PORTLAND AND SEATTLE

Thursday

The Amadans are opening for Mudhoney in Portland and Seattle. The guys are driving up and I will meet up with them. I flew in from Burbank and my first flight was cancelled, so I had to take a later flight. But that gave me the rare opportunity to witness a Crispin Glover freakout (Rare since the late 80s at least).

In Portland I met up with a fellow forum foodie named Jim. He was a liberal Jewish blue-stater, for which I was grateful. There was really no other choice but Jake's Crawfish, which has been in business for over 100 years. Although it was bought out by McCormick and Schmick in the 70s, it has retained its personal flair. I had been thinking about Jake's big chunks of sweet crab for the entire flight. Jim was a good dinner companion. He laughed at all of my jokes, and didn't blink an eye when I ordered huge quantities of food. We work in similar fields, and have similar views on politics, so the conversation was lively.

We started our meal with popcorn crawfish, fried in a fritter-like batter with a sherry aioli (I didn't find the sherry flavor to be very pronounced). I am always amazed by their mutantly large prawn cocktail, so I hogged that while Mr. Chips enjoyed the pan-fried oysters. Try as I may, I am just not an oyster person. Their dungeness crab/shrimp cakes with Jalapeno ginger aioli were crispy on the outside and downright ethereal. I want to eat them every day for the rest of my life. We also split the Dungeness crab legs sauteed with artichoke hearts and mushrooms in a light coating of Bernaise.

I also had two local microbrews and proceeded to either charm or terrorize the waiter. Sometimes those distinctions are not so clear for me. The dessert menu sounded great, but I have been watching the sugar. Finally I couldn't resist the local homespun appeal of a mixed berry cobbler. After I snapped a photo of it, I pushed the plate over to Jim. I confessed my secret madness, "I didn't want to eat it. I wanted to take a picture of it". I did take one bite, and it was just like angel's breath.

Jim walked me back to my hotel through a neighborhood populated with bars and bathhouses. A panhandler hit me up and we had the following exchange:

Panhandler: Spare some change for my spa treatment?"

Me: Hang on...sure...here you go

Panhandler shouts after me, "Thank you! Believe in Jesus!"

Me: I don't!

Panhandler: Believe in Jesus ...or else!!!

Me, turning around and walking back to the panhandler, thrusting out my open hand: "Give me my money back!"

Jim: Oh, you ARE funny!


FRIDAY

So Friday I slept until noon and had to hit the camera store because I somehow managed to break yet another point-and-shoot. The man in front of me was looking at his prints, and I commented on his cool black-and-white picture of a familiar-looking clocktower. I asked him, "Is that the University of Texas?"

He said, "Yeah, I just got back from Austin."

I said something like, "Isn't it weird that he had all of those guns, and then he had a hatchet? Like, just in case."

He asked, "Who?"

"Charles Whitman."

"Who?"

"You know how they say when people go crazy they are going to go up into a clocktower and start shooting people?"

"Yeah."

"Charles Whitman is the reason why." He was totally stunned when I told him about Whitman's famous killing rampage at the University of Texas. He had no idea. He just liked the clocktower.

I didn't make it to the Velveteria until 5pm. The Velveteria is a museum of velvet paintings run by a couple of ex-Angelinos named Carl and Karen. They are supercool and we immediately hit it off like old friends. We could barely stop gabbing about Charles Whitman, and Waco, and Russ Meyer movies long enough for me to check out the art. We had so much in common. I loved them and hung out on their pink velvet sofa way past closing time. They had the museum in sections - Clowns, Nudes, Polynesian scenes, etc. They said they actually have hundreds of paintings that don't fit in the space, so they rotate the exhibits. They are surprisingly knowledgable about many of the artists and subjects of the paintings. They are like Doctors of Velvetology. Their black-light section is particularly mind-blowing. They told me one guy came in and just started rolling around on the floor, he was so overwhelmed (and most likely pretty high).

They recommended a Creole Cuban place around the corner called Pambiche. It was a friendly little neighborhood joint painted in bright colors and watched over by a flock of paper-mache parrots. The chef, John Connell Maribona, cooks family recipes which differ subtly from any Cuban food I have previously experienced. I had oxtails that were falling off the bone, drenched in an intense red-wine sauce. Oxtail is like a cross between brisket and a beef rib. The meat shreds like brisket, but is richer and fattier. It was accompanied by rice and some kind of corn fritters that had a slight hint of amaretto, but strangely, no black beans. Their banana cake, La Banana Borracha, was not too sweet, more like a banana bread. But it came with an intensely sweet rum sauce and a Pina Colada salsa.

I rushed back to the hotel to get ready and headed off to meet Bob at his gig. The venue was an old movie theater. The bar had black lights and was decorated with murals replicating Ripley's Believe it or Not drawings in da-glo poster paint. It was a pretty black-light themed day. It was a nice place, except that it smelled like burnt garlic and the backstage area was like a little wet cave.

I was up front taking pics during Mudhoney, and the crowd was getting pretty rowdy. During the second song, someone threw a full can of beer at Steve, the guitar player, barely missing his head. After the song, he said into the mic, "Thank you!" He usually doesn't talk onstage, so I thought he was going to say, "Thanks for throwing a beer at me, assholes!"

Two skinheads and a chick in a leather jacket were pushing everyone really hard. I was just kind of riding with it, when BAM! A fist came out of nowhere and punched me right in the mouth. HARD. I instinctively punched back, and hit the girl in the back, since she had already spun away from me. I was going to grab her shoulder and punch her in the face, then I realized I had no way of knowing it was actually her who punched me. It could have been somebody else, and my mind's eye played a film loop of saloon fights in cowboy movies, and I didn't want everyone to start punching the wrong people and throw me through a big plate glass window.

So I went into the black light bar to have a drink and chill out for a minute. I have never been cold-cocked before, and it was kind of a relief to know that my natural reaction is to fight back instead of rolling up into a tight little ball and rocking back-and-forth, crying. When I went back in I stood at the side of the stage, further from the fray.

After the show I told Steve that I thought he was going to say something worse than "Thank you" when that beer flew past him and he replied, "If I said, 'Fuck you', I would have had four more cans coming at me. So I just start a solo." When in doubt - guitar solo. I have much to learn.

A girl came up to me and said, "What was up with that chick in the leather jacket? She punched me right in the stomach. So I pushed her down"

I said, "So it WAS her who punched me? I'm glad you pushed her! I wish I had punched her harder!" Then I noticed Mark Arm onstage coiling up cables and trying to pretend that he couldn't hear us.

Bob and I went to the Roxy, a 24-hour diner, for sandwiches. They had a church-sized crucifix on the wall with a neon halo. My sandwich had turkey, bacon, avocado and hash browns. I wasn't sure if the hash browns just got in there by accident with the bacon or not.

My jaw was really sore and I started whining that I needed some ice. I told Bob, "I'm sorry. I'm such a pussy - wanting a big ice pack." He said, "Yeah, my delicate, wilting flower."


SATURDAY

Saturday I rode up to Seattle with the band. Jon imitated Huell Howser for the last hour or two of the trip. For some reason I have a deep animosity toward Huell Howser.

The gig was at Neumo's, and there were many jokes about Old Mo's. There was a nice big backstage area with separate rooms and everything. The bar had a huge mermaid mural and blown glass that looked like flames. Bars here just don't try that hard. Bob and I met my nephew Justin at a nearby Pho place that was no great shakes. I didn't really eat much of my soup. But the carefully arranged flowers and pho garnishes made for a beautiful still life.

We went back to Neumo's and it felt like we waited around forever for the music to start. Meanwhile, I impressed my nephew with my daring and mesmerizing bar tricks. Finally my best friend Anne Pancake and her husband Ed showed up. They are both massage therapists and I got Ed to start working the kinks out of my shoulders.

The bar had an attached Pommes Frites place, called oddly enough, Pommes Frites, which only had french fries and sausages. They had at least 20 different dipping sauces, so we ordered fries all around, and: Garlic mayonnaise, Ketchup, Horseradish mayonnaise, Chipotle mayonnaise, Pesto mayonnaise and Curry Ketchup.

I am really fickle about bands, but the opening band - Hot Lunch - had me at "1-2-3-4". They are the ultimate good-time-fun band. The music is superpop, channeling 60s bubblegum and old novelty country bands. Their drummer is just cute as a button. I wanted to run onstage and pinch her little cheeks. the frontman was like a cross between Jerry Lee Lewis and Lux Interior. I loved them and thought their set was way too short.

Ed started rubbing my neck again, and Anne was leaning her head on his shoulder as we watched the Amadans. I'm so comfortable with them both, we are always trading massages. But we were in public and I was a little worried that people thought we were going to start having weird patchouli-scented hippie sex right there on the dance floor in front of my husband. When Ed reached around to rub my breastbone, I had to call foul and run off to take some pictures of the band.

This time I stood at the opposite side of the stage to take pics of Mudhoney, although the audience was pretty mellow. If anything they were in a kind of religious ecstacy.

After the bands were over, it took what felt like forever to get out of there. I know it comes with the territory. The first thing you learn is you always gotta wait. I just didn't feel like talking to anyone anymore and felt kind of hanger-on-ish standing around stupidly backstage. Touring makes me cranky. I am just not cut out for it. I think they should have a survivor-style reality show called "Get out of the Van" where people have to go on tour with Mike Watt. Watt would break me, in like, 2 days. I don't know how bands don't fucking kill eachother on 3-month tours.

I had booked a "modern" hotel for us in Seattle. It was the kind of place where Catherine O'Hara's character from Beetlejuice would have stayed. When we arrived, exhausted, we couldn't even figure out how to make the crazy red elevator work. It was like we had woken up in the future. The room was painted entirely grey, and was opressively tiny. The bathroom was like an airplane bathroom. The next morning Bob could barely take a shower. I asked to be moved to a bigger room, at my expense. In the next room the toilet was so close to the wall you had to sit on it sideways. There was also an 18-inch step going into the slippery, marble-tiled bathroom. Uncharacteristically quoting Star Trek, Bob said, "This hotel is illogical."

SUNDAY

Sunday the boys came to pick Bob up at the Hotel Moderne. The uptight desk clerk called up, "Ummm...I have a Barney Fife to see you." I said, "Oh God, he's not talking like that is he?" She didn't answer so I told Bob, "You're going to have a LONG trip back home." I saw the band off, showered, and headed straight into Tacoma to the Museum of Glass. I have always wanted to see Dale Chihuly's "home" space. I especially wanted to see his big glass floats, and I was disappointed that they had only been a temporary exhibit. I had rushed to the museum without bothering to eat breakfast, so I grabbed half a panini at their cafe, which kicked ass over all paninis prior.

The other exhibits compensated for the missing floats. I was especially entranced by works of Anna Skibska, which reminded me of spun sugar, infinitely fine and delicate webs of glass. There was also a gorgeous red glass house, partially filled with glass apples. There was a workshop where you could watch sweaty college boys in leather aprons work with molten red glass. It sounds very grade school field trip, but the glassworking was much more interesting to watch than you would imagine.

Outside there were various installations; BREATHE, a fiber-optic exploration of light and movement, was not as impressive in the windless daytime. It was still beautiful, but it was more like BLUE STICKS IN WATER.

TIDEWATER, a series of metal doorways, was so geometric it felt naturally very photograph-like, making for perfect and easy pictures.

Finally, INCIDENCE, a series of glass triangles, takes advantage of the surrounding landscape and architecture, transforming its shape depending on the vantage point. This is probably the one installation I would want in my own backyard.

I walked over the much-lauded "Bridge of glass" and sadly, it was not made entirely out of glass. How thrilling and terrifying that would have been to stand on! Instead, there was a display wall with dozens of Chihuly's works, which pretty much everyone who has seen my pictures thinks look just like bongs. Overhead, encased in glass, are Chihuly's signature sea-creature-like displays. And then for no apparent reason at all, there are what appear to be two giant glass rock-candy sticks.

Grand Central Station, which had another huge (admittedly ubiquitous) Chihuly instillation, was locked up on Sunday. Since it was not yet closing time, I walked over to the Tacoma Museum of Art on a whim. What a happy accident! There was a display called Symphonic Poem. Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson, a Columbus-area folk artist, creates books and sculptures out of fabric. Using leather, quilting, sewn-on-buttons and yarn, she stitches together artworks mostly resembling voodoo dolls. There was a videotape of the artist speaking that reminded me again what a fine line it is between genius and madness, and how some people are lucky enough to have talent so that they are called "eccentric" instead of "homeless". And yes, I bought the book.

Next I wandered into a room containing horns strung one upon another all over the room at varying heights, like something out of Dr Seuss. The bottoms of the horns had V-cut air holes like a flute, beneath which were connected flat pieces of wood, which in turn were connected at the bottom to tiny canisters of compressed air. In the center of the room stood a music stand equipped with a button and two dials. Not anticipating much, I nonchalantly pressed the button. I was suddenly surrounded by music as the horns started sounding, above, below, and in every direction around me. Fuck surroundsound, this was three-dimensional music - music like I had never heard before, whimsical, charming and playful. It was like a special joke someone had engineered just for me. And I was delighted in a way I have not felt since I was a very small child. It was magical. It was pure enchantment. I began weeping. I wept because I had forgotten that it was ever even possible to feel that way. When the music stopped, I turned one of the dials. By manipulating the dials I could play anything I wanted, isolating each horn. The installation was called Conloninpurple. It is Trimpin's ode to the player piano music of Conlon Nancarrow. It is probably one of the most affective art works I have ever been lucky enough to experience. When they came to kick me out, I told the security guard that if I smoked pot they would probably have to call the police to drag me away from those dials.

Anne picked me up in Tacoma, and we went down to Pike Place for fish and chips. We went to her favorite place, The Salmon Cooker, which is owned and operated by local Indians. They alder-smoke all of their fish. The cod was smoky and flaky, and the chips were done perfectly all the way to the center even though they were humongous. The chowder was intense with the usual Italian herbs - rosemary, thyme, possibly marjoram, but there was one distinct taste I couldn't place. The helpful cook let me in on the secret - mustard seed! Anne loves their coleslaw and can eat 2 orders in one sitting.

Anne dropped me off at the hotel, and I relaxed for awhile before I met my nephew Justin for a late dinner. I had reservations at Chez Shea, which has a very good reputation. Plus they had foie gras, which I eat at every possible opportunity. The waitress seemed disappointed that we just wanted starters and iced tea. The foie gras was kind of charred at the edges, and was just not appetizing in spite of the creative sauces, including one made with quince. Loss of palate is the first harbinger of illness with me, so maybe something was going on. Justin was not too impressed with his mussels either. So we left there hungry.

It seems most of the restaurants around there close at 9pm, so we were kind of wandering around haplessly. We passed the closed Scone shop which was proudly displaying its Roadfood review in the window. Finally a kindly cook steered us towards Cutters, which did not look promising. It is a waterfront office-party type place that also had a sushi bar. But it was open. It turned out it was "happy hour" from 9pm til closing, so all appetizers were half off.

3-dollar appetizers? We went wild - potstickers, coconut shrimp, hot wings crab cakes, and calamari. I expected them to be little plates. But this was a bar and they were big drunk guy portions. Everything was so good, especially the calamari. Who would have thought black beans and tortilla strips would work with fried calamari? I felt guilty leaving so much food on our plates, but the grease saturation would not have been worth it.

We hiked up the giant hill toward the hotel. The first one's a doozy. Half-way up someone had kindly bolted tractor seats to the side of their house so you could have a little rest. As we soldiered on, my throat ached and my head was pounding. I was definitely starting to feel unwell. As we passed the 60-foot tall Macy's Christmas tree, there was a hysterical chattering of birds, the likes of which I had never before heard. I looked into the tree, and every branch was dark with thousands of frenzied, shrieking birds zooming from branch to branch like it was the end of the world.

I asked Justin, somewhat alarmed, "What the fuck is that?"

He answered, sounding bored, "They're birds."

"Why are they screaming like that? Are they burning themselves to death on the Christmas lights?"

"No. They're just birds."

"Why are they freaking out ? Birds at home don't freak out like that in the middle of the night."

"It's because they're bats."

"Are they bats?"

"No. They're just birds. Let's keep walking"

"OK. But I don't think you are comprehending how totally freaked out those birds are making me."

The next day I told Anne about how all of the birds in the trees were screaming and screaming. She said, "Yup. Starlings'll do that."


MONDAY

Monday I met my nephew, Justin, at the EMP - Experience Music Project. Many of my friends are boycotting EMP because of its founder, Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft. He pissed off a lot of people by building Qwest Field with taxpayer dollars after it had been voted down twice.

The building is another strange Frank Geary design. I am not an expert on architecture, but I find his buildings disorienting. At some point in a Geary building I am usually surprised by an unexpected flight of stairs, like, "Where did those come from? I thought I was on the second floor".

The main draw for me was the huge collection of Jimi Hendrix memorabilia. I expected the usual - a few guitars, a few costumes, and maybe a guitar pick or two. It's more like someone just followed Hendrix around picking up everything he ever set down. There are intimate family letters (His family referred to him as "Buster"), early drawings (Hendrix was also a great visual artist), and anything else your mother might keep in a box in the attic. I was most affected by a letter Hendrix wrote from the air force, where he discusses a simulated jump, and how fellow recruits backed down. He discusses the thought process that made him choose to jump, and it reveals a deeper philosophy of life.

The museum displays his guitars, and pedals, and even the mixing board from the Electric Ladyland studio. But I was most amazed by the chunk of guitar that Hendrix set on fire at the Monterey Pop Festival. It is such an iconic relic, it's the only thing I would have been tempted to smash-and-grab, were I a smash-and-grab type of person. Of course, the fact that it occured to me at all possibly means that is exactly the kind of person I am.

There were letters, clothing, jewelry, handwritten lyrics, and homemade cassettes. When I saw that they even had his diary, it started to feel a little more like plunder than memorabilia. Later I asked my friend Anne if Paul Allen had taken advantage of the family, exploiting poverty to root through their heirlooms. She said it is just the family business, and they're pretty matter-of-fact about it.

The special exhibits sections Held an exhibit on Disney music and the early roots of hip-hop. Both are vaguely interesting, but I was too overwhelmed by the giant Hendrix display to take in any more. There is a sound lab where you can play instruments, a concert simulation, and Justin's holy grail, the Guitar Gallery. They have over 50 guitars, from as far back as 1770.

Afterwards we went down to Pike Place to try to eat our way from one end to the other. We did not get very far. We split a killer pulled pork sandwich from the Soul Food Stop, and a Mac and Cheese from Beecher's, and called it a day. The donuts from the much-lauded Daily Dozen Donuts were disappointing; they are probably only good when they are fresh out of the fryer, as is true of most donuts. We watched the fishmongers throw fish across the building to eachother for awhile, and I bought some fantastic plump Rainier cherries and raspberries.

We met up with Anne, and Justin tagged out and headed back to the University. Anne and I sat in the bar at Lowell's and stared at the Sound. Lowell's has been around forever. If you want to eat on the first or third floors, you order from a counter much like a cafeteria. The second-floor bar has table service, which continues later than counter service. I was now fully sick and nursed a cup of hot tea. We ordered sandwiches - Anne got a Reuben that she liked a lot. I got a crab cake roll. The crab cakes were not very flavorful, but once I added the cayenne-rich mayonnaise and pickle chips that came with the sandwich, it was much better. Anne also tried the clam chowder and reported that it was much richer, but not as flavorful as the Salmon Cooker. I was too full to eat my sandwich, so we took a taxi back to my hotel.

She did a Cranio-sacral massage for me, which is very, very relaxing. It made me fall into a deep sleep and I was barely aware of her quietly tiptoeing out of the room. Back at the hotel I fell into a deep sleep around 6 o'clock. I woke up late at night and ordered room service and a movie. Hotels are a comfy place to be sick. The room service was provided by The Red Fin, which serves very hip chi-chi Asian fusion cuisine. I had mushroom dumplings, and a hamburger which was served on a ciabatta with pickled red onions and grilled pineapple. The condiments were wasabi-honey mustard and ginger ketchup. Not for everyone, but I sure enjoyed it (I did have to take out the pineapple)

The next day I took a train back to Portland so I could catch my plane the following day. The views from the train were spectacular, especially since we were running late and caught the sunset, turning the sky magenta and purple over the pines. I was also lucky enough to see the Mima Mounds, which I had almost rented a car to see (That and the world's biggest frying pan, which the train unfortunately did NOT pass). They had Ivar's clam chowder, which was rich but again, not as flavorful as the Salmon Cooker. I watched The Polar Express on the train, which ensured that I will be creeped out by Tom Hanks for the rest of my life.

TUESDAY

Back in Portland, I checked into the Governor's Hotel, which was super-ritzy for the price. They informed me I had been upgraded to a suite with a fireplace and jacuzzi tub. Plus, their room service was provided by Jake's Grill, Jake's sister restaurant. Score! I had one last thing I wanted to do - visit Powell's, the gigantor bookstore. I wanted a quick bite before shopping, so I went to Henry's Tavern, original home of Henry Weinhardt's. Maybe it was my cold that turned me into Goldilocks, but the dumplings were too greasy and the cheese soup was too beer-y, so I headed off to the bookstore. I controlled myself and only bought 8 books. They had some 50s exotica sexploitation paperbacks that I found irresistible, as well as a cookbook from Jake's, and a few music books for Bob.

I decided to order my food to go from Jake's Grill instead of ordering room service. It was not just the hiked room service prices, but I've noticed room service usually has a very limited menu. Jake's Grill is much more upscale than Jake's Crawfish. Both the menu and ambiance are more like a fine steakhouse. Tucked back safely into my room, I found I was still whiny and finicky - the crab cocktail was too fishy, the pea soup was too thyme-y, but the macaroni and cheese was JUST RIGHT.

The next morning I had a nice soak in the jacuzzi tub before heading off for the airport. Although the Good Dog/Bad Dog downtown was closed, the one in the airport was still open. So I had a healthy hot dog breakfast. I think airline security is really random, so I found myself wandering the shops noticing plastic forks and all of the other potential weapons, like, "I could totally kill someone with that jar of boysenberry preserves." There was a kid in the waiting area with a toy plane, who kept making his toy crash while screaming like Taffy from Female Troubles, "Aghhhhh! Nooooooo! Slow Dowwwwwnnnnnnn!!!! You're going tooo fast!!!

After our plane landed safely, in spite of the kid's voodoo, we were sitting on the tarmac. My purse fell onto the feet of the man sitting next to me. I unbuckled my seatbelt and leaned over to move it. The overhead speaker demanded, "Ma'am, please buckle your seatbelt". So I started buckling it back up, when a flight attendent literally flew down the aisle into my face shouting, "Ma'am, when you unbuckle your seatbelt, you make ME unbuckle MY seatbelt, which endangers MY LIFE!" I was shocked, and the people around me murmured, "Woah." I was glad it was the end of the flight. Uncomfortable.

When I got home I started unpacking the books from Powell’s so I could give Bob his presents. I found a card saying, "YOUR LUGGAGE HAS BEEN SEARCHED" lying right on top of a kitschy 50s paperback with the title "STRANGE SEX PRACTICES".