Well, i guess this really has to start on the night before we left, last wednesday evening. We of course, had made the decision just to stay up to four rather then get an hour or two of sleep. So stay up we did. Then dimitrios brought alcohol into the equation, and drank i did. I went out for a pre-cigarette shower at about 3am, i was out smoking, a guy walks up, and he asks a question. The following brief and kinda cool conversation occurred:
guy: "hey, you waiting for someone?"
me: "aren't we all?"
guy: "yeah, man"
Then i went in and showered and at 3:45 people starting flooding in, tickets were handed out and i got in a cab with steph and laura and dimitrios. Our cab guy was kinda cool, he probably should've kept the fact that he'd been up for 24 hours a secret, but he got us to Logan airport nonetheless.
Got some dunkin donuts, had a cigarette outside listening to Kid A. Let this be said: Kid A is EXCEPTIONAL blisteringly early morning music. It was the absolute perfect fit to the feel of everything. We boarded our lovely plane, which adam pointed out looked like no one has paid any attention to it since the 70s.
The first plane ride was pretty smooth. I didn't sleep a wink, and listened to some of the CDs of the latest katie offering, and god damn, i'm some sort of genius. Listening to my work, which is really just composed of me arranging the works of others, i was like "hell yeah." Landed at midway. Bummed around for a bit, and then boarded plane number 2: direct to LAX. I did sleep on this flight, an hour or two. Somewhere in the middle listened to some Sigur Ros, where i fully formed my deep views that in fact the stuff encoded onto my little silver platter is not, in fact, music, but something wonderfully different. And also the Magnetic Fields got a listen in there.
And suddenly, we were in LA. It was bright, a little chilly, and bright, and palm treey. We got outside, and into our van, and drove around, and everything was just weird. I could never live in this place. Everything is too much palm tree, and too bright, and too pink, and too just unreal. We drove for some time, into santa monica to get our performance permit, than to a little health conscious restaurant that served only turkey and i got a beef burger, i specified beef, and got back something grayish white that tasted nothing at all like beef. It was a nice day outside, but sitting outside eating, and not in the shade, it was really quite chilly. Lunch ended and we loaded into el vano and headed to our first gig. A lutheran k-8 school.
We sang for a bunch of kids. They were all cute and asking questions. I talked to them, told them all to go home and ask their parents to give them the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds. And we sang and they clapped and we left. On the way out, some kid came up to laura, said "hey, what's up" then covered his face and ran away. Unfortunately, i missed this encounter, but it sounded quite fun.
And back into the vans. We drove through some ghetto, then through LA proper, then along some highway, saw the hollywood sign, and some really big houses, and a shitload of palm trees. And then climbed an 18 mile hill and arrived at la casa del gantus.
Beautiful, beautiful place. I followed oly's lead and got a beer. Threw my bag in some room. We all hung outside by the pool for a while, i had some beers, enjoyed the house, enjoyed the sun. Got snapped at because after probably over 1hour of watching Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, with only 15 minutes left, some people wanted to change the channel, and adam and i pointed out that we had been watching a movie that is almost over, and we just got yelled at more. Then there was an invitation poolside only conference held outside.
Mrs. Gantus cooked up some turkey lasagna, apparently turkey is the official meat of the los angeles area. It was my first time eating lasanga and it was tolerable, probably not anything i'd willingly order in the future, but it was pretty good. And the garlic bread was delicious. Then we changed into blacks and loaded into the van to drive to USC for our performance with the USC Socal Vocals.
We got there, and we were forced into uncomfortable introduction circles where we had to say name, place, major, year, and "something cool abotu you" and everyone went around, said something interesting and without fail one of the more lame socal's would say "yeah, that IS pretty cool." It was pretty silly. Then Bryce, a cool guy who was trying to be punk Peterik wearing a winter hat told us we were doing a jam circle, which is basically everyone in the circle making some rhythmic noise or sound and it sounds cool and such. Well, it was, i was lame and just coughed in time, which was really painful in the end. It's the type of exercise that the bostonians, being a bunch of self-conscience people who worry about what everyone else thinks would never be able to pull off well. Also, most of us are totally not cool like that.
Then the performance, the socal's were pretty good. The first song, Melissa Ethridge's "the only one" wasn't like exceptional so far as arranging and singing, but they had cool dancing. The second song was something called "on the wire" which was just excellent. And then some other song that was all dancing and very little singing. And yet, it seemed as if the bostonians were all blown away. Whatever. We got on stage, and as i learned, people were demoralized or whatever, we sang, it was ok. We ended. The socals came back, sang a third eye blind song, "motorcycle driveby" the bryce guy sang it, and it started out all timid, and by god, it was the most intense a cappella performance i have ever seen. The song was just so raw and desperate, it was really awesome. And then we sang something and blah blah blah we went home.
Not so much home as to a little strip mall cause meaghan needed something girly. There was a baskin robbins there, and adam reintroduced the concept of daquiri ice ice cream to me, and i got mad excited. I went inside, with camera, filming the whole event, and for fuck's sake, they no longer had daquiri ice, which is a damn shame, because it is one of the finest ice cream flavors ever. It's not really an ice cream, it's more of a sherbert or and ice, but christ it's yummy. Then we went back to gantus'.
We had survivor on tape, and beers, and a deck of cards. Some of us started a game of asshole, which was ultimately doomed, as survivor was on, and i for one could in now way concentrate on both things. Survivor ended. Gantus served up shots of his family's own brand of anise alcohol. And i was ready to party, and as is to be expected from this group, everyone was tired and poopy and as i wrote in the palm pilot: "lame motherfuckers." maybe that was harsh, but i was hoping for a hell of a kick off to our college tour.
Didn't stop me though. I drank. Beer. And as it was time to go to bed, i was the last one standing. And then i discovered a completely free bed in one of the back rooms. Everyone else was settled so i fucking scored bigtime. I went outside with Sigur Ros on. I started a cigarette, and fast forwarded to a random song on the disc. The song i landed on was track 8, "Olsen Olsen," the one i wrote about two days ago. Here's what i wrote in the palm as i lay in bed about 15 minutes later:
"just had an amazing experience. Was outside for the last cigarette, everyone else was asleep, I was listening to sigur ros, track 8. Finished the cig. and the piano part kicked in and made me unbelieviably happy. I left the pool gate and then started running around, jumping and spinning and throhing my arms up in pure elation. Then i dropped to my knees and then lied down on the grasss staring up at the stars and finished out the song, as happy as i've ever been. This is what this "music" can do - its unreal."
And it was. I mean, to see me out there would've have been something wild. It was an absolutely beautiful night. The moon was out and perfectly framed between the roof and the chimney, and even though we were in smoggy LA, the stars were out and you could see them. And i was listening to this triumphant song and fucking jumping around like a madman. It was amazing. Went inside, and after over 40 hours of near uninterrupted wake time, went to sleep.
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