2005-05-25 - 10:14 p.m.
Weezer breaks my heart. This new song, the Beverly Hills, just not so good. And all the more so, right now, because I just listened to "Only in Dreams" and it brings back the days of flying places to meet friends and drives after midnight for the hell of it and the sunroof rolled back (cranked, actually, '87 Jetta). Bands, when they release albums, should write something in the liner notes. A disclaimer?
Warning: You may fall in love with this album. We are not responsible for heartbreak. Attach memories to this album at your own risk.
But.
Kings of Leon. A recent find. "Slow Night, So Long." There you go, boys.
I don't know how it happened, but when I started this journal I got hooked into a bunch of Portland folks. Actually, no, I do. I remember searching around and happening upon bicyclelove's journal. Then she was something else and now she's called division-day. The point is, all the Portlanders seem to really love their town and so I asked myself, have I ever loved my town that much? I was too young to really love my little hometown, Cumberland, Maryland, and I left it to go to college and then I grew up and there was Baltimore before me like a big, violent, dirty uncut jewel. And the longer I'm away from Baltimore the rosier that place gets and of course I forget about the trash and the police tape and the broken car windows and the overall bombed-outedness of the entire west and east sides and the strange experiment in urban commerce (Timberlands sold out of the backs of vans) that is North Avenue. What I remember is the Brewer's Art and Patapsco State park and day trips to DC and west to the mountains and to Charles Town race track and Pennsylvania to Matty T's bohemian shack with the frisbee game we made up for the swingset in the park down the street. It's possible that I'm one of those who only really loves something like a place after leaving it. I hope that's not true, because I do my best to live the thunderstorms and morning coffees and walks down Colley Avenue.
Anyway, I can see, I think, why people love the Pacific Northwest cities. When I was in Portland, it just made me feel cleaner, a general overall cleanliness in that place. A crispness, maybe. I remember walking around downtown, with the public transport going all ways and plastic deck chairs just sitting, unchained-to-street-signs and unguarded, on the downtown streets for a parade that was scheduled for the next day. Couldn't believe that, the chairs just sitting there, and that nobody'd stolen them or at least messed them up. My friends and I were stunned. We talked about the chairs for five minutes. Then we got hungry and asked this couple about a good place to eat. and I'll always remember what the guy said. He had a pierced nose and those round black plastic things people liked to put in their ears a few years ago:
"What do you want? Vegan, vegetarian or just a place to eat?"
And we said we didn't know and they told us about a vegan burrito place but we randomly found a regular bar (Kelly's?) and when I went to the bathroom, a fifty-year-old guy came in and used the urinal next to mine, and looked me right in the eye.
"How you doin'?" I asked.
"Here we are, just drinking beer."
"Yep."
"The communists are taking over this bar, this country, and the best we can do is sit around and drink beer."
And when I saw him again, out in the bar, I was drinking a beer and so was he. All right.
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