feather2pixels

My just-completed voyage to the US easternlands resulted in some interesting artifact finds at home, as well as the creation of some new ones. Now I am back.

Some pictures of note:

And finally, a video of me and Danny dominating The Looper at Knoebels in Elysburg:

[flv:knoebels.flv 600 400]

I seem to be back from the coast. The south coast. Of Lake Erie. Ben and Joe (barely) flew in from New York, I came in from Pittsburgh, and we all rendezvous-ed with Shal in his newish, possibly semi-permanent home. The night before, driving a Korean rental car upstate, I watched the aggressively uniform landscape of Ohio (is any part of this state uninhabited?) kind of give way to the sprawling, post-industrial mass bisected by river that is the greater Cleveland area. We spent most of time sprawling ourselves: in next-to-back row seats of a tight Indians/Yankees game, in corners of the kind of bars that pull you in with a seven thousand beer menu and keep you there with a Labatt special, and of course on Shal’s living room floor, where approximately one thirtieth of his media collection still fills an entire bookshelf two rows deep. Cleveland is a good place to hang out.

Then I got on the same United States Route 80 of my daily commute and drove East out of the state of Ohio and towards the state of squalor. I was headed to State College, Pennsylvania, where Danny was about to complete his last week ever of studying at the state college in question in a fantastically shitty shell of a house (further ravaged from a party the weekend before). At this point, studying is the generous description of what he does there, though we did wake up at 9:30 AM, after a night of watching DVDs in his warm bedroom, and slashed though a thicket of Ugg boots into middle campus to learn about monopoly. Later on, we went out with his friends to the kind of bars that pull you in with their $5 pitchers of bottom shelf liquor and keep you there because you are not physically free to leave. It was fun and it all made miss college. But not that much.

I completed my five hundred mile circle on PA Route 22 West, where central Pennsylvania transforms to western Pennsylvania via the Altoona Valley.  Freight trains still do things like chug up proud green hills and cross sturdy steel truss bridges here. Once in Pittsburgh, I tried to make the most of my time there by visiting PA’s superior state college, eating a kielbasi fried pirogi sandwich, pinball, and meeting up with Stef and Alicia, who spend less on their new mortgages than what I’m thinking about spending on a studio space. As Alicia’s pup was licking my face over a distracted game of Guitar Hero, I thought, she’s got a pretty nice life.

Why is To-Shi-O dragging a keg?

For our third party is why! We had what I guess was technically a kegger on Saturday night and it was reasonably successful. That is to say people showed up to our apartment, drank, and eventually left. The only casualties were a shower curtain and a scrappy rug—just a shower curtain if you don’t mind the rotting smell of old trendy pilsner.

Speaking of people who don’t mind the smell of rotting beer, Danny humored me while I told him all about the weekend. Afterwards, he added, “Yeah we usually have a couple of kegs at every party.” A couple?! How often does Danny’s house have parties, anyways? “You know, a couple of times a month.” Lesson: never try and amuse a Big Ten student with your keg-obtaining exploits.

This week I returned from a trip home–or whatever Blue Bell is to me. Do I have a home? What does that even mean? Is home just one of the many fictions I have invented to deal with myself? Argh! I have been desperately trying to claw out of my imaginary worlds; you would think a trip back East would provide some much needed clarity.

But at least it was an efficient trip. In four days and five nights I was able to do everything I wanted to do without down time. Time is sanity at home. More importantly, I was able to eat (almost) everything I was hoping to eat. Plus, I got to fulfill my lifelong dream of experiencing live reggae in Blue Bell. It did not disappoint.

That particular excursion happened to be the first time I have drank (Yuengling, none the less) legally with Danny, as he reached the end of his twenty-first year last January. From now on, the powers that be will have to think of a better reason to kick us out of Slim’s. The entire family, which, more and more is starting to resemble a bona fide clan, also made it down to Philly Chinatown, where I sampled the worst carrot juice and the best wonton soup of my life in the same meal.

OK, so there was a little clarity.

On Saturday, the clan traveled to a barbecue near the nuclear power plant, where tomatoes apparently grow to the size of dodge balls. Those were enjoyed with burgers and bottled water on the lovely little ranch of my dad’s longtime lab manager, Marella. Danny, Michelle & Andy (Mandy?), and I got a casual game of whiffle ball/frisbee/tennis/football (fiffle ball?) going and that was really the main event.

That nigt, Joe was cast into the final weeks of his bachelorhood with a party designed to, um, be like, the opposite of a wedding? Or something. I guess I don’t really understand bachelor parties. Maybe this mental block is linked to why I will be the last of my friends to get married. But, as with the family, everyone was together for the first time in a while, and that was good. I’ve got good friends. Plus, Shal and I got scrapple–that’s good too. Especially in a crowded diner at 2AM.

The next day I had probably the best pastrami half sandwich of my life. I use the term sandwich loosely to describe what was more of a small mountain of freshly carved, hot meat, dripping with pastrami goodness between slices of bread. The Rascal, sitting across from me in a busy corner of the Reading Terminal Market, ate the other half, which was slathered with an ill-advised layer of mustard. Not only did she decline my mustard advice, but that girl still insists I love mustard, which is like saying that Donkey Kong loves short Italian plumbers. Just because I once ate half a jar of it rather than risking certain starvation strikes me as irrelevant. Irrelevant!
Speaking of advice, some of the too hip for their own good SF coffee shops could learn something from the quiet dignity of La Colombe at Rittenhouse Square.

Finally: cheesesteaks and baby cows. It was a surprisingly good combination, the cheesesteaks in question coming from Palermo’s in Blue Bell (because at the time it was not one of Pudge’s four hours of operation) and the baby cows from Merrymead Farms, where one can watch really cute feedings in the early evening, complete with oversized baby bottles.

It freaks me out how long you can go before you catch on to people. Especially when you want them to turn out to be a certain way. How exactly does one determine that somebody is a not good person? I’m not talking about a bad person–that’s easy. Just someone who doesn’t particularly care about other people. That confuses me. Everybody wants to appear like a good person and plenty of people are good at being friendly. Some people are exceptional at it. Maybe this is all just a matter expecting nothing from people.

But enough of that. Hip hip hooray for seventy-two hour weekends. When I was working at the museum, every weekend was this long. Man, that was a another life. These days, I wake up at five for a commute to an office where I am three months behind my grading, which is impressive in light of the fact I have only been working there for two.

Today, though, I got to escape reality at the end of the continent with the Bulldogger. We met up for a simple breakfast in the Mission and then we were off, traversing through the park and whatnot. That’s been my weekend life for the last few months, but I’m not used to having company. It was interesting to have a companion.
Looking ahead, I’m hoping I can hop skip and jump my way through this week and towards nine whole days of Thanksgiving break. I can’t fucking wait. Danny was supposed to make his way over here for the holiday but apparently the people who do things like buy Danny’s plane tickets couldn’t find a deal. A shame: I know he would have been up for football on the beach and midnight movies.

I think plan B is to accompany Jenny down south to where the air might not be so clean but I can think everything over in the sun. I actually haven’t been down to L.A. since I moved West and this is my forth year here. I have been so lost in this city that I’ve barely scratched California’s surface.