This is my favorite picture of Dylan, ever.  I think because he’s smiling, which seems to be a rare thing when there’s a camera around him.  He seems kinda cranky in most of his photos.  We weren’t close enough at Monday’s show to see his face, but I’ll just bet his blue eyes were all laser-beam intense, his thin mustache all villainy, and we could see he was dressed all in black like a gentleman gun slinger.  Epitome of Cool.  This person does a decent, song-by-song review, so I’m just going to give you a couple vignettes from the Lori-cam.

•    I was experiencing some serious clothing envy all night.  I think women, in particular, like to dress up a little for a show, and I kept seeing dresses, blouses and coats I wanted.  Needed, even.  An ankle-length black crushed velvet coat lined in purple, that swirled behind dramatically like a cape.  A Japanese evening-jacket draped on the chair in front of me, black silk on the outside, and a delicious yellow silk inside, quilted for warmth, yet light as a pillow (I surreptitiously touched this one while the owner was away…a little OCD when it comes to touching sometimes).  A red strapless fifties poufy-skirted dress, and a chartreuse batik blouse that draped oh-so elegantly.

•    I seem to be in a period of transition at concerts these days.  It’s taken a couple of decades to figure this out, but I’m not really a floor-crowd person at a show.  I used to love being part of the energy, the mass, jostling my way to the front and connecting with the performer: “He’s singing to me!!!!” (Ecstatic bounce bounce bounce.)  But now…first, and foremost, there’s the height.  Unless we’re crammed right up next to the stage I won’t be able to see a thing but the big screen of nothingness that is someone else’s back.  Second, it gets tiring these days standing for a couple hours on concrete, the threat of Charley Horse constantly looming in my calves.  (I’m getting one right now just thinking about it.)  Then, there’s the smell of increasingly ripe armpits, gagging on the cloying smell of perfume, hair product and cigarette-breath.  Also, it is definitely not a love fest down there on the floor.  Your music loving floor-mates tend to be kind of pushy, shoving, incredibly selfish, and totally oblivious to the likes of middle-aged 5-foot tall women.  Like, aren’t we all here to see the show?  Come on!  I could be your mom!  Let me see, let me see!  I turn into a little atomic bomb, a tiny vial of nitroglycerin, a seemingly friendly balloon at a child’s birthday party – it’s only a matter of how many times I get bumped, jabbed or stepped on before I explode.   So, we opt for the bleacher seats and plop our bottoms in chairs in the thick of the Grey Hairs, the Wrinkle Section (WS), where I can feel young and see every band member in their entirety, but with no detail, because we’re never smart enough to bring the little binoculars that are always in the car, unlike the 60ish woman I’m sitting next to who has a charming pair of ivory and gold opera glasses.  (She actually was a near-victim of my touching compulsion as she was nervously, and noisily, bouncing her knee for a while before the show and I so wanted to reach out and steady that leg!  I grabbed Joe’s instead.)

•    The seats are freestanding at the WAMU theatre, so that as every person huffs and puffs their way up the stairs the bleacher section sways, like a boat, like after you step off an elevator, like extremely motion sensitive me is seriously going to barf.   I start looking at the floor mob below us with my Considering Face.  Joe and I devise this very dastardly scheme of purchasing a used wheelchair so that for shows like this he can wheel me in and we can both sit in the handicapped section, where the view looks to be great.  Then we speculate there may be some handicap-socializing going on and they’ll ask what happened to me.  “I’m sorry, I really don’t want to talk about it.”  Then change the subject.  “How about you? How long have you been…um….”  We throw out the idea before we truly hate ourselves.

•    Once the music starts and the lights go down and my distractions are (more) limited, I rock and I roll in my seat, and I get some major foot tapping, boot stompin’,  hands on thighs drumming,  shoulder rolling, hootin’ and hollerin’ and I join the motion of the bleachers, and I still feel the energy of the crowd even in the WS, because there is BobgodDylan!  He’s somehow incorporated Tom Wait’s voice with his own, but it works. He’s 69 years old, after all; it’s not the Sixties anymore, Baby Blue.  When they play a sexy-gravelly-bluesy-dark Ballad of a Thin Man, and the deep yellow lighting comes from below and the band members are all 10-foot tall shadows on the back of the stage wall, all hats and guitars, and Dylan plays his harmonica, knees together and passionately bending towards the floor with each powerfully sustained note, I know that if this was the only song I heard or saw this night I would be happy.  And I am.  Even if I don’t have a long crushed velvet coat.

Read his excellent new book, War Dances. I just did.

Read the title story here, in The New Yorker.

Listen to him on KUOW-FM on Monday, Oct. 5, at 10:00 a.m. If you can’t listen then, listen to it later online.

See him in person at Town Hall on Tuesday, Oct. 6, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are only $5. I can’t overstate how great he is to see live — you will laugh and cry and laugh some more.

Did you see him when he was on Colbert’s show last October? No? Go watch it now.

It’s Sherman Alexie time, baby.

If you’ve been reading these posts the last couple of weeks, you’ll know that my birthday and my wedding anniversary fall in the same week.  It sometimes turns into a week-long celebration, and this year was no exception.  After a pleasant birthday dinner with friends, a couple days later we had lobster, bread and cheese, and drank wine under the willow tree in the back yard on our anniversary, then the next night went to a… show…at a place in the Denny Regrade area of Seattle.  Neither of us had any idea what to expect,  but hey, we’re open minded, fun-loving, so it was all a grand adventure.

The front part of the Little Red Studio is a bistro/bar, all heavy curtains, low light, and intriguing looking patrons in muffled conversation punctuated by clinking glasses, surrounding what looks to be a rectangular fainting couch, draped in brocade and strewn with inviting pillows. Only it’s hard wood underneath, so I was quite grateful I didn’t throw myself backward onto it, like I’d been thinking about since I entered the room and saw it.  In a hallway between the bistro and performance area we claimed our tickets from a couple of the cast members, one a little person who said to call him Professor Big. (Actually, I mis-heard him and thought he said Professor Pig, which I thought was odd, not very flattering or even funny, really, until the next day Joe was talking about  him and I finally got it.  Such is the Life of Lori.)  We went back to the bistro to get drinks (no alcohol in the studio), and discovered this tall four-sided canvas and wood-framed contraption, narrower at the bottom than at the top, and you could throw super balls into it and it would make this wonderful echoing, musical bonking noise as it bounced its way down the hidden slats inside.  Of course, Joe and I could have stayed there for hours.  I was feeling tall in my retro platform shoes that went so well with my retro polka-dot halter dress, and happily receiving compliments,  until a tall-already man came in, also wearing platforms, decked out in a King Louis type coat in zebra pattern, accented with leopard print on the foot wide sleeves, and gold braid and bells,  from the hips down puffed out with crinoline underneath so that sideways he was about as wide as I am tall. Not a very crowd friendly outfit, but magnificent, nonetheless.  He said he bought it at the Seattle Rep costume auction, and I was quite jealous.  I scored major points when one of his bells fell off after an expansive gesture and rolled under a packed table nearby and I dove under to retrieve it for him before he even noticed it was gone.

When we finally entered the studio we had to pause right away, as on a platform just inside the entrance a pregnant woman, quite far along and wearing nothing but a scarf across what was left of her overshadowed lap, was being tenderly painted by another woman.  The music was soft, the lighting exquisite, and I was drawn to the shining blue and green swirls of the planet earth on the woman’s protruding mound-o-baby-to-be.  In stark contrast, but no less tender, somehow, on the main stage/floor area there was a little aerialist/bondage action going on, but it was just ending, and I was okay with that. To hide the reaction on my face, I decided to be preoccupied with the seating arrangements, which consisted of several cushy leather couches, velvet red booths, with high sides and backs, cuddling thrones for two, really.  We settled on ornate pillows on the edge of the performance area.

There was a lot going on, with everything from skits (Professor Big was a detention teacher in this one, wielding a yard stick  about the same height as he was), to comedic monologue, to poetry readings, a public birthday spanking, (a little silent wide-eyed prayer here by me, hoping Joe hadn’t told them it was my birthday a few days ago, as I am highly averse to public spankings involving me on hands and knees on a platform surrounded by a crowd, no matter how interesting and encouraging they are) to a magical piece involving a shapely naked woman on a table and fire.  It all had the feel of what I imagine a French salon in the 30’s would be like. One of the more audience interactive segments, began with a woman singing a bluesy song, carrying a pot of paint brushes, handing them out as she put us under her spell.  We were then handed teacups, and shells filled with various colors of paint, and the next thing you know the song’s over and two men and a woman, without a stitch of clothing, are posing on small boxes center stage.  Well.  When you have paint and a brush in hand and a naked canvas, as it were, you must paint!  It was all so natural and full of camaraderie.  I claimed all three sets of nipples; targets, flower petals (for the woman) and eyes.  I also tried to paint some lips on the rear cheek of one of the men, but kind of screwed up and was temporarily flustered trying to figure out how to erase it, so just turned away leaving it a sort of Rorschach blotch.  It’s a butterfly; it’s a turtle; it’s an attempt at lips by a 48 year old woman who has the artistic talent of a 3 year old with an injured hand.

Later on we were all invited to put on costumes and hats presented on racks for our free-for-all use.  I found an incredible bejeweled red velvet foot tall Vegas show-girl type hat, and was happy with that until I saw a man in a long cape (short on him) I was totally coveting and which would have looked so much better on me.  Joe was wearing a black dress shirt and Utilikilt that night and the top hat he chose and decorated with sheer multi-colored ribbons looked perfect.  Kind of like a fancy undertaker driving a black carriage look. At the end, the floor opened up to dancing (DJ’d by a sexily clad woman with legs to die for, with a voice that was suspiciously deeper than Joes),  and I danced/sidled over to  Professor Big, muscled, shirtless and wearing the cutest little Utilikilt ever known to man. Wondering again why he was called Professor Pig.

I didn’t know that the phrase “Toil is stupid” was a Devo phrase until I Googled it just a minute ago. I saw the phrase on a bumper sticker this morning at Ballard Market. It was on a red van that had a Devo-related vanity license plate, which should have been a clue, I guess. The plate said “WERDEVO” or something similar. I was never a Devo fan, although I know a lot of people who were back in the day. Devo’s lead singer, Mark Mothersbaugh, came into the radio station where I worked in the 80s and was interviewed by one of my colleagues. In an attempt to show how cool he was, my colleague asked Mr. Mothersbaugh about the raincoat he was wearing:  ”Hey, is that some new type of Devo-wear you’ve got on there?!” “No. It’s. A. Rain. Coat. It’s raining outside.” was the terse response, dripping with irritation and an undertone of “why do I have to put up with these radio idiots?” It was totally humiliating. The van also had an Abide sticker, which I’m a big fan of, thanks to The Big Lebowski.

Why am I talking about bumper stickers, after such a long absence from my beloved blog? I guess it’s an intentional diversion from talking about my life, which, truth be told, has been supremely sucky lately. Lily’s been sick. I’ve been sick. A very good friend of mine has gone through some awfully traumatic stuff, which affects me pretty deeply. A man committed suicide one and a half blocks away from our house last week and Andy happened to be driving Lily to school when emergency personnel were there, with the poor man’s covered body on the ground. My library system is having all kinds of financial troubles and I don’t know yet whether I’m going to be laid off or not. It’s the not knowing that’s driving me nuts because I love my job a great deal.

There have been good moments, I promise. I really do hate to be a whiner. Really, I do. So here are some good things: 

• Fall, my favorite season, is here!
• My friend Misha had her 2nd baby this morning, a son named Enzo. I just talked to her on the phone and she sounds wonderful. I’m so happy for her and her family. Lily will be thrilled out of her head when I pick her up from school and give her the news (which will help soften the blow of telling her that she has to go the doctor’s with me this afternoon).
• We’ve watched some episodes of the second season of The Flight of the Conchords, which I have checked out from the library, and Jemaine is still his hilarious, dreamy self.
• I saw the movie Adventureland on DVD (see, when you’re sick, you get to watch lots of DVDs) and absolutely loved it even though it has huge flaws and Andy didn’t like it so much. The main character makes a mix tape of “bummer songs” for a girl he likes. There, that’s all you need to know about that movie to understand why I love it so much. Oh, and the song they play from it:  the Velvet Underground’s Pale Blue Eyes. Oh, and just coincidentally, both of the main characters have gigantic David Bowie posters up in their bedrooms:  one has the cover of Aladdin Sane and the other has the cover of Heroes. They name check The Replacements and Big Star. And, Martin Starr (Bill Haverchuck from Freaks and Geeks) is in it. OK, enough. I’m sure I’ve made myself very clear now about why I love Adventureland.
• Andy and I went shopping for Halloween costumes and had a blast. I now own 5-inch platform heeled shoes. I plan to wear them to the library after Halloween, just for fun. You know, if I still have a job then…

Last night Joe set his beer can derby project aside and buckled down to do some bills, and I was left with the need to workout and no buddy to exercise with me.  I need to lose a few more pounds before Halloween, because I suffer from FOCT: Fear of Camel Toe.  I resorted to the big screen, scrolling through the options on ExerciseTV for something a little more interesting than my usual.  Abs Anytime Anywhere? Biggest Loser? (I like those ones because they make me feel small, until I realize they can totally kick my comparatively diminutive ass on some of their exercises.)  Arms of Envy?  Buns of Envy? BootCamp Cal Burn?  I’ve had dance music in my head for a week now, (more on that later, perhaps), so I decide Booty Beat sounds intriguing.  Apparently part of the Flirty Girl Fitness series. Okay, I’ll give it a go.

Enter a world of predominantly pink, a handful of twenty-somethings, all tanned abs and sultry smiles.  I gamely join in and within 5 minutes, oh yeah, I’m Madonna.  I’ve been shaking this booty years before these wanna-be strippers were even born.  Watch my booty sway, sweetie. In fact, watch the bookshelves next to me sway.  Hair flip?  I am the Mistress of the Hair Solo.  This thigh thing is a new move, consisting of turning the inner thighs out, knees bent, swooshing up along the thighs with your hands while simultaneously pushing your bottom way out back, to like, the neighboring county, cleavage round, shiny and prominently displayed like a box of apples at the Farmer’s Market.  And I know I can use this Party Girl move, after a few drinks miraculously remove 20 years from my inhibitions (common sense).

Suddenly, there’s a sports drink ad on screen, and I think it’s over.  I turn it off before I find out if it really is – I’ve had enough of the bootylicious burn.  As I walk out to get a drink of water, Joe asking, “What was that? It sounded horrible!” I tell him and bust out a sexy move. Only to crumble to the floor in pain because of an excruciating, oh-my-god-I’ll-never-walk-again hamstring pull. I writhe about like an NFL linebacker, no wait, I mean Madonna after an arduous dance rehearsal.  It subsides a bit, and I limp around the house, only to discover more mysterious pains, like when I go downstairs to get the laundry I’m particularly aware of the strongly complaining muscle on the front of my thigh just above the knee.  And later when I go to bed the middle of my stomach starts twitching violently, and I’m sure Alien is about to burst out in all its slimy glory.  Pain is gain, baby, pain is gain.

I seem to have survived the night, without any serious repercussions, or more importantly, Alien births.  Next time I’m looking for a little change, though, I’m thinking the Real Housewives routine might be the one for me. I wonder if there are vacuums involved?  I’ve got an awesome swing dance routine worked out with my Dyson.

Hope you have a lovely celebration and a gazillion more years together!

 

You’re still one of us!”   This was my favorite birthday card (the quotes were inside the card)  this year, because it’s from my sister!  The sister who usually sends cards so thick with sentiment they drip as I pull them out of their pink envelopes.  Am I not so misunderstood after all? Not that I ever looked like that. On the outside.  (Although when I last saw my father and greeted him with a morning hug, my short hair wet from a shower and tucked behind my ears giving the appearance of being even shorter, the first words out of his mouth were a wry ”Here’s Lori No Hair.” ) Come to think of it, I have a jacket just like that. When I’m around my family sometimes I feel like my heart has a mohawk.  I love them all dearly, I know they love me, we’re just different. Very.

I remember when I was three years old my older brother told me I was adopted.  From the Adam’s Family.  Not totally wise to (mean, nasty, life-changing) teasing I may have believed this for a while, as I grew to have a strong resemblance to Cousin Itt.  Perhaps I was destined to be different.  This same brother’s daughter stayed with us for a couple of days last week, and we left her on her own in the house because we had to go to work.  Later I apologized, hoping she had found the coffee, the microwave (it’s in a pantry), etc.  “There’s a microwave?  I figured you two were just the type who wouldn’t have one.”  Said very matter-of-factly. Well, we do.  A hand-me-down behemoth from the office, with some questionable rust spots a bit on the scary side, but which pops corn and melts butter quite nicely, thank you very much.

The womenfolk of the family did not ask me to either the stage production or the movie of Mamma Mia, and I probably won’t tell them how much I loved the new Tarantino movie Inglourious Basterds.(Which I kept calling Insufferable Bastards, and when Joe bought the tickets called it Intolerable Bastards.  Still don’t get the spelling of the real title.)  In middle-school/junior high, I would sneak into my brother’s room and play his drums, his guitar, crank up his 8-track of Black Sabbath or Lynyrd Skynyrd and bang my head with abandon. My parents once tortured me on an across-the-state road trip to Spokane by playing Abba cassettes all the way.  My mamma’s got a great voice, though.

Who knows. Maybe if my parents had been hippies living out of a van, and I danced around naked with flowers braided into my golden dreadlocks, and I was named Starr, I would have grown up and joined the military and be wearing fatigues right now, bellowing at the troops.  Yeah right.  Starr…hmmm. Nice name.

Today is Lori’s birthday! You may remember that I wrote a birthday post about her one year ago today and, just to be clear, all of those sentiments are still true. I realized later that I had forgotten to mention some really important stuff, like how Lori always leaves cilantro out of the food she makes for me because she knows I despise it and that she always has Grey Goose vodka in her freezer for me and she super-duper cleans her house to reduce cat hair because I’m allergic to cats and what you can see by just these few examples is that being my friend is extremely hard work and a huge pain in the neck. Yet, somehow she remains my closest friend. I know! I am SO LUCKY! Happy birthday, dear Lori. I love you.

Poet, writer, and rocker Jim Carroll died on Friday. I just saw the news in The New York Times.

I am a huge Jim Carroll fan. I loved hearing him read his work out loud and watching him perform his songs. At one event, he kindly and patiently signed every book of his that I owned. I can’t believe he’s dead. This hurts.

Best album cover ever.

Did all of you already know this? I missed it until I saw an ad for the 2009-2010 Seattle Arts and Lectures series in the newspaper this morning. As Lily would put it, “OMG, Patti Smith is my BFF!”

The details:  Monday, Jan. 25, 2010 at 7:30 p.m. at Benaroya Hall. It’s a “special event” rather than part of the regular season of events.

I just bought two main floor tickets online. I almost bought “patron” tickets that include a post-event reception with Ms. Smith, but couldn’t quite justify the cost because I know I would simply stand there and stare at her without being able to speak. I told Andy I would probably drool or cry or both and I wasn’t kidding. I have a long history of becoming a total idiot when I’m around people I admire, especially rock stars, and I’m sure I’ll never grow out of that stupidity. (I think I’ve told a few of you about my recent ridiculous behavior — I crossed paths with Peter Buck in Ballard and oh-so-smoothly yelled, “Oh my god, it’s Peter Buck!” Andy was kind of mortified. So was Peter Buck, I’m sure.)

Here’s the text from the SAL web site about the event:

Patti Smith
Songwriter/punk rocker/poet Patti Smith blazed onto the rock scene in the 1970s with the seminal album Horses. She had nine additional releases—becoming known as the “Godmother of Punk”—and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. Writing in the New York Times last year, Terrence Rafferty referred to Smith as “…a passionate autodidact whose idiosyncratic style is a kind of homemade concoction of Bob Dylan [with whom she has performed], William Blake, Arthur Rimbaud, Allen Ginsberg, Little Richard and Buddha…” In addition to her musical career, Smith is a visual artist and a writer. She has written poetry for decades, including The Coral Sea, a book of prose poems written after the death of longtime friend, the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe; her most recent collection is Auguries of Innocence. She has completed a memoir, Just Kids, about her relationship with Mapplethorpe, to be released shortly before her event with SAL, which will include a reading of her poetry and memoir, Q&A, and end with a few songs.

Maybe if you’re lucky, Kenneth, she’ll bring her clarinet.