foomart foomart

I'm baa-aack!

Thursday morning we got a ride with Charlie the accordion player. I know, I know. The plan was for us to rendezvous with the accordionist at the Jersey side of the Holland Tunnel. I was IMing with a friend just before we left and told her that, not realizing how cloak-and-dagger it sounded. He was a little early and we were right on time, so it worked out well. We hopped into the accordionist's Porsche and zoomed off through Jersey City. His radio was tuned to a sports channel where some guys were doing the post mortem on the Yankees loss the night before. Charlie asked us if we followed baseball/the Yankees, we said we didn't and explained we liked soccer, so we talked about baseball and the Yankees for a while. At some point we took the wrong exit onto the Pulaski Skyway, but once we fixed that it was a smooth trip.

We didn't talk much at first, sports and weather mostly, but eventually we found some common ground in our feelings about children and pets. Naturally, we also exchanged accordion jokes. I say exchanged, but of course he already knew all the ones I could remember from the Jazz Years. He told a few more, but I'm certain we barely scratched the surface. I think a sense of humor is a pretty strong requirement if you want to go into the squeeze box biz. That, and a normal disdain for trombone players. I wonder who they joke about?

We drove on, Clifton Chenier blasting happily, past the muted olives, golden reds and mustardy oranges of the Pennsylvania fall foliage which is probably a week away from hitting its peak of color. It was lovely, though, in a subtle way. The trees were in the process of changing and there were fascinating gradations even within individual trees.

So to answer the question of a few days ago, State College, PA is right near the Jersey Shore. Wha—? We finally turned off Route 80 and were immediately surrounded with the smell of—well, not just cow manure, though that was a big part of it—cows. Living, breathing, all-sorts-of-stuff-excreting cows. Milk. Cheese. CHEESE. That was it. "Smells like fresh dairy air," Charlie quipped.

We couldn't find a load-in door at the venue, so we went to the hotel, where the rest of the band was waiting. Nora is taller than I'd imagined, slim and stylish in t-shirt and jacket and jeans. She was wearing an anti-war button which she thought was one of mine, but it wasn't. It was one of the Donnelly/Colt 7/8" lithographed buttons that I'd give my eyeteeth to be able to make. She also had on, and this is extra weird, a 1.5" button, black with the words AND NOW? on it. Not one of mine! Echo must have reprinted them (poorly (mrow)) or somebody else must have ripped them off. Go figure. I wanted to examine it and see if there was any contact info on the edge, but by the next time I thought about it, it had fallen off her blazer and been lost. Very weird indeed.

So to the venue. I went up and sat with B at the FOH desk and everybody started to set up. The band set up their instruments—instruments! actual instruments! and sheet music! It's been a while since I've seen that. I noticed that Nora took off her shoes for the soundcheck and was wearing striped socks. And now I have to talk about her hair for a minute. The woman has really good hair. It was casually pinned up on top of her head up until now, but she took the comb out and it all tumbled down just perfectly. She combed her hair out briefly, taking the loose strands out of the comb and putting them in her purse (!) and then she did that skritchy shaky finger thing and it cascaded, just cascaded into a perfect mane. I was awed, sitting there like I was with my Homemade Ass haircut. I don't understand it, it's just long straight hair, parted down the middle, but it doesn't lie limply on her head, somehow. Magic or money? Maybe it's a $500 haircut and I'm just not able to recognize that. It is the same kind of effortless look that people of means achieve via lavish applications of well-seasoned money. Given her lefty-liberal subject matter, though, I dunnno-- but she does have a very rich look about her. Even in jeans she looks like she just got off her horse after a dressage exhibition. Maybe she just has good posture.

The venue was hyperefficiently run by a caffeinated stage manager with Simply Red hair. He had Jack Black's manic specificity but was more friendly and less arch. The guy was familiar with every inch of that place and every jack on every piece of equipment. He was assisted by a couple of pale, taut crew guys and an overwhelmed lighting tech. During the sound check I overheard her desperate phone call "I need help, I've been awake for 48 hours and I don't know where anything is..." followed by muffled curses as she repeatedly batted me in the back of the head with her lighting plot. She had to adjust some of the lights at one point and got out an extending ladder. She stood it up okay but was completely unable to figure out the whole pull-the-string method of raising the top half of the ladder. It teetered and lunged as the band tried to focus on the changes Nora was making while keeping one eye on that ladder. The stage manager finally sent one of the pale guys down to "go help her out before she kills somebody." He extended the ladder and she managed to get it onto the pipe. She shakily climbed up to adjust the offending instrument, then climbed back down and bonked it out of whack when she tried to move the ladder. Back up she went, back down she went, BONK the ladder went. She and the pale guy ended up using the ladder to knock the instrument back into place. Quality! Here's a photo of the scene, sorry it's blurry but I'd turned the flash off.

Sound check went well other than the terrifying ladder ballet, and everybody went their separate ways to eat or rest before the show.

We went back to the hotel where I hoped they'd be hip and modern and have free high-speed internet connections. No such luck. The lamp on the desk had a phone jack. A PHONE JACK. Darn, and I'd left my acoustic coupler and 300-baud modem at home under a pile of 5" floppies. I wish we'd had an AirPort card. It's a college campus, you just know the aaaaaair iiiiiiis humminnngngggg. So I watched the Weather Channel and did some yoga while B took a power nap.

Back to the venue, where I was supposed to meet up with Nora's sister to set up and sell buttons. I waited in the green room with the band and made a few circuits of the theater, but didn't find Nora's sister or any place to set myself up. At some point I realized that the house was already open anyhow, so I said screw it and went back to my seat up by the sound board. The webcasting guys had set up their camera over the seat next to me so I figured it was a good place to sit. Okay, now let's play a little game. The house is about 30 percent full at this point. Lots of empty seats everywhere. I'm all the way up in the last row next to the video camera. When five towheaded sproglets come in, which five seats do you think they sat their squirmy little selves down in? Bonus points if you can guess where their handlers ended up. (hint: not in the same row) Grr. I hope the webcasting people used the sound from the other camera, since I'm pretty sure they didn't get a feed off the board like they should have. If you listened to the webcast and most of it sounded like crinkling plastic, that was the two sproglettes fighting over the bouquet, the tattered remains of which they'd later deliver to Nora at encore time.

The performance started. Nora came out, kicked off her little slippers, and did the whole show barefoot. She'd changed into a weird lavender jacket that didn't do a thing for her. She'd also put on her stage makeup and I was horrified to realize that from where I was sitting she looked just like Ann Coulter. Eew! The show went smoothly, and she introduced B a couple of times as a member of the band. Aww. The webcasting guy (whose iBook I'd borrowed to post the previous post, btw) told me that the webcast will be archived and should be up in a couple of days, so if you missed it you've got another chance. They should have the sound fixed, too.

After the show, the band took their gear back to the hotel and we all went over to a local bar. B and I got there first, having walked over with Nora's sister who lived in the area. There was a lot of confusion about where the group should sit, and in the course of hanging around, the woman from the college who was kind of organizing things told us that we could sit in that area, but that the big table there was really for the band. Hee. Clearly somebody wasn't paying attention to the introductions. We smiled and sat at the bar, not wanting to make a fuss. Ordered a pint of beer for B and a Stoli and soda for me. Cost for the round: $3.50! I LOVE college towns. I like the way the college people always look the same, the short, long-haired girls, hippy with the Freshman 15, and the skinny, messy-haired boys in loose jeans and dirty sweaters. And you gotta just love a cheap bar. The hugely-popular house drink was a thing called a Car Bomb: a pint glass 3/4 full of Guinness, and a shot glass with half Jameson's and half Bailey's. The victim drops the shot, glass and all, into the Guinness and guzzles the whole foaming mess down in one go. I saw the bartenders make dozens of these things. I can't imagine how nasty the floors must get in that place. Urk. The organizing woman was set straight at some point about who B was, and the college picked up our tab. And the Yankees won.

Back to the hotel, where we watched a bunch of the Democratic debates (will somebody please tell Joe Lieberman he's a fucking albatross?) and went to sleep.

Got up in the morning, red-eyed and bushy-tongued, showered, and headed off to the local Tex-Mex place for some Brex-Mex. They were closed, though, so we ended up at "The Corner," which looked like a bar but was serving breakfast. A quick feeding and back to the room to pack up and check out. We rode back with Nora and the drummer in her minivan. She pointed out the correctional facility where Mumia Abu-Jamal is being held as we passed it and gave us some t-shirts her sister had made. (She'd been wearing one yesterday which said LUCID across the front and I'd admired it. The ones she gave us, though, said BEAUTY on them. Ah well, gift horse, you know.) We drove back through the scenic fog and lovely foliage, stopping at a local diner for some meh food and good-natured schmoozing with the seasonally-festooned waitress. Got back to Bergenline Ave. where B and I picked up the bus back home past the Colombian bakery, the Argentinian bakery, and the (I didn't see this one last time) Guatemalan bakery. We have really got to get back there sometime when we're not rushing somewhere else. Home again, home again, and if you read this whole thing it's a miracle.

12:33 PM