Seattle doesn’t change.
I still spend afternoons in the Elysian, waiting for friends to call. Still wander along Capital Hill, Broadway, thinking that there’s no one left in town that I know. Still get that lump in my throat when I see Mount Rainer looming ahead of the plane through the clouds, when we’re driving down the freeway and the Emerald City looms into view over the horizon. (Although, of course, there’s long since been another way to drive into town from SeaTac.) Peter Bagge still has a shit-eating laugh, Joanne Bagge is still uber-hospitable, Steve Fisk still looks ’separated at birth’ from myself (although he now has a shock of hair). I still can’t recall anything except for shots of Maker’s Mark and how beautiful the view, across the city and over to the mountains, from Pine and 13th is. People laugh heartily and often. On the bus into town yesterday I nearly witness a fully-fledged street fight but everyone makes up and jests “only in America” in time. Man, I hate that phrase. Only in America could those idiot Democrats put up that mongoloid right winger Kerry as a representative of ‘liberals’. Only in America can they fingerprint travellers and humiliate citizens on a regular basis. Whatever.
Conspiracy theories are discussed.
I trade stories with Eric Erlandson about girls being smashed in the face by famous widows, and phone Mr Fisk to ask if it’s OK to bring along my pal to the Bagge’s dinner party. (The dinner party featured excellent Mexican food and ribs, as prepared by Joanne, plus vast amounts of baseball trivia, courtesy of Peter and his belligerent neighbour.) “Yeah, he’s fine by me,” Steve laughs. “He never phoned me up and threatened to kill me, unlike some of my friends in Olympia. The 90s were pretty good to me.”
Eric denies the charge. “I might have told Slim Moon his farts were stinky one time…” he suggests.
The Bagges are suitably impressed with how sweet Eric is and, after he leaves, posit the same query that people always posit. “How did he manage to put up with C for so long…?”
Peter shows me some comics he’s done recently: one for Weekly World News - a publication that has gone insane ever since its advertisers decided spamming every email account in the world 20 times a day was a far more lucatrive way to reach potential weight-loss and erectile dysfunctional consumers. Eric and Rhea behave as sweetly as ever, and ask after Charlotte. Everyone asks after Charlotte. A nice lady tells me she thinks my weblog is very gentle, far removed from the cynicism of average music critics. Ah, I don’t do ‘criticism’ any more.

Today, I take a ride into God’s own country - Olympia, Washington - and try to find fresh ways of expressing myself.
Wish me luck. I’m very jetlagged.