THE DiSCiPLiNES ‘SMOKiNG KiLLS’ OUT NOW! CAN BE ORDERED HERE (CD) OR HERE (DOWNLOAD). My night at home was absolutely essential, but it was so short…I arrived to an empty house, too, at about 9.30 Sunday night. The girls had been stuck in a traffic jam leaving Ile de Re, and thus missed their train to Paris, they had to jump on a later one (packed to the rafters, no bar/food service); they arrived well after midnight. We had the usual ritual, giving Aden presents as a way of apology for my absence…proof that she was thought of while I was gone. The nature of the gift doesn’t matter (often I ‘bring back’ Aden something that Dom slips to me, having bought a little toy at the thrift store for a Euro), just the symbol that she is in my thoughts when I am away (it cements the deal that the phone calls home outline). At about 2.30 we all fell asleep, and at 8.45 I was out the door on my way to the airport. Aden was up and seeing me off, blowing me kisses as I headed down to catch my shuttle.
My mom had put in a request for some
confiture de lait, but I had said that neither myself nor Dom would be able to pull that off under the circumstances…but there was an
epicerie gourmande past security by my gate…they had every imaginable delicacy…EXCEPT confuiture de lait. Was a generous receptacle for my good intentions, however.
3 movies, much sleep (longest I’d had in weeks), and a pleasant re-entry to the US in Cincinnati, where they asked me next to nothing and were happy to see me, later, I returned to Seattle after one year’s absence. My mom and stepdad were there to greet me at the airport; they had driven two cars down so as to be able to deliver mine to me, which was exceedingly sweet. We also knew that there wouldn’t be much time to see each other, so we had dinner together (I had also had a 2004 Colgin Cariad sent ahead to their place so we had something exquisite to enjoy over dinner). My friend, and host, Brian, joined us as well to help dispose of the all that spoilt grape juice, very kind!
I have to give a special shout out to Brian, who has put me up at his place, with all my late night/early morning comings and goings, and provided great company, loaned me some gear (given me some more), etc. More on our adventures later.
It was so strange to drive again. It had been a year for that as well. Luckily, Seattle was familiar enough…well, *sort of*; it’s changed a lot: I call it a ‘steroids’ effect. Every block where some hulking clump of condos can go, one is in progress or already installed. It’s starting to crowd out the pleasant greenery that made Seattle so livable in the first place…this was readily apparent when I visited Portland this week. I got a little lost trying to find my way to the Edgewater Hotel to drop my folks there (I ended up buying a GPS to save myself brain strain). Before I went to Brian’s I found that I had hung on to a garage door opener from my old house (sold two hours ago). I left it on the doorstep of my old house, in the middle of the night. They had replaced the garage door…wonder if they had kept the same unit.
Day one in Seattle was a mad dash, retrieving my Posies backline (or what seemed to be left of it) from its home at the former studio of my former bandmate Blake. My Hammond organ was there, too—realizing I was never coming back to Seattle in recent months…there’s a lot I don’t need to storing, waiting for my return like I’m some kind of King Tut who plans to have a serious jam session in the afterlife. Craigslist. Two years ago, I had attempted to sell my piano on Craigslist, and had received not one nibble (I ended up giving it to Blake). I guess people have caught on now—I had something like 40 emails within a couple of hours about the Hammond. I went with the first one who emailed, and thought…”I didn’t ask for enough money”, tho it was plenty for me. I took my tennis racquets in to get restrung; I stocked up on items from the pharmacy unobtainable in France--like EO products lip balm (they didn’t have the lavender one at Whole Foods, tho). I sold tons of CDs. I was refitted for musician's custom earplugs at the Seattle Ear Clinic (recommend).
Soon I was loading in to the Jambox, a flyshit encrusted rehearsal cube filled with smaller still rehearsal cubes. I was there to rehearse with Red Jacket Mine, whose album I was to be producing the next week, on which I would be playing keyboards. I set up my enormous digital piano (on a flight case, seems my keyboard stand as well as my Fender Bassman speaker cabinet, didn’t survive the winter in storage and somehow evaporated—rumor has it the Fleet Foxes have a pretty wicked guitar sound now) and my amp, which sounded kinda weird. Cue me pulling out the desiccated furry and flat corpse of an enormous rodent from the back…a quick call was made to amp guru Jeff Stone, who was kind enough to accommodate me, the day before he was leaving on tour with Smashmouth…my amp back up and running, we ran thru 5 songs before I started to get as glazed as the average doughnut.
TACOMA, 5/14
First order of biz that day was a teef cleaning at the dentist. Who says I am not the EPITOME of rock & roll.
Hell’s Kitchen is the punk club in a not very punk neighborhood in Tacoma. We loaded in and had time to walk around…we discovered many, many great things in the neighborhood: 1) Jim Anderson, who used to run sound at the Crocodile (and would again if it reopened tomorrow), who lives around the corner; 2) an odd little café/florist/handmade jewelry shop/jazz club—good espresso, 3 people watching a jazz trio duly run thru the standards, and an arched doorway lined with tree branches—all the gewgaws hanging everywhere made me say ‘Blair Witch’ but it didn’t seem too dangerous. Number 3) was Slot Car Racing. I’m not sure what this place’s business plan was either, but it sure was a great place to hangout after soundcheck. A huge oval of teenage electric powered wet dream, little plastic race cars are placed, and you grab a squeeze gun from the perimeter and race away. No charge to do so, no refreshments sold, but it occupies a storefront there in the biz district. Hmm. Money laundering? I didn’t ask. I wasn’t the fastest, but I was the winner since I didn’t whiz my car off the track in the tight curves.
Good turnout tonight, and we definitely rocked it. We were getting beat into submission (I suffered all week from the most brutal jet lag I have experienced in quite some time) by the truly strange support band—the singer had seemed very excited before the show, and introduced himself as a fan, citing me/us as a big influence on his music…but, as Matt pointed out, ‘this guy’s peaking right now’—his stage banter was somewhere between Jim Morrison and the bit on the Grammy’s where Sinatra starts getting lost in a baseball metaphor and the director cuts to a commercial. All their songs had taped intros and kind of sounded like the soundtrack from a ‘shreds’ video on You Tube.
We managed to really deliver, or ‘bring it’ as they say. We were on fire—no rehearsal, etc., and we burned that club to the ground (musically speaking).
BREMERTON, 5/15
The problem with going whole hog into the first show is the feeling you have the next day. I felt like I had been strafed with jagged iron bullets. However, we didn’t have much to do, just bust ass and get on a boat. OH, except, I had one of those funny feelings and realized that when my stepdad had kindly detailed my car to show it to a potential buyer, he had cleaned out the glove compartment thoroughly enough to leave me without my registration and proof of insurance! I had just enough time to dash to my insurer’s office—to find they’d moved. FUCK! They left forwarding address, entered it into my GPS (Seattle is getting less and less familiar with its steroidal condo ballooning) and hustled it to the new place, grabbed the insurance, and got to the ferry just in time.
On board, we signed a few autographs, and out on the poop deck I met an African American gentleman, in full ‘hood regalia (doo rag, Raiders jersey), urging me to buy his CD and trying to get my number so we could ‘collaborate’. Eventually, I relented and bought a CD. “How much?” “7 bucks, man”. All I had was a twenty. He left his bag and went to get change. I wondered if I was being scammed somehow, but he returned with a tenner and said for the other $3 he’d give me a bootleg DVD, of the film ‘Matador’, which was among the other wares he was hawking. I am so glad I bought this CD! ‘Go Getta’ by
Don Pierre, with the classic opening salvo of ‘Seattle Seahawkin’ (Trappin’ in the Sky)’ absolutely rips. I have a weird feeling Don Pierre left some promo CDs lying around that were then re-sold…but it was totally worth the price.
After the fresh air, sunshine and expensive real estate gawking on the ferry, we drove off into Bremerton proper, and pulled into the lot of Winterland, a multi-purpose dive bar where toothless locals can gum buffalo wings and wash ‘em down with Old Crow in one half and local rockers trying to keep the flame of culture alight can have a place to get they freak.
I can’t say this was the best sounding show; my former Saltine bandmate Scooter’s brother Mike was doing sound…he told at least one of us it was the ‘first time’…er…
I was tired, too…during the opening band, I was sitting on a couch, earplugs in, cup of coffee in my hand…sound asleep. I can say that the drive back was the WORST. I was so tired, I was slapping my face to stay awake. When we crossed the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, we were the only car in sight paying the toll, which is like $2.50 or something like that. I thought about the lone toll collector, and what a shite, bizarre job that would be.
PORTLAND, 5/16
I drove down early to meet with Erin, my website designer. Seems Portland has blossomed, really. It retains (for the moment) the qualities that the building boom has heavily encroached on in Seattle…leafy green neighborhoods, parking. Erin has a lovely little house with rock room downstairs. I used to live in a little house like that in Seattle, in not quite as picturesque a neighborhood—I could never afford that same house in Seattle now.
Later (to the soundtrack of ‘Seattle Seahawkin’’) I pulled up to Dante’s in downtown Seattle. A strip club at certain moments, a rock club at others, a pizza joint, a watering hole…it serves many demographics (and certainly these demo’s cross over at various intersections). The stage is no longer designed purely to accommodate pole dancing; it’s been expanded, widened, and is of uniform depth. We slogged thru our soundcheck and then, despite the fact we were cranky and in need of food, Jon & I met up with our old friend Jeremy Wilson, singer of Portland’s beloved Dharma Bums. The Dharma Bums and the Posies go back to our earliest days; our first shows in PDX were together, our first albums came out on the same label on the same day (you could do this sort of thing then) and we had back-to-back record release shows that we played together the same weekend. We toured the West Coast together in 1991. Etc. Jeremy’s good peeps. He now has a video podcast, with a strong set of subscribers, for which he films live in studio performances…and Jon & I did one this evening. 6 songs, a little shorter than others, but we were in that self-digesting-due-to-lack-of-food mode. Still, we were really into it, tearing into the songs with an emotional depth that mere hypoglycemia couldn’t explain. You can watch the podcast, starting on June 2,
here.
After a very nice meal
au terrace, in quite authentically summer-ish heat, Darius & I went to a local hotel to search a late night macchiato (our server at the restaurant was kind enough to give us free alien-green shots on the house, but it came at the price of a lecture against espresso in general and Stumptown roasters in specific when we tried to order something to wake/sober us up).
This show was quite good, I *felt* like the sound was really good…certainly the stage was generously laid out and we were in much better shape than the night before…must’ve been a good one, really! I had a pre-emptive heckle versus Juanita, our friend from Seattle who generally has the last laugh at our shows.
Afterwards, I found myself with reverse jet lag—I was completely sober, and completely awake. Weighing the prospect of bunking with Jon and driving in the full heat of day, and going straight to soundcheck, versus my own room at Brian’s in Seattle, and zipping up under cover of darkness, it was easy to choose the latter.
SEATTLE 5/17
My eyes were burning with fatigue when I got to Brian’s, but it was still worth it. I crashed, and was up in the late morning and we busted out a brutal set of tennis—something about re-beginner’s luck, and being a little tired that helps my game immensely. I served six aces! In the afternoon, we loaded in to Neumo’s. You might recall we played the club’s opening night in 2004. When I landed on Monday, I found that Neumo’s, among other venues in Seattle, was getting the rough treatment from the city. The SFD had decided all of a sudden that the existing capacity was no longer applicable, and cut it down be several hundred. Basically, this would shut down Neumo’s as a business. Now, the timing is interesting: right about now, the opposite end of the block is scheduled to be demolished and rebuilt as—you guessed it—condos, and evidently Seattle’s Mayor Greg Nickels is an investor. Hmmm. This is of course, hearsay…all over town.
Anyway, our show had already sold enough tix to be sold out under new capacity, so we were left with one realistic option—play two shows. And this is what we ended up doing. It was a logistical nightmare.
However, I have to put these two shows up there as among the best moments I’ve had in this band. The additional juice we had with having all of the former Posies – Arthur Roberts, Mike Musburger, Dave Fox, Joe Skyward, and Brian Young—join us for few songs each set; the pure ‘because it’s there’ runner’s high of doing 4 hours of music in one night; the outstanding audience reaction; plus, my band was on the money, we were all sober and focused. It’s about as good a Posies show as you will ever see. It was also the release party for ‘Beautiful Escape: the Songs of the Posies Revisited’, an astonishing 3 CD set of bands from all over the globe doing Posies songs. I haven’t been able to listen to all 45 tracks yet, but what versions I’ve heard are fantastic, super diverse and imaginative, and recorded with great care and quality. You’ll find a few familiar names on the track list—the Drowners from Sweden, The CosmopolitANTs from Spain, Ian McGlynn from the US, Luis Francesco Arena from France, Even from Australia; plus contributions from myself (A revamped piano/vocal version of ‘Everybody Is A Fucking Liar’), Jon Auer, Joe Skyward, and more. But, the unknowns in the cast often render the biggest, most pleasant surprises. More info
here.
Also it should be noted that I joined
Preston School of Industry for two songs, on keys, which was just another mile in the marathon evening, but a great one, for sure.
BELLINGHAM, 5/18
I was up early (again) and soon on the road to my hometown, to spend the afternoon at my mom’s place, having lunch with my family there, going thru my mail, etc. Promptly after lunch I fell asleep for like two hours. I was already suffering from a kind of exhaustion—not just the Posies shows, but also the travel, the last month of touring, plus the 1,000 errands I was running in the hours before the shows—selling gear, buying gear, all the stuff I’ve already mentioned.
I was going to try to purge my storage space as much as I could, but one look inside the place, where I could barely open the door for all the stuff inside, nixed this idea—that would take a special trip.
We assembled for soundcheck, at the venerable Wild Buffalo in Bellingham. Now with a bigger stage, it’s not only the best but seems to be the only game in town. The Nightlight Lounge (which I wasn’t that thrilled with, from a sound POV) closed its doors during the winter. There’s the University, and with a bit of investigation I imagine I could dig up an all ages venue, I detected whisperings of such in the local free papers. A bit of wisdom from one of the local papers in a review of a live show by Tegan and Sara: “indie rockers proclaim to like cutting edge music but have been shown time and time to gravitate towards the music with the most pop sensibility, provided it is presented with the image of being indie”. So true! All the hipsters like melodic pop as long the singing voice is a little quirky. Give 99% of the population something truly out there and experimental and a-melodic, and most will turn up their noses, supposed elitists included. The writer went on to compare T&S to Avril Lavigne, asking, at the end of the day, what’s the difference, stylistically? T&S are shouting to further and further back in the arena that Avril simply came out broadcasting to from the get go. The main difference to me is that T&S write their own material, and haven’t been as heavily marketed as they *could* be, considering they are on a major. BTW, I am a fan of T&S, and have no hesitation in proclaiming my love for clever melodies, esp., when packaged with lyrics that yield rewards deeper than just good phonetics (the writer above took T&S to task for some laziness/cliché-mongering on their part).
The show: a great sleeper. The venue (also expanded considerably since Jon & I played there last year) looked absolutely abandoned when
Le Concorde took the stage. Having missed them in Portland, I was thrilled to have them to myself, and I was able to join them to reprise my singing part on “All These Fragile Unions”, from their last EP.
Our show brought people out of the woodwork, and the place looked healthy—hell, just Jon & my relatives would have at least filled the first few rows. I felt we delivered, the show was the sleeper of the tour—the least attended, but we didn’t hold back in the least—we gave the full two hours, and gave it with full throttle.
After the show we had tons of friends to catch up with, and at last I was loaded up and headed to my folks place to catch a few hours sleep.
JUNEAU, 5/19
I woke up and was able to take in the view for a few minutes. My stepdad made me a smoothie, and we had a conference call in the driveway with my cell on speaker—Dom at her office in Paris, and the three of us gathered around my phone. I hightailed it to Brian’s in Seattle, dumped some stuff and grabbed some other stuff, and found a parking space on the roof of the garage at SeaTac. Jon still held elite status on Alaska Airlines (I had it last year, and never had a chance to use it, although they did send me some cookies in the mail), so we could check in chill-style and got no hassles about the gear.
The approach to JNU gives one an intimate view of the surrounding hillsides and local buildings…of course, the landing is preceded by an hour of huge white mountains scraping the fuselage. People always associate big-ness as a Texan thing, but Alaska has the most, the biggest, the most voracious, the coldest (and sometimes the hottest)…it was Extreme before Extreme was named. Juneau is, by any standards, esp. by the standards of state capitals, small—the downtown is a huddle of government buildings and a frontier-style façade of saloons; this and the airport are crammed into a small valley/waterway that provides slim footholds for civilization to establish itself. Across ‘The Bridge’ to Douglas, and you find suburbia, Alaskan-style, clinging to mountains at enough less of a degree of pitch as to make settlement sustainable.
We were greeted by Matt’s friend ‘
King Sh*t of F*ck Mountain’, who was also part of our cadre of promoters. We checked into Juneau’s biggest hotel, a.k.a. one of Juneau’s 3 hotels, this one happening to be the tallest, named the Goldbelt. After settling in, we had a look at the venue, Centennial Hall. Holy crap, it was enormous—a convention center, just for us. There was a local band, the local teenage pop punk sensations,
Missed By A Long Shot, supporting and providing backline. Serious backline, stacks and all that. Anyway, it was a full on, major production, and one that we are not really used to for our headlining shows. Not that we told anybody; we acted like it was the most natural thing in the world. And of course, the Posies on their best days are consummate professionals, adapting to the terrain no matter how craggy, lava-covered, or smooth.
We had a splendid dinner and very good wine at the Boathouse, the restaurant that was more or less bankrolling our visit, and returned to find the kids already blasting away to an audience of 250 screaming teenagers, and two bemused local law enforcement officers. The band, although one could say they played in a style that was a bit played, certainly were fun and more than competent, and remember, in all things except for open heart surgery, confidence is 99% of the game. I was truly pleased to find that the screaming and the teenagering continued for our set—it’s amazing how different it is to play for all ages than a bar crowd, and what affect that had on our music—we became as frisky as they did. At some point the kids started stripping and throwing their shirts on the stage, so naturally I tossed of my Iggy Pop T-shirt and played most of the set PUSA style. The preceding week of starvation and stress and pure exertion onstage left my body in the perfect condition for such a display…just 6 days later and I would be totally ashamed. Now, here I am in a hair salon in Paris and some band is covering ‘Umbrella’ by Rhianna in a kind of Lemonheads style on the stereo, and I just remembered that MBALS closed their set with a pop punk version of the same. Anyway, the kids of Juneau were totally starved for music, so I felt this show was a win win win. We got to play in the best technical circumstances imaginable; the kids got a gnarly rock show with a band 7 shows warm, i.e. in top form but not burnt out; the venture was prob. an expensive one for our hosts but with $25 tix I guess they came close t making their nut, and the rest can be written off to cultural exchange—in that sense it was totally worthy.
After the show, I had intended to sell my Danelectro, unused during all of these shows, to the highest bidder, but when the guitarist for MBALS said, please, all I have is $20—there was no question it was his for about 5% of what I could have gotten for it on Ebay. It was basically a gift, with a little money changing hands so it meant something.
After the show we found out where the adults were that night—the local MC battle at the Alaskan Hotel, probl. the most jumping bar in town (remember, this was a Monday, too). I took one look inside and realized I had to be up in a few hours.
You know, most people come to a town to play, they build in a little denouement, they commiserate the indulgences of the night with a greasy breakfast the next day, hugs are exchanged, etc. Not this guy. You can be sure that before the last cymbal crash is done bouncing off the walls, I am already stuffed in an economy class seat heading to another gig, usually in the single-digit hours of the morning.
No difference here. At 7.40 I took off for Seattle, and by midday was back in rehearsals with
Red Jacket Mine. We went thru the songs, making a few alterations, some of them quite profound (adding another chorus to one song, e.g.) and then we loaded in to the Soundhouse, chatting with studio manager
Jack Endino, yes, the grunge legend. Guys don’t come much nicer, more committed to the grande bataille than Jack.
After we loaded in, this night we began a ritual that we managed to enact each night of the studio project (save for the first night, for reasons explained below)—Brian and I would retire, at about 11 each night, to the Palace Kitchen (we also went here the first night I was in town). There, we would crack a prime bottle from my cellar, which I visited the first morning I was in town and pulled out a dozen choice vintages. Every wine we tasted was a Robert Parker 99 or 100. From esoteric Austrian dessert wines by Alois Kracher to an absolute brain-wasting Abreu Napa cab., we had nothing less than top shelf stuff every night. One night we were so crazed we went back to Brian’s, this was when we were stoned on the Abreu, and opened a Sine Qua Non Syrah that tasted exactly like an old Chateauneuf. Lots of wow factor. Mostly it was us two, occasionally Brian’s g.f. or a Seattle associate joined us but mostly we were greedy bastids and kept it all for ourselves.
As for the sessions themselves, I was reunited with my most comfortable audio environment in Seattle, the Soundhouse, and with
Kip Beelman, veteran of many a KS session, and a friend I was absolutely thrilled to have the opportunity to hang with. Then there’s the band—Red Jacket Mine. These guys were about as well prepared as a band could be—they made my job incredibly easy. They set the parameters—this would be an analog recording, live in the studio. With that in mind, considering we didn’t have a ton of time, just 6 days, and also considering I would be playing keys on some of these live tracks, I enlisted Kip’s help to engineer. I would become a ‘hand’s off’ producer—making judgment and performance calls. I did hit the EQ a bit to make some vocal sounds straight outta ‘Melodie Nelson’. Anyway, with any other band (including my own) I would be gravely worried about such an ambitious concept, but the band was ready—they had sent me demos months before, I made suggestions as to the arrangements and possibilities with the songs, they incorporated the suggestions they found inspiring, sent me updated demos, we winnowed down the song list to 10.
Anyway, the recordings turned out incredibly well. I would say we played each song, working on 2 a day, a maximum of 5 times before we achieved a take we loved—none of them were rough, by any means. The band had prepared so well, the takes were good straight outta the gate, so we could pursue nuances beyond the usual level of detail pursued in a live setting. The band members are really great guys, as well; they put up with my insane schedule, my Norwegian TV interview in the middle of one day, my jet lag/need for quadruple iced americanos, etc. I was feeling a bit bad that this project was sandwiched in between so many other activities, but that’s another reason I had Kip there to provide technical structure. After the tracking, I added a few overdubbed bits—guitar, keys, backing vocals; and we had a guest appearance from Ian Moore, doing some absolutely spooky guitar and vocals.
After the first night in the studio I headed down to the ultra seedy rock club the Fun House—which didn’t exist when I lived in town, to check out filthy funk legend
Blowfly. A 65 year old man in a kind of Mexican wrestler’s outfit, telling us “The ABC’s of Pussy” (A….angry pussy!...B…Britney Spears pussy…C…and so on, up to “Zooooombie puuussssyyyyy”!) and many more jems of wisdom. Fantastic, of course!
Suddenly, it was the last night—we tracked the last vocals, moved the last songs to ProTools, did my overdubs…packed my stuff up and I had my last bottle (er, bottles—the RJM boys handed be a Stag’s Leap cab on the way out the door!)—an R.J. Buller rare Muscat. I grabbed what seemed like an hour’s worth of sleep at Brian’s and was up at 5, not 100% sober, either. Brian, bless him, was up to take me to the airport. I had sold my Honda to Jon Auer…leaving my last set of keys with Brian (part of the deal was that I use my car until I left). We crammed all 5 pieces of luggage—plus my computer bag now jammed with TWO laptops, I picked up a MacBook Pro while I was in Seattle. I had new mic pres, new ProTools rig, new mics—the fine folks at
Lauten Audio had let me demo mics for the RJM sessions, and loved ‘em so much I had to keep ‘em. The Horizon LDC and Torch SDC’s…just about the best guitar amp mics I have ever come across. Big part of the RJM album sound. Plus my suitcase, full to bursting with presents from my family to Aden, all the beauty and health products I can’t find in France, etc. And my guitar. 5 pieces. I had called ahead to Air Canada, for clearance on getting this stuff on the plane. $550 later, I was on my way. This doesn’t count the $350 I spent shipping 100s of KS CDs and the power supply for my mic pres to myself. All part of the expat game.
I settled into my flight to Toronto, and the in-flight movies were so good I didn’t sleep. I spent 5 hours at Toronto’s Pearson airport (YYZ to Rush fans and airport geeks like me and Le ConcORDe). Oddly, the long haul flight to Paris had no personal in-flight entertainment so I did manage to sleep on that one.
We landed in Paris at about 9am. Whatever sleep I got, it wasn’t enough. I was walking exactly like a newborn giraffe. I claimed my stuff and headed for customs. I was pleased to find that France had done away with landing cards—huge waste of time, paper and man-hours that they were. I also had the great fortune to push my cart, with boxes stacked higher than my head, thru the customs exit at the exact moment the shift changed. No one wanted to be stuck with me and have to stay a minute longer. By 10.30 I was home, and in the arms of my family—and to the great relief of my daughter, age now 4. It was her birthday. We buried her in presents. I tried to stay up til midnight, my patented beat-the-jetlag rule, but I couldn’t make it, I passed out for a couple of hours that afternoon.
The next day I was still tired, and this day we took Aden to Eurodisney. I was doing quite well, getting up, walking to Gare de Lyon, taking the RER to the park, getting us in (Dom’s folks met us there), and going thru the first half of the day’s attractions. It wasn’t too crowded—early in the season, midweek, and looking like rain. I would say the crowd was roughly 30% French, 30% British, 30% Indian, and 10% a mixed bag of Americans and other assorted nationalities. I think it depends on overall crowd capacity versus which tour groups are coming thru that day. Observations: 1) despite the fact that all the attractions, characters, and merchandise are from movies, and despite the fact that any conceivable movie tie-in product is for sale at no less than 25 feet distance from wherever you are in the park, I never saw anyplace that you could buy a DVD of a Disney movie. 2) Anyone there not accompanied by a child is, IMHO, kinda weird.
My favorite ride was the last one of the day, a boat ride thru canals of a kind of greatest hits of storybookland…you pass a miniature Emerald City, a miniature gingerbread house from Hansel & Gretel, a miniature snow covered cottage from Peter & the Wolf, all while tooling along at about ¼ mph. There was a little town built around the theme of ‘Night on Bald Mountain’ as visualized in ‘Fantasia’—the demon creature is frozen, emerging from a tower…and up on the next hillside is a perfectly rendered, tiny cemetery.
All was going well until we stopped for lunch at the Blue Lagoon restaurant, which straddles the pirates of the Caribbean ride. Dark, humid, and gently pulsing with a mélange of tropical musicks of the world, this completely broke my will to stay awake, and I passed out at the table. Aden punched and kicked me, but to little avail. Finally they got me out in the daylight. I fell asleep again in the Haunted Mansion. I eventually encountered my second wind. Observation 3): despite the fact that we were in France, and wine can be had for cheap, it was Gallo’s Turning Leaf that was offered by the glass in the restaurant. Couldn’t they find a cheaper alternative? It’s not just America-first protectionism—the restaurants also served Nescafe, a Swiss product. I had to scratch my head on that one.
We did the Mad Hatter’s Teacup ride—essential, IMHO. There was a laser target ride with a ‘Buzz Lightyear’ theme. Good stuff. Aden danced with Woody from Toy Story as well. That was her highlight. Fair enough. I do believe she was happy with the excursion! I fell asleep again on the RER back to Paris…and then, with no other obligations, slept for 16 hours upon arriving back at the flat.
Since arriving home I’ve been digging myself out from a month and a half’s worth of bills, clutter, packages received and packages to send. I’m getting back in my rhythms—back in my neighborhood, back in my bed. With the Disciplines album just out, it’s a little intense of a time to call down time, but, being home, I can pretty much handle whatever is being expected of me.
So, to wrap, my thanks to my family for their patience; to Brian for being such a great host and friend in Seattle; and to Red Jacket Mine for allowing me to participate in what I believe will be a great album. And thanks to my readers for checking back after two blog-free Sundays. I’m back on my regular weekly schedule now…I imagine!
Also enjoyed upon coming home, the 1905
Perez Barquero Pedro Ximinez. I read about this in the Wine Advocate, and being a huge PX fan, I had to know what a century-old PX would be like. The fine folks at Perez Barquero were very helpful and managed to work with my peeps at Legrand here in Paris to get the oily elixir shipped up to me. I’ve been enjoying it for the past couple of nights as the ultimate nightcap. Forget about calling it a dessert wine…this is liquid gateau, a wine dessert. A rich, brown-black syrup tasting of figs, toffee, caramel…a serious wow factor and certainly more than narcotic enough to ease any pain that ails you…if you can find it, sell your family jewels and jump on this, only 1,000 bottles available. On that warm note, goodnight!
Love
KS
Paris
