Strange Days

It's been a little weird this week. I started out with a crippling headache on Sunday night that picked up steam on Monday and really got going on Tuesday with the right hemisphere of my skull randomly exploding at five second intervals. I went and got acupuncture for the first time at Pine Street Community Acupuncture. It's one of those sliding scale group places and I was led into this enormous room with a high ceiling and a skylight and there were little fountains everywhere making noise and Tibetan monks chanting through the speakers and she stabbed me with needles in my hands and my feet and then left me there. At first it was relaxing. I napped briefly. The headache was departing. I tried not to think which led to me imagining that I was scooping my brain out like a melon ball, over and over and over again. Then I got worried. It felt like I had been there forever. She didn't come back into the room and it was entirely empty and the sun came and went through the skylight and the fountains kept playing and I couldn't move. The needles have little springs in their ends and they were waving off my hands like alien antennas. I couldn't scratch my nose. She had forgotten I was there. But not really, eventually she came back and gave me some herb tablets and I took them and went back to work. It worked. The headache was gone.

Then it came back as I was heading over to Tony Vu's. He made meatloaf with chevre and pine nuts and we ate that with asparagus and olive bread and sorbet and drank pabst and then we went to the Owen Pallett show at the Aladdin. So good. He plays the violin and loops over himself. He didn't play this song:



But I wish he would have. The headache left about halfway through the show and it was like the lifting of a black veil. He told a really charming story about blowing it the last time he was in Portland opening for Bloc Party at the Crystal Ballroom. Gus Van Sant and Hedi Slimane were there and people talked loudly throughout his entire set and he eventually walked off the stage to zero applause. We all said AW, and cheered loudly enough to make up for his last Portland failure.

So Owen Pallett cured my headache on tuesday and I met Jocelyn at Slow Bar on wednesday for Portland's best hamburger (so they say) and we ended up at the Dirty Mittens show at Holocene. But not before sharing a watermelon flavored Four Loko in the alleyway. Like teenagers. I had never tried this drink before and it's a fruit-flavored caffeinated alcoholic beverage. Right? How can it go wrong? Our New York friends love it and Kale tried to get me to befriend it on facebook. That's not happening. I don't need to be friends with an undesirable like that. Four Loko turned out to be less than a good idea. But the Dirty Mittens show was great. I think the thing I find most charming about them is the amount of fun that it looks like they're having up there.

Phantom House

My friend Kyle Arthur is surprisingly mysterious. He looks straightforward enough. He has a beard and a pleasant expression. He's not above wearing things like khaki cargo shorts to super hip events like PDX PopNow and tolerating people making fun of him to his face (me). But he also has a dark side.

He has a "girlfriend". Apparently they have been dating forever, since early college years and they live together. For the longest time we didn't believe that she existed. She never came out with us or accompanied him to events. We never saw her or proof of her (khaki cargo shorts? Why didn't you stop him?) Kyle was always a solo flyer and that was okay, but he continued to lie about this girlfriend of his and we continued to pretend that we believed him. Until she actually did show up at a bbq/living room dance extravaganza and dispelled the myths once and for all.

The issue of his home has yet to be solved. I have never been to Kyle Arthur's home. No one has. Apparently it's an apartment in NW, on like 20th or so, and Couch. Or so he says. He never has people over, no dinner parties, no pre-parties, no movie nights, no pizza parties. Nothing. And then he finally says he's going to invite people over, creates a facebook invite (that means it's real) and then pulls it today at the last second and aborts the whole mission. He promised us spanakopita. Hey Kyle, April Fools was yesterday. Not funny.

If it weren't for the fact that Kyle and I were enrolled in the same black and white photography class at UofO I would be 100 percent sure that Kyle Arthur is actually a crazy homeless impostor who paid a girl to show up at a party where all his young and attractive non-homeless friends were to keep the lie alive. I'm beginning to doubt him. We'll see. He has postponed the party for two weeks. . .

One Mystery Solved

 I went to Content 09 awhile ago at the Ace Hotel, and among the standouts I listed, there was this room filled with structurally beautiful pieces falling off the bolt and threads draping through the room from spool to garment and I didn't manage to jot the name down but I've been snooping on the internet ever since and finally figured it out (not the coin though, I still haven't figured out the coin). Liza Rietz is a designer here in Portland, apparently she used to share a space with John Blasioli (the guy with the great jackets) but now she has her own shop at 2305 NW Savier, and it would be worth checking out. Here is what I would be wearing if I didn't have to pay rent and utility bills and doctor bills and eat food:

Maybe not in white though. Everyone knows I can't wear white. She does this romper in a soft gold too.

If it's asymmetrical, I'm in.

Dance Party Disco

Okay, so after yesterday's post I checked out the world wide web. The bird on the coin is not a cassowary, but a lyre bird. So there you go. The cassowary is a large flightless bird (somewhat like an emu) that can maim domestic animals and small children, and apparently Australian men with doors if provoked. Here is a terrifying photo. This doesn't solve the mystery but does brings me one step closer.

Anyway, Thanksgiving is tomorrow, which means I am going to eat. My family is pretty big on Thanksgiving. One year we had dinner at my aunt's house and because we didn't have any leftovers to speak of, my mom roasted an entire turkey and we had Thanksgiving again, on friday. With stuffing and potatoes and the whole thing. It was ridiculous.
This year I have something up my sleeve to combat the effects of the two-day food coma. Simian Mobile Disco is playing at the Wonder on saturday night, which will give me an opportunity to dance like a dervish and sweat out some gravy. This is awesome. Their new album is great, with some solid collaboration with various musical forces, everything danceable. Here's their song with Hot Chip's Alexis Taylor.

Girl with a Coin

I found an Australian coin in my room last night. I was shaking things off my bed (my room is small and the closet is the size of a coffin and sometimes my bed turns into a table because my room is filled with things, clothes mostly, a few unhung drawings, a rolling clothing rack that holds coats and dresses, earrings hanging from a piece of gauze nailed to the wall, shoes, sweaters unraveling from the shelves and bracelets scattered on flat surfaces, lots of loose paper because I print out my stories and then I make notes on them and leave them in piles and books, books are stacked in the bookshelf because there is not enough room for all of them, though the floor is mostly clear except during the weekend when it gets hectic and I change in out and out of things three times and throw rain-soaked jeans on the floor, and t-shirts that I've spilled coffee on, and socks).

So this coin catches on the edge of my comforter, flips to the floor, glinting, and I could already tell that it was foreign, the metal's all wrong and it says 10 in a large script that isn't familiar and I thought it would be from Japan or China or maybe a euro from the most recent venture. I picked it up and Queen Elizabeth II was on one side and on the other were feathers, very pretty, very delicate, on closer inspection there were not just feathers, but a whole bird, with the bottom of the bird and the feet and the wing and the rest, the head, hidden behind all those feathers. I can't remember the name of the bird but I feel like it starts with a "c" (cassowary?) and it was minted in 1993.

Alexa moved to Australia a while ago and to date she has sent me two letters. One on the unicorn stationary I gave her, enclosing an article about Nick Cave, whom I love, and apparently she loves him too, though we did not share this love before she left, and then a letter with 40 American dollars enclosed to reimburse me the cost of shipping her a package and a CD with the Noisettes and Thao. Actually, I was listening to the CD when I found the coin.

And I don't remember an Australian coin being in either letter. And I've never been to Australia. I should have said this from the beginning. Because that makes this a mystery.