[photo: "baseball is a simple game." whatever, i'm foreshadowing.]ok. at this rate i won't finish this stupid trip summary before turning around and doing it all over again. here are the cliff notes of the highlights of the illustrations of the end, because i had this grander point i wanted to make (i think? i don't exactly remember) so let's just get to my navel gazing and finish it already. also, my sister got married.
VA:
maysan's husband, c., works at virginia tech, which means she has moved from her location during the last trip (MI) to blacksburg (VA) (not an upward move). she asked me if i wanted to see the monument to the slain virginia tech students, but after new orleans and the holocaust cage, i'd had my fill of tragic landmarks.
then again, blacksburg is in itself sort of tragic; 4 out of 5 businesses are tattoo shops, there are $300k condos marketed for rich people who need a place to crash during football season, and maysan's building's "pool" looks like this.we took her boys (ages 3 and 1) and went to target, petsmart and barnes and noble, aka the local art museum (lookit the artistry of the new GO collection!), aquarium (lookit fish!) and library (well, there are books). but i also provided an excuse to go to the mountain lake resort, aka, the place where they shot dirty dancing. i mean, neither one of us is a superfan of the movie, but really, you can only go to target so many times.
and it was totally worth it, because we a, discovered that the next sequel will be called dirty dancing 3: an inconvenient truth, as this here is the "lake" of the resort's name which was featured in the film as the home of "the lift." now it's no bigger than patrick swayze's current carbon footprint. "!"[additional note on photo: the lake is the silver of blue in the back. it's every so slight, like the wind through my tree.]
and b, we went into the dining hall, stuck sinan in a chair, and literally put baby in the corner.[additional note on photo: i thought maysan'd want to be cropped out of the photo, but you can see her hand and that she a, didn't just dump her huge infant in a chair and walk off to do the pachanga, and b, was having the time of her life.]
[ok references over.]
oh, these are maysan's kids and my dog. please note that my dog weighs less than sinan the 1-year-old, who, if maysan really wants to buy a minivan, could help contribute to the down payment by working as a bouncer, maybe at one of the local tattoo shops, if such shops had bouncers, and if sinan could walk.
but as boring as blacksburg is, my time at chez maysan did a lot to clear up the misery of the previous stretch. on the one hand, i'm annoyed that i'm giving maysan the short shrift write-up since this part of the trip was fun, while i went on and on about atlanta which was utter punishment, but after you put baby in the corner, what more is there to say? plus, at this point, i sincerely don't remember shit. which, given the 3 days of sleep i needed to recover from this trip when i got to nh, might be a good hting.
MD:so i decided to not punish myself with an 8 hour drive directly to nyc and instead drive from VA to baltimore to cristie's house. she embraced buzzo (pictured, not so stoked as this time no groin relief was involved, but this is as close to blue steel as my dog gets). we did fun things that nobody would care about. no vermin were exchanged. we bitched about dudes. surely i've said enough.
DE, NJ, NY:i had to be in nyc for a night to meet with my new subletter, who i liked, which is good since he lives in my house and watches his giant tv on my precious couch. i always hate writing about my trips to nyc because they're basically private friend time, but i will say that buzzo finally got a bath, and i finally got 31 corn lane merch for my birthday (that hadn't actually happened yet at that point, but since i beg for shit all the time, finally still applies), and now i'm finally including a picture of kesone's aforementioned adorable rodent (with buzz staring at him since he seems to be the official recurring motif of this entry).
CT, MA, NH:
before making the final stretch to nh, i went to a bbq at the sperber manse in bk, and i got my 31CL bags as well as a ton of food and red sox talk, and holy shit, it's such a good/bad feeling when you realize you're happy because you feel at home (yay), and that it took you so long to realize that because it's been so long since you've felt that way (christ).
i mean, i travel to see friends a lot, and those trips are always somewhat life saving in nature, but 10 years ago, after i fled an apartment in queens and was waiting to move into the place i am now resubletting to yet more mixed feelings of relief and misery, it was the sperbers who let me sleep on their bizarro couch on bleecker st for 2 fucking weeks. and it wasn't long after that that i met their neighbor, emma, who i didn't spend one-on-one time with until we were both in london months later and i suffered a allegra-induced nosebleed that lasted for our entire dinner together. i was sure my nosesplosion was going to end our friendship right there (as was she, i mean, ew), but somehow, it didn't. and now she's my lifeline in LA, and teeter's sisters still take me in, and both teeter and emma were my dates to my sister's wedding last week. that's next level relief.
what i realized sometime during the long slog of drive after texas was that maybe i wanted to see the alamo (if you don't remember that part, i'm not hurt) because i fancy myself to be alamo-like-- old (about to get older with the birthday et al) and buttressed and famous for an endless last stand that (i'm convinced) i will also lose. but of course, that's self-indulgent bullshit, or really, given that this is written on a public travel diary on the intertubes, next level self-indulgent bullshit mach 9.[photo: a truly shitty shot of one of the truly shitty waterfall instillations in nyc. not sure if i captured the true essence, but to me, it looked like a scaffolding taking a piss.]
so i lose by my 8-year-old larry bird-era standards, but that's because my best friend isn't a life-sized talking my little pony, i can't breathe underwater, and i don't have any magical powers (duh, because if i did, i'd be riding my my little pony to the seaside so i could go to my summer home off/under the coast of martha's vineyard where all my neighbors are all large, kindly whales). but if the watermellon thump queen, whoever she ended up being (kimmy #1!), thinks she's a winner, then fuck it. davy crockett was killed at the alamo, but he's remembered as the king of the wild frontier and wearer of a signature cap.
you spend enough time sitting in a compact car with a small dog and the threat of don henley, and perspective does seem to fade away. but. now, we remember the good friends and li'l giant babies and poop jokes. remember that we all fight, and we never win, at last according to joss whedon. remember to set your tivo in advance for dollhouse. remember where glenn danzig lives so you can take others, and remember to get buzz's rabies shots renewed next june in a timely manner, and remember how insane teeter and emma looked dancing to tina turner at the wedding. remember only the good times with manny ramirez, before things got ugly. and natch, remember the alamo. and that it's not in el paso. i might not be a loser per se, but i'm still kind of an idiot.
[photo: btw, in case you haven't noticed, that was the navel gazing i warned you about. this photo of the sunapee harbor 4th of july fireworks seemed like the best illustration of that.]a weekish before my sister got married, cristie came up and we went to see/i photographed the manchester fishercats get slaughtered by the new britain rockcats (these are minor league baseball teams, not some sort of feline ultimate fighting ring). and as we watched more errors made than either one of us thought humanly possible during a semi-professional baseball game, we recalled our favorite line from (the movie that inspired us to go to a minor league game in the first place) bull durham; "sometimes, you win, sometimes, you lose, and sometimes...it rains. think about it." anyway, here's some cake.
[photo: from my birthday, since i love cake and hate birthdays. touche, mom.]FIN
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