Whew, long week. But it's barely ended and the next one is already set to begin.
My friend Rabbit visited from D.C., arriving on Tuesday. We promptly went out to the "Trannyshack" (a fun drag show on Tuesday nights in SF) with Walt, Rupe, and a few other people. Greg was feeling sick and couldn't go (which would prove to be an ominous sign). The show was great! Possibly the best one i've seen. Afterwards we usually just drink another beer or two and leave, but Rabbit got the dance bug and basically danced and chatted people up until 3am. It's funny, he gets really extroverted when drunk, and will just run up to strangers and start talking to them. Finally we went by the Rusty Penny for sobering up and got home at 5.
The next day i felt really light-headed and sleepy, but i figured that was just from staying out drinking the night before. Yakk and i talked about say2 for a while at work, and he got me psyched to do the next major chunk of work on it (splitting the channel server from the registry server), even though i knew i wouldn't have time that week. He and Mike are the only Eazel people who have expressed any interest in what we're doing, so it's encouraging to get feedback.
Since Rabbit is the only bassist Dead Dog has ever had, we always try to play a show while he's in town, so this time was no exception: Matt hooked us up with a two-night gig at the illustrious New Hack City on Friday and Saturday. So that night, we started practicing in earnest, even though we all suspiciously felt light-headed and sleepy. I was a bit nervous about the number of songs we planned to play, but we got it trimmed down pretty well and started to make real progress.
By Thursday morning, it was definite that we were all starting to get the dreaded Greg plague, so we pumped ourselves full of medication, and Matt handed out liberal doses of hippie vitamins, and slept a lot, and tried to practice. Finally our drummer (Orange) showed up -- first practice with any drummer ever! I was extremely nervous that having a drummer learn the songs the day before a show might be a disaster, but we plugged through each song one by one, and by the time we finished with the set, i felt a lot better about it. Orange didn't impress me much at first, but he caught on so fast and threw out so much energy that i started to think, "This is going to work!"
Friday morning i felt better. Probably better enough to go back to work but i decided to recuperate instead and live with the guilt. It was either sleep + practice or work + practice and i decided to let sleep win a round for once. Once i was rousted, we packed up, drove to SF (horrible traffic -- i could never live in that city) and set up in NHC. We got through another practice round (that's two!) before people showed up, and then played a somewhat satisfying but fairly sloppy set. By sloppy i mean that i messed up a lot (probably everyone else was playing fine). This crowd was mostly friends of Matt, including Strick, who had just arrived from his most recent trip to Asia. Afterwards we went to a cool nearby bar called "Pow!" and then drifted toward the End Up, which has changed so much since i was last there that i was fairly disgusted by it.
Of all the weird coincidences, while i was there, a guy came up to me and said "Robbie?" I thought, this is probably another eggdrop kid who has only seen my name in writing and doesn't know how to pronounce it, so i corrected him. He said, "from Tennessee, right?" (Huh?!) "It's Bradley!" Whoa!! It was one of my best friends from high school! He was the one who first dubbed me Robey. He moved out here a while ago but didn't know how to contact me! I invited him to Saturday's show, which must've been a trip for him. He's also apparently dating a member of the Killkenny Cats (an old Athens band) which just completed the 360 degrees of absolute weirdness.
Saturday we chilled and then played another set, much tighter and more together and far fewer mistakes by me (though still enough). K8e (a girl we met the night before) did a few opening songs for us, and we're hoping to include her as "part of the band" (as much as there's any meaningful membership here) next time we play or record. Matt got it all on Minidisc, so i'm looking forward to hearing how the show came out, when listened to in the cold light of day. This night the crowd was mostly yak people and some of my friends, including a fairly perplexed Bradley.
That night we drove back down to Mountain View, picked up food at Jack, lamented about the lost hour, and then stayed up to watch varying amounts of Meet the Feebles (if you haven't seen this movie, go watch it now!) -- most of us fell asleep before it was over. I think i managed to watch almost 100% of it, though. Early Sunday morning, Rabbit had to leave to fly out to D.C. again. I wish we could play with him and Orange more often now.
I have typed far too much for even the most patient person to read, so i'll stop now.