January 31, 1997, Friday

I went to Comet to check a little e-mail and such. I was very pleased to learn that a network protocol problem that has been plaguing our phone lines for the past few days (flooding tech support with calls, some of them hostile) appears to have lifted to some extent. It had become stressful going to work, something which was unfamiliar to me.

the end of the Rising Sun Bakery

I found myself chatting with Eliza of large meat pizza fame again. Again she read me her poetry. Her presentation is a little overly emphatic though and I decided she needs to learn to excercise restraint. She needs to do this in everything she does; for example she knew a mother and child were in the tiny little Bakery bathroom but went on in anyway. She's a weirdo. But she's only 14.

Speaking of weirdo, that girl Raphæl was there too. She's the one with the eyes that are always open a little too wide who is full of things to say that follow each other incompletely incoherent ways. She really digs me for some reason (she's also very close with Eliza, if you know what I mean) and kept coming up with ideas for artistic projects for me to do. I'm prolific, but there's no way in hell I could do half of what she suggests...even if I knew what in god's name she was talking about.

Most people who ever were anybody in Bakery history was there (exceptions being Ana Klausmann, the Malvern Girls, Nellie Appleby, Burrita and Justin). Even Rami (aka Bad Ironing Board), who had an acromonious post-employment relatioship with Terry, the owner, was there in full extroverted splendour. At a certain point I was too drunk to recall much of what I was doing, except in a post-modern collage-like way. But hell, this is the World Wide Web, which is perfectly suited to post-modern ramblings. So I now present a list of events, in no particular order (thus a perfect opportunity for an HTML unordered list).

• A couple little kids were given a ride in a mixing bowl on a wheeled platform by a Marxist-looking man who appears to be the male friend (I imply nothing sexual by this term) of the woman who will turn the Bakery into a bloated burrito stand.
• Matthew of Plutonium, Andy Roland, Reg (John Zawacki's old housemate- I haven't seen him in awhile) and others notable Charlottesville musicians (those were mostly pre-Big Fun folks and thus you get no links to follow) played funk. That bleached blond and tanned alterna-chick named Liz (the one propositioned by Eliza a couple weeks before) and I donated our vocals to this cause. Liz has a far better voice than I do, so her donation was worth considerably more than mine. But people were grooving to it. Not being a fan of funk, I have to say funk is a hell of a lot of fun to sing even if it is a drag to listen to.
• A woman my age was being gradually seduced by Phil Ginini, but I came up and chatted with her in the midst of the seduction and she filled my hands with marijuana that she presumably had loose in her pocket. Phil had a bowl ready and we smoked it then and there, right in front of the cash register.
• Lee, the dedicated Asian woman who was one of the Bakery's main bakers, kept busy to the end making fried salmon and huge bowls of shrimp and fried rice. I ate this stuff and enjoyed it, though I had to avoid the egg nodules in the fried rice.
• Terry, the old owner of the Bakery, and the unassuming idealistic woman who will make it into a bloated burrito stand, in a seemingly inspirational act both of abandon and good will, stood on the rear counter with more youthful Bakery employees, dancing enthusiastically to the funk. They had the funk, no one could deny it.
• I was getting weird vibes from Jenfariello, or else I was giving her weird vibes. I guess in my state I wasn't very nice to her, sort of avoiding her. But I really felt as though she wanted nothing to do with me at first.
• In addition to beer, there was Champagne and even tequila expensive enough to sip. Terry opened them as necessary with jolly loud pops while his wife took numerous Polaroid photographs.
• I expressed to Elizabeth my desire to kiss her just on the cheek. Her response, "You had your chance."
• I talked to Noah, the punk rock doll, and Josh, the youthful frequent patron of the Tokyo Rose, about my frustration about finding other musicians with whom to play the sort of music I'd like to. They were enthusiastic about the idea of maybe starting a band (of course they were...they're teenagers after all), and they asked what I play. "Guitar." What did I sound like? Oh I didn't know. I don't sound like anybody else. "I play very fast...but I sound a little like Fugazi. I have a strong metal influence, by the way. And I don't really know how to play...like, I could never play covers." They liked the idea of fast Fugazi with a metal influence. And that I could never play covers is no problem to them. This might sound weird, but the hope of starting a band...with anyone...was inspiring. Oh, we also talked about Morgan Anarchy, who looks down his nose at poor Noah (Noah had a mohawk this summer, and punk rockers always look at new punk rockers on the scene as artificial in some way). I said that Morgan has his hang-ups, but that this is of little consequence in the general scheme of things.

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