Hump Day October 8th 2008: A Self-Portrait

I must preface this post with a photo - a self-portrait if you will. This photograph conveys my life as it currently occupies the universe.



Hump Day October 8th 2008: A Self-Portrait

I also wish to present this video as an accompaniment to my portrait. My BFF Disco Nap sent it to me - she's the best.

In the video the 99¢ Chef performs a 99¢ wine tasting. It brings a tear to my eye to know that my Thirsty Fish performed so well. Oh sorry - was that a spoiler?

I could almost fall in love with the King Cobra feller...except I cannot forgive his glaring fashion faux-pas.



You're surprised, huh?

So finally here are the photos from the last Not The Government residency show.

The boys really went out with a bang. Longtime friend Joe came out from Texas to perform a touching tribute to Elliott Smith. As I hear it, he completed his LA visit with an Elliott Smith tour, posing for a picture in front of the infamous Figure 8 mural on Sunset Blvd.



Elliott's ghost must have been in the room, because at one point, Joe appropriately forgot the words to "I Better Be Quiet Now." But Joe didn't miss a beat, carrying on, and maybe Elliott's uneasy soul can rest a little better now.

When Joe broke out "Angeles" I was immediately transported to the first time that sad guitar ever touched me. I was fifteen and sitting at my desk sometime around midnight. A friend sent it to me over the internet, back when Napster was a foundling, and I'll never forget how that first sustained note affected me, with the guitar creeping in and the darkness closing in all around me, the tungsten of my desk light burning into the back of my skull.

He killed himself my first year in college. I remember crying to "Waltz #2" off of XO - you know the line....

Narwhal Party came up next, kicking up the atmosphere. I feel like this is dumb to say, but the first and only time I saw them prior to that night was at the Vermont House and I didn't know there was a tambourine involved! With the tambourine restored, their sound was much more different and I dug it even more than I did before.

Who knew?



Duhka followed them, strumming up and stripping down. I think that collectively the band weighs about...a hundred pounds, but they produce a two ton sound.



Not The Government tore it up, of course, with their final song erupting into guitar-slamming chaos. Injuries were sustained.



The best part was a candlelit cake for Wilton's birthday.

I wonder if he wished for a face full of cake?



And so ended their residency, the best sort of ending I could have ever asked for.

I realized as I drove home that Sam has never seen a NTG show at Tribal. Nor will he ever.

He will probably never see NTG ever again.

I relapsed recently. He whispered to my heart, or I read between the lines when there actually weren't any lines at all. I fell emotionally ill and in the process forgot myself, drowned in a rip tide.

I was going to write more about it, and I really hate to do this, but Elliott Smith put it best:

"You're just somebody that I used to know."

I imagine myself standing on a cliff overlooking the sea. I blow a kiss and the breeze catches it. Swept across the Atlantic, the breeze becomes a wind, a torrent, a hurricane, tossing ships, wrecking lovers...and as it approaches its destination, it simmers back down into a breeze that caresses his cheek.

I know he feels it. He turns away from the sea and walks home.

I want to complete this photo project - and I will.

I can't help hoping for a future friendship.

But you're just somebody that I used to know.