PARK thing at Ritual
Well, contributing to the hyperblogulation of this event, the claiming of a public parking space or two, here I am at Ritual Roasters by complete accident, as I figured I’d get some wireless, some nice hot tea for my sore throat, and I’d probably run into someone I know. I have already run into a friend and worse than that, took some photos and went to blog this odd thing with the astroturf and bongoes outside, and then realized it was Already on Metroblogging. Adam is probably somewhere in this cafe right now - I should go looking for him. Hi Adam! I’m sitting by the door.
As I photographed the goofy techie hipstery people outside and commented on it being a truly overblogged moment, they pointed out I am actually wearing a Blogger tshirt. It’s a little bit embarrassing. Why is it that I am sure to run into someone I know here? Does this mean I am part of some strange little predictable herd? Should this be so, in such a big city? Here I am, not feeling alienated… this is not my beautiful anomie…
Let’s play “identify the people in the photo”… who are they? The fellow in the green tank top commented that he “needs more exposure”.
:-) I’m actually back at Hastings now–I left a little after 1 PM or so. Props for the word “hyperblogulation,” by the way.
And it’s a really nice day for it, too! Hooray for sunshine!
Though I missed talking with le , I ended up having the most insanely fun random conversation with N. and a guy named Joel who I’d never met before. A guy I probably should have recognized whooshed up on a bike with a tape player blaring a song by The Ventures. I suggested we all do the twist, because I used to have this Ventures album that was called “Twist Party” with voiceovers from an announcer explaining how to have a Twist Party.
Joel, being somewhat older than us, clued us in on how to do the twist correctly: as if you are mashing out cigarettes with your toes.
N. remarked he knew someone who used to kill frogs that way.
I recounted how I used to ride my bike in Houston with my friend Julie Carter on the handlebars and we would count the dead frogs in the road, often hundreds of them; they’d dry and flatten out completely like paper. You could peel them up.
N. described Washington D.C.’s sidewalk “carpet of roaches” and wearing wading boots to keep them off.
In Austin there used to be certain times of year where there was a Carpet of Crickets.
N. experienced a cicada cycle in Texas. We discussed cicadas. Peeling their shells off trees.
Joel: In Kentucky there was a famous incident with pesty swarms of birds. The town tried shooting guns to scare them off. Trees were falling over because of the weight of the birds. Then a week later it turned out all the cicadas hatched on the 17-year cycle and the birds at the cicadas and flew away. So all they had to do was wait.
Then on to cockrings and bracelets and discussions slightly unprintable, and I did a sort of obscene pole dance for N. with the repurposed parking meter pole, and then my friend Brian Oberkirch showed up unexpectedly from out of town, so my wish for serendipitous meetings at the cafe (The Cafe) was granted times a zillion, and we roamed into blogs, marketing, Cuban and Chilean literature and translation; Brian outlined his vision of the literary translation mashup, and I described C. Berenguer’s poetry to him as being neobarroque like Perlongher but with more “Ay, Sticky Vagina!” and body-ness in response to dictatorship, and shaped like the FLAG. I can say that in fancier academic-speak but this way, gushing incoherently, we entertained Joel hugely, and perhaps also you, gentle reader.