“Warm Coke tastes like summer,” I thought to myself as I took a sip. I set out my feast. Left-over fancy organic pizza from the vineyard the night before, donated Coke and Powerade (Brawndo! It's got what plants crave! It's got electrolytes...) and a gas station banana. Sitting by the banks of a river 3 miles outside of a faux Bavarian village in central Washington State. And I looked around me and thought, “yeah, this seems about right.” This is Pen Pen on a regular Tuesday afternoon.
I'd slept in my car the night before because I'd been too tired to make it to Leavenworth after the show. I derive a weird pleasure from the contrast of spending an evening talking fine wines and grape growing regions with folks in a vineyard, and then sleeping in the parking lot of a Walmart in the Hatchback of Notre Dame. Lately I’ve been learning to navigate the weird. Riding the rapids of contradictions because otherwise you drown in it. And if you're at all prepared, it's actually pretty fun. This is Pen Pen manifesting metaphor in front of some rapids.
So I spend my days in New York discussing economic philosophy with my friends who range from effectively homeless to actually homeless. Then running off to summer resort towns to make theatre and discussing Stravinsky with the wealthy who like me because I’m “edgy.” Never talk Marx with the 1%. Talk Chomsky. This is Pen Pen talking Eduard Bernstein with faux Bavarians.
The show in Leavenworth was pretty awesome, and Steve, the guy who runs Der Hinterhof is good people. He asks me to add me to the "not-an-asshole list." So I put him near the top. (It's not a real list.) I end up staying up all night talking politics with a self-described “Limbaugh Conservative.” And instead of killing each other we end up becoming friends. I don’t care what your social or economic views are, if you accept that Deep Space 9 is the best Star Trek series, we’re probably going to get along fine. This is Pen Pen waking up in real fancy hotel in the fake Alps.
The show in Bremerton? Well I’m not really sure what happened. I’d been offered a show at this pretty rad venue. Then the booking guy just sort of stopped responding to e-mails. This is usually a red flag (unlike a red and black flag which is a good thing. Flags are complicated...). In the back of my head I knew there was no show, but I went anyway. I got to the venue an hour before the show was supposed to start as is standard protocol. The venue was dark. No signs of life on the street other than the tattoo parlors and head shops with neon Open signs illuminating their windows. An overwhelming urge to get a new tattoo while I waited was pushed back by texts from my friends who are slightly more rational than I am. So mostly I just read the 2nd Hunger Games book in an alley behind the venue that can only be described as the exact opposite of a beer garden in Leavenworth. This is Pen Pen having apparently slipped through a wormhole in Bremerton, WA that connects to Boston because obviously there’d be a Sox Bar in the Olympic Peninsula.
So I head to Seattle with an unexpected night off. What else can you do? The next day I hit up Black Coffee with my quasi-roommate Amy and replenish the stock of radical zines. I love that despite being on the other side of the country, two former roommates are coincidentally and unrelatedly in town. Why wouldn’t they be? It’s Thursday, after all. This is Pen Pen enforcing the safer spaces policy, Amy.
Then there was Portland. Where I had had misgivings about the show in Bremerton, there was every reason to assume Portland would be good. The other bands all had a good reputation. I had a few folks coming for me. And the venue had been in good communication. They even posted something about the show earlier in the day. What could possibly go wrong? I show up. The other bands show up. We wait. A bunch of people show up. A good crowd, really. We wait. An hour later, someone walks up, tapes a sign to the door saying the show was off and walks away. No explanation. No conversation. Just. “Show’s off. Unforeseen circumstances. The city wouldn’t let us open.” He closes the door. We all sort of stare at each other in disbelief. Now what? On the bright side, my streak of never playing a good show in Portland remains unbroken. Score! This is Pen Pen and some bullshit.
I drive all morning on Saturday, crossing the Oregon Trail backwards. Fording rivers in reverse. People who died of cholera and snake bites return from the grave. Axles unbreak and oxen undrown. I pull into Union around 11:30 and immediately feel out of place. The old construction of the buildings in town and the classic car competition flooding the streets give it the look of 1950’s Hilldale from Back to the Future. Cowboy hats and Harley shirts everywhere, and I’m in a hoodie with an embroidered heart on it and corduroys with embroidered flowers. This is Pen Pen, newly rich in VHS tapes though.
But the feeling of being out of place is quickly replaced by that irreplaceable small town hospitality. Leslie, who booked the music for the Grassroots Festival, introduces me to her family. I quickly hit it off with Dylan and Allison, both of whom are awesome and live in Yakima. The rest of the festival is fun, but as the final band plays, it begins to hail out of nowhere. Golf ball chunks of ice assault the crowd while Bitterroot tries to keep the show going. Finally everyone more or less gives up and we all head back to Brewski’s to drink and laugh about the hail. Because what else can you do? Faux Bavarian villages in Washington State, unexpectedly cancelled shows, random hail storms? The only thing to do is take it for what it is and laugh. You can drive yourself crazy agonizing over what could have been. The money you lost by not having a show is a real concern, but there's also nothing to do about it now. You just hope you get enough at the next show to cover gas and keep going. So you laugh. Because the random string of events that spring forth like a story told by a sugar addled 4 year old is just my life. Arbitrariness is my predictability. Chaos is my stasis. This is my normal. This is Pen Pen on a perfectly normal Saturday afternoon in the country.
This is a song I wrote one time. You should download it and share it with your friends.
So I spend my days in New York discussing economic philosophy with my friends who range from effectively homeless to actually homeless. Then running off to summer resort towns to make theatre and discussing Stravinsky with the wealthy who like me because I’m “edgy.” Never talk Marx with the 1%. Talk Chomsky. This is Pen Pen talking Eduard Bernstein with faux Bavarians.
The show in Leavenworth was pretty awesome, and Steve, the guy who runs Der Hinterhof is good people. He asks me to add me to the "not-an-asshole list." So I put him near the top. (It's not a real list.) I end up staying up all night talking politics with a self-described “Limbaugh Conservative.” And instead of killing each other we end up becoming friends. I don’t care what your social or economic views are, if you accept that Deep Space 9 is the best Star Trek series, we’re probably going to get along fine. This is Pen Pen waking up in real fancy hotel in the fake Alps.
The show in Bremerton? Well I’m not really sure what happened. I’d been offered a show at this pretty rad venue. Then the booking guy just sort of stopped responding to e-mails. This is usually a red flag (unlike a red and black flag which is a good thing. Flags are complicated...). In the back of my head I knew there was no show, but I went anyway. I got to the venue an hour before the show was supposed to start as is standard protocol. The venue was dark. No signs of life on the street other than the tattoo parlors and head shops with neon Open signs illuminating their windows. An overwhelming urge to get a new tattoo while I waited was pushed back by texts from my friends who are slightly more rational than I am. So mostly I just read the 2nd Hunger Games book in an alley behind the venue that can only be described as the exact opposite of a beer garden in Leavenworth. This is Pen Pen having apparently slipped through a wormhole in Bremerton, WA that connects to Boston because obviously there’d be a Sox Bar in the Olympic Peninsula.
So I head to Seattle with an unexpected night off. What else can you do? The next day I hit up Black Coffee with my quasi-roommate Amy and replenish the stock of radical zines. I love that despite being on the other side of the country, two former roommates are coincidentally and unrelatedly in town. Why wouldn’t they be? It’s Thursday, after all. This is Pen Pen enforcing the safer spaces policy, Amy.
Then there was Portland. Where I had had misgivings about the show in Bremerton, there was every reason to assume Portland would be good. The other bands all had a good reputation. I had a few folks coming for me. And the venue had been in good communication. They even posted something about the show earlier in the day. What could possibly go wrong? I show up. The other bands show up. We wait. A bunch of people show up. A good crowd, really. We wait. An hour later, someone walks up, tapes a sign to the door saying the show was off and walks away. No explanation. No conversation. Just. “Show’s off. Unforeseen circumstances. The city wouldn’t let us open.” He closes the door. We all sort of stare at each other in disbelief. Now what? On the bright side, my streak of never playing a good show in Portland remains unbroken. Score! This is Pen Pen and some bullshit.
I drive all morning on Saturday, crossing the Oregon Trail backwards. Fording rivers in reverse. People who died of cholera and snake bites return from the grave. Axles unbreak and oxen undrown. I pull into Union around 11:30 and immediately feel out of place. The old construction of the buildings in town and the classic car competition flooding the streets give it the look of 1950’s Hilldale from Back to the Future. Cowboy hats and Harley shirts everywhere, and I’m in a hoodie with an embroidered heart on it and corduroys with embroidered flowers. This is Pen Pen, newly rich in VHS tapes though.
But the feeling of being out of place is quickly replaced by that irreplaceable small town hospitality. Leslie, who booked the music for the Grassroots Festival, introduces me to her family. I quickly hit it off with Dylan and Allison, both of whom are awesome and live in Yakima. The rest of the festival is fun, but as the final band plays, it begins to hail out of nowhere. Golf ball chunks of ice assault the crowd while Bitterroot tries to keep the show going. Finally everyone more or less gives up and we all head back to Brewski’s to drink and laugh about the hail. Because what else can you do? Faux Bavarian villages in Washington State, unexpectedly cancelled shows, random hail storms? The only thing to do is take it for what it is and laugh. You can drive yourself crazy agonizing over what could have been. The money you lost by not having a show is a real concern, but there's also nothing to do about it now. You just hope you get enough at the next show to cover gas and keep going. So you laugh. Because the random string of events that spring forth like a story told by a sugar addled 4 year old is just my life. Arbitrariness is my predictability. Chaos is my stasis. This is my normal. This is Pen Pen on a perfectly normal Saturday afternoon in the country.
This is a song I wrote one time. You should download it and share it with your friends.
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