going mobile
03.26.03 @ 11:10 p.m.
I wrote this about two hours ago. Right now I'm happily listening to the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack. For all that I'd rather stick a fork in my leg than listen to "This Land is Your Land," I can listen to "The Big Rock Candy Mountains" with no problems. Hmm. And "You Are My Sunshine" which I remember singing in preschool. Must be my fondness for country music. Anyway, the stuff I wrote earlier:
That pretty well sums up the last four days. Martha said that last night when she, Andrew, and I were paralyzed with laughter, playing Mad Libs and these old ecology themed board games whilst coastal winds and rain raged outside. We were listening to CDs, mainly Martha's mixes and U2, The Beatles, and Buddy Holly.
I suppose I should start at the beginning in what will surely be a too long narrative of my journey into the magical world of the Oregon coast. Tillamook, home of dairy cows and a cheese factory (and the fucking best strawberry cheesecake ice cream in the history of the world, my god, I love Tillamook ice cream). Nine people started out at the coast, only a few of whom are my high school friends. There was me, obviously, Martha, Andrew (gay, with an honest to god lisp that makes him seem, at times, like a caricature of himself) and Amy rounding out the group of high school friends. Andrew and Amy brought their friend Clinton (also gay and very informed and well spoken, though he looks very young), and a couple named Miranda and Doug. They were quite fun, actually. And I know Clinton from Spring Break last year. Martha brought her friend Jennifer and Jennifer's boyfriend, Jason. They're annoying, that couple, because they say they don't know anybody and go around excluding themselves from the whole thing. The first day we went to the beach at Happy Camp (yes, it's actually called that) and played Pictionary in the sand at the beach. I portrayed Mick Jagger by drawing a stick figure with huge lips. Martha got it immediately, but everyone else was vaguely confused. The sets of couples wandered off.
That night was spent playing Scattergories for HOURS. Well, Clinton, Andrew, Amy, Martha and I played Scattergories for hours. The couples did their own thing or disappeared. Doug ended up spending time talking with Amy and some of us while we did the traditional beach thing: we watched VH1 until about 3 AM. Insomniac Music Theater exists for us to while away our nights at the beach. Blah blah.
The next day we went to Cannon Beach, which was fairly uneventful apart from seeing a local celebrity ("Andy Carson, you know, the weatherguy on Good Day Oregon?") that apparently only I recognized (Moni had joined us, I think she kind of recognized him, too. Or Martha. One of them and not the other). He was poking around the tide pools with his kids. Everyone wanted to look at the tide pools except Martha, Moni, and me. Jennifer and Jason had left early that morning, prompting Martha and some others to say "Why do they bother coming if they're not going to hang out with us and then leave after one day?" Moni joined us for the day and left that night. The other eventful thing was that while we were obsessively watching the guy pulling taffy in the candy store window, a youth group came up and tried to evangelize Moni. Hah. They couldn't have picked a less likely target. One of them was quite cute, the two gay boys in our party commented when they had moved on. The ladies agreed. The lone straight guy kind of shrugged. Hah hah. We mostly wandered. Martha decided that it was indicative of some traces of obsessive compulsive disorder (which her sister has) that she feels like she has to stay until the taffy the guy was working on had all gone through the wrapping machine.
I can't remember what day it was, but one of the days we watched part of the VH1 Original Movie about MC Hammer. None of us had any idea he was so close with Tupac. Or that he was supposed to be in the car with Tupac when he was murdered. We also watched a lot of count downs. This morning we watched the "Too Hot For TV' Countdown, which was cool for me because it covered a lot of controversies we went over in Rock History class, but the presenters were idiots. (Like all VJs aren't idiots?) But they were so stupid about Zappa. Frank Zappa spoke out at the PMRC hearings, opposing Parental Advisory labels. Then later he released an instrumental album with an Advisory sticker on it. The idiot VJs tried to make it sound like spite on the part of the PMRC, but, ugh, fucking morons, those are VOLUNTARY stickers, and it's such a Zappa thing to put a sticker on an instrumental album to bring attention to it all.
Last night was the best, though. Everyone left yesterday, and we went to the Tillamook Cheese Factory with Amy and Clinton. We mostly just looked around the gift area and I bought some lovely ice cream. Amy and Clinton headed to Portland from the Cheese Factory and Andrew, Martha, and I went to Fred Meyer to see if it was worth buying the "Super Value Fun Bucket", which had bubble mix, shovels, and all kinds of other beachy things. It was too expensive for the stuff inside it, so we bought some chips and some crayons so Martha could make French and Nazi flags for when we re-enacted D-Day this afternoon with plastic army men. It was fun and I really wished I had my camera, though Andrew and Martha had theirs. We set up the army men on the beach and had them progress toward the 'coast of Normandy' and eventually erect an American flag in the place where the Nazi flag had been planted. I was smart enough this time to risk crossing at the log jam at the top of a little water outflow instead of wading through the water, which was GODDAMN COLD. My feet were so numb they hurt the first day, when I decided that my balance is lousy and I didn't want to risk it, so I waded through the water and walked around in the cold, barefoot and wet.
Well, I think I covered everything interesting. We listened to a lot of Martha's music, which, for the most part, I liked. We talked about Elvis Costello a lot. I listened to Martha rave about Roy Orbison and Friends Black and White Night for four days, then tonight I discovered that that Roy Orbison special was the program that was on Oregon Public Broadcasting the last time my mom worked a pledge drive. Mom made cookies just now and I'm eating far too many of them while I sit here typing. I must be stopped.
Previously
fuck it @ 08.01.05
fanciful imaginary sea voyages to come @ 07.20.05
*dies* @ 07.19.05
more ootp @ 07.17.05
harry potter: driving our children into devil worship @ 07.17.05
