sunday best-of blogging: the "i drove to new york city by myself because i'm a lovesick groupie" issue

Best. Musician. Ever.: evan dando! yay! yay, evan dando! you're so the love of my life i can't even stand myself. evan dando, for those of you who do not know, has been my #1 rock star crush since i was 13 years old. that's a long time—and he's earned every second of it. he ties with jon stewart, who is only not my #1 rock star crush because he can't play guitar*, unless he can and i just don't know it, in which case i might never be able to decide. for some reason, everyone everywhere on the planet is not obsessed with evan dando, and some people haven't even heard of him. i can't understand this at all, but i'm also foggy on calculus and people's fanaticism for excessively manicured lawns.

awwwwww! i wuv my boys. and so do their respective wives, but let's not think about them.

best fan at the 12/17 lemonheads show: a lovely 19-year-old boy from toronto, who took a train all the way to new york by himself and stayed in a room at a hostel with four strangers. that's devotion. i thought i was pretty hardcore, but this kid takes the cake, the serving platter and all the silverware. i was so impressed by his devotion that i bought him a beer, but that was before i knew he was nineteen. in my defense, he was already drinking when he started talking to me, and the bowery ballroom swore that it wasn't letting anyone under twenty-one inside. what can you do? whatever, he earned it; he had gone to see the lemonheads in providence a few weeks before, which i did not do, and i only live an hour away. i didn't ask him his name, but whoever he is, he's fantastic. way to go, young man.

best secret-boyfriend synchronicity: i only spoke to two people in the two days i spent in the city; one of them was the aforementioned boy from toronto, and the other was a guy from dorchester named mike, who introduced himself to me at the friday show and, in the course of our conversation and with zero mention from me of anything of the sort, told me the last book he read was the tipping point. while he's from dorchester, he works half the week in manhattan, and when i said, "i have such a crush on malcolm gladwell," he said, "let's go get him, he lives in columbus circle." he agreed with me that malcolm and i would be a smashing duo, but i declined, for no good reason that i can think of today. no matter; now i know which corners to stake out once i've hoarded enough candy and kix to stalk with my all, which malcolm certainly doesn't deserve less than.

most jarring disappointment: i got up early saturday and walked to 12 harrison street, the address given on ken brown's web page, assuming it was his home-base store and that i'd score bushels of bizarro swag. NO! 12 harrison street is an apartment building, where, presumably, ken brown lives and fills orders from. now, i could have buzzed him and demanded that he load me up with booty, since i'd come all that way, but i was so thrown by the situation that i just turned around and headed back the way i'd come. *sigh* it was a pleasant walk, anyhow, and i did get a cup of great coffee.

best catharsis of all lingering romantic demons: before now i have only ever been to new york city once in my life; that one time was five and a half years ago, and i made the trip to visit a boy. i met him in boston in february and liked him lots, and at the end of may he moved to the east village and invited me out, and i'd never been so excited about anything in my life. so i drove down, and we sat on his couch for an hour and a half and had a wonderful chat, and then his girlfriend came home. i did not know about the girlfriend, and he became somewhat agitated, which led me to believe that i was not supposed to know about the girlfriend. bastard. anyway, she didn't seem too terribly flustered, so i tried to make the best of it and asked her if she could recommend anything interesting for me to do while i was there, since i was a first-timer. the girl looked me dead in the eye and said, "interesting? interesting, interesting… gosh, i don't know, mostly i just shop." i sat very still and prayed for a punch line, but all i got was, "soho has the best shops, that's my favorite. they have so many beautiful things." i looked around and saw that the boy was across the room with his head in a drawer, not acknowledging anything that was taking place. i felt rather unwell. i left a short while later and wandered for a while without paying any attention to where i was going, and i wound up at union square, where i sat down under a tree and was promptly kicked off the grass (they close the grass in new york city. what the hell is that?). so i moved to a bench on the perimeter of the park and sat there for two hours, thinking dark thoughts and throwing bits of cinnamon bun at pigeons. every time i thought about new york after that day, i thought about that sequence of events, and so the city was a hideous place in my crazy, cloudy head.

but yesterday i retraced all my steps and buried my sad, ashy ghosts under that tree. to think i let one no-good punk and one shopaholic bubblehead ruin this entire place for me… but that's the end, i've had a lovely time here, and i hope to have many more lovely times here in the future. perhaps even in the very near future, but i won't get ahead of myself.

best sign: "ENDLESS FLAX." really, that's all it said, with a phone number beneath it. it was a fairly large sign, too, not something handmade or slapdash. i like flax, it's in my cereal and my crackers, it's tasty and good in its way, but endless? i can't imagine what else the sign's makers might have been trying to say, though; if you have suggestions, please, tell me. lest i be plagued by it all the rest of my days.

best horoscope to read the morning of a five-hour drive: "all signs indicate that you should not stray too far from home today, if you can possibly help it. you are easily distracted, making you prone to accidents. behind the wheel of a car is not the place for you to be right now. stay home and tackle all those little chores you've been meaning to get to." thanks, earthlink! if i hadn't been easily distracted before, i sure will be now. it's my own fault, i suppose, for choosing to read my horoscope even though i know i'm a superstitious neurotic.

most un-bad news about my grandmother's health: she hasn't gotten worse. that's all the information i've been able to obtain, and it comes second-hand from my mother, who has been forced to wrench it out of doctors and hospital staff, since my paternal relatives are insane and only hear every eighth word in a sentence. god knows what i would think if i were listening to them. thank you, everyone, for wishing us well. it truly is tremendously appreciated.




* jon stewart has earned semi-rock-star status, definitely in my heart just for being himself, but also on a more general scale, because he let marilyn manson burn things while playing "lunchbox" on his talk show and he once lit his farts on fire on trent reznor's tour bus. but still, as it stands, evan wins.