Tarkington, Texas

The Perseid meteor shower occurs every year.  I am 19 years and before Tuesday, I had never seen it before.

I got a phone call from Darcy on Tuesday asking me what I planned on doing.  I told her that I planned on staying in.  She remembered me mentioning something about a meteor shower before.  About 45 minutes later, her truck pulled up in front of my house.  Alex was driving and our first stop was in Humble.  Clay and Sonia live there and we talked about garden solarization and I looked through their poster collection.  Sonia gave me a massage because I won a contest.  When our business at home was done we all drove to Tarkington, about an hour and half’s drive outside of Houston. That’s where Logan’s farm was and it was a great place to get away from the city’s lights.  We set up a little spot in the middle of a cow pasture and watched the stars and meteors.

I put my camera on a tripod and left it on a 30 second exposure to see if I could catch any of the meteors, but the only photo that came out pleasant was an accident.  While my shutter was open, a few of the people on the blanket pulled out a camera and took a picture of themselves.  The flash on their camera was caught by mine and I was pretty stoked when I saw the picture that came out.

The Chris Ryan Private Pool Party, 20 years of Felipe, AK-47’s reunion, & washing the dishes

“My parents are out of town and nobody’s home, come over and we can hang out and go swimming!”

“Should we bring beer?”

“Sure!”

That may sound like a transcript of a conversation between two high school students in the middle of summer, but it’s actually from a conversation between two adults.  One is 22 and the other is heading towards 30.

Chris Ryan invited Aaron, Laurene, & I over to his parents’ place in Sugar Land.  They were out of town so he and Melissa took a break from their place in the Heights for a while to watch it.  We took the 30 minute drive and once we got there, everyone went swimming.  Well, everyone but me.  I’m not really into swimming.  I took some pictures and Chris Ryan told me not to tag him in them on Facebook because he’s friends with his parents on Facebook and he doesn’t really want them to know he had people over.  After he grilled some hotdogs for us all, we watched the Tour de France.

I talk trash about the suburbs all the time, but spending time in one of those giant houses makes me realize that living like a king could be pretty cool.  Chris and Melissa told me the only bad thing about it was the insane drives to go to Houston.

When Felipe turned 20 a few weeks ago, he had a party at a house that was kinda like a king’s place.  It was at the house of an investment banker.  The place blew my mind.  Especially when it was filled with people in formalwear.  I took advantage of this party because it would be one of the last ones I go to for a while.  After I got my Associate’s Degree and hung it up on my wall, I decided that once college started up again I’d stay inside and try to learn as much as I can and study and make the best grades.  This will also give me more time to write and paint, two things I haven’t done in a while.

I’m going to miss things like this.

The best thing about the party was the afterparty at Calder’s place.  I think it was in the poolhouse, but I’m not very sure because I’ve never been to his place before then.

You can tell it’s an afterparty because everyone’s top button is undone and ties are loose.

It was a good party to end partying with.

Aaron and I have been hanging out more this summer, especially because his dad opened up a burger/hotdog restaurant that we started working at downtown.  Aaron is a host/cashier/server I’m a dishwasher over there.  I like washing the dishes.  There’s no responsibility, no pressure, nobody to deal with, and gives me the opportunity to spend a few hours to actually think.

We arrive at the restaurant around 9 or 10 every morning and we leave at about the same time.  The thing is, even though we work 10-12 hour shifts, we still feel the need to go out and do something.  Most of the time we go to the Mink and we find ourselves there 2 or 3 times a week, at the minimum.  The other night we went there and saw AK-47, something I thought I’d never be able to see in my entire life.  I saw AK-47 play “The Badge Means You Suck.”  I still can’t believe I’m able to say that.

While hanging out downstairs, I ran into Zoe Kanan!  I had 7th grade math with her and was absolutely obsessed with her family because her dad was in Poison 13 and played with the Big Boys for some time and her aunt or something had something to do with the movie Paris, TX.  I asked her what she was doing there and she told me her grandma was in the Mydolls. Unbelievable! Punkest family ever.

Jacob Calle’s first stand-up appearance, Neil Hamburger, & what punk looks like from an outsider’s perspective

I woke up at 6 in the afternoon yesterday.  I would’ve slept longer but a phone call from Darcy acted like my alarm for the day.  “There’s a party at Alex’s warehouse tonight.  It starts at 8!”  she told me.  I agreed to go, but told her I was heading to her house first so we can carpool because I didn’t wanna ride my moped home in such conditions.  I packed my bag, hopped on my moped, and sped off out of my neighborhood.  I wasn’t even out of my block when I thought my steering was kinda sluggish.  I checked my front tire and it was good.  I checked my back tire and it was flat!  I went to the gas station a few blocks away and filled up on air.  A half-mile down the road, my tire went flat again so I decided to just push the bike home and call it night.

I got home and parked my bike and went inside.  I looked back at what I was doing, and for some reason got really disappointed at myself.  I thought about how I pretty much forfeited my entire night because of ONE little flat tire.  Fuck that!  I hopped on the bus and headed towards Alex’s unnamed warehouse, but it used to be the old Todo Moto clubhouse.

I got off the bus on the corner of Westheimer & Taft and noticed some ruckus coming from Mango’s.  I walk over and remembered that my old ice cream scooper coworker and self-proclaimed “stuntman” Jacob Calle was opening for Neil Hamburger.  For some reason I knew the night wasn’t going to be good for Jacob and I wanted to see what would happen but considering I just quit my job without getting a new one, I couldn’t afford the $10 cover.  I ran into my friend Seth and his buddy Eddie and we walked in together.  I decided to walk in with them and talk, but planned on leaving after they paid.  Well to my surprise upon walking into Mango’s, I was on the guestlist!  I don’t know how or why but I don’t really care because it was perfect.  I had a few hours before Darcy came by so we could go to the party and I could definately kill some time by watching Jacob and Neil Hamburger for free.

It wouldn’t be fair to say Jacob completely bombed because I distinctly remember hearing laughter from the audience.  But to be honest, most of the noise coming out of people’s mouths were heckles.  I had to feel bad for the kid when he muttered into the microphone, “Aww man…come on guys…this is my first time doing this, I don’t wanna do it anymore…”  Total fucking heartbreak.  However, his primary heckler was kicked out for being totally fucking drunk and throwing beer bottles at the ground.  I watched him swallow an inflated balloon-animal style balloon and display his various drawings.  Then he made us watch videos of him and his friends doing stuff like drinking a cup of his own blood.  After his act, Katie Menowsky came by and I found out she was moving back to Sugarland to study for her LSATs and then she’s moving somewhere to go to law school.  Aww shucks I’m gonna miss her.

Neil Hamburger came on and it was pretty much how you’d imagine it.

Darcy came by to Mango’s and we went off to the party.  We parked our car in front of the old Todo Moto warehouse that shares a building with a local Alcholics Anonymous chapter.  When we walked out of the car, this young kid in a polo shirt, khaki shorts, and sandals comes up to us and asks, “Are you guys going to the party or AA?”  I didn’t wanna answer because I was afraid he’d tell us we can’t get plastered in the presence of a bunch of recovering alcoholics, but Darcy went ahead and told him we were going to the party.  It turns out that all he wanted to do was party with us, but he was afraid he wouldn’t fit in because he didn’t look punk enough.  And to tell the truth, he wasn’t really punk enough.  If he walked into the warehouse, it would be the reverse of having a punk walk into a country club.

There’s never a reason to not party so we told him he could tag along with us and if anyone gives him any attitude, Darcy and I would stand up for him.  He told us his name was Jordan.  The party was to celebrate this girl Rachel’s 21st birthday.  I recognized her because she was my waitress at a diner once, I never knew she was punk.  Darcy and I said hi to everyone and went to the makeshift living room to hang out.

Khaki-shorts Jordan was absolutely amazed with everything at the party because he’d never seen anything like it before.  He grew up in the suburbs and I guess that really limits what you can be exposed to.  Darcy and I were pretty amused with this.  He was asking questions like, “So, they live here? And this is a warehouse?”  Some trainhoppers came by and we asked them to tell us some train stories.  Well, Polo-shirt Jordan started asking questions like, “So you just hop on the freight trains?  And that’s how you get places? And other people do that?”  To my surprise, Beau Beasley made an appearance and walked through living room doors.  He sat down next to me and we started talking about a neighborhood gay country bar.  After he left I started telling Jordan about the bands I’ve seen Beau play in and he started asking even more questions, fascinated and excited.  Oh man Darcy and I were getting a kick out of this kid.  He was great.  He even offered to drive to the liquor store to get beer before midnight struck.

The party was dying down so me, Darcy, Alex, and Sandal-wearing Jordan decided to go to Chapultepec.  Jordan had never heard of this place before and seemed to really enjoy the idea of a 24 hour Mexican restaurant.  We told him it was some of the best Mexican food in Houston, the fact it was 24 hours is just a plus. When we were eating, everyone started to talk about the different tattoos we had, except Jordan because he was the only person that didn’t have tattoos.

After dinner, we headed back to the warehouse but everyone was gone and Jason was mopping the floor.  Alex decided to call it a night so we said our goodbyes.  Me and Darcy decided to show our new friend Jordan the sacred art of dumpster diving pizzas.  We all walked to the late night pizza joint and on the way there, we were telling Jordan that pizza shops everywhere throw away perfectly good pizzas at the end of the night and its up for grabs to the first person to claim them.  Then came his questions again.  “So they just throw the pizzas away?  And you pull them out the dumpster and eat them?”  I told him, “Well that’s how most people do it, if you go out there and just wait, they’ll hand you the pizzas.”  For some reason it seemed like he didn’t believe us and this “free pizza” we talked about was a complete fabrication.  Well we show up to the pizza place, walk around back, and saw that there was nothing.  I told everyone to wait a few minutes and someone will come out. Well one of the employees came out and threw away a giant bag.  Darcy told this employee we were waiting for old pizzas.  Well the thoughtful employee came out and handed us a box of pizza, still warm!  We gave Jordan a big slice and he was pretty amazed that this “free pizza” does in fact exist.

On the way back to the car, some guy came up to me and asked, “Can you spare a slice?”

“Of course! Go ahead and pick one out!” I said as I opened the box.  He told me thanks and grabbed a slice and went on his way.

Jordan asked me, “So how do you know that guy?”

“Oh, I have no idea who that was.  I’ve never seen him in my life!”

Jordan responded, “And you just gave him some pizza? Wow!”

Haha oh man me and Darcy got a kick out of this kid.  Darcy and I do this kind of stuff all the time because it’s our normal life, but this kid was amazed by everything.  So if you’re reading this right now and you plan on having kids, please don’t raise them in the suburbs.

Darcy and I went back to her place.  I didn’t want to wake up early so we stayed up until 5 in the morning and I took a bus home.

Houston’s scenic moped route, Fleabag, & Cory Branan’s manager

I didn’t have internet access for about 3 week or so and now that I have it back, the internet hasn’t gotten any more interesting than the last time I got on.  Getting on my moped never gets old, though.  On a moped there’s always something to do and something to see, even though I never really have a place to go.

I live on the East Side of downtown and every time I head up to the Heights, I pass that big steel WALD sign.  I don’t know what it is, I think it’s some sort of steel company.  I’ve been seeing it ever since I was a kid.

I also pass this General Electric building that looks like it has been in business for the past 50 years without changing any of its decor.

Fleabag from Oakland, California was marked on my calendar for June 29th at Mango’s.  I’m a big fan of Brad, their drummer who used to live here in Houston.  He’s been in bands like Die, Emperor! Die!, Rosa, Punkin’ Pie, and the Tenspeeds so I was curious to see what this band sounded like.  It was a murky, cloudy day and when I rode out to Mango’s I swore it would rain on me.  I was a few hours early and when I got there I sat with John Sears.  He was eating a salad and drinking a beer.  I asked him if he was here to see Brad’s new band and he informed me that he is the biggest Brad fan around.  We talked about Houston punk houses and Houston punk bands what it’s like to grow up punk in Houston.  He pretty much had nothing good to say about anybody or anything but it was pretty great. No sarcasm, I loved it. He loved it.  It was hilarious.

Fleabag was pretty great, a gritty pop-punk/power-pop band fronted by a female.  Too bad it was a total clusterfuck of a show.  I mean, come on, SIX BANDS on a MONDAY NIGHT? And a few of those bands were on tour, but not on tour with each other.  It was pretty obvious nobody was going to stick around to see SIX BANDS on a MONDAY NIGHT.  Good thing Fleabag played 2nd.

Cory Branan was playing on July 1st at Walter’s but I didn’t plan on going.  If that name sounds familiar but you can’t really figure out how you know it, you might recognize it from the song “Tears Don’t Matter Much” by Lucero.  One of the verses goes something like “Cory Branan’s got an evil streak/and a way with words that will bring you to your knees/he could play the wildest shows/and he can sing so sweet.”  I recently quit my job at the punk rock ice cream shop I had been working at for the past year and a half and didn’t really have much money to spend.  Well I check my email one day and Cory Branan’s manager, Brian Mann, emails me telling me information about the show.  He offered to send me MP3’s and albums and stuff to convince me to go see Cory perform.  I thought it was pretty random for him to email me but he told me it’s because I seem like a “punk rock kind of fellow.”  Well that convinced me enough to go out to the show.  I bought a cheeseburger from the the Broken Spoke Cafe, one of my favorite local restaurants about a mile away from Walter’s that’s also owned by my former assistant principal.  I took it over to Walter’s and walked inside.  Doors hadn’t opened yet and Cory Branan and Jon Snodgrass were doing sound checks inside.  I sat down at the bar and started to eat my burger.  I started to think about how a few years ago I walked into Walter’s before doors opened I was sternly asked to leave, but now I can pretty much walk in there whenever I want and sit at the bar and eat dinner.  The bartender sat down next to me and I asked him how his ice cream was and how his head was healing.  (He got stitches in his head recently and I sent him a 2-quart container of his favorite ice cream, key-lime pie.)  He told me the ice cream didn’t have enough key lime pie in it and his head was alright.

Cory Branan and Jon Snodgrass played great that night.  Instead of playing individual sets, they alternated songs in a single extended set.  Thinks got pretty shambled, though, when Jon lost a piece of his guitar hardware when trying to change a string so he and Cory had to share one guitar and alternate songs.

The headliner of the show was actually Joey Cape.  He was the lead singer of Lagwagon, a big pop-punk band in the 90s that I never listened to.  At the end of the show, he invited Butch from 30FootFall on stage to play guitar and do a sort of duet.

After the show, I was leaving the parking lot and Cory complimented my moped.  I told him that the only reason I went to the show that night was because his manager emailed me and told me to come.  He told me that it was nice to “meet proper” and we said our goodbyes.  I went over to Darcy’s and we tried to watch Tokyo Zombie but we couldn’t get passed the first 15 minutes.  We ended up going to this kid’s warehouse, which turned out to be the old Todo Moto warehouse.

We lit a bag of sanitizer on fire and threw rocks at it while listening to a Geto Boys tape.  We got drunk and then at around 3 in the morning we went to Late Nite Pie to see if they had any left over pizzas in the dumpster or any they were willing to give us.  We parked the car outside near the back and an employee came out and we hung out for a while. He told us to wait a little bit and he went inside to go check on the status of leftover pizzas.  We talked about stars and aurora borealis while we waited.  He came back out and told us that all the pizzas had been delivered or eaten already.  Darcy and I went back to her place.

When I woke up in the morning, I planned on leaving but I had so much fun that I decided to stay for one more day.  She sleeps a little longer than I do so he roommate and I just hung out in the living room for a bit.  Our talking woke Darcy up but she didn’t mind.  We didn’t know what to do all day since we no longer have jobs, but I had a pretty good plan.  I remember Darcy telling me about how she loves Allison Mosshart and the Kills so I told her we were going to Whole Foods.  We go there and walk around and buy some food, but what I really planned on doing was finding Bucky.  Bucky and I have known each other for a while now and he loves to talk and tell stories about all the punk stuff he did or planned on doing, but more importantly he was the driver for one of the Kills’ tours so I wanted him to tell stories about them and Allison Mosshart and Discount.  He wasn’t at Whole Foods so I Darcy and I went to Domy Books to find him.  Luckily, he was there and Darcy and I sat on the floor and ate our food while he told us stories about touring with the Kills.

We finished our food and Bucky finished all his stories so we went back home.  We hung out for a few hours and we decided to go hang out with this kid.  He was hanging out with his friends at the time but he told us we were more than welcome to come by, so we did.  We ended up at this guy’s awesome house; he had a lot of antique or vintage furniture, like old rotary telephones and tube-speakers and antique luggage.  It was amazing.  He also wired all the telephone lines in his house, rebuilt a 1980 diesel Mercedes, is currently building a fountain, and was interested in restoring a vintage scooter.  We get to talking about scooters and mopeds and small diesel powered engines.  This guy was awesome, he was a plant operator for the city of Bellaire.

We ended up going to Catbird’s where we didn’t have any money so we left and went back to the old warehouse.  We sat there for what felt like hours, awkwardly glancing at each other and not saying a word.  It was treacherous, like Sartre’s “No Exit.”

Darcy and I went back to her place and watched the Royal Tenenbaums and she stick ‘n poked herself a tattoo on her left hand.

Dylan “Fuzzy” Fitzpatty and a suicidal vacuum cleaner

Last Sunday I worked one of my last shifts at Amy’s Ice Creams.  On the way home, Rachel calls me up and tells me that I should go to Dylan’s moving-out party.  I declined because it was kinda late and I was kinda tired.  Somehow, an hour later I found myself sitting in Rachel’s living room with Dylan.  We were waiting for Rachel to finish dying her hair.

Dylan drove us to his apartment once Rachel finished her hair.  Calvin was sitting on an old Coleman cooler outside of Dylan’s door when we arrived.  We walked inside and I started drinking even though there were only 4 of us there, including me.  Darcy was out of town and Dylan’s other roommate, Aaron, hadn’t been home in a couple of days.  The more I drank, the more people from my past starting showing up at the party.  These were people I did not expect to show up at all and they seemed to show up in order from the most recent person I had known to the earliest person I’d known.  Everyone there was from a period of my life between 5th grade and Thanksgiving 2008.  Lindsey Smith was there and I remembered reading on her blog that she started listening to vinyl so I told her all about the record label and record distro and vinyl and mixtapes and I assume most of what I said made no sense at all.  I drunkenly scribbled a “perfect mixtape” for her on the back of a receipt for some textbooks I bought a year ago.

Hours later all the girls at the party left, except Rachel who fell asleep.  The remaining males and I all drove to House of Pies in the same car.  I told them about how sometimes the waitresses refuse to serve me, even if I’m sitting there, and they all decided that if I didn’t get served that night we’d all walk out and go somewhere else.  We showed up to House of Pies and every car in the parking lot was a cop car.  We walked inside and every patron was a cop.

When we got back to the apartment, Dylan accidently stepped on a glass so he vacuumed all the broken glass up.  The glass shards ended up destroying the vacuum cleaner and it started to make horrible noise and eventually stopped working.  He literally hanged it up in a closet, as if it committed suicide my hanging, and etched something like “HOOVER WAS HERE” in the wall.  He even wrote a fake suicide note and taped it inside the closet.