| Part Two: | The Arbor Sure Is Ann |
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Since I had some
use-it-or-lose-it vacation time, and since I'd not yet had the
pleasure, I wanted to elongate this wedding weekend by visiting some
other Fegs. I'm so smart that I figured out that umich.edu is the
University of Michigan. Wow. So, I set up plans with Ann Arbor's own
Natalie Jacobs, and I was also contacted by the lurking umich-er Mary
Huey. We decided to get together for dinner and then just sort of see
what was to do in Ann Arbor that night. As a former resident of a
Midwestern college-town, I had suspicions that were proven true about
the lack of summer activity. But that was just fine! Ann Arbor, in fact, is a lovely variation on the basic blueprint from which every major Midwestern college town is drawn. And hey -- there's a big phallus in the middle of neighboring Ypsilanti! I neglected to photograph it... I was too much in awe. But here's a lovely informational website with a picture (sadly in b+w). Anyway, I arrived about 5pm Sunday and called Natalie. She showed up minutes later, presented me with my very own Tinfoil Eb(tm), and as we were looking over my selection of tapes for possible car-music candidates, she noticed that I had Capt. Beefheart's Lick My Decals Off Baby with me. She happened to have the same one in her car that day! Then she saw Nick Drake's Pink Moon -- she had a Drake mix tape with her! Eventually, we brought Tim Buckley's Starsailor, but the Drake mix (rhymes with "cake mix", hmmmm) was so perfect that we just couldn't bear to tear it from the tapedeck. We decided to walk around downtown, and soon after doing so, Mary came up to us and introduced herself as Mary. So, we all trudged over to Wazoo, a good lil' record store. |
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(L to R: gNat, Dolph, Mary)
Soon thereafter, we got hungry, so we went to the restaurant where our lovely pic was taken. I'd never had sushi before, so they introduced me to the delights of eel. Mmmmmmmmmmm. They then alerted me to the fact that the flagship Borders store is in Ann Arbor! Knowing that Borders is doing a lot of cutout-bin-clearance activity, I got a bit excited and bought ["several" CDs and tapes...]. Flush with success, I got hungry again. We stopped at the corner coffeeshop, and I ordered a peanut butter bar and a green peppermint cappuccino. It was So Very Green. It was soylent green. It actually looked like warm Maalox. I attempted to photograph it, but it didn't come out. It might've just been a mirage... but then, gNat and Mary seemed pretty disturbed by it, so I suppose not. Hopefully, this isn't what drove her off, but Mary bid us adieu in any case. She's a very nice lady, and she really oughta post to the list sometime... (hint-hint) One of the things that gNat and I talked about doing was going to an open mic night and performing really frightening versions of songs from Respect. Sadly, this didn't work out, but we did decide to go to her place and sing a bit. First, though, since I'd not seen Brenda Of The Lightbulb Eyes before, we watched that, followed by some really great XTC and Beefheart footage (a puppet show called "The Road To Oranges & Lemons" and a live Doc-era concert, respectively). Then, we did commence the singalong, with me plunking away on the guitar and Natalie singing, with my occasional chirping along. Nat pulled out her Skylarking CD and said "oh, I bet you can't do anything from here, with all that production..." I Love A Challenge. So, we did "Sacrificial Bonfire." Then, since gNat had an early morning ahead of her, she drove me back to the hotel. Fegs are indeed the nicest people, Bayard, and Natalie's a stellar example of this Universal Truth. Even if she did (needlessly) threaten me for taking "too many pictures" (only 2!) with her in them. Summary: Go to Mike Runion's Fegmap site a few weeks before your next vacation. If you'll be near a Feg, schedule some dinner and conversation. Like me, you might walk home with tinfoil sculptures of list members, as well as bargain-priced out-of-print CDs and tapes -- but you will almost assuredly walk home happy. (I'm definitely using the Fegmap if I tour behind my CD!) Hope to see more of you very soon. Dolph |