I got there around midnight on Thursday night. The concert was on Friday, so I wanted to get down there a bit early so I could be sure and catch it. Of course it rained on the way, because that's one of the Rules of Nature -- that if Josh is driving to the DFW area, it must rain somewhere along the way. Thankfully it wasn't too much. Although it was when I was on 121, which has to be one of the more confusing roads I've ever had the privilege to drive on. I was highly impressed by Jimmy's apartment. It was a LOT cleaner than mine. Apparently he was the first person to ever live there. It was all new and had awesome appliances and what-not. I also got to meet Mortie, his red husky. He was quite hairy, but good fun nonetheless.
Friday, I woke up around eleven, I think. I didn't really want to make any sort of effort to venture out on my own. I was feeling rather lazy and rather unlike dealing with the Dallas suburb traffic. Jimmy came home for lunch and we went to Chipotle. Definitely couldn't finish my brick of a burrito. He went back to work and I went back to napping at the apartment. When he got home, we took Mortie for a walk and then headed off towards the House of Blues in downtown Dallas for the concert. We drove to the nearest train station and boarded the train for a $1.25 ride into the heart of Dallas. (Quite cheap compared to gas prices nowadays). It was pretty neat watching parts of Dallas I had never seen, fly by the windows of the passing train. It definitely reminded me of riding the Tube in London. One time I rode the Circle line the whole way around the city just because. Good times. We got to the House of Blues a bit too early and ended up 1) standing in line for a while and B) standing inside for a while, waiting for the concert to begin. I milked the merchandise table when I first went in. I had quite the internal debate about this going in because I didn't want to carry the stuff around during the whole concert, but also, I didn't want to miss out on the opportunity to purchase some spectacular William Fitzsimmons merch. So, I decided the latter was worse than the former, seeing as how there's no telling when I'll be able to catch a WF concert again. Finally, ole William came out. His beard was significantly shorter than I remember it being on his Myspace page. His hair was also significantly longer. We were standing along the front row, which happened to be in front of the speakers, so the concert experience wasn't quite as grand as it could've been had we actually been able to hear him perform in all his glory. The coolest part of the concert though was when William called me out for wearing my Iron & Wine shirt. Said he had the same shirt and that everything he does is copied from them...jokingly. He played 6 or 7 songs, and those alone made the drive to Dallas and the vacation day very much worthwhile. One of the more random moments during the concert was his teaming with Cary Brothers for a cover of "King of Wishful Thinking". Good stuff, although I would've never in a million years guessed that that song would ever be covered by a modern artist, much less an acoustic folk singer. I really only cared to see him perform, so we moved from our places in the front row, hoping he'd come out and hang by the merch table. Stars of Track & Field was alright. They had a few songs that were great, but nothing really too spectacular. Fitz never came out from backstage, so we ended up leaving between the 2nd and 3rd sets. I purchased Cary Brothers' CD in lieu of actually watching him perform. It was alright. I was rather glad we left, because we ended up getting picked up by and hanging out with Jimmy's friend, Mel, who is one of the single coolest girls I've ever met. We went and got coffee at Cafe Brazil and just relaxed in conversation for a couple of hours.
Saturday, I woke up around noon. Jimmy and I went to see Superbad. It was filthy and hilarious and tragic (at the end). Afterwards, we went back to his apartment and I took off for Fort Worth. I stopped for gas at a 7-Eleven and picked up a couple six packs of Buzz Cola (Simpsons reference). I figure I'll sell one to the local comic book guy. He had asked me to pick some up for him. He's been selling the crap in his store for $5 a can. Insane. Anyways, ended up choosing a Venom shirt for the 80's party. I was really stretching there, but I didn't really have any 80's clothing, so that's what I resorted to. The party itself was relaxing. Just hung out and had some Guitar Hero fun with the Moss's & friends. Wish there were single girls there though. :( I'm still mad at the Moss's dog, Piper. The freakin' son of a bitch (literal - no curse) stole my Whattaburger Ranch House burger. I had dropped some onion rings on the floor and was trying to quickly pick them up before the dogs snatched them. In my haste, I had left the fully-wrapped burger on the floor behind me. I picked up the rings just in time and then turn around to see the unwrapped burger in Piper's mouth. He ate the thing in one bite. I was rather angry with him for the rest of the trip. We're usually best buds, but buds don't steal Whattaburger from each other.
Got up Sunday around 10 (astonishingly). Went to a random chicken dinner house in Roanoke, TX called Babe's. While waiting, we went across the street to this tiny shop advertising Dublin Dr. Pepper and Alex and I purchased some. That stuff is great. All coke should be made with pure cane sugar. The chicken dinner was glorious. It was probably the best fried chicken I've ever had. I'm hoping that we can go to their Ribeye steak house sometime. Pretty sure that the waitress was either flirting heavily with me, having fun with me because I was a Babe's rookie, working me for a better tip...or all of the above. She brought out these joke items that they have there. One was a box of baby rattlers (some kind of hissing noise-makers in a "dangerous" box; she was wearing "handling gloves") and the other was their pet Ground Hog (ground meat in a cage). Her manipulative ways of luring me into giving her a better tip worked. As we were leaving the restaurant, we saw a car that could be potentially be "Death Proof"ed. Sometimes I wish I knew more about restoring cars and that sort of thing. After lunch, we went back to the Moss's. I left for my traditional comic book run and came back to find Alex & Livvy had left, Andrew was playing Madden in preparation for our traditional team-up, and Sally & Kiedra were asleep. Moss finished his current game in progress, then we teamed up against Peyton Manning's Colts. We fell behind by 3 touchdowns, but made a tremendous comeback. We could've tied the game with an extra point, but I had to leave as soon as possible, so we went for 2. Unfortunately, we failed...and thus ended our run of spectacular comebacks.
I finally managed to pull out around 6:30. Surprisingly, traffic on the way back wasn't too bad. My first stop was at my traditional Fate, TX Exxon. This particular stop featured cops making an arrest in the parking lot and a waitress asking me if I'd "wear her ring" to which I replied, "I seriously doubt you want to move to Arkansas." About 30 minutes outside of New Boston, TX (one of my traditional stopping points), I started feeling the "Number 1" urge. This, however, suddenly was pushed from the forefront of my mind as I passed a cop who had someone else pulled over. I got over into the lefthand lane and slowed to 70mph. The police car turned its flashing lights off as I passed and then sped out from behind his stopped victim and quickly chased after me, lights flashing. I was not looking forward to this interaction since 1) I was driving a car with out-of-state plates and B) was going 5mph over the nighttime speed limit. I'm always extremely nervous when getting pulled over. As the cop came up to my window, I could've sworn I heard him whistling. He said he had pulled me over because I had a faulty license plate lamp. He asked for my license and insurance. I handed him my license and told him I had proof of insurance in the back if he wanted me to get it. He didn't say anything else about that, but said he'd be back. Before he left, he shined his flashlight in my floorboard at the energy drink cans. He also made casual conversation about where I was coming from, where I was headed, where I worked, and what I did. He took my license back to his car and did his little research & paperwork bit. He just gave me a warning and told me to get the lamp fixed. I quickly (65mph) left him parked on the side of the highway. I stopped in New Boston, bought a couple of energy drinks, the movie Deer Hunter, Led Zeppelin's greatest hits, and a replacement license plate bulbs. I debated attempting to change them, however, it was dark, and I figured the warning and the bulbs themselves would be sufficient effort were I to get pulled over again. My chicken dinner was starting to wear off, so I bought some low fat potato chips, a couple of energy drinks, and some smoked provolone cheese and had a decently meal. Headed on towards my next planned stop in Arkadelphia. Saw tons of college kids (keep in mind this is 1AM) at Walmart and bought some necessities (deodorant, vanilla coke) and moved on to the final leg of my journey, which was quite unadventurous. Overall, the trip was pretty boring, dark, & monotonous, but went by pretty quickly. Thanks to the massive amounts of energetic liquid consumed, there wasn't much fighting fatigue.
I eventually went to sleep around 3AM. This morning I woke up and started feeling like crap. I don't know what the deal is, but I think I may have either food poisoning from the chicken or some kind of stomach virus. I may even have a fever. So, I'm home from work, and had nothing better to do that write a blog that is about 4 times the length it really should be. If you've read to this point, I commend you. Heck, if you've even found this page I commend you. I'm wondering how many people actually have found this transition from the old Xanga page. I doubt many have, and I'm okay with that.
So, anyways, the real moral of this particular blog entry is that you should check out
and make sure you have functioning license plate lamps when driving near New Boston, TX.
Have a good one!
1 comment:
Well said.
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