hunter s. thompson died yesterday. admittedly, i’m not as familiar with his work as i could be, i haven’t read any of his books and i’ve only read a few of his articles, but i get the very strong impression that if it weren’t for hunter thompson, i would be a very different person today, so i’ve got a lot of respect for the man, in spite of the fact that i don’t know that much about him. i’ve complained in comments in other people’s journals about this, but now it’s time for me to complain in my own journal about the fact that all the cool people have been dying recently – jimmy smith, shirley chisholm, HST – and none of the people who deserve to die have been dying for a long time. it’s time we did something to change this. any suggestions?

okay, drunk puppet night was invited to invade portland saturday night, and it was REALLY cool. it took place in the portland center for the performing arts, winningstad stage, which unlike the rebar, the jewelbox and new city theatres, and other places where i’ve been performing recently, is a real theatre, complete with 300 hanging lights, 100 more lights that are in storage in back (just in case), a computerised lighting board, and enough microphones that each act had their own mic, which had it’s level set before the theatre opened and then was simply muted until it was needed. there was only one major screwup, when i couldn’t get the CD for one of the acts, a shadow puppet show called "Eat", to start (it would play for the first couple of seconds and then stop automatically), and when i finally got it running i realised that the volume was turned down, so i had to start it all over again, but it was relatively minor compared to some of the things that went wrong at the rebar. not only that, but i got my name on the program as the "lighting and sound designer", so it’s going to look really good on my resume. after the show we went to dinner at bistro montage, which was nice, although rather crowded which surprised me given that we got there about 1:00 in the morning. the food was good and i got an aluminium foil snail in which my leftovers were wrapped.

i’m kind of disappointed though, because i’ve put a lot of energy into coming up with ideas for the puppet show based on a frank zappa song, and when i mentioned it to josh, without any further discussion, he said "not in my puppet show production". it makes me think that i probably should confirm that i can actually do the show before i get involved any further in planning. it also makes me feel like, if i can’t do the show based on frank zappa music, then i might just as well not do any puppet show at all for drunk puppet night, and at that point i would also think about not doing lights for it as well… so i guess maybe i should talk with josh about the potential reality of the show before going any further.

on my way out of portland yesterday, i was requested by moe to "drop by" her mother’s house, because she had something for her, but they didn’t (or wouldn’t, i was never able to tell exactly which) tell me what it was that i’d be picking up. so i got marginal directions for how to get to monique’s mother’s house from where i was staying, and actually made it to monique’s mother’s house after only getting lost once… because they changed the freeway signs on the I205 offramp near clackamas town center (they don’t say that any more, which is what threw me). however, i only got lost once, and it was only for about 15 blocks, until i realised that i actually knew where i was anyway. in fact, there was a moment, before i got on the freeway, where i was travelling away from downtown on hawthorne, and i could have turned right on 39th, instead of left, and i think i would have been able to get there anyway, even without the marginal directions. i know that, before my injury, i wouldn’t have had any problems with this, and i’m glad to see that this ability has been retained afterwards, even if it is more instinctive than conscious at this point. it makes me feel as though i’ve probably got a lot of knowledge that is more instinctive than anything else at this point, and i’ve just got to trigger the instincts for it to come out.

one of ezra’s friends from cornish bought a building in old fairhaven (don’t ask me how a college student buys an entire building in a historic business district… i am not even sure i want to know), and renovated it as a performance space and "dance club" – which is something i think bellingham has needed for a while now. ezra was in charge of the first performance in the space, which happened last night, and actually performed himself, as well.