"get out the camera, take a picture
the drag queens and the freaks are all out on the town..."

After purchasing a pair of American Eagle low-rise flares on Wednesday, I realized I was tottering perilously close to the edge of the cliff overlooking Shallow. American Eagle? Working at the mall is compromising my integrity, for sure. Luckily, Roseanna swept me away in the nick of time to the largest outdoor arts festival in the west, or as Rolling Stone calls it, "the mother of all arts festivals."

An overview:

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The Moore Hotel: $50/night. Why? Because the bathrooms are scary, and there's only one per floor. That, and there are no alarm clocks. But it's cheap, and the rooms are quite cute, and it's only 10 blocks from Seattle center.

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The New Orleans Klezmer All-Stars:

'Nuff said. (That's the sticker from the CD I bought.)

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Habib Koit� and Bamada: Two or three hundred people at the base of the Space Needle, dancing because the music left us no alternative. At one point, Habib says to us--

"We are from Mali. At the west end of Mali is Senegal. At the west end of Senegal is the Atlantic Ocean, and at the west end of the Atlantic Ocean is the US."

--words that shrunk the divide between African and Western civilization almost as quickly as the rhythms and spiritual qualities of his music did. Some things are universal. I bought his CD, too.

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The ElectroDeck: This was supposed to be a techno venue, but both times we visited it, they were playing hip-hop. We definitely dug the 60-plus-year-old guy who was rave dancing, though. The first of countless instances of the music at Bumbershoot bridging boundaries of age and ethnicity.

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Saturday Morning Shower, Moore Hotel:

"Eeeewww! My elbow brushed the shower curtain! I think I have Hepatitis!"

(these would be our last showers of the weekend.)

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"Sarong Alley," Bumbershoot: 4 sarongs in about an hour. I can't believe myself, sometimes. I haven't been out of them since, though; amazing how one piece of beautiful fabric is a long skirt, a short skirt, a halter top, a cape thingy, a shawl, a head wrap, a sash, a dress, or almost anything else.

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Bamboo Garden, 364 Roy, Seattle: My first vegetarian restaurant. Yes, that's right. I've been veg since I was 11, and I'd never been to a vegetarian restaurant. Spokane doesn't know what a vegetarian is. The restaurant, by the way, is wonderful.

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The Black Crowes: These guys made me nostalgic for a '70s I don't even remember--a time when rock was not reserved for the angry, before America had lost the art of rocking for the pure joy of it.

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Experience Music Project security guards: I cussed one out. Brief incident. About the only negative event of the weekend. He deserved it.

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Cannibal! The Musical!: For future reference, the EMP SkyChurch is not fit to accommodate 800 people. The movie, however, is frickin' hilarious. If you like Trey Parker and Matt Stone at all, find this. It rocks.

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Sidewalk outside of Seattle Center:

"Hey, do you have a cigarette?"

"No, sorry, we don't smoke."

"Rock on. Good for you. ... Do you have a joint?"

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Dream: "Nick, what are you doing here? Why the hell are you being nice to me? Did I ask you to start acting like a human being and acknowledge that friendship is cool? And how the hell did we get in my high school principal's BMW? Mr. Miller doesn't even drive a BMW; he drives a Mercedes. Why are we going to the grocery store? What the hell is going on? Give me the frickin' keys, Nick, and leave me the hell alone!"

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The Wasteland that is TV:

"I don't want to blow things up. I want to whittle reindeer!" -- deep insight from Courage the Cowardly Dog, a cartoon I turned on because... because... uh...

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Rusted Root: The crowd was a single-celled organism, a giant barefoot amoeba communing with the music in trance-dance meditation. Freedom. This... is... freedom... (This is also Rusted Root, which was probably the band I was most excited about seeing before I got to Bumbershoot.)

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Bumbershoot vendor, selling beautiful handmade glass marijuana pipes:

"Are you going those away? How much do you want for them?"

"Twenty-five."

"Shit!"

(a drop in the bucket, ma'am, compared to filling it regularly.)

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International Fountain: A spontaneous drum circle; maybe fifteen or twenty African drum and other percussion instrument musicians. One older man joined in beating a stick on a lawn chair; another played a flute, and another blew a referee whistle on the beats. Roseanna and I danced wildly in the fountain for a couple hours with twenty or thirty other people, most of whom didn't shave their legs or underarms, regardless of gender. A note to my fellow long-haired friends: dancing is a whole lot more fun with soaking wet hair. I discovered that you can't bend your knees in a soggy pair of American Eagles. My sarong-halter-top thing kept coming loose; I believe I flashed someone a time or two... and for once in my life, I didn't care, and I don't think anyone else did either. It wasn't about conforming or not conforming to society's expectations and laws. It was just twenty or thirty people of all ages and ethnicities and both genders feeling the music and being true to their fundamentally human selves. It was beautiful. It was freedom... real freedom of a kind I'd never felt before... bliss...

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Surf Nazis Must Die: This is a B-movie in the traditional sense. A couple hundred of us watched it solely for the reason that it was bad, and funny in its badness. It was about a neo-nazi beach gang who believed that real surfers surfed with their left foot forward. The leader's name was Adolf, another was Mengele, etc. They killed a African-American guy who tried to stop them. Then there was about 45 minutes of blood and sex and nudity and foul language that really wasn't funny anymore, followed by the African-American guy's mom finding vengeance by blowing away all the Surf Nazis in various ways. It was pretty funny, but I wish I'd gone to bed instead.

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Vassar Clements: Yup, yup. One of the greatest fiddle players in the world. I've had his albums since I was 11. Bluegrass, jazz, blues, he does it all. It was truly special to see him; unfortunately, I had to leave halfway through to go see Taj Mahal.

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Taj Mahal and the Phantom Blues Band: What can I say? The man's a legend.

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Sam Bush: Third row, baby! And I'm not talking third row of chairs, I'm talking third row of adoring fans pressed toe-to-heel against the board keeping us back from the stage. I was 20 feet away from greatest mandolin player in the world, THE bluegrass revolutionary... shit.

I've never seen a more diverse show; he'd play a traditional bluegrass song, and then he'd pick up his electric and swap Jimi Hendrix licks with his guitar player on an out-and-out burn-the-house-down blues number. It was amazing. Hell, it was Sam Bush... I guess I could have expected nothing less.

Toward the end, who should appear on stage but Vassar Clements?! He and Sam and the band jammed their way through the strangest medley I've ever heard:

1)Party Like it's 1999. Yes, the Prince song.

2)Celebration. You know, "Celebrate good times, come on!"

3)Bill Cheatham. Among the most standard old-time fiddle tunes.

4)Some long jazz improvisational thing of the type I was really hoping to hear more of in Vassar's set.

5)Crossroads Blues, a la Cream. You don't know Cream? You don't even know Robert Johnson? Oh, buddy. Get yourself some modern music history lessons.

It was crazy. I started hyperventilating. I thought I was dreaming.

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G. Love and Special Sauce: Apparently, this is a famous band. I'd never heard of them, and wasn't interested in going to see them, but we ended up catching part of it, and you know what?

It kicked ass.

Of course, you have to be crude enough to appreciate the humor of a song about how "you don't need pussy to have a good time, but it helps." The music, though was amazing... sometimes he reminded me of Bob Dylan, harmonica and all. Other times it was jazz-influenced retro pop, and other times it was a really cool blend of rap and acoustic guitar stuff. I don't know how to do it justice in words, really... "talking about music is like dancing about architecture"... but it was love at first listen.

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Cake:

SHEEP GO TO HEAVEN, GOATS ... GOTOHELL!!(??)!! don'tanalyzecan'tanalyze just ... sing ...

"TEE heheheheeee that's not a cigarette!" should i ask for a -- damn it. i'm a sheep.

"SHUT THE FUCK UP!" why didn't i ever think to write a song called "shut the fuck up"? -- oh, right. i'm a sheep.

"Why's there a guy with an easel set up in the middle of the crowd, painting?"

"SATAN IS MY -- ?" (satan is my what?) "I Think It's 'Motor.'" "SATAN IS MY MOTOR!" what?

pot smells Goo

D !!

(i didn't, but i may have gotten a contact high... i was acting really weird later on, but when do i not?)

"Check it out. Suspended dancers! ... Yes, it is pointless. But it's cool."

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2nd and Vine, Seattle: A black woman with blue hair was yelling cuss words at someone I wasn't paying attention to. I heard her yell, "Twenty five dollars!"

As we passed, she asked if we were "feeling good tonight." I said "No, thanks." She got offended. I guess I would have, too.

"Don't think I'm trying to sell you nothin', just 'cuz my hair's blue and... my skin got dyed!" (laugh) "I just asked if you were feeling good tonight!"

"I don't have a problem with any of that! ... Are you feeling good tonight?"

She was.

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Ellensburg, WA (on the way back to the sweaty, dusty, smelly, boring, crappy side of the state--home): $1.82/gallon for gas. Damn.

Gas stations have bathrooms, and that made me happy. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, and I almost screamed.

I looked like I should be on a poster:

"This could be your child, after only four days of freedom. Four days. That's all it takes. Keep yours at home."