9/20/08, by George

Molly's note: Well, here we are at the 100th blog entry of 2008, and somehow it's only appropriate that this entry is by a SPECIAL GUEST BLOGGER, my brother George. George is often the unsung hero behind this blog, because he pushes me to write when I don't want to, he gives me ideas when I feel that nothing is blog-worthy and he assures me that at least one person will always read these ramblings of mine. (I'm assuming that one person is him but perhaps that's presumptuous).

Anyways, George's entry is the last in our three-part series examining the marvel and majesty that is the Asheville tradition of Brewgrass. I believed I used the adjective "Tarantino-esque" to describe what I thought he was doing, but I might have overlooked the fact that George has taken to walking around in huge sunglasses and a shotgun. Without further ado, I give you the gonzo world of my brother.

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Fear and Loathing at Brewgrass
-A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream.

We were somewhere in Asheville on the edge of downtown when the beer began to take hold….




I found myself on a baseball field littered with people, tents, kegs, and pretzels. There must have been 40 breweries, 48 portable toilets, 7 police officers, 2 security guards, 5 musical acts, 100 different types of beers, and 8 different food tents. But the only thing that worried me was the toilets. There is nothing more horrible than having to use a port-a-potty. Nothing… That’s why this journey starts out at the church...

I had been given the assignment to cover the 12th annual Brewgrass festival, a gathering of breweries, music, and food for a blog I do some project work for. I had gotten the call from my editor earlier when I was in Atlanta drinking Flying Dog in the middle of the afternoon. The blog’s editor in chief had given me the tasks to write a blog on the upcoming beer festival ….

What I found was a joyous celebration of the making of BEER. Beer is one of the world's oldest and most consumed tasty beverages. It’s fucking from the 6th millennium BCE and is recorded in the written history of Egypt and Mesopotamia (thanks Wikipedia). Hooray Beer!!!

Pilsners, Ales, Weizenbocks, Wits, Stouts, Wheats, Barley wines, oh my. This joyous festival provided me with beers of different taste, color, style, alcohol percentage (fuck you Great Divide, when I say “brewers’ choice”, I don’t want the shit no one has been asking for all day, 10.5%, fuck off!). Not only was this festival a showcase of a great tasty beverage, it’s a gathering of people who REALLY like beer. Who turns out, are my type of people. Very friendly. Very opinionated. Very drunk. And sometimes very creepy.

HOLY SHIT is that a pretzel necklace!!! Did I say that? Or just think it? Was I talking? Did they hear me? Not only were these people wearing pretzels around their necks, there were Oktoberfest hats, beer bottle shaped glasses, and bags of kettle corn the size of garbage bags (the BIG kind of garbage bags, not those 1 gallon bathroom size)…



As the beer/water ratio became a little weighted… I found my thoughts wondering to the broken levies, terrorists, rising gas prices, recessions, Russia (which you can’t see from Asheville, NC), low funding for stem cell research, John McCain, childhood obesity, and rising food prices. However, when people come to enjoy their fruits of their labor and put pride in the beer they are making (not looking at you Great Divide) it just all seems a little bit better. Beer is what was able to bring people together today. Beer drinkers are friendly people who surprisingly don’t read Steinbeck novels.

As our arrangements were made to get home to a dinner of turkey cutlets, we left Brewgrass with a little more beer knowledge, a little less hydration, and a sense of a hopeful future. However, we were given another assignment after being picked up: find a gas station in the Asheville/Enka-Candler area that has gas.

And with that, we re-entered a strange world, a different world…. a world without gas, rice, or enough pretzel necklaces. While we are preparing to fight a lady over waiting in line to get gas, I remember a better time and realize that Brewgrass is not just a festival, it’s a state of mind. I am looking forward to Brewgrass 2009. I’ll be the one wearing the pretzel necklace…

9/20/08, by William

Molly's note: In order to present Brewgrass from all angles, I’ve asked my brothers for their takes. Also, I need more entries this month. That means it’s time for SPECIAL GUEST BLOGGER!!!! My brother George is a bit of a slacker because he still hasn't written his entry yet, though I guess it might take extra time because he used the phrase "Tarantino-esque" to describe what he was going for.

But never you fear about the delay, because we will now hear from a brand-new SPECIAL GUEST BLOGGER, my youngest brother William. William is 21 years old, though he has been drinking like a 21-year-old for years and years. He's a student at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC, which apparently has quite the football team. He enjoys barbeque, country music and long walks on the beach. Here is a picture of the two of us at Brewgrass:


Let's hear his version of the events that transpired on September 20, 2008, shall we?

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Molly has invited me to be a guest blogger alongside George to share my experience at the 12th Annual Great Smokies Craft Brewers Brewgrass Festival at MLK Park in Asheville, NC. The experience started much like that of any major holiday at the plantation. In this case Molly very enthusiastically came in to my bedroom, jumped on my back and asked me “Guess what day it is?” I straggled out of bed and took my position on the top stair so dad could take our picture, a holiday tradition. I sat there for a minute and realized today is not the day for celebrating the birth of Christ. Today is the day we celebrate the birth of delicious nectar we all enjoy… BEER!

Going into the day we realized substance was a very important factor in the festivities that would be taking place. So keeping with family traditions we took the Blue Ridge Parkway to our favorite Saturday lunch spot, Chick-Fil- A. A quick 8 pack of nuggets and some fries would be my only meal going into a 7 hour “beer tasting.”



While dining, George and I realized some last minute necessities were needed to make it through the festival. We traveled up to the Big K-mart in search of sunscreen and sunglasses. Protection from the sun while drinking can make the act of consuming beverages a much more pleasurable experience. Being almost fall, it was difficult to find spf 30 to protect the nose and neck from the heat of the day. Now, I don’t know if many of you are aware that I spent a summer unloading 18-wheelers and stocking shelves at the big red K, but this was about 2 years ago this past summer. We walked into Kmart with mom, we being 3 of only 12 people in the store including employees. I happened to run into an employee who worked at this particular store that I had worked with at another store. After saying hello, I asked her where the items we needed to make our beer festival a better experience might be. She looked at me with a disappointing look almost expecting me to know where I had stocked something 2 years ago. Like they never change store layouts at the worst retail store on the planet. A quick purchase and we were on our way to MLK Park to enjoy beers from 40 brewers around the area.

Now growing up we always had to rush home from whatever trip we may have been on in order for George to heed the call of nature. George can only heed the call of nature in bathrooms that he’s familiar and comfortable with. So it should have been no surprise that ON THE WAY to the event nature would call George’s name. So to deter our trip even more we had to beeline it to our church, which was in the vicinity, in order for George to make room for beer. After this pit stop we were officially on our way to the festival.

Tickets in hand we were dropped off at the side entrance to the field. We snapped a quick pic and made our way to the line of fellow beer aficionados. Our tickets were scanned, a glass was grabbed and eyes went wide. Imagine Charlie getting that golden ticket to the factory, that’s how I felt but my ticket was a glass and the factory was a field full of breweries.

I know there has been a lot of anticipation leading up to my account of the actual festival, but I’m not going to go into all 40 beers I tried. Now our glass could only hold 4 ounces so I didn’t consume 40 beers, however, medical staff was on standby. I would probably be in some sort of made up Olympic event Molly likes to sponsor like “interesting names for presidents.” You would be very surprised how drunk a bunch of little beers can get you in a 6 hour period. We started in left field and worked our way all the way around the perimeter of the field to home plate. We worked our way farther and farther away from any food to compensate the amount of alcohol we had consumed. Finally we decided it would be a good idea to get some food. As a group we settled on kettle corn. Kettle corn was probably not the best idea but it had the shortest line. Other than randomly opening up our bag of corn we spent most of our time waiting in line to get a beer only to wait in line again. We enjoyed getting different beers at each brewery and sharing both what we had and how we felt about it.

I’ve decided to share my top five favorite beers with the fans of “I Wiggle it just a little bit.” I recommend these beers if you can find them at your local beer supplier.
1. Pisgah Brewing (NC)- Endless Summer
2. Asheville Brewing (NC)- Shiva IPA
3. Depot Street Brewing (TN)-Whistlestop Wit
4. Ham’s Brewhaus (NC)- Tiki’s California Gold
5. Natty Greene’s Brewing (NC) Southern Ale

The Brewgrass festival was a great experience and I could not have asked for a better time or better company. This is my first blogging experience so I hope it was up to par for Molly. I guess if I make the cut, I will feel I have accomplished something more than what I could have out on that field full of beer drinkers and their one true passion.

Special thanks to:
Whoever made our Kettle Corn?
Johnny on the Spot
Mom and Dad

9/20/08, by Molly

The weather was beautiful in Asheville, NC on Saturday, which was good because I was there to go to the Brewgrass Festival with my two brothers, George and William. Brewgrass had about 40 breweries serving between 2 and 6 of their beers, and bluegrass music played at the same time. I thought it was a pretty clever name.

Going to this festival was sort of like going to Disney World, if instead of rides Disney World served beer. Basically, you get in line for a few minutes, and then you’re rewarded with a little bit of beer. Then you get in line again. If I could do two things over, one of them would be that I would wear gloves to the event, because your glass gets really sticky. Also, I would thread pretzels onto string, and wear a pretzel necklace, as I saw other people doing. When you saw people wearing a pretzel necklace, you knew they were pretty experienced at beer festivals, because they had a means of both cleansing their palates and getting a little snack.

So, we just drank and drank for hours. We had some good beers, we had some bad beers (Great Divide and Tommyknocker breweries, I’m looking at you regarding that second one. I don’t care if you are from Colorado.). The boys drank more than I did, but they have more places to put it. But here’s another thing you should know about going to a beer festival, in addition to the tips about gloves and pretzel necklaces: you should probably wear a plain t-shirt. Don’t wear a t-shirt with anything else on it.

Now, maybe other people would disagree with me on this. My brother George wore a Virginia Tech t-shirt and my brother William wore an Appalachian State t-shirt. Both of them had lots of people yelling out encouraging things about those schools’ sports teams. I guess it can be a good way to meet people. But I wore my John Steinbeck t-shirt, which I have mentioned several times on this blog, and it brought me nothing but trouble. First off, people were asking me if I’d read books that I hadn’t read--the obscure John Steinbeck books. And I hadn’t, so that made me feel unaccomplished. Eventually I got so drunk that I answered all questions about books with, “Of course I read it! I loved it! Changed my life!” but I don’t want to live life that way. So I can’t wear that shirt again until I complete the entire Steinbeck catalogue.

The second unfortunate thing was that some guy tried to use this shirt as a means of hitting on me, except he thought that all the titles on the back of the shirt were song lyrics and not books. So I was not impressed with him. I tried to give him the stink-eye as I waited for my two brothers to come over and defend my honor, but apparently brothers are no good at defending honor when they’ve had 15 beers. Then some brewer apparently mistook me for my brother William’s girlfriend and he nearly barfed. Those were some low points of the day for me. One of the high points, just to reverse these negative aspects, was that we ate kettle corn.

The festival was held on a softball field. My dad played softball there when we were younger, and one time he hit a home run out of that park. I remember talking about that a lot. We tried to re-live our childhood a little bit by sitting together in the dugout, as we used to do when Dad was playing. George and William went out to get another beer and told me they’d be back in a few minutes. When they didn’t return for almost 20 minutes I got a little concerned that they’d left me there. Then I realized I didn’t care because I was so drunk and they’d left me the bag of kettle corn. It was kind of a nice feeling.

At one point I was trying to keep notes about the beers I tried, but they all seem meaningless to me now. The only really constructive thing I wrote was that Triangle Brewing of North Carolina had an Xtra Pale Ale that was the “Sprite of Beers” and I meant that in the nicest way possible. It must have been fizzy and light. The last thing I learned on Saturday was that if you drink for 5 or 6 hours in the hot sun, then you will go to bed promptly at 8:30 p.m.

And now some pictures!

Here we are at the beginning of the festival:


And here we are pretty close to the end of the festival:


And here I am with some local celebrities:

trying to reason with hurricane season

So, I wasn't going to blog tonight. I was going to curl up in bed with a nice beverage and read about the wonder and mystery that is the human brain. But I get into bed and who do I find but my little companion Barnabas. Barnabas is a magic bear and he comes alive but I'm the only one who knows. To everyone else, he just looks lazy and like he needs to lie down a lot.

Sometimes I feel that I shouldn't mention my bear too much and how he and I just have the longest conversations about whatever we are doing. But luckily I have at least one other friend who is as willing to talk to stuffed animals as much as I am, and that person is my friend Adam. Recently I hosted Adam in my apartment when he had to evacuate from New Orleans due to a hurricane. I kept saying, "I am kind of like the Superdome, but better!" but I don't know if it's too soon for that kind of humor.

I guess the real noteworthy thing about Adam's visit is that we were in close vicinity to TWO car-jackings. Unfortunately the second one involved Adam. The first night, we were eating when someone ran in and said, "whoever drives such and such a car, it just got broken into!" Adam and I talked about how much that sucked. Then the next night we were at a bar on the very same street when Adam's car got broken into. But please don't worry about my safety. I live over a mile from where the carjackings took place, and while that might not seem like very much, believe me when I tell you it is a world away.

But back to the creatures. Adam has two creatures, a cat and a squirrel. And I have Barnabas. Adam and I treat these things like real people. We spent a bit of time discussing what our commitment to these creatures meant. Did our overwhelming fondness for these things make us selfish or shallow? Were we bad people for finding our creatures far superior to children or even living pets? Would this ever change, or would we be old people with stuffed playthings? And if so, would that be better or worse than becoming an old lady/man with an inordinate number of cats?

After awhile, though, we decided to stop worrying about it and just take adorable pictures of all the things our creatures did. And here are those pictures. Barnabas is glad I am finally taking the time to put them up.

From left to right: Squirrel, Cat, Barnabas. Barnabas was glad to have so much company, since I had left him home alone for 10 days while I went on vacation.


Barnabas sharing the only food I had in my apartment, pretzels:


Gossiping in the bathroom:


Barnabas playing some sweet tunes for his new friends:


Plotting something, no doubt:


Turns out they were plotting a hide-out in the laundry room. Barnabas likes to perch on that thing in the washing machine and ride it around and around. That's how he gets clean.


Adam is real conservative, and I started to worry that his rantings would influence Barnabas, so here I am reading Barnabas some things about Barack Obama:


Meanwhile, Cat and Squirrel check weather reports online to figure out when they can go back home:


Then Barnabas read everyone a bedtime story:


Then he tucked them in on the couch where they slept:


If this is the first entry of my blog that you read, please know that I'm not insane. I just really like this little bear.

not every idea is a winner

Sometimes I have ideas for blog entries that don’t always make it to the blog for one reason or another. Sometimes they exist better as ideas and nebulous concepts, so I abandon them, or sometimes I get too lazy and I abandon them. Here are some recent ideas that did not make it to the blog in full post form, but seem sorta worth mentioning:

Idea 1: Passive-aggressive notes to myself
Last week at work, we had a burst of excitement when people started leaving passive-aggressive notes in the ladies bathroom about the use of air freshener. The office was abuzz. Who was left the note? Then the counter-notes started appearing. It was so funny. Passive-aggressiveness in the workplaces is one of my favorite things ever. I found it so funny, in fact, that I thought a good blog entry would be writing passive-aggressive notes to myself, and then leaving them around my apartment, and then taking pictures to show how funny passive-aggressive notes can be. I wrote up a few, but then I realized that pictures of passive-aggressive notes written to myself wouldn’t look very funny. It would look, in fact, like I had a mental illness.

Idea 2: More Olympics Stuff
I actually had a ton of Olympics blog ideas that I never got around to because time slipped away from me, and next thing I knew, the Olympics were over. But here’s one that I started a little bit…I was going to give Olympic medals to some people and things other than athletes. So far, I had come up with this:

Interestingly Named Presidents
Gold – Abraham Lincoln
Silver – Millard Fillmore
Bronze – Grover Cleveland, Rutherford B. Hayes (tie)

Handsomest Vice-Presidents
Gold – Thomas Hendricks
Silver – Levi Morton
Bronze – Charles Dawes

Breakfast Meats
Gold – Sausage
Silver – Bacon
Bronze - Fried chicken

Features of Microsoft Word that have the tendency to annoy me
Gold – Bullets, when they get all funky
Silver – That little paragraph symbol that puts all the dots between the words
Bronze – When letters get automatically capitalized or rearranged in a way I don’t want

That didn’t really seem like enough to post in and of itself, and then the Olympics were over, and that file lay dormant until now.

Idea 3: Cooking without Colanders
I tried to make some spaghetti, but I forgot that I gave my old colander to Goodwill before I moved to Atlanta, and I never bought another one. I was going to write about my misadventures realizing halfway through the spaghetti process that I was sans colander. I came up with the line, “my emotions were drained like I wish my spaghetti would be,” and “I feel like my heart is the thing that went through the sieve,” but that’s about all I had. And as it turns out, the process didn’t end up all that bad. The spaghetti was a little watery but probably not worth its own entry.

Idea 4: Hurricanes
I was going to write something about how they name hurricanes. When I was a little kid, I always wanted there to be a Hurricane Molly going through somewhere. But I got particularly upset about the name of Hurricane Ike, because it made me think of our beloved 34th president, Dwight D. Eisenhower. Whenever I saw a headline like, “Ike ravages coast” or whatever, I just got confused and offended on behalf of the Eisenhower estate. It seemed like the headlines were reporting major foreign policy fiascos of the 1950s, such as the headline, “Ike gives Cuba final kick and moves on.” But I didn’t end up writing this, except in this very shortened form, because once Ike started doing serious damage, it seemed too flippant.

Great Food Court Project on the Road

I’ve had a problem lately where I dream that things happen, and then I forget that they didn’t happen in real life. For example, this weekend I dreamt that I bought the new Dar Williams CD at Target for $9.99. The next day I was looking all around the apartment for the CD, but it turns out I didn’t buy it. They don’t even sell it at Target, or at least not the one closest to me.

That is the case with this blog entry. I was convinced I already wrote it. But I didn’t. And now I can only sorta understand the notes I wrote down, which means I can only partially vouch for the accuracy of this entry. That’s a shame, because this entry relates to something near and dear to my heart, which is the Great Food Court Project.

As you may remember, the Great Food Court Project, an attempt to eat at all restaurants in the Lenox Mall Food Court, was partially spurred by the great sense of relief I felt at being back on the East Coast, where the food courts are as God intended. By which I mean, they have a Chick-fil-a. I couldn’t find one good food court in the greater Seattle area, so when I went back to the Northwest on vacation a few weeks ago, food courts were not high on my list of things to do.

But what I realized is that I may have been prematurely hasty in writing off all Northwest food courts, because apparently Portland has a good one. I ate at this food court, located in the Pioneer Place Mall, completely by accident. The goal of that day was to look around at a bunch of outdoor food carts and eat at one of them, which is rather like eating at a food court, except it’s outside. Doing things outside is REAL big in the Pacific Northwest.

But it was Sunday, and the food carts were closed, as was most every food-serving place downtown, I guess because Sunday is a city-wide day of fasting that I was unaware of. Do you know what was not closed? A food court! An inside food court in a mall! So now I present an edition of the Great Food Court Project On the Road.

First off, as I mentioned just two paragraphs earlier, I liked this food court. These were the restaurants:
--Kelly’s Cajun Grill
--Gyros n’ Grill
--Wrapture
--McDonald’s
--Subway
--California Crisp
--Yucatan Grill
--Paradise Bakery and Grill
--Lotus Express
--Suki Hana
--Thai Go
--Sbarro

I thought this was a good food court because of the diversity of options, with not too many major chains, and it was affordable. Although I did not eat there, I was intrigued by Wrapture because I thought it was a clever name for a place that serves wraps. I went to Yucatan Grill and got a delicious and attractive plate of nachos for just six dollars. I gave my meal a 10 out of a possible 10.

I was eating with my friend Gallagher, who gave his meal a 7 out of 10 if my notes are to be believed. He had a dish of spicy chicken with red beans & rice and boiled cabbage. While he ate this meal, I seized the opportunity to pick another person’s brain about food courts.

While I enjoy food courts for the amount of diversity they offer, Gallagher does not feel the same way. Given his druthers, Gallagher would rather eat at a place that does just one thing really well, as opposed to having to choose from a bunch of places that do several things in a mediocre way. When I asked him why he selected the meal that he did, Gallagher explained that he panicked, which may be further evidence that there was just too much choice. I don’t want to speculate too much on what this might reveal about his personality.

Gallagher claims to be against food courts in general yet had no bad food court experiences that he wanted to share. Later in the conversation he revealed that Chick-fil-a was his favorite food court restaurant of all time, so maybe he’s against food courts because he lives in a place where the food courts don’t have Chick-fil-a. Generally, he finds food courts to be lacking in options related to vegetables and fruit, as well as North African cuisine.

For awhile, Gallagher and I discussed how the restaurant California Crisp had no customers. I thought that was weird because it looked pretty healthy, and the Northwest is all about eating healthy. But Gallagher pointed out that the food court was full of foreigners. That was true. Also if someone really wanted to eat some California cuisine, they only had to venture a little bit south to actually be in California, another possible deterrent.

Speaking of foreigners in food courts, Gallagher told me about food courts in Japan, where he lived for two years. Apparently they serve udon, ramen and fried octopus dough balls in Japanese food courts.

When asked what kind of food court restaurant he would like to operate, Gallagher said he would serve rolls, of the kaiser and rye variety. I think at that point I tried to convince him to serve all kinds of rolls, like sushi rolls, pizza rolls, sandwich rolls, likely with a cutesy name like “Rock and Roll” or “Roll it Up” or “Rolling Stones.” I am guessing this conversation got sidetracked, because here’s what I have written down in my notes: “Molly continues talking about brilliant idea; Gallagher starts talking about cartoons/comics.” I don’t remember which cartoons or comics, or how that related to my brilliant idea.

Here’s another thing I have written down in my notes: “I tried to pick a fight about Cinnabun.” I don’t really remember doing that, though I generally do think that Cinnabuns are a waste of space. So I may have brought that up, but then written the exchange down in my notebook in a way that created dramatic tension. My notes abruptly end at that point because we went to see a movie.

voices carry

It was a good weekend for live music, though frankly, results are mixed on whether it was a good weekend for anything else, as I’ve only accomplished about 4.7 percent of what I set out to do. But as for live music, I was pretty successful.

First up was Aimee Mann on Friday night. She had adorable opening act called The Submarines. The girl in the Submarines managed to smile the entire time she was singing, which was a good counterbalance to Aimee Mann who smiled few times while she was singing. Right before Aimee Mann started, a guy wedged himself between me and this other girl, holding up his camera by way of excuse. This has happened to me before, and usually it means that the guy is press or works for the venue, and he’s going to just take a few pictures and be gone. If only that had happened in this instance.

First off, the camera guy started asking the people in front of me if they could see the set list (I was pretty close to the stage). This is one of my major concert pet peeves, because I do not want to know what is going to be played. If I wanted predictability, I would play the CD. But I figured it was just so he would know what song was first so he could label the pictures appropriately. Then everyone else around me started asking the guy at the stage what else was on the set list. I tried to focus on something else.

Focusing on something else was super easy, and the thing I focused on was trying not to throw up, because, you see, the man with the cameras smelled like ass. To be more specific, the camera guy smelled like he had slept in mothballs for 15 years, then awakened to take a swim in a pool full of sweat and urine. He had one scruffy little piece of Kleenex that he used to both wipe the sweat off his face and blow his nose. And then at one particularly horrifying moment he opened his mouth, inserted said scruffy piece of Kleenex, and wiped his teeth with it. He looked kind of like I imagine Billy Joel will look in 20 years.

Now, as I said, usually guys who claim to be using cameras for professional purposes disappear after just a song or two, but this guy stayed around for quite a while. I think I am pretty lucky I did not throw up during Aimee Mann. That would have been uncool. Also uncool was the guy behind me, who laughed like Woody Woodpecker. That’s not a bad thing in and of itself but he laughed like that a lot, at things that weren’t really funny. He laughed when Aimee Mann was talking about how frogs fly from the sky during the movie “Magnolia,” and then he loudly yelled, “That was so funny!” and did his woodpecker laugh again just in case we didn’t believe him. I wanted to turn around and say, “haven’t you noticed Aimee Mann doesn’t smile? That is an indication that we should be solemn and serious and too cool for school!” But I didn’t. If I opened my mouth I might have thrown up.

Anyways, one of the few times Aimee Mann did smile was when she brought a robot onstage to sing a song with her. That was fun, and the music was really good as well. The night improved when sweaty camera guy left.

I did not see sweaty camera guy the following night, when I returned to the same venue to see Teddy Thompson and Tift Merritt. Despite both those singers being fairly young, they attracted a very middle-aged audience, and for awhile it looked like I would be the youngest person there. I didn’t mind; I have known for awhile that I like things that old people like and as I people-watched, I grew increasingly confident about being middle-aged, when I might actually have some peers in my preferences. I tried to pick out which middle-aged woman might most accurately represent Future Molly. Was it:
a) the very short woman with the very tall husband? (probably not, as I would have to shrink a lot to have a husband that much taller than me)
b) the woman inappropriately dressed in a halter top and four-inch heels and hitting on a bald man?
c) the woman who was wearing a cute skirt but was hanging all over a guy who really seemed to be gay? Hanging all over him in a way that implied that she was married to a homosexual?

Okay, so I didn’t see Future Molly at all. But I did see Past Molly! By which I mean I saw a little girl, about 10 years old, who was at the concert with her dad. That’s how I grew up, going to concerts with my dad. We would always get there ridiculously early and talk about what songs we wanted to hear. I stood really close to this father-daughter duo so I could enjoy the moment, which I hope did not freak them out.

There was enough to distract them, though. Both Teddy and Tift put on a great show. Teddy Thompson is English, so his banter between songs was adorably cute, just by default of the accent. It would put me in a really good mood, which was then off-set by the terribly sad songs he sang. It was a roller coaster of emotion. When Tift Merritt came on I got a little too distracted by how high her heels were. When she walked around onstage it looked like those high heels would get caught in wires and she might fall. I tried to develop a plan for how I might help Tift Merritt if she did fall on stage but I couldn’t think of anything helpful. But Tift Merritt is definitely a singer that it pays to see live. That girl plays instruments with an intensity that you don’t pick up just by listening to the CDs. She also sang two songs on the edge of the stage with no microphone, which was one of the most beautiful concert moments I’ve seen in awhile.

Teddy Thompson and Tift Merritt did one duet together, and I thought about blogging a rumor that they were dating, because I think they would be a cute couple. Plus Teddy Thompson himself is evidence of what good can come out of a marriage between songwriters, though I guess that didn’t end enormously well for his parents. But I read on the internet that Tift Merritt is engaged to her drummer so I guess there’s no chance of this rumor coming true. So there is no rumor. Oh well.

an interview with myself, by myself

Molly 1: Molly, the last time you blogged, there was a giant bug in your apartment! Then you disappeared! For like two weeks! Did the giant bug eat you?
Molly 2: No, I just went on vacation for like 10 days in Seattle and Portland. Then I had a houseguest.

M1: I was so worried and bored when you did not blog!
M2: Your concern was muted.

M1: So much has happened since you’ve been gone!
M2: I know! They have announced not one but two vice-presidential nominees! The Olympics ended! There have been like ten hurricanes!

M1: Well, let’s talk about your vacation. You spoke in your very first blog entry of how much you hate the Atlanta airport, so you must have been dreading that. How was your experience heading out there?
M2: It was like the nicest experience ever! The security people were so nice and funny. The lady at the place I ate was so sweet. There were like, no people there. The departure was one time!

M1: Great! Were you scared to travel, given that there are many news stories about guns in the Atlanta airport and people getting decapitated on buses?
M2: I would be lying if I said I was not mildly concerned.

M1: Okay, let’s jump right into the important questions. Can you name all the meals you ate while you were on vacation?
M2: I sure can! Here is what I had, in the order I had it:
-burger that was made of beef, blue cheese and bacon all mixed together
-sushi
-an omelet and pancakes
-a salad and a wasabi grilled cheese sandwich
-a doughnut
-a slice of pizza and a pesto salad
-clams and a flatbread pizza thing with figs and proscuitto
-a chicken gyro
-a burger made of magical beef
-a ham and cheese sandwich
-an oyster sandwich
-doughnuts
-a breakfast sandwich with proscuitto and cheese and magic
-a Cajun chicken sandwich
-a sandwich made of sage eggs, sausage and avocado, on an English muffin
-a ramen and vegetably thing
-doughnuts
-sausage on an English muffin.
-miso soup and stirfry
-nachos
-pizza (for dinner)
-pizza (for breakfast)
-burrito

M1: Oh my, I can’t believe you remember all that! Your memory is beyond compare! Can you remember all the beverages you consumed?
M2: Oh, of course not, there were too many.

M1: Did you meet any interesting bartenders, though?
M2: Oh yes! In Seattle Matthew and I met a bartender that we both wanted to be best friends with. She gave us Cheez-its and got us really good and drunk!

M1: Did you go back to your old places of employment?
M2: Yep, Matthew and I walked around Old Navy and took pictures in the store. We found the store to be a mess, and we were surprised that some of the security codes still worked, even though it’s years since we worked there. We went into some places we were supposed to go. Then I went to my old office. It was weird that someone else sat in my seat. But I was glad I wasn’t doing that work anymore.

M1: What things happened in Seattle that made you glad that you don’t live there anymore?
M2: First, I would say almost getting run over by a car. Second, I would say the more or less constant deluge of rain. Third, I would repeat what I said above, that seeing my old office made me glad I had a new job.

M1: What did you do to deal with the rain?
M2: Mostly I ate things. For example, I ate cupcakes with Matthew while it rained.

M1: What things made you wish you still lived in the Northwest?
M2: First and foremost, I’d say the people. Second, the bookstores. Third, the reliable public transportation. And also Specialty’s bakery in Seattle.

M1: What did the city of Portland do to welcome you?
M2: They got the symphony to play a free concert in the park with cannons. Then they shot off fireworks.

M1: What things did you win in Portland?
M2: Trivia, foozball.

M1: How many episodes of Weeds did you watch in Portland?
M2: I think like 30.

M1: How many movies did you see on this trip?
M2: Four! I saw The Dark Knight on an IMAX screen, Elegy, Hamlet 2, and Hot Fuzz.

M1: How was the return trip?
M2: I just want to let my readers know that Labor Day is possibly the most miserable day that you can travel. There are too many people, and they all smell funny.

M1: What book did you take out there, and how many pages of it did you read?
M2: I started Middlemarch, but I only read 76 pages of it. It’s kind of a hard book and I have to read most pages twice to make sure I understood. But one guy on the light rail in Portland told me it might steal a little bit of my soul!

M1: What was your greatest accomplishment of the trip?
M2: I bought 15 books and managed to get them all back home.

M1: 15 books! That is insane! I thought you told your mother you weren’t going to buy any more books!
M2: I really don’t remember saying that.

M1: How gracious were all of your hosts?
M2: They were all very gracious!

M1: You said you had a houseguest? What about that?
M2: It seems like a topic for a separate blog entry.

M1: Alrighty then! Looking forward to that!