Monday, April 21, 2008

My course load is very much lacking this semester. Because of this, I have an enormous amount of free time on my hands, which sounds awesome, but free time is only cool when you have busy times to make you appreciate said free time. So, I have to find ways to fill up my time. I killed time today by:

-Groccery shopping. I'm trying to kick dairy, and it's really fucking hard.
-Looking for a place to live. More on that later.
-Working on the scavenger hunt that I'm essembling.
-Talking to my sister
-Reading "The Plot Against America" by Philip Roth
-Studying the growth of my all natural beard (that's right, I'm not trimming it until it's full grown in. It's less than a week right now, and it's already gross).
-Seeing the Jazz B group perform. There's some seriously good musicians in that group.
-Interneting

The only activity worth going into detail about it "Looking For A Place To Live". I'm currently searching the pages of Craigslist.org for a 1 bed room house to live and create music in, which is much more difficult than it sounds. I found a listing today that looked relatively promising, so I called the number and waited for the woman who listed the house, Penelope, to pick up. She did, and we arranged to meet so that she could show me the house, right after her dog finished getting Accupunture. No shit. I loved it, thought it was hilarious.
I met her outside of the house, and proceeded to explore the tiny guest house she was renting out for a bit more than I was willing to pay. "So, you're a student?", she asked. "Yes, I'm a music student at the U of A". Tell a person that you're a musician, and they want to talk about every local, two-bit musician they're ever known. One person I was looking to rent a house from started bragging to me about all the local bands that he rented to. I wanted to shoot myself. I was very thankful when she didn't press the subject of music.
As Penelope walked me out of the house that I had no intentions of renting, I made several attempts to end the conversation and be on my way. Sly old Penelope chose to slip in a bit of music talk at the very end of our interaction, and I was secetly furious with her for doing so. Out of politness, I heard her out. "What kind of music do you make?". I hate this question. "Pop music, I guess." I hate that answer more. "Oh, my son is good friends with a man who is in a pop band. I forget what they're called...I had open heart surgury about 6 months ago, and I've had some memory loss ever since. Oh yeah, there's plenty of studies on the correlation between memory loss and open heart surgury....Something about the anestysia." This bit of information made me infinitly more sympathetic towards Penelope. I joined her and sat on the short wall outside of the house and waited for her to remember. "Oh yes, I remember now. My son's friend's band is called Alkaline Trio."
I nearly shat my pants. This is not a fact that I'm particularly proud of, but from 7th grade to Junior year of highschool, I was stupidly obsessed with Alkaline Trio. What are the odds that this woman renting out a house in Tucson, Az once lived in Chicago, IL, reered a child who became friends with a member of this band whom I, a completely unrelated indiviual, once idolized? What are those odds?
"Which member of the band?". This was an important question. It could have been one of the first 2 drummer, the most insignificant members of the band. As much as I adored Matt Skiba earlier in my life, as I sat talking to Penolpe, he suddenly seemed like an unqestionably evil person for Penelope's son to be spending so much time with. It could be Dan Andriano, someone I think I still secretly worship for being quieter, crafting the more emotionally sincere songs. Or it could be Derek Grant, the most current drummer, who just kinda seems like a piece of shit. "His name is Daniel Andriano. He's such a nice young man."
We sat and talked about "Daniel", some of his other bands (Me: I really loved Tuesday, his earlier band. Penelope: Oh yes, and what was the other band he was in before that.... Me: Slapstick! Penelope: Yes! They were funny!), Penelope's children, and the potential for her memory to improve over time. For really only functioning as a method of killing time, it was actually really enjoyable to talk to this stranger for 20 minutes of my day.
And now I might kinda be reconsidering the guest house she was for rent...

2 comments:

Jason P. Woodbury said...

That is a crazy story, dude!

Is the place within your price range?

Zachary Toporek said...

Yeah, but it's real tiny. I'm still kinda considering it though. It's really just one room, bathroom and kitchen attacthed to it. I think I'd go fucking crazy if I lived there, which may be good artistically...