i'm a trivia whiz

normally i post my profanity-laden blogs on myspace, then just repost the g versions here. but i forgot to mention something on my most recent myspace post. and that is that me, jules and rory are all now officially trivia wizards. on friday night we particated in some benefit trivia night thing for cedar creek therapeutic riding or something like that (disabled peeps get on horses and it's good for them). anyhoo, our team--which consisted of me, jules, rory, al (dr. herde's husband), and 4 people i had never met before. besides winning and learning that i am indeed a superior being, i learned a very valuable trivia strategy: make sure you get peeps from all different age brackets and backgrounds, because us young stupid folks are the one's who know the stupid stuff like the names of tyra banks' tv shows. maybe i'm not well-versed in missouri history, but the stupid stuff is just as important. we killed it in the "books you should have read" section, guessed correctly that an octopus has 3 hearts, and knew the capitol of romania. 80/90 earned everyone at our table a bottle of wine. so i just had to brag for a little bit.

so that was friday night, now about the rest of my weekend.

it's no secret that i am deeply in like with calexico, specifically joey burns. there, i said it. i've had a pretty huge crush on the band/the man for a long long long time. random, but i just told julie i had a crush on a sandwich. specifically the big tomato (add bacon) from uprise where rory works. this shows to go you that i get crushes on anything and anyone. all that's required is that someone be nice to me or that they have tomato and bacon together in harmony on ciabatta bread. anyhoo... calexico played in st. louis over the weekend, so it seemed like a swell occassion to borrow my dad's grand marquis (it's a luxury car), pack up the wife and kids and go see their rock show. so me, jules and two visiting korean students set sail on saturday afternoon for the radisson st. louis.

not really an aside: i have been a staunch supporter of priceline.com since they treated me so well when i bought round trip tickets to europe a few summers ago, so i always use them to book hotels too. this was one of my best priceline experiences. the hotel itself wasn't particularly nice or luxurious, but we were on the 25th floor and had a balcony that looked right out at the arch and the river. i could almost reach out and touch either of those things if i had super long arms. alas, i don't, but i was still pleased as punch, right as rain, super duper.

anyhoo, we get to the hotel, and decide it's time to drink at the hotel bar. the barkeep--an old timer named steve--was not very friendly as far as personality goes, but he did give us a free beer for no apparent reason at all. unless it was because the popcorn machine viciously mangled my arm (is there any other way to mangle someone, except viciously? i think not). i like the thought of all the popcorn in the bar area of the radisson st. louis being contaminated with my blood. not that there's anything wrong with my blood...but still, it's blood.

post mai tai, we headed to university city. we went to blueberry hill and crammed too many people into a photo booth. and guess who's head doesn't show up in any of the stupid pictures? yup, mine. so we ate spicy wings and circular french fries, drank beers and julie ordered shots that normally taste good but not this time. our waitress had a cool motorhead t-shirt and very red hair. not that these two things matter, but it's all about the details, so i'll include them.

the next stop was vintage vinyl. i felt very weird when i walked in there for some reason--a little light headed or something. i could specifically explain why i felt weird, but i'll just be vague and say it had to do with being sweet on a musician.

after collecting lots of cds to ultimately refile after rationality kicked in, we went to a thrift store. the two korean dudes (american names jack and gun. yes, gun) had never been to a secondhand store before, so we said it was a cultural experience for them. i'm just thankful that their cultural experience resulted in my new cowboy boots and bracelet. i don't think they got anything.

it was now time to sup, and sup we did at some place called 609. jules and i had eaten there before on a prior trip. the food was pretty good, but also pretty expensive.

show time at mississippi nights. just like the last time i saw calexico in st. louis, except not at all because i was actually calm, unobsessed and unaffected by aforementioned crush on lead singer. which struck me as sort of tragic. part of the reason i became obsessed with this dude was because i perceived him to be unattainable by me, a non musician, but it seems like only on saturday did i actually care to stop worrying so much about whether or not i seemed awkward to him or worthy or whatever (note to me, i will always be awkward. it's cute. it's charming. it's a fact.). this is hard to explain. whatever... the most important lesson here is that he's just some dude in a band on a stage. just like lots of other dudes in bands on stages. but now i don't really have any crushes on anyone. and that brings me back to the tragedy of all this. perhaps others don't see this as tragic, but now who do i have to look forward to? who do i get to put on a pedestal now? i'm rambling. i'll probably regret this later.

after the show we went and bought lots of cheap wine (hooray, yellow tail!)and sat in plush chairs on the balcony of our 25th floor hotel palace, gazing drunkenly out at the arch. the nighttime arch is so much more interesting to look at than its sunny overpopulated daytime counterpart. it's a large living creature sleeping off the exhaustion and excitement of its busy, overworked daytime hours. and the moon and the river and the bridge and the relative tranquility were all pretty swell too.

random alert: i was thinking about a book i used to read when i was younger called Tallypo/Tailypo. amazon has this description: "A strange varmint haunts the woodsman who lopped off its tail." sounds about right. anyhoo, me jules and ma-licia used to record ourselves reading and it was nothing short of adorable, especially during my speech therapy years when i couldn't pronounce my "r"s. i'm a firm believer that there's nothing more adorable than a speech impediment. but there's a recording of jules and me reading tallypo to our cousin aimee. most of the time we are just yelling at her while intermittently screaming "tallypo!" this is one of those things that only julie and i think is funny...my mom used to babysit when we were little and we did lots of mean things when we were little and the daughters of the babysitter. children are cruel. i know i was. one of the girls that stayed at our house during the day was terrified of earth worms. so when she was taking a nap one afternoon, i put a bunch of worms on her face. she screamed and cried and i was impressed by my own evil. i guess i figured today was the time to come clean about that.