chicagoooooo

hi people. problems with the blog, problems with the blog, hope this goes through. so much has passed through my rearview lately, it's hard to extract one blogworthy scene. there was a ukrainian bar in east buffalo full of left-leaning conspiratorial types and perogies and borscht and russian beer. i sang there and spoke my two or three phrases of russian (language of the oppressor) which are like, "please, i want to drink wine", "where is red square?" and my favorite- "maybe later..." there was a bar in pittsburg with beer in aluminum bottles and a midget who worked every saturday night. he had answered an ad in the window saying "midget wanted". my darling friend said in his excitement to the bartender "people in pittsburg don't give a f***!" and the bartender said, "exactly!" cool bars exist in a certain constellation. in pittsburg we drove the winding raised highways, the grinding semis and rusting iron railings and urban water beneath us, i burned candles on my dashboard. there was also vermont, lambs dropping on green grass, shivering and slimed. and i am in love, but i shan't talk about it on my blog as it is too dear to me to talk about.
next, i tour with darling rachel ries to texas. she has a new record and she's gonna be huge. texas waits with gaping open maw. hot stinking texas where you can buy an individual chilled can of beer at a gas station (not that anyone drinks and drives) and where men still call me "sweetheart" without a trace of irony. where the rivers are wide and brown and just the right temperature for swimming. today i am thinking the country is too large and diverse to make any generalizations about. i used to love generalizing back in college, it made sense to think of the culture as heading unhinged, desenfrenado, down one greasy hellbound track, but it just ain't true. old men in tollbooths are kindly. christians keep putting up weird pithy signs like "got jesus?" and sometimes it is funny. people work hard and drink a lot. the leftists congratulate each other and swap buzzwords. the machine rumbles on day after day. some people beg for their livelihood, some work for corporations and go to the gym. everyone feels guilty about something or other.
i am mostly quite happy. i'm working on being direct with people, honesty as the best policy. part of that means going ahead and weirding people out if i am in a weird mood. who are you readers, out there in the ether? come to my shows. hello anonymoses and all you weird bloggers out there. hello mama and papa, hello frogs. life is beautiful, gas is expensive! tonight the tin pan takes the stage in chicago... chicago is as windy as they say... WHOOSH! love anais.