Firstly, I got a twinge in my heart of the Oxford picnicees marching up St. Clements Street, as *that* is where I lived when I lived in England. If you see a fish & chips place at #38, look up to the top floor window & say hi to my ghost. I threw up out that window on Thanksgiving 1989. And spent some of the best months of my life. And secondly, the Los Angeles picnic, "A Summer Wasting", was i think a success, as founder Jennifer Juniper already pointed out. There's photos to be seen here: http://www.asummerwasting.homestead.com/photos1.html Ernie, you're in a few of them (sorry). But mostly I just got your palm covering your face. Have y'all ever met someone so camera-obscura? Adrian & Chris strummed out some lovely tunes by our favorite band, and Rachel Cornflakegirl was even lovelier in person. My sister (and recent convert) Melanie chased after a camera-man from the Discovery Channel, demanding to know whether he knew who Rick Springfield was. He was embarrassed and tried to deny it at first, but we could tell by his too-quick denial that he at least owned "Working Class Dog" and "Success Hasn't Spoiled Me Yet". And we played with a dog the size of a rat, but fluffy and springy thru the grass. He was cute till he pinched a cigarette-butt-sized loaf on the lawn. Then we kinda lost interest. But the best was the Japanese tourist who agreed to take our group photo. He counted off with the cutest "Wan... Too... Free..." and he said it *twice* as we'd given him two cameras with which to win our soft hearts. Bless that man. Apologies to The Pickle Prince for publicly announcing that he was *not* in attendance, despite his assurance that he'd be there "with belles on" (excerpt from the 'A Summer Wasting' guestbook). We kept watching the horizon for his bent-cowboyhatted silhouette strutting forth, but it never came. And on our way to the freeway, Rachel & her boy-crew following us, we sucker-bombed a bag of crisps into their car at a red light; and they thusly retalliated with (inexplicably) a box of tissues through our car window at the next red light. We blew our nose in their general direction, and kept the tissues as the Spoils of War. And although i failed to mention it at the picnic, it was Joan Of Dark's birthday the very same day. It was fitting that, although we couldn't be in Greece to party with her, we partied like it was 1989. Or something. And the Ribenna was flowing!! Although I couldn't pronounce it correctly, and it was shunned by some of the picnicers ("Welch's with a bit more berry flavor-- but you hafta mix it yerself!") but embraced by others (J. Juniper emphasized that it's better with vodka). I believe her. So that was the picnic. We were chasing the shade of the announcement-speaker-thingy, but it kept us up to speed with the happenings of the Observatory minute-by-minute. When all of a sudden a god-like booming voice would announce above our heads: "Attention, Griffith Observatory visitors....." we half-expected to hear: "The freeks you see on our south lawn are representatives of the Belle and Sebastian collective known as Sinister. They are harmless, but if you approach them use caution. They are known to burst out into laughter. Tickets are now on sale for our 3 PM planetarium show entitled The Many Moons Of Saturn. Admission is free for children under 5 years." Anyway, it was a wonderful time. See the photos and believe me. I've just started singing for a Pavement cover band, just something to do for the summer. But the thing is, we're covering one non-Pavement song. It's called "Get Me Away From Here I'm Dying". More on this as the situation progresses. Did I mention that I was an extra in the Nelly Furtado video "Turn Off The Light"? Look for me when it comes out, in about a month. I'll look for you everywhere. Love, Brier +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+