last friday i found an all-caps plea in my inbox from a friend, asking me to tell her what stuart murdoch looked like. i sent off the URLs of two of rachel's photos from the LA show, and quickly got back an exclamation of thanks from my friend. why did she want to know? she was to meet him at the 24th st BART (san francisco's subway) station, which is sort of like saying 'i'll meet you at the transamerica pyramid,' as the station has two outlets above ground (on opposite sides of the street) and is quite large. why was she meeting him? what was he doing back in san francisco? she was to take a few quick photos of him for a magazine she works for. i could come along, she said, if i wanted. but i couldn't. fast forward a few hours. a group of us indie-internet-nerds have a weekly friday lunch gathering at a different restaurant each week. derived from a naughty spoonerism, we call this group 'funch luckers.' my friend the photog is a member, as are about 30 other people. and today's funch was at zeitgeist, a spot popular with motorcyclists and bike messengers that's on the warm fringes of the mission district. it's got a wonderfully unreconstructed patio (dirt and rough-hewn picnic tables) and serves food and beer (beer is perhaps the unifying factor of funch, and has led to many an unproductive friday), and is quite comfortable. somehow my friend convinced stuart to come along to funch. there were about a dozen of us as usual, and i have no idea at all what he thought of it. topics of conversation picked up quickly and changed direction across the table: barbecues, orgies, work, children, guitar solos, friendster.com, radio shows, personal gossip, good natured teasing. all about us, of course. as this post is all about me. stuart was charming and sweet. he was in SF taking a break for an extra week or so, with no partcular plans as far as i could tell. tho i was sitting next to him and fairly ecstatic (i have been on sinister since early 98, i bleeve, got IYFS in 97), i tried not to monopolize him. no one really was, i guess - everyone was sort of chattering with each other as they usually would. he talked about the kcrw show - how the group could barely hear anything thru the headphones at first, how kcrw'd sent someone in at the last second to tell them which words weren't allowed on-air (no idea if 'wank' would be alright). he did quite a good nasal-y american accent. (amusingly,) he brought up playing dvds on laptops and i had to confess to having the fan's own dvd at my house (from the treasure hunt), & having tried all my friends to see which would switch the region on their player so we could watch it. he talked about how his laptop was a good bed-warmer after a dvd on a cold winter night. we gabbed a bit about the aislers set, and about the berkeley show. he was looking for a soccer game on sunday and my pal dan tried to help figure something out, but here i was helpless. my knees, see. i'm glad to see the Other Ian ended up sorting it all out (in a manner of speaking). there's more, isn't there? but i can't really put it all down here. i was a bit giddy, i guess. and i had to go back to work, believe it or not. and the jobless amongst us (about half; sf's economy is tepid at best) stayed to soak up the sun and have a laugh and a beer, happy. it was great to meet stuart and have a bit of a chat with him. i wonder what he thought of us, an odd and sarcastic bunch of nearly-30s-ish people out on a sunny patio on a friday? not much, i'll wager! ian +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ 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 +-+ +-+ Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+