Sinister: on picnics, Los Angeles and otherwise

[Brier Random]

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



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