A few years ago, I had an intense love affair with a guy on the East Coast. It was a strange relationship in the end, and an unhappy one, but in the beginning, it was good, just because it was extremely intense. I flew a few times to meet him, always flying into New Jersey. I’ve flown a lot and I sometimes get into the weird beauty of it, especially when going to a romantic place. Sex and the Jersey shore in October. Yeah.

So on these few fligths to the East Coast, I had this sort of ritual to listen to OK Computer right before we landed. Only, sometimes we circled around after the CD ended. So I would just rewind back and listen to The Tourist, the last song on OK Computer, over and over until it the attendant came over and forced me to turn it off. Those circles in flight, accompanied by that song, will live with me forever. If that makes any sense. Flying, and listening to this:

Sometimes I get overcharged
That’s when you see sparks
You ask me where the hell I’m going
At a thousand feet per second

The Tourist is one of the only songs written by Jonny Greenwood, and it has not been played much live. Until this tour. Lots of talk on the message boards about “when will I hear The Tourist?”

So I was beyond thrilled today when I found that Bradley has, once again, a fantastic show for us all to enjoy. And the final encore is The Tourist. SWEET. God I love that song, even if that relationship went nowhere. It’s weird how a song can totally bring you back to one time, one place in the history of your life.

Bradley didn’t have a ticket, but one of his readers sold him one. The crowd around him sounds really lame. The crowd around me better not talk during the show, or I am gonna smack em. Or even kill ’em. I mean, they sound AWFUL. It’s scaring me.

Three weeks to go… the Boston set list is awesome. Planet Telex? Just? Like Spinning Plates? Nude? I might pass out from happiness. Seriously.

Thanks Bradley, you have made my day, month and year a better place to live.

Perfect days happen. Yesterday was one of them.

Too bad that on Friday, Little Miss Airhead at the Doubletree Hotel didn’t tell me that all needed was to get back on the light-rail for a couple more stops to get to what I now realize is the real – and totally hip – Portland. She wasn’t very with it, because she never even checked me in, as I found out today. To them I was a ghost with a working key. I could have ordered Veuve Clicquot from room service and walked right out the door. Oh well. I’m not really that kind of person so it doesn’t make much sense to ruminate on what I could have done.

Yesterday morning, when I was writing in the hotel business center, there was another dude in there with a bunch of tattoos. We both sort of stuck out in Corporateland Hotel as not exactly corporate types so we started talking. Turns out he is in a band (actually I think he IS the band) called The Violet Burning. He gave me a CD and his phone number and told me to call him after the Eels show, plus he told me some cool areas to check out. I took this interaction as an excellent sign.

From there, I just wandered. I have visited Portland once, but I was working, then I got the flu there, so it wasn’t altogether successful as a pleasure journey; still, I remember the Saturday Market there, because I bought a bean bag lizard that sits on the dashboard of my VW Bug. That market is COOL. They have food stalls there from all over the globe – Egyptian, Himilayan, all kinds of weird shit. I ate a killer taco al pastor and watched a steel drum band. Then I walked some more, stopped in a pub for a drink, then went to an oyster bar and had oyster shooters and clams. It was hot and humid, and I never did make it to the carnival, because I wanted to take a nap before the Eels show.

This is where the day left Pretty Awesome and entered Totally Killer. I knew I wanted to go to a wine bar, but I didn’t know where one was, so I looked in the phone book and found a place called Vino Paradiso that was not too far from the venue. So I headed there. There was some festival of lights parade last night so the streets were lined with people waiting. Portland is a really cool city to walk in. I was getting pretty enamored at this point.

So, made it to Vino Paradiso where I ordered up a Pinot flight and a salad of Arugula and Seared Duck. There was a couple next to me that just moved to Portland from San Jose, California. In fact MANY of the people I met were transplantees from California. And they all love it there. So we talked and drank and I ate my salad (which was awesome.) Then Timothy, the owner, comes over and started talking to me. By now it was well known that I had come to Portland to see a show, so the owner told me he was in a band.

“Which band?” I asked him.
“Pink Martini,” he said.

HOLY FUCK. HOLY FUCKING FUCK. My jaw dropped and I swear, I almost fell off my barstool. “DUDE.” I said. “DO YOU REALIZE I AM LIKE, YOUR BIGGEST FAN IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE????”

I then proceeded to tell him everything about everything, including my blog entries on Pink Martini and China Forbes. He told me that someone had printed them out and they all read them! PINK MARTINI READ MY BLOG!

Well, after that I was totally convinced that this journey was all very, very good and that the music gods were indeed smiling down on me. I had not only found a killer wine bar, I had found one owned by one of the dudes in one of my favorite bands! I am seeing the band in three weeks, and I told Timothy that if he gets me backstage I will bring some great wines to drink. “Not too many of them drink wine,” he said. “That’s OK!” I said. Please oh please oh please….

I left there almost reluctantly, but with great anticipation to see if Mark Oliver Everett, otherwise know as E, would succeed in totally blowing my mind once again. This was the real reason I came to Portland, after all. I walked to Roseland, the venue, down streets filled with marching bands waiting to be in the parade. It was fairly surreal. Outside the venue, the parade was going by, marching band after marching band.

Roseland is one of those places that discriminates against us drinkers and makes us go upstairs and sit down to get a cocktail. Normally this would have totally bugged, but since I was on a mission to remain somewhat conscious, I didn’t care so much. I went up and got a drink and settled in for the opening band, Smoosh. There were two dudes next to me, and I tried in vain to tell them what they were in for. I said I would be leaving for the floor as soon as Eels came on and one of the guys said “why do you want to go down THERE?” But when Smoosh came on I could tell that THEY wanted to go “down there.” Smoosh is comprised of a twelve-year old girl drummer and a fourteen-year old girl keyboardist. I have never seen so many riveted dudes as I have seen during Smoosh. It’s kind of freaky, really. But it’s there.

Smoosh is good. But they are unformed. They don’t know how to act, talk or dance yet. In a description of Smoosh in one of the free Portland weeklies, the following: “When the army of young girls on my block hit the preteen mark, an unexplainable heaviness oozed over our neighborhood like “The Nothing” in The Neverending Story. Saturday night slumber parties became whirlpools of maniacal giggling and tears, powered by overactive imaginations, blossoming sex drives, and crushing self-doubt.” DUDE. At last I know where my real problem is – I never really matured past the age of thirteen. You are describing ME.

But I digress. Smoosh finished their set, I finished my drink, and I was on the floor as soon as Eels hit the stage.

Part of the reason I wanted to see this show again is, last weekend when I saw them I was pretty buzzed. As in, I remember it was a fantastic show, and I remember bits and pieces, but I had shit on my mind and that combined with the buzz messed me up. Last night I was fairly sober. So I remember it all. The guy with the “Security” T-shirt who stood glaring out at the crowd, but then in the course of the night proceeded to dance, do kung-fu moves, squirt whipped cream into people’s mouths (and then wipe them off with a tissue – TWISTED), play keyboards, make random announcements before songs, and at one point, take over the guitar from E while he went backstage. Security Guy was just a little tidbit that made one go “holy fuck, this show is INSANE.”

So then… it was so good I almost started crying a couple of times. E was dressed in some crazy jumpsuit with airplane goggles and longish hair sticking out from a cap with another pair of goggles, and there was a wind machine blowing on him… the effect was quite striking, and I think I am in love again. There were moments of great beauty, and moments of two guitars about to rip your head off. The girls from Smoosh were right next to me on the floor and were jumping up and down like they were on pogo sticks, because like I said they haven’t learned to dance yet. The crowd, though somewhat sparse, was appropriately enthralled and respectful. I think I love Portland.

Then, sadly, it was over. I didn’t bring my phone so I couldn’t call Michael from The Violet Burning, but I walked out into the rain and uptown to one of two bars he had said they would be at. It was a club, and definitely one where people were going to be taking drugs. I didn’t see him so I got out of there quick before I could get myself into trouble. See! Even I, Shannon Essa, can sometimes be good.

Out in the rain, I walked aimlessly trying to get a cab. Finally I got one and the driver got so lost he did not want to charge me. But I made him take money. Portland has cute cab drivers too, by the way.

This morning I dreamed about Mark Oliver Everett. He was at my house and I asked him what the scoop was with Security Guy. Then he looked at my CDs and asked me to put on the Living Blue. I was happy that all my Eels CDs were in plain view. “This band sucks,” E said. The rest of the dream involved unsuccessful sex and my grandmother, but I’d rather not elaborate.

During that show I had this image of myself crucified on an electric guitar. I can’t think of anything that makes me quite as happy. And I am glad.

I am in Portland. I got here last night and to be totally honest it would have been better to get here today. Last night was, kind of, well, lame. I don’t know where I got it in my head that Portland is this uber-cool city with a fantastic bistro on every corner.

I had to go through Oakland and had over an hour to kill so I went to the bar, which was packed and had a slow-as-molassas server. I mean, she was SLOW. After twenty minutes I got a drink, but in the meantime struck up a conversation from some businessman from Seattle. “Service with a smile,” he said. “I don’t care if there is a smile as long as there is service,” I said. Well this comment was going to bite me in the ass later.

In the seventh grade, in social studies, we had this project to design a city. In the city I designed, the airport was outside the city and there was a train connecting the airport to the city. Now for me, having only been to the airports in San Francisco and Orange County, this was pretty cool thinking, I thought. I didn’t know other cities actually have this. And if there is one really great thing about flying into Portland Airport, it is that you can walk out the door and get on a light rail that takes you right into town. The thing dropped me off in front of my hotel! Awesome.

I didn’t get here until almost nine and I was starving, so I immediately went out to eat something. There is a giant mall across the street. A MALL. Where am I again? The girl at the front desk had given me a really horrible mimeographed map of the area with all manner of fast food places on it. Quigno’s subs? Not. So I walked past the mall trying to find something else. I passed an Applebees that was packed. “No way” I said to myself. “I am NOT eating at fucking Applebees.” Do you sometimes feel that the hip neighborhood is very close, that if you maybe walk two more blocks there it would be, but in which direction? That is how I felt last night.

Finally I found a street with some coffeeshops and a pizza place and a pasta restaurant. The pasta place looked pretty good so I went in. Everything on the menu looked really good. And the server was not only great, he was also smiling. He did everything absolutely perfectly (like get me a second glass of wine right when the first was done, and not fire my pasta until my salad was done, because I eat slow). So when my pasta came out and it was total crap, I couldn’t send it back. Unfortunately, I had let him choose for me. It sounded good – linguini with marsala and cream, tomatoes and mushrooms. But it tasted like plain pasta. I couldn’t taste any marsala or cream, all I could taste was stale pasta water. I dumped half a pound of Parmesan cheese on it and that made it at least edible. Leaving there, I walked back past the Applebees, which was still packed. “Oh how I wish I would have eaten at fucking Applebees,” I thought.

The night wasn’t a total loss. Franz Ferdinand was on Austin City Limits and they were AWESOME. I always wondered what the big deal was about that band and now I know. I am gonna go and buy all their records.

I guess there is a carnival by the river today. I am going to try to go there. I saw it on the news, because they were showing how everyone is getting their bags searched before entry. “Makes everyone feel much safer” one dude said. “No one will get their pockets picked now.” Huh? How did that one make it past the cutting room floor?

Somewhere there is a great wine bar calling my name… I just have to find it.

Tonight is the first night of the U.S. leg of the Radiohead tour. Therefore:

All those thousands of people singing “for a minute there, I lost myself.” That shit just slays me.

I am really excited and today I impulsively (not) bought a ticket on ebay for the first show at the L.A. Greek. It was hella expensive but I DON’T CARE. It’s all I can do to strap myself down and not go to Boston and Chicago or even Canada.

I am, however, going to Portland on Saturday to see Eels again. And to drink some good Pinot and maybe eat something. I’ll try to stay out of trouble which is something I didn’t do when I saw Eels last weekend. Me, stay out of trouble. Right. It’s 1.6 miles from my hotel to the venue. How much trouble can I get in on a 1.6 mile walk? Plenty, I reckon.

June is shaping up to be Totally Killer. Maybe I’ll take a cab.