Last night I started thinking about luggage. As in, what am I going to do about it. Basically I am thinking about how I can buy wine in Spain and bring it home – now that I can’t actually bring it into the cabin, I am sort of screwed. So essentially I am visiting three different wine regions of Spain and I can’t bring any wine home. Well, screw that. Ship it? Not (too expensive.) Put it in a box and bring it home like that? Not (too complicated, too hard to move around when you are exhausted.) No, I have to buy some sort of a rolling suitcase that is big and also, hard-shelled. Then I can throw away all my clothes and just fill that sucker up with wine.

So since I have been thinking about this so much it is only natural that my overactive imagination would take over, especially since I have had immense quantities of mindless time over the weekend with nothing to take my mind off it. I started to think about those big black cases that musicians haul their gear around in. And I started to think, how cool would it be to have a suitcase that was not only big, and not only hard and tough, but also looked hella cool? As in, if you rolled it around in the airport everyone would think you were a rock star, or at the very least a roadie? I figure, with one of those big black cases, I could slap some wheels on the bottom and outfit the inside with some styrofoam wine holders, and voila, I could bring home ten, maybe twenty bottles of wine.

The only problem, of course, would be the weight. I guess each one of those cases probably weighs something like twenty pounds, and this would probably be kind of a drag when the airline wants to charge a hundred and fifty dollars because you went fifty pounds overweight. So then I started thinking, well, you just have to make this luggage DESIGNER, and charge $5000 for one suitcase just like Prada does, because rich people don’t care about extra weight because they not only have people to carry their shit, they also have private jets, hence they don’t have to worry about overweight charges. Then with all the money I make on the Prada Roadie Luggage, I can then afford to pay for these charges myself.

So in my mind I have the whole line of luggage going, complete with bumperstickers of rock bands you have never heard of, and stencils that say stuff like PROPERTY OF BRITT DANIEL. And it would be sold already banged up and thrashed. I swear, sometimes I have some brilliant ideas, what can I say, maybe Irving, Texas is good for me.

Now I just have to find some investors but in the meantime, if you ever see luggage that looks like this, let it be known right now that THIS WAS MY IDEA.

Sometimes I wish for this: traveling all around Europe and Eastern Europe and maybe even past that by myself and then blogging about it. I do want it, I think it would be really cool, and weird, and scary and also, fun to do this. But then I end up by myself for a few days and I start to rethink that plan.

I guess I can’t really compare Irving, Texas to Stockholm or some random Greek Island, but I do have to say that sometimes I get insanely, overwhelmingly lonely on the road. I can’t really say it is one place over the other, because I have spent too much time in other places (even horrible places) and not become too lonely. I travel to so many weird, sometimes desolate places for work that I just try to find the beauty there, and usually there is something – at least one thing – that I can call beautiful.

But Irving, Texas. It’s awful here. It’s been hot, it’s been muggy, and today it is raining AND hot and muggy. I am trapped in the Four Seasons wishing my guts out that I could leave right now for the airport. It’s dry here, meaning you can’t buy a bottle of wine at the store. You can’t buy a bottle of wine at the grocery store! This is the 21st century, people! What’s next, no pudding?

Thankfully I was able to scam a couple of open bottles left over from a tasting yesterday, otherwise I probably would have called the airline and paid the hundred bucks to get out of here as soon as possible.

Oh, you can get a glass of wine at the Four Seasons, but it is $10 for a glass of Whitehaven Sauvignon Blanc ($7.50? I think, at The Vine) AND they tack a 17% service charge on every bill. Now, I totally would have tipped more than that anyway, but the fact that they add it and then leave a space for “additional gratuity” just galls me to no end.

Anyhow. It’s not all that bad here if you like staying in a sprawling business park type setting. Sometimes people say “oh, it’s so cool you get to travel for work.” Yeah, sometimes. But then there are those times when you are trapped in a Holiday Inn Express with no car and nothing around you and are forced to watch Jon Benet Ramsey’s “killer” fly from Long Beach to Boulder Colorado over, and over, and over.

I guess I could read. But places like this make me so brain dead that I find myself reading the same paragraph over, and over, and over like it’s the same CNN loop entrenched firmly in my brain.

It’s not what I expected, really, but there is this: I never got Texans, and they’ll never get me.

I’ve been having hardware problems, and now I have an ulcer. However, I can’t not post something, so here you go.

The new carry-on rules are also a bitch.

While there is something to be said for our happy go lucky ways over here in America, I sometimes wish the Italian postal service would come over here and take over. I do, I really do. I am kicking myself for saying that right now, but I think the Italian postal service might be doing it right. And we might be doing it wrong.

Today I was in the post office, waiting to mail one package, and this woman in front of me has: two shoe boxes, one shipping box that holds one of the shoe boxes, and a roll of tape. She proceeds to the counter, where she wonders out loud how she can get both shoe boxes in one shipping box, so she can save some money.

The ever efficient postal worker somehow manages to stick both shoe boxes into the shipping box, but there are numerous open spaces that will have to be taped up to make the thing shippable. I am thinking already, the postal worker has the patience of a saint.

So then the woman says how she is worried the box won’t make it, and the postal worker tells her, well, tape it up. Great! The customer says. I brought tape! She breaks out her roll of packing tape and HANDS IT TO THE POSTAL WORKER. Tape it up! She said.

Can you believe this shit? The postal worker did it. She sat there for – I kid you not – fifteen minutes and taped up this box that had all kinds of openings around the sides because it wasn’t the right sized box. Then, there was a long discussion about priority mail ($9.50) vs. parcel post ($7 something or other.) It went on for decades. Finally the customer decided on parcel post because, TIME WASN’T REALLY AN ISSUE FOR HER.

Can you imagine this happening in an Italian post office? NO. I would love to see someone go into an Italian post office and hand the clerk a roll of tape and ask them to tape their box up. Ha ha ha… I would oh, so love to see that. Instead, the clerk would cooly light a cigarette, blow it into the customer’s face, and tell them to fuck off. AS THEY SHOULD.

I still think that post office worker has the patience of a saint, but I don’t think I should be paying for it. Pack your own parcels, biyatch! OK, I am done now.

Interesting thing, love. What else could have possessed me to get in my car, drive downtown, pay $10 for parking, and enter a venue full of fourteen year olds, for an eleven song set? Oh yeah, Britt Daniel.

It was fun. Basically, I was the oldest and tallest person in my area, which is sort of a bonus. I actually let the pygmy girls that were standing next to me go in front of me, I felt so bad. I mean, they were teensy. I guess this is why I don’t like Death Cab for Cutie – all the nine year olds are into them.

Whatever. I got me forty-five minutes or so of some prime Spoon. I was on the rail in the same spot (well almost – I was actually quite a bit closer) that I procured at Radiohead, but at this show, I didn’t have to fight for it. I was so sober that I wrote down the set list:

The Beast and Dragon, Adored
Don’t Make me a Target (new song – Target? Whatever. I love it.)
My Mathematical Mind (FUCKKKKKKKK)
The Way We Get By
Rhythm & Soul? Another new song…
Paper Tiger
Stay Don’t Go
They Never Got You
I Turned my Camera On
I Summon You
Fitted Shirt

Let me just say right here that the band was totally into it and happy and Britt was fucking drop dead awesome. The man is a superstar just waiting to happen, but I kind of hope it doesn’t because that would ruin everything. I have to say the highlight was They Never Got You. They just go on and on in that song, it is orgasmic. I am serious. Brett got down on his knees so many times I thought I would die. It was short, but oh-so-sweet.

Death Cab for Cutie came out and played Fitted Shirt with the band. The crowd went ballistic. I left right after Spoon, and as I was leaving a security guard said, “if you leave, you can’t come back.” I said “I don’t care!” To which he replied “ya’all came for SPOON, didn’t you?” So I guess I wasn’t the only one.

I sometimes have a hard time justifying my obsessions, but THIS ONE IS WORTH IT. Believe me.

The good news: in a couple of hours I’ll be seeing THIS.

The bad news. I’ve got a rippen’ cold. I don’t even feel like partying. I am even going to DRIVE to the venue. Me, drive to a SHOW!

Doubt I’ll be staying for Death Cab for Cutie – even when I had the energy it didn’t sound that appealing.

I am bringing my camera in hopes of getting some shots of Britt. I don’t think they are anti at that Bayside place, at least they weren’t when Radiohead was there.

I wish I could be more excited but I just feel too yucky. But, there is the chance that the exhilaration will cure me. The Britt Daniel cure. Bring it on.

Actually, I am starting to get excited. Really really excited. But I am not going to wear my Poptarticus T-shirt because I am just too scared. And I am too sick to stalk. Maybe this is a good thing.

Something a little crazy happened yesterday. I have a six-CD changer in my car, but for the past few weeks I have been jumping around from Radiohead’s The Bends to Spoon’s Kill the Moonlight (sometimes I listen to “Jonathan Fisk” over and over just so I can listen to Britt’s little moan at the beginning) and Eels’ Beautiful Freak, ignoring the other CDs in there, pretty much. So yesterday I am driving around San Diego, a beautiful Saturday morning, and Takk comes on. After one minute, maybe two, of listening, I was suddenly gripped by this overwhelming sense of sadness. It was, well, almost crippling, and I almost had to pull over. Instead I kept driving, all over OB, stopping at stop signs and sitting there not knowing what to do and what the hell this was all about.

For a while I played with it in my mind. Just like everyone else, I am worried and scared and horrified by what is going on in the world, but it wasn’t that. I am really super bummed that I probably can never take wine or water on an airplane anymore and I am really not looking forward to flying through London in October if I have to check my cameras and carry my passport around in a plastic bag. But this is not freaking me out so bad I can’t breathe.

So finally it dawned on me. Takk. Nancy. Duh.

Nancy Lytle died suddenly a year ago last Thursday, and I wrote about it, but it was an angry piece, and I pulled it down. I think about Nancy all the time, and of course thought about her Thursday night as I sipped on many glasses of wine at the Vine (always the self-medicator, me.) But the sense of loss and sadness that gripped me yesterday was so overwhelming, and it was Takk that brought it on. Because one day after Nancy died I drove to Hollywood to see Sigur Ros at the Avalon, and heard those songs for the first time – the record wasn’t even out yet.

The music in my car brought me back to a grief a year old. It was the craziest thing. The heart, the mind. Crazy. Once I understood, I forced myself to listen to the entire record, and I drove all the way over to Pacific Beach and back. I drove and listened and tried to process it. It was a major relief when it was done and The Bends came back on.

I really, really miss Nancy. I am crying right now. But Brian has promised to play The Eraser and Gimme Fiction at the Vine later, because it is Sunday. And that is something to look forward to.

This just in – Cat Power is coming to Brick by Brick on August 31!

To all my San Diego readers – this is going to be an awesome show. Well, we hope it will be. It certainly has the potential. Tickets just went on sale and they won’t be around for long – GO! GO!

It’s gonna be intimate… sweet.

It’s time to move on.

Spoon is coming! And we all know what that means. Britt Fucking Daniel.

All I want to do until Tuesday is listen to Spoon and watch videos of Britt Daniel on youtube.

I get goosebumps. He’s so hot. HE’S SO HOT. I love him. I promise not to do anything crazy like stalk him. Maybe.

In just over a month, my mother and I will be taking off for Spain again. Our first few days, we will be in Galicia, the northwest corner of the country. Intentionally set forest fires are burning the region up right now.

Isn’t it weird how, as a traveler, everything seems so much closer? We are going to be there, so we will see the devastation, instead of just hearing about it. Kind of like when we went in 2004 right after the Madrid bombings.

I have this feeling about Galicia – I don’t know how to explain it, except I feel like I am going to love it there in a very special way. I know I will love La Rioja and the Picos de Europas and the Sierra de Grazalemas too, but it is really and truly Galicia that seems to be calling me. Why is that? I even looked at property on-line when me and my mom first decided to go there.

It’s a troubled area. This is something that I have to always tell myself, after first-hand experience. I wanted to move to Italy SO BAD and I finally did and I can tell you, living the reality is not living the dream. So all these dreams about Galicia are, well, just dreams. Dreams coming out of some dark, yet instinctive, part of my brain. The romantic part, for sure. It’s weird how we latch onto places in our subconscious. At least us dreamers do.

So the fires burn, very close to where we will be, and I am very safe over here in Ocean Beach while all this craziness happens everywhere else.

I have been reading this blog to get ready for my adventures over there. And I am worried about a place I have never been and never even thought about until a year ago. Is that weird, or what?