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?

Today was Mr. Brian O’Loughlin’s birthday. I can’t say much more than: it was immense.

We drank so much good wine it was obscene. Also I ate half a ham sandwich. I’m not gonna use that word. I’M NOT GONNA USE THAT WORD.

Oh, whatever. I can’t help it. It was AWESOME. Happy Birthday Brian!

I dreamed about Britt again! Happy Friday to ME!

I think I dreamed about him because last night I couldn’t sleep because it was so hot, so I got to thinking about I might go down to Bayside where Radiohead played last month and Spoon is opening for Death Cab for Cutie next month. I guess it’s an indication that I am not as in love with Britt Daniel as I was last summer, that I was possibly thinking of NOT going to next month’s show. The thing is, Spoon is opening, and the tickets are expensive, and what if they only play for half an hour or something? I have been trying, HARD, to get into Death Cab for Cutie but I am finding it difficult. Though maybe they are really awesome live. Anyway, last night I was like, OF COURSE I have to go and then I have to go out to the buses and see if I can find Britt Daniel. Like, screw Death Cab for Cutie, I am just going to do some stalking. But what would I do if I actually MET him? Uh, hey Britt, can you please sign my Poptarticus T-Shirt? Yes I am THAT Poptarticus, the one who writes about stalking you. Not the Poptarticus that is on that Reality TV Message Board or the one on the Marching Band Forum or the one who likes Soccer. THEY are imposters, while I pay $9.95 a month for my name. So can you sign it?

Anyway that is probably just the kind of fool I would make of myself. And this is probably why I had the dream.

In my dream, I was at the South by Southwest Music Conference, in a giant convention hall, and Spoon played a couple of songs. Then some other stuff happened but I can’t remember what, and then Britt played two songs, solo. He was right there and then Ladytron was going to play, so nobody cared about Britt anymore, they only wanted to see Ladytron. It was then I realized I wasn’t wearing a shirt. Oops. Some chick from the Ladytron group gave me a Ladytron sticker and I put it on my arm. But I was really bummed because I didn’t care about the sticker or Ladytron, I just wanted to see Britt.

So then I ended up in his room. Don’t you LOVE dreams? I was in his hotel room, and he had nailed his own pictures over the pictures that were in there. Not pictures of himself, but pictures of other stuff. Nailed them in! Then I was sitting on this long couch next to Celeste, my best friend from high school, and Britt’s parents. Thank god Britt’s parents showed up because without them inviting me, I would surely have been arrested as a stalker. We were all sitting on one long couch when Britt came in and sort of just looked at us. At that point I sort of wished the parents weren’t there, just to see what would happen, but then a very pretty blond girl in a sundress came in. The girlfriend, presumably. She sat down next to me. “Are you happy?” She asked. “Yes,” I said. But then I said, “no, I’m not that happy. Are you happy?” She said yes. “No you aren’t, we all think we are happy, but we really aren’t. We just think of things to make us forget we are unhappy.” She just looked at me.

So, I dreamed about him, but nothing will ever compare to the magic of that first dream, the one that I can still remember and that was almost one year ago. I went back to the conference after I left his room, and it was raining, and as I entered the hall I thought, I gotta start a label.

I’ve been wanting to do this for oh, so long.

Novocaine for the soul
You’d better give me something
To fill the hole
Before I sputter out

ANYWAY. It’s been awhile, mostly it’s been kind of crazy around here. Not really crazy so much as HOT and just, well, SUMMER. It seems that summer sort of takes away from introspection. Summer and introspection don’t really go together, do they? Plus my apartment is a little sweatbox and I can’t hang out in it for too long. Though, it has sort of cooled down a little.

Summer. It seems as if time really accellerates when summer comes. There is, well, just so much going on, and it makes everything fly by. I highly recommend writing a blog, since you can actually go back to weeks or months or years prior and see what the hell you did. Did I spell accellarate right? Fuck.

Summer is sweat, the crack of the bat, the feel of something cold on your tongue when you are hot, sand in the bathtub, too much energy, not enough energy, not enough real sleep. Because sleeping in the heat is way hard, of course. Corn. Summer is also, corn.

I think I have been spending too much time at the Vine. But it is really fun down there.

And tomorrow I am going to see Muse at SOMA. I have mixed feelings about this show, but only because I truly hate SOMA. How about this: SOMA IS THE WORST LIVE VENUE IN SAN DIEGO. There, now I will get at least fifteen google hits a day. It is really an awful place to see a show, but I really want to see Muse, even though compared to The Eraser Muse’s new record Black Holes and Revelations sounds sort of superfluous and overambitious. ME: the new minimalist. All because of Thom Yorke!

Well, it can’t be anything but good since I am so scared of it. I do love that crazy Muse.

The other night I dreamed about a friend I lost about a year ago, because of a stupid misunderstanding and also, the cruel manipulations of someone else. I can’t believe it has been a year, and it is weird that I dreamed about him now. Mostly because I have had time to get over it, and with the shit that is going on in the world today, I just have to say: there is no room, or reason, in the world for this kind of meaningless bullshit. Seriously. We should all just concentrate as much as possible on the positive as we can right now. There is absolutely no room in the universe for any kind of negativity. Did I spell negatevity right? Fuck.