We are in Ensenada, and I can’t wait to get back on the ship. Xingolati is AWESOME. We are having such a blast… fellow OBcian Ed Decker is on the ship, and so are some other people from OB. It’s pretty weird seeing all these familiar faces in such a bizarre environment.

The party at the hotel Thursday night was kind of lame but boy did they make it up to us yesterday. Everybody pretty much boarded and started drinking, and the vibe (one of total fun and complete abandon) intensified as the night went on. Very early on I found the Champagne Cart. Just after, I learned that while a glass of Moet & Chandon costs $15 a glass, while an entire bottle of Nicolas Feuillatte champagne costs only $35 a bottle! So this has become my drink of choice so far, besides all the red wine I brought of course. You can buy a bottle and pretty much walk wherever on the ship, check some music out, then go to the next place. I tried to explain to some dude when I was buying my second bottle, as he was getting the shaft for the glass of Moet. “You had to go and spring numbers on me” he said. Oh well.

There is music all over the ship. The best band last night was Mutaytor. FOUR drummers! Fantastic looking people doing crazy things with burning hula hoops and shit. Tonight they are playing again, but at the same time as the Flaming Lips. Still, I might have to go check it out again.

There are four guys staying next door and yesterday while we were unpacking they were all out in the hall making a ruckus. One of them is this guy Chris who was already completely hammered by 4:30 or whenever that was. I kept seeing him all night, and so it has become my mission to photograph that guy all over the boat in whatever state he is in. I got a lot of shots – he was EVERYWHERE, with his silver glitter fedora. Then this morning I went out into the hall at 8:00 AM to go find some coffee. The hall of our floor was totally trashed – plates and glasses strewn about, towels in heaps – and who is walking toward me but Chris, doing the walk of shame right in front of my eyes. “Keep walking” I told him. “I’m gonna get your picture.” Little does he know he just gave me the best shot of the trip so far.

Also I am photographing everything we eat and the best one was last night’s 1:00 AM snack of chili, french fries, tator tots and spinach quiche. Yum!

Seriously, so far this has been a really great time and everyone on the ship is totally into it, even the crew who I think have never worked a cruise like this one. Our steward, Yusef, has already come out and told me he played guitar in a Metallicaesque band back home in Indonesia. Everyone who works on the boat is incredibly nice. All the officers are Italian and man is it hard to resist a guy in a white uniform. They were all out groovin’ to Mutaytor last night.

Two more days of this? AWESOME.

Manchester England’s Doves will always bring back Sicily to me. Back in 2000, when I went on my solo trip there, I spent many a night listening to their first record Lost Souls, and on this last trip, I was listening to the third release Some Cities. I don’t know what it is about Doves and Sicily, but I do know their layered, guitar driven sound comes through perfectly on my little speakers in whatever dinky hotel room I may be in. They were, and will be, the soundtrack I always remember from both those trips.

It’s really weird how the music business works. I remember when Doves were first being talked about, back in 2000, and I remember that a new band called Coldplay was also one of the new hot bands. It was like, Doves and Coldplay. They were equal right then, but I liked Doves better right from the start, and most people I played both for agreed with me. But one day I was in a supermarket somewhere in Sicily, and what was playing on the canned sound system but friggin’ “Yellow,” Coldplay’s first uber-hit. I was like, whoa, these guys are being played in a supermarket in SICILY. What up with that? Then at the October 2000 Radiohead show at the Greek Theater in LA, all the cars had Coldplay flyers on them after the show. So, there was some serious marketing going on behind Coldplay. But why Coldplay and not Doves?

Last night, I saw Doves live down at the House of Blues. It’s been almost six years that I’ve been listening to them, I have all their records, but man oh man was I not prepared for this show. They totally ROCKED. It was really and truly one of the best shows I’ve seen all year, and I have seen a lot of shows. The sound was incredible and the band just totally tore it up, smoothly and professionally. And it was LOUD. It was so awesome that I wanted to go and have sex with one of them. And I am not like this, generally (with bands, anyway.) I’ve seen Coldplay, and seriously, there is no comparison, for me at least. And there I was, in shoelicking distance, not in Section You Are Fucked at a huge arena. I’ll repeat – AWESOME, AWESOME, AWESOME.

So today I was sort of recovering from that. I am almost always hungover after a show, but I am starting to think it is all the energy I expend that is killing me in the end. Or maybe I am just dying slowly from happiness.

Tomorrow, I head to Long Beach for the pre-Xingolati party. Bags packed, hair colored, it’s gonna be an experience for sure.

In just a few days, I’ll be on the high seas off Baja on a ship full of, one would hope, crazy people. Xingolati. I can’t imagine anyone wouldn’t be crazy to shell out this kind of dough to be on a boat for three days, because when you are on a boat, you can’t get off. I know because one time I went on a cruise and I swore, never again. Well, just goes to show you, never say never again.

I am getting ready. I’ve got a crazy wardrobe picked out, with almost all the Betsey Johnson I own, and my purple suede boots, and my purple glittery weird stretchy boots. My new Sigur Ros hoodie, and my yellow Esther Williams bathing suit. Plus four bottles of good wine and some earplugs.

Xingolati is a big party, but it is on a Carnival ship, and that is the cruise ship I went on before. I can’t even tell you how vile and repulsive the food was on that cruise. But I ain’t going for the food, I am going to have fun, listen to music, wear clothes I never get to wear anymore, and party with my #1 uber-bud Colleen. Still, I will be reporting back on everything, even the food. You can expect a full report of what I remember, I promise. I’ll even try to post from the ship.

Also, my brother’s wife Carrie is due to have her baby this weekend, and I am getting really pent up and excited about it. I can’t wait until he is old enough to take to shows and I can be “cool auntie Shannon who buys her nephew rock ‘n’ roll hoodies.” Jay and Carrie, if you are reading this, I will be thinking about you all the time and can’t wait for baby Ryan! I love you guys!

This week my home away from home, the OB Vine, was written up in the Night and Day section of the San Diego Union Tribune. It’s about time they (the newspaper, not the bar) got hep, but whatever. Also, let’s just hope I always have my favorite barstool. It would really suck if The Vine got so busy they didn’t care about me anymore.

Also, slowtrav.com got a big mention in an article about, well, SLOW, in the Toronto Globe & Mail today. I’ve got one thing to say, besides congrats. STEVE COHEN, MANY PEOPLE KNOW YOUR NAME. For sure I do!

Other than that, tomorrow I am working at the San Diego Little Italy Festival. I thought I might be getting a cold but I think it was maybe just exhaustion. Someone accidentally posted Britt Daniel’s personal email address on a message board. And I made it way past the 3rd without mentioning his name!

I’d never have the guts to email him though. I’m such a pussy.

Yo. My storefront is up on CafePress. Check it out. It’s almost Christmas, you know.

Once in a while, one of those days comes along, where everything clicks into place perfectly and becomes a fantastic memory. Yesterday was one of those days. Yesterday, the music gods and the karma police were all smiling on me in a big, big way. I’m so happy that I am so impulsive and such a childish fool. Because if I wasn’t, I would have missed one of the best times of my life.

I’m not going to get into too much detail about how I got there, because I already wrote that and it was a dissertation. So let me just say I arrived at the show with two people I didn’t really know, after quite a few emails, several phone calls, and a bottle of wine poolside at the Best Western on Highland Boulevard in Hollywood, equipped with a ticket for a seat in the second row in the pool section of the friggin’ Hollywood Bowl for a band that I totally worship, Sigur Ros. When just that morning I’d been ticketless. That is the shortened version of my dissertation.

My new friends Lloyd and David had seats in the 200 section of the garden boxes, one of which was previously mine until the pool ticket materialized. It was really trippy to be around people after all those solo Hollywood shows of the summer. It was especially awesome to be with David, because he worships Sigur Ros too. We all ate french onion cheese spread and crackers and watched the opening band, Anima. Then I went down to the pool seat. Being very close to the stage in a huge venue is a pretty cool experience, and I sat crammed in with a predominately Asian audience while a now familiar scrim was lifted. It was awesome – as much as I didn’t want to leave the garden box, it was pretty spectacular being right below the stage. It was LOUD – loud as I could want, perfect, not too loud but really really loud. The band was so close I could see expressions and all the Asians lifted their cellphones constantly to take photos. Two girls in front of me – in the front row of the entire venue, got up and left after the second song, then came back around the fourth and proceeded to have a lengthy conversation. Me and the Japanese guy next to me both shushed them at the same time, then looked at each other and giggled, and at that moment I completely forgave him for his incessant cellphone photo taking. The light in his eyes when he smiled was all love for this band, and all love for anyone who loves the same way. It’s one of the best things about music, that light.

Eventually I went back up to the box to give my ticket to Lloyd, who seemed as hesitant as I was to leave the garden box. “Dude,” I said. “You HAVE to go down there. You can see Anima’s BREASTS from there.” I so did not mean this in any sexual or sexist way, but only as an observation of the eye/back of the stage where Anima were playing violins ratio. While the garden box was close, the pool seat was imminent. In my excitement telling Lloyd all this, the woman in the box in front looked back at me, and I looked back at her with an I’m so sorry I should shut the fuck up look. She smiled, and then, again, there was that light. So all of you readers who hate L.A. crowds, take note. Certainly there are some pretty lame ass people at an L.A. show. But I think we always look for the bad ones, when really, there are people like you and me EVERYWHERE. We just don’t see them too clearly unless we really look hard. It is just too much easier to notice the jerks.

Lloyd took off and I took his seat in the box. As much as I loved the pool, the sound, and the vibe, in the garden box was so much better. The band sounded lush and intense, everything bouncing off trees and the sky and people, instead of confined in a indoor space like the Avalon or Copley Hall. David and I kept looking at each other with jaws dropped, even though we’d just both seen them two nights before. I can’t even describe how beautiful it was, but if you’ll listen to Bradley’s files, and imagine yourself in an almost perfect setting… he was in Boston and we are in Hollywood, but the set list is almost exactly the same. The feeling? Almost exactly the same. Almost.

I can have no complaints, since I had already seen the band twice; and I was so totally lucky all day with the navigation of tickets and seats and new faces, that I did not, possibly even could not, let dickheads in the audience bug me. But this is only because I saw the Avalon show and the Copley show, where for the most part the audiences were perfect. Having all that space around in a garden box also helped. There is much internet chatter about an incredible moment of silence during Sigur Ros’s “Vidrar Vel Til Loftarasa.” In Boston, as Bradley’s file shows, the silence was unbelievable. In my experiences at the Avalon and Copley, someone had to yell. But at the Hollywood Bowl, my god! There were not only people yelling but there was some freak black dude dancing by us that kept screaming “JOHN CAGE! JOHN MILTON CAGE!” Dude, this is so not about you, or John Cage. This is about Sigur Ros, their music, that silence, and our relation to both.

In the end though, freaky dancing guy just added to a perfect night. Just before the encore, Lloyd came back from the pool. “That was SO unbelievable,” he said. We both looked at David. “You have to go down there,” we said together. I had a sublime mixture of wine and joy running through my veins. There was a panorama of cellphones in the air, a sea of little lighted boxes. It was like a cellphone ballet on a perfect autumn night, danced to one of the best bands in the world.

Another thousand quiet wows. Another two hours of perfection. Thank you, Sigur Ros.

Last night was the Sigur Ros show at Copley Symphony Hall. It snuck up on me, getting back from my trip on Saturday, trying to re-enter a more still presence on Sunday, and trying to get caught up on Monday sort of took the anticipation out of it all. And it is especially weird these days to actually see a show AT HOME. Imagine, no three hour drives, no checking into hotels, no $35 “may as well go all the way” dinners.

Well. I’m still trying to stop the butterflies in my stomach from trying to break free, because that show was so beautiful that I have decided I must go to Hollywood tomorrow night, go through the drive, the hotel room, and the expensive dinner. Because there is no way Sigur Ros is going to play so close and in a place I totally love – the Hollywood Bowl, without me being there. No way no way no way.

I had an extra ticket to last night’s show, and ended up making a friend. I posted on Craigslist and Taunya responded, and we decided to go have some drinks and food (yes, expensive, but at least there was no hotel bill) before the show. She even lives in OB, and she even DROVE. So already karma is working some sweet magic here. We ate some truly rank tapas at a place called “La Gran Tapa” across from the Symphony hall, but the bottle of wine was good, a 2000 reserve Rioja that shall remain nameless due to wine holes in my brain. Taunya and I hit it off right away, so it was all good, and when we got to our seats she was very happy, as was I, at how close we were to the stage.

Since I’ve already seen Sigur Ros once this year, at the Avalon in Hollywood, I knew how awesome it was going to be, but I didn’t know the songs yet since their new record Takk had not come out. Now I’ve been listening to Takk for a couple of weeks, but even knowing the songs, I think I was equally blown away in both shows for different reasons. It was so weird being in a symphony hall. There were retired people acting as ushers who were so nice but clearly, didn’t get the music. There was a bar where I was shocked to find that there was no carding going on (later, when I went back, there was a LOT of carding going on – clearly the bartenders had a “talking to.”) It was difficult to have to sit in a seat the entire time. No one stood – ever. I think I am conditioned for movement at a show now. It was very hard to remain still. Maybe I need to take up mediation or something.

Yes I need to take up meditation. Because sitting there I just could not get my mind to shut up. I kept telling it SHUT THE FUCK UP but it wouldn’t. That’s why I have to go back tomorrow. Or at least this is the excuse I am giving myself.

I don’t really need any excuses. It was incredible. How does Jonsi do that with his voice? The highest, cleanest, notes sustained for so long the people in the audience couldn’t take it. One MUST shriek “whoo” after a minute or so. Well, I didn’t – I just whispered many “wows.” Because there are two kinds of music lovers – the whoo shriekers and the wow whisperers. Actually there are three – there is also the non-listener but I don’t think there were too many of those at this show.

One of the truly fantastic things about the internet is that you can relive a moment that happened 21 hours ago. Like here, where you can listen to Sigur Ros’s Boston show, thanks to Bradley. Like him, I have a hard time putting it all into words, but you can LISTEN. So, if you will, scroll down a bit and find the show, and at least listen to Vidrar Vel Til Loftarasa. This is the song I wrote about on my Avalon entry where there was a long moment of silence until some guy whoo hooed. Last night, there were quite a few whoo whoos. But at this Boston show that Bradley recorded, no whoo hoos. Dead silence in the middle of the song. It is SO fantastic. Thank you, thank you Bradley for recording that show because right now I am listening to it, crying, remembering it all. Readers, take advantage of this gift, regardless of what kind of music you are into right now. My god.

Sigur Ros lyrics are sometimes an invented language called Hopelandic. Their music breaks my heart, even if I don’t know what it all means. Breaks my heart and mends it later. Then fills it. At the show last night a ring of light strands hit the stage vertically and the effect was one of a spaceship coming down to take the band away. Later, white birds flew everywhere, but they were light birds. It’s no wonder I want to go back tomorrow.

And now, a more silent Wow.

A long time ago, I was in love with a man. Really in love, and that man became my first husband. There was a time when I was returning to this man, this love, on a plane, and on the way home I kept pressing my shoes into the floor to drive the plane home faster. Out the window, there was a view of that ethereal New Mexican snow. But I could not see anything except what was waiting for me at the end of the runway.

That was quite a few years ago, and that love is gone. But I’ll never forget driving my heels into that airplane floor. Driving myself into the future. How is it that I forget so much, but remember a pair of thrashed leather boots and a frayed carpet? The smell of cheap wine and air freshener? The feeling of that pull, that agony of waiting to see if what you fell in love with is still there?

This is not about my old love and my failed marriage. This is about my home. Today I drove home from Santa Barbara pushing the floorboards of my car, to get home, after two and a half weeks away. What is it about this place that replaces the need for human love?

It’s an interesting thought, though not a new one. Places rather than people dominate an awful lot of literature. I feel I may bore people not familiar with Ocean Beach by going on about the way the sea air smells, or the way the palm trees blot out the ocean fog if you make a loose fist over your line of vision. I figure people won’t understand when I tell them how I can be hurtling slowly through space, and how that disorients and ungrounds me, but when I get back to OB the sound of a skateboard or even the sight of Sky the bartender at the Vine calms me and brings me back into the real world. The world outside, the world where I have to be “on,” the world where it is dangerous to not be alert, driving eighty miles an hour in a land of constant danger, vanishes fairly quickly here.

So. In my world, the one I have chosen to inhabit, the sun goes down and the sky is gray and pink. Palm trees sway against a hill full of expensive houses. I live down below, in a small bungalow I can’t ever imagine leaving for good. This place chose ME.

I am so lucky, to come home to this, and to feel the way I do. And that is my message after a long trip. Is this intense love permanent? Probably not. But while it is here, I am going to embrace it. I love you, Ocean Beach.

I just wrote this really long and boring entry of the last ten days – a marathon of gluttony. Then it all crashed and I lost it. That’s the universe telling me something there.

So, I am at my brother Jay’s house in my old hometown of El Granada. His wife Carrie is about to have my nephew. Yesterday was the family shower. I won a box of See’s Candy. Dangerous, since I’ve got another six nights of motel rooms to go and we all know that calories don’t count when you are on the road.

I was thinking all kinds of poetic stuff to write about last night in bed but now I can’t remember what is was. I am headed to Paso Robles today. It’s making me thirsty. Plus watching my brother watch football is making me crave my mom’s clam dip. The mind is a trippy thing. Like I haven’t been eating enough. Plus my dreams have been insane. Even more than usual.

Home Saturday. Then I can write more. Fall is here, and when I get home I am going to make some soup.

I am in San Francisco. Yesterday it was cold. Today it is hot. So I brought something with me.

I’ve been on the road for just under a week but it seems like so much longer. Wednesday I drove on a two lane road from Lancaster to just south of Bakersfield. One might think this would be a hellish, boring road. But really, there is something very special about that part of the world. It’s special because there is nothing built there yet. It’s a hot and wasted land, but with wildflowers as far as the eye can see and an ominous mountain range in the distance.

I was talking to someone in The Vine a couple of weeks ago, about the magic of Coalinga. Coalinga is a nothing town off the I-5, but there is a motel there way off the interstate that I sometimes stay at when I have to pass through. From the door of your room you can see the sun set over the mountains to the west, and though it is hot, and desolate, it is beautiful. It has a lonesome, unnoticed kind of beauty. Like the highway from Lancaster to just under Bakersfield.

Driving along Highway 99, you enter each town with it’s mile high signs for McDonalds, Motel 6 and Chevron, and you cringe. In Coalinga, you look one way and see the mile high signs, but you look another and you see a desert sunset. In the Central Valley of California, it is pretty bleak. You’ve got to seek out the hidden beauty, no matter how elusive. If you can do this, you can make a boring road meaningful and colorful.

Anyway. I am in San Francisco, staying in the flat I lived in the last four years I lived here. It’s like going home, but now, after four years away, it’s like going home in a real-time memory. Yesterday, after a marathon slowtrav party (more on this later, like tomorrow) I got into the city and walked up the wood staircase to the flat. My old roomies Leigh and Laurie were there, and just happened to have a bottle of sparking wine on ice. When you live with someone for four years, it is beyond familiar, and that was how it was yesterday, walking in there.

Then they had to go to rehearsal for the new play they are doing called Mudd’s Women which is based on the 4th episode of Star Trek. Leigh is playing Captain Kirk and Laurie is directing and is one of the women. Based on this alone you can probably tell how fun and cool Leigh and Laurie are.

Left alone in the flat, I walked around a while absorbing my past. Everywhere, there are things to look at in that flat – my roommates are consumate kitsch collectors and fabulous designers. Even when I lived there I use to look at everything all the time. I would have just stayed, drank some wine, and ordered up some takeout, but there was something else going on that I had to at least try to check out, and that was the Arcade Fire show at the Warfield Theater. I did not have a ticket, but I had to try to get in, and first I had to eat. So I headed out into a windy and cold San Francisco night.

My old home! What a trip to walk down to Church and Market in footsteps I’ve already walked in a thousand times. I had a dozen places I wanted to eat, many dishes I miss and want to eat while I am here. I ended up at Chow on Church Street, because there is this weird thread on pizza on the slowtalk message board and I just needed to eat pizza out of a woodfired oven really, really bad.

It was magical in Chow. It’s a life I no longer lead, but for the first time in four years, I missed San Francisco. Sitting at the counter, watching the staff with their crazy hair and nose rings, the whole place packed and crackling on a happy Sunday evening, drinking a glass of Banfi Corvina while waiting for my pizza… it was, well, like putting your cold foot into a warmed, furry slipper, one that has been stuck under the bed for a while. It only took a second to realize who the guy sitting next to me, pounding a Thai noodle salad, was. A bartender at a place called the Orbit Room down the street, a guy I always had a little crush on, a muscle car type with a slight lisp. Once, he carded me, and when he read my ID he said I was a couple of months older than him. This was years ago, and I still know exactly who he is. And he is now 40, just like me. This kind of familiarity with someone you don’t even know could only happen after living in the same place for fifteen years. I was over San Francisco, but now, I suddenly miss it. I love Ocean Beach, but I don’t have that same familiarity there, especially with strangers, if that makes any sense.

So yes. The cold Sunday evening, a wall of voices, and PJ Harvey playing loudly above that, even. Steam on the windows, the streetcar going by. This is San Francisco. This is really, really great. And suddenly I miss it.

Got on the F Line down to the Warfield, where my quest for an Arcade Fire ticket was unfruitful. It sucked – it was a scalpers market, with more buyers than sellers. I had a little sadness trio going with a really tall, skinny British guy and a long-haired nerdy type. The British guy told me he saw a woman hand over fifty bucks for a ticket, but then the guy just walked away without giving her the ticket. The nerdy guy kept saying “I can’t believe I am getting contempt from a SCALPER.” And there was some contempt, because they had us. I told one of them I’d pay fifty bucks and he contemped me. One dude walked by and had an extra ticket to sell at face value close to where I was standing and I was in the wrong spot so I didn’t get it. He made these two people flip a coin and it was brutal. The British guy came up to me and told me he was giving up. The streetcar was coming, and I gave up, too.

I gave up, and that is the only reason I am functioning today. So there is a bit of beauty in everything, even in missing an Arcade Fire show.

There is a particular thrill that goes along with seeing a band that you have seen a few times already. I guess this is why Deadheads exist. Well, maybe not. Maybe that is something else entirely. Maybe this is why Tori Amos fans exist. It definitely has something to do with Radiohead worship. Well, maybe not. Because lots of people who are into Radiohead have never seen a Radiohead show. Hmm. I’d better move on to last night’s Pink Martini show, because I’m in no shape to get into a philosophical discussion with myself.

Mark and I got to the Belly Up an hour before the show with a plan to eat and drink a little. When we got there, there was this long line around the building, and it was mostly made up of, well, not to be ageist, but it was made up of, like, a lot of older people. Nothing wrong with that, truly, but I was just surprised to see the 50-70 set coming on down for a Pink Martini show. After four shows, this was a new one for me. We were the youngest people there, I kid you not. Later I did see a couple of people in their mid-thirties and a twenty-something chick who was with her mother.

So when we pulled up and saw this, I was like, “how come they are all waiting here already?” I couldn’t imagine all of them would be securing a place in front of the stage. No, I reckoned they all wanted a seat. A SEAT, at a Pink Martini show. Well, I told Mark, cool for us, I won’t have any problem getting us to the rail when the show starts! I like to pretend I elbow people and use karate moves to get people out of my way, but of course that is all an act. Really, I just move with the stealth of an invisible warrior and wiggle through that way. I’m good at it.

We had an expensive, mediocre meal at the cafe in the club. The bartendress made a comment about the age of the crowd, and I was like, yeah, I know. “Why are they all waiting?” I asked her, knowing the answer. “Because they want a SEAT!” She said. At about quarter of eight I started getting those wonderful, uneasy ripplings in my stomach that I get when I know I’m going to see a good show. Mark told me he wasn’t expecting much, and how that was good, because no matter what it would be good, since he wasn’t expecting great. I was like, dude, you just have no idea. You have no idea what you are getting into. That’s why I can’t eat this last piece of calamari. My stomach’s all anxious. Here. EAT IT. The cool thing was, we still had some wine left and the cafe let us bring it into the club, and said come back for more any time! That is really dangerous – decent wine at a show plus Shannon equals hangover. That’s why I can’t have any philosophical discussions with myself right now. I should instead just eat a pot pie and go to bed.

Can’t though, before finishing this entry. We left the cafe and walked straight out to the stage. The front was taken up by groupies, but I had a nice spot right behind the front line with a totally unobstructed view. One good thing about an, eh, older crowd, besides them not being on the floor, thereby making more room for me, is that there are no really tall guys to obstruct the view. And this, my friends, is the A-1 worst thing about going to shows and trying to see – really tall guys. They are everywhere, or were everywhere, until last night.

There was no opening act, this was AN EVENING WITH PINK MARTINI, as I was told when I called the Belly Up to see what time they were going on. And they went on at something like 8:05. Damn! I always get a thrill when I see all those good looking dudes walk out (and there are MANY of them) and then, when China Forbes appears, I get all weak at the knees and start screaming “CHINA!” Last night I was not the only one. There were a few other women doing the same thing. And you know there has to be something special about China if you are screaming HER name when there are ten handsome guys on the same stage.

China, very simply, is a Chanteuse. She is also one of the most glamorous, riveting people I have ever laid eyes on. Furthermore, she is a kick-ass singer. Where would Pink Martini be without China? She is the glue that holds the whole thing together. The rest of the band might think differently, but from the view on the other side… man. I had to force myself to look away, even when all this other great stuff was going on. She’s got that kind of presence.

It was a great show, energetic and fun, with the whole sold-out club totally into it, sitting or not. There was a woman right in front of me who was SO into it that she kept bouncing on my feet and into my glass of wine. But, I was chill with that because I know how it is when you just can’t stop bouncing to Pink Martini, though, of course, I never bounce. I always thought of that as more a Deadhead thing. Mark kept saying, over and over, “this is SO cool. This is SO cool.” OK, here is the rundown: two horns, a guitar, a bass, a grand pianist (Thomas, the main PM dude), FOUR percussionists, and China. I feel I may be leaving something out… but you get the idea. They were all perfect, having fun in a tiny place after some way bigger shows. It’s difficult to put Pink Martini into a box, but it is sort of like showtunes meet Samba. And when it is live, it is really and truly a great fucking time.

I am still feeling the tingles… even with a hangover.