Tag Archives: vacation

plastic memories


Early morning was spent being slackers and playing more video games. I know it sounds silly to drive five hours to do what we do at home – but it’s good company that makes it all worthwhile. We’d drive 10 hours if it meant getting to be lazy slobs with Glass.

Breakfast was comprised of Pleasant Ridge Chili, a little stumble in joint near Glass’ old abode followed by a brisk walk down the street to walk off the fries covered with gravy and cheddar. (a local specialty).

A mere few blocks from breakfast was “The Earth Collectible Toy Mall”, which we popped into and subsequently got lost for an hour. Now I’m not talking tin robots from the 50′s. No sir… We’re talking the toys “we” grew up with…. Micronauts, Shogun Warriors, Star Wars figures, etc…. It was a nice walk down memory lane. I bought a playschool figure I remembered from my wee-youth.

Did some more record store poking and then took in Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind.. Cool story… A little too French for my tastes – but I need to watch it again.

stoner video game guys

In the evening we had dinner over at a couple of Glass’ friends’ house. A nice young married couple in the throws of their first child.

I didn’t get a nap before the evening so I was a little more drowsy and less animated, (and observant), than I like to be when being introduced to friend-in-laws. But they seemed to not mind the three strangers in their home. Chad declared, “Thems good people” as we pulled out of their driveway for home.

I’m not blogging, I’m crawling back into bed.

green

testing shoot

Yesterday morning was laid back and easy. I overcame (most) of my caffeine withdrawal jitters by running resolution tests between my camera and Glass’.

We were out and about by noon, first stopping by a great little pop-culture depository which calls itself a record store. The shop had a rather comprehensive designer toy section and a eclectic books section leaning heavy toward graphic design.

We got our shop on and then headed across the street to a new restaurant called “Pot Luck” – which seems to be a front for a catering operation. The food was delightful. A little shi-shi but not over the top.

Headed downtown and got to run around Contemporary Arts Center for a good hour and some change. The current special-ex is called“Beautiful Loosers”, a great show of “street art”. I didn’t know wheater to drool on the exhibit or the nice architecture.

Somewhere during the day – Glass got a call from a friend who works at the hipster video post-production house in town. They were looking for someone to be in a music video they’re working on who closely resembles an old haggard bum.

Glass graciously, and without taking offense, said he’d love to stop by so they could do some camera tests.

The production joint was one of those super wigged out, architect’s wet-dream projects, “fuck you look how much money we have” places I hadn’t seen the likes of since the 90′s in St. Louis. (*they’ve all since gone bankrupt in our town and have closed).

Despite the oppressive show of cool – I still couldn’t help but drool on the poured concrete industrial spankness of it all,… and kept my envious grumbling to a simple: “It’s nice to be bankrolled”

Glass got into “costume”, which meant slipping into the outfits he had pulled from his closet to bring along. They handed him a sandwich board to put on, later to be animated with changing symbolic messages, and took the test shots infront of a chroma-key green background.

Here’s the real tickler… The band the video is for is Bad Religon…. One of my favorite bands. (They were the hard fare on the otherwise melancholy Morrissey and faggy syth-pop music menu of my college-daze).

The coincidence was somewhat freaky.

We retired back to Chez-Glass for dinner: Cincinnati chili over spaghetti toped with Cheddar. *I packed my cholesterol pills.

The busy day had left us pooped and me feeling unworthy of Glass’ cool-factor. He tends to do that to me, but I can usually shake the creeping feelings of insecurity by reminding myself that he likes us right back.

In twenty four hours we have nearly eaten his entire kitchen stores and have trashed this once super-clean, if not a little anal, beautiful home.

Can’t blog – I’m going to clean up some before he gets up.

watch the video

watch the video

il-in-ky

family

I didn’t think we’d ever get out of town…. It’s always like that. The universe aligns and library returns, last minute bank deposits and kitty litter deficits make us leave about three hours later than we’d like.

We’ve traveled to Kevin’s family in Akron so many times, we’ve memorized the long tedious drive that is 70… So… we opted to take 64 to Cincinnati instead.

The trip was fine… Elise lent us Me talk pretty one day on CDs. Sedaris made the duller parts of the trip (Illinois and Indiana) much more bearable.

We’ve discovered two things though on the trek:

1) Indiana and its inhabitants are frightening.
2) Kentucky is underrated and beautiful.

We stopped at “Family Restaurant”, somewhere in Indiana… Jennifer, our chemically altered waitress, reacted like every fourth word our of our mouths was in Swahilian. I got my trucker chicken fried steak breakfast at any rate and it rocked.

We ventured off the path in Kentucky and found a state park to romp around in for a while until finally hitting Cincinnati at about 7:30PM.

chrisglass called down to us from his window and pointed to the small alley you have to go through to get up to his loft.

May the great hang-out commence.

Did a little X-Box live with and , sampled some Cinci-Pizza (shockingly good)… I crashed by midnight.

Crunchy-butt Glass doesn’t own a fucking coffee maker. A loft-warming gift of a French Press is in order.

I don’t know what we’re doing today. I’m sure whatever our host has in store for us will be fun.

I’m also sure I won’t blog about it.