Baconton

11-23-2008
/
16:46 EST

Today we're headed down to New York to play two shows and I'm buying a small diaphragm  condensing microphone from a stranger in Queens that's going to venture to Brooklyn to sell the thing to me. I have excitement in me for this. The Belly Club is playing with us at the Surreal Estate and there's another gig to play today at a salon of Ryland's friend Thomas. I'm not sure where it is exactly but I'll find out as soon as I get there

Bennington's just fine from what I experienced. The kids do have the capacity to be out of their minds just like any other kids. I'm going on a date with a wonderful girl, Becki, on Wednesday in New York and then another gal I met in the bathroom last night, Annabelle, is coming to the gig tonight. I'm mostly enthused about the date.

Bennington is incredibly isolated feeling and seems like an odd spread out summer camp, the way the residency halls are laid out. There are a lot of kids here I met who are from the west coast and many who are from Portland specifically. The arts building is amazing and it feels like it's just a factory of cool crafts that come out of it. The theatre kids are really nice too. As our tour guide, Russel, was showing us through the halls we stopped buy some guy doing some art stuff but we caught him smoking a pipe, which was a bit awkward for him but hilarious for us. We laughed about it... then Hemmingway punched me in the mouth.

We eventually made it to Andrew's house. Andrew used to live at the Department of Safety with Ryland a few years back. He lives here in Bennington and goes to the college here majoring in theater? I believe that's correct. I ended up offending one of the five people sitting at the dining table in their house be talking about stealing bikes. The fellow I offended was (from what I was told) not to pleased with me since his impression was that I stole bikes and his friends have had bikes stolen. First of all, I don't steal bikes but more importantly: No one in Bennington College locks up their bike. Fels was the hall we were staying at. We walked outside to head to the car, actually did contemplate stealing bikes but then returning them later, and I noticed that there was an-entire-effing-rack-filled-up-with-unlocked-bikes! I'm sorry but if there are any social norms that I adhere to, it's the one that involves me locking up my bike. I began the classic argument of "Well if you didn't [i.e. lock up your bike] then you were asking for [i.e. theft]." Honestly, that did not make too much sense to the fellow on account of how the social atmosphere of the college operates.

Weird.

I have three weeks until I'm done with the tour. I think Ryland was going to record a band but I'm not sure at the moment. If this does happen, I'm probably going to hang around and learn how to fool with that stuff and set myself on a short path of pseudo-sound engineer pretentiousness. I'll probably leave out the pretentiousness but it would be wonderful to acquire some more common sense on that facet of my life to which I lack some in. Maybe after that I'll work on my relationship common sense or something. Since we do indeed have three weeks, I need to read some books that I brought with so I can mail them somewhere and not have to worry about taking them with me after the tour. The excess weight is nonsense. Also, I'm going to try to learn French in three weeks; the entire language. It's going to be rough but I figure it's not that hard if I already know Spanish. Some audio-learning would be a grand idea since I still have my iPod. I've wanted to learn it since I left the Tri-Cities anyway,

The northeastern coast is beautiful. The more middle of nowhere towns are still depressing but the sprawled out country houses seem to look very nice if not decent. The countryside is stupendous and the way the roads overlook the small valleys are marvelous. I'm mainly talking about northern New York and the bit of Massachu-chu-chusetts that we drove through. I would give it about an eight of ten on being hillactously pleasant. Also, both Massachusetts and Vermont get a high rating in ridiculously cold.

I've got to come up with a game plan for the next three days though. I forgot that thanksgiving was on Thursday so that probably kills a free day. Ryland, Lisa, and myself are going to be eating Thanksgiving dinner with my Uncle Russell and Aunt Rosemary's friends pad in Manhattan, which should be pretty fun. I'm glad that came about because there wasn't really a Thanksgiving plan when we hopped on the tour but it kind of rolled out that way.