hot in the city tonight
originally written 07.31.2002
it’s hot in the city tonight, but not in the fun way of the song that was on claire’s mix cd when all the kids in the house danced around and acted silly and just chilled out and had fun. it’s hot in the city in the way where you just feel like you’re swimming through the air – a slow crawl stroke making little progress toward land. maybe the swimming analogy is because of the humidity. i don’t know. it’s not so much the heat itself, it’s how it makes me feel – slow and dumb. or maybe that’s just the fatigue. i made it through my classes ok, and hacked together a bunch of stuff at work, finally finishing the documentation for the tools that i had written to make the new hires’ job a little easier. but, as soon as i got home, fatigue hit me like a sledgehammer, and i’ve been sort of sulking around the house since about 8 pm. it’s almost 10 now which means i should be able to go to sleep soon without fscking up my sleep cycle too much – not that it really matters – poor time alocation has made me into a bit of an insomniac lately anyway.
even the house seems fatigued. maybe it’s just empty. claire’s gone, shad just moved out, though i’ve still seen him a lot lately, he’s one of the few people i feel completely comfortable around these days, i just found out that paul’s gone to maine for 10 days. the rest of the house seems to be under some general malaise. adam slides quietly around the house in his normal unsettlingly serene way. matt just quit his job. katelynn’s cool, but to me she seems like the kind of person who’s got shit together but isn’t happy. strong enough to function but still struggling under some invisible burden. i’m alright i guess. not great, not poor. the jobs good, i’m doing well in school – there’s just no magic in this summer. my room seems boring and bare now that shad’s moved out, and the living room, which katelynn seems to tidy with a disturbing frequency, seems lifeless and sterile when relieved of it’s clutter.
so the reason i’m exhausted is from altogether shitty time alocation. i’m already playing catch-up and the new classes have just started. last night i went up to cleveland to see the weakerthans play a show at the grog shop. i drove up with chad, shad, and katelynn along for the ride, and had a pretty good time. we ate at soul vegetarian which is a few doors down from the venue in coventry and gorged myself on the feux-country fried steak sandwich and chili-cheese-fries. i was farting through the entire show, and embarrasingly trying to hide my indigestion in class today, but it was worth it. the two opening bands were altogether lame. one of them was cleveland’s own brandston, who i thought i had liked from their recordings, but were pretty uninspiring in person. it’s not that they were horrible, just horribly mediocre. the nail in the coffin was a cover of the pumpkin’s “today”, performed in a wholly un-ironic fashion. how dull. the weakerthans were awesome though. engaging and straightforward they sounded every bit as good as the records. they played letter of resignation which is my favorite track as well as some neat new steel guitar twinged countryish tracks. the singer (the one who used to be in propaghandi) has such a distinctive voice – it’s nasal and high, plaintive, but definitely genuine. the music is what emo music should be – emotional and personal without being histrionic. it’s weird how a lot of bands like the weakerthans are able to evoke emotions from me in a way that so-called emo music doesn’t. i still really like bands like, say, recover, it’s just that i don’t always need music that evokes ntensity and passion – sometimes meloncholy or pensiveness is in order too. but yeah, the weakerthans were awesome. totally unimposing but at the same time completely captivating. musically clever, lyrically beautiful, it was well worth sitting through the first two lame bands to see them play.
on the way home, everyone else dozed off, but we listened to all three of the dismemberment plan records that i own and i somehow managed to stay awake long enough not to drive us into a ditch. we made it back to columbus around 5:30 am, just eight hours until i had to be sitting in my material science class
i went to another good show recently as well. went over to the legion to see silencio and fire down below. erin came, which was cool because she never goes to the legion, and so did shad and yon. it wasn’t a big show by any means, but it was a good time. silencio is my favorite band in columbus right now. jazz meets technical metal meets hardcore meets math rock maybe. i dunno. it’s technical as all hell but still rocking. it makes me want to quit playing guitar. fire down below was a new-school hardcore band from philly with two vocalists. they played to maybe a dozen people. fewer if you subtract the kids who live at the legion. still, they didn’t seem to hold back and played with an intensity and a sincerity that really impressed me. it was awesome, and by the end of their set, my ears were wringing and i was soaked in sweat. the other thing that was so cool about the show is that i got to hang out with erin in my element – didn’t feel like i was compromising or missing out on anything.
a funny thing happened en route from the 7-11 to that legion show. erin noticed that someone had left her keys in the trunk of her car. erin, being the do-gooder that she is tried to locate the owner, but none of the kids on the street knew anything about the car. so, she pocketed the keys and we went to the show. yon proposed that we just leave a note later. after the show, i wrote up a note that said “dear chump, you left your keys in the trunk so we took them for safe keeping. call ***-**** (ask for geoff) and we’ll give ’em back”. erin thought the chump part was being an asshole, so i crossed it out and replaced it with “victim of misfortune”. i thought of just opening the car up and pounding on the horn, but even in showman mode i’m not that bold. i just took the keys home and left a note for my housemates in case the owner of the keys called while i was out. apparently she called the next day, and despite the rudeness of my windshield note was really grateful that we had found the keys. katelynn said that the girl told her that she was chronically leaving her keys lying around. it’s really strange. girl leaves her keys in the door, we generally leave the house unlocked, and nothing catastrophic happens. nothing gets stolen, and no one gets raped. so much for the ghetto. after the recent serial rapist scare, i’m starting to think that south campus is worlds safer than north campus.
but yeah, it’s getting to the point where i can’t even write coherently in my journal anymore. at least it’s cooling down. i’m going to take a few more swigs of my cheap kroger cranberry juice coctail, brush my teeth, and go to bed.