daytripper

2009-07-27 6:05 p.m.

I'm trying to decide whether or not my mom is overreacting or within her rights to complain that I've been going out too much. True, I have been out every other day with Alison or Anton (fierce competitors for the title of "Cat's Best Friend Summer 2k9"). But it's mostly been doing innocuous things such as sitting at her house playing Scrabble (albeit after a few glasses of gin and lemonade) or running errands at Walmart at 10pm. Most nights I'm home before midnight. Before I go, I usually prepare dinner for the family or hang out with the Korean.

The Korean is the son of a benevolent family that housed Thai when he was teaching English in South Korea last summer. My mom came over ot visit and also stayed with them. She says that we owe a lot to their kindness, and I don't doubt it. My mom is a handful under the best circumstances, but will be an absolute ordeal in a foreign country, far from her Milpitas Health and Fitness gym and full stock of neon polyester clothing. They are saints for dealing with her for three weeks. In a sort of illegitimate exchange program, the family has sent their son over here for a month, and being the only person without a real life, the task of entertaining and taking care of him has fallen to me.

To amuse myself and make peace with the situation, I've decided to draw a parallel to the Arrested Development storyline of Annyong. Lucille adopts a son out of spite, and it's a struggle for her to be maternal and tone down down the discrimination. I'm having similar difficulties. Even though his name is simply Taylor, I can't break out of the habit of calling him "The Korean" or "Annyong". My care has amounted to carting him around all day as I do errands for my parents, and placating him with sweets.

I left my duties on Friday to go to the Gilroy Garlic Festival with Alison and Julie. I don't know why I went back seeing as I didn't particularly enjoy it when I last went a few years ago. It's basically paying $12 to get past a gate and pay $6 more for some kind of garlic food. We did a cursory lap around, found nothing to do, and settled down with food. Then did another lap, again nothing, and again food. We probably spent the same amount of time in there as we did driving down from Milpitas.

That forty minute drive was nothing compared to yesterday. I've definitely had enough of driving for awhile. Yesterday Anton and I went all the way up to Lake Tahoe to go to the Wanderlust music festival.

We grumbled and cursed it as a bad idea to have it so far and in such a difficult location, but it turned out to be worth the drive up.

With a minor pitstop in Sacramento, it took us four hours to get there. Sacramento was a harrowing experience, not because anything in particular happened, but because nothing was happening. All of the shops were closed, there were barely any cars on the streets, and next to zero people walking around. Besides ourselves, we only saw five other people, all apparently a tourist group, just as mystified as we were at this ghost town.

The festival had three different stages, but all of the artists we wanted to see were on the same one. We parked at the bottom of the mountain, and then had to take a long ski lift up to the top.

All told, we were probably at 11,000 feet! The scenery was indeed beautiful, as promised by the website and advertisements for Wanderlusts. There were also freaky yoga enthusiasts wandering around, as advertised. Wanderlust was supposed to be a weekend marriage of music and yoga... it isn't hard to see why Anton and I were so skeptical.

Broken Social Scene started their set soon after we got to the stage. Anton and I have seen them before, just a year ago actually, at Outsidelands. It seems that Anton and I are destined to only make it to the final day of three-day music festivals. It also seemed that we were doomed to always almost see Andrew Bird but not. Thankfully, those other times we missed out only made me frighteningly determined.

Andrew Bird played afterwards, and I was almost inconsolable. The minutes before he took the stage, I almost collapsed in anticipation. It was also very hot. I guess the sun beats down harder when you're that high up. My extreme aversion to tanning worked in our favor though: I forced Anton to apply SPF 50 before and during the festival.

Andrew Bird was... I could never describe enough to do him justice. I knew that he would be good, but I didn't know that he would be the best performance I've ever seen. The other times that we've almost seen him, he's had a band with him to play. For some reason, he was alone this time. I wasn't skeptical - I knew that he could do it, I just didn't know how.

For each song, Andrew Bird recorded three different melodies then blended it together to play while he sang. I know it doesn't make sense. I don't know how to explain it. Suffice it to say, he did everything himself, and it was mindblowing.

So many bells and whistles! Actually, this is neither, but I'm not sure what this is, and Anton didn't explain it well. The monkey is adorable though.

If I don't have enough readers for the blog to warrant a genre or a rating, but if I did, it would be family-friendly, so I'll spare the details of my fierce attraction to Andrew Bird. He goes on my List, the list of men who could bed me in an instant. The list so far has Leonard Cohen, Rivers Cuomo and Stephen Merchant. Okay, maybe not so family-friendly.

After the show, I was a fangirl and waited by the stage exit to meet Andrew Bird. I liked him that much, that I didn't mind being so embarrassing and pathetic. Andrew Bird came out and hugged a couple of people, signed a tee shirt, then made his way toward where we were standing. Anton asked for a picture, and Andrew Bird declined, saying that it would be awkward because then everyone would want one. I thought it was a bit full of himself to say and think that. There were only five other people around who were waiting for him, scoff. I pulled out a sharpie and started to ask Andrew Bird to sign my wristband, but he and Anton started walking away from me. Anton stole the short moment that Andrew Bird was willing to talk to us!

I fumed for ten minutes while we walked around, getting a drink of water and using the restroom. We came back to the stage for the final act, Spoon. I don't listen to them much, but they were also enjoyable. We left during the second to last song, before they were going to play "Underdog", I'm sure. I wanted to beat the rush for the lift and traffic on the road. I promised my mom earlier that day that I would be home by eleven, and I thought that we might make it.

However, at some point on the freeway the air-conditioning started freaking out and fogged up the windshield completely in thirty seconds. I felt very near to crashing, and that combined with the dangerous, winding forty miles down from the Sierras almost gave me a heart attack. We must have missed the freeway change during the fog-up disaster, and ended up driving forty minutes out of the way of the right route. I didn't get home until just past midnight. Midnight isn't actually that late for me, considering that I sleep at 4 am most nights. But I had driven a total of eight hours that day, and stood in the direct, harsh sun for four hours. At a red light, I even closed my eyes and laid my head on the steering wheel, almost too tired to go on.

Melodramatic, I know.

Worth it though, even if Andrew Bird was not as nice in person as I thought he would be. After that performance, he could murder someone and I'd not only forgive him but... well, let's just say he'd keep his place on the list.

We were going to be the No No Nos because I was trying to do Karen O's signature microphone pose, but the photographer cut it off. So I guess we'll just be the White Stripes. I can be Meg White, impassive.

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