Okay so I rode into town on the newish Bolt Bus with Andrice, Theo, Jason, Suzette, & Julia. I read some collected Sally Forth all the way up, practically. Julia & Suzette did a celebratory impromptu theatrical reading aloud in full of the new 66-page portion of my series 2005 on the bus. I found a new Gardetto product I’d never eaten at the rest stop! The snack of champions!
Upon arrival in Seattle we 6 friends split in half to hook up with our corresponding housing friends. Andrice, Theo & I got to stay at the beautiful home of Short Run organizer Eroyn Franklin. She greeted us with mad excitement & the desire to get awesome ASAP! She was ready to party!!! We met the 2 wonderful cats of the house, Eroyn’s gorgeous & friendly mewser Pillow, and her roommates cat PP DOODOO. Mrs PP DOODOO was so silly & wanted to break out the window all the time so she could be let back in through the sliding glass door! I fully understand this game! IT’S SO FUN!!! it’s like you exit & then pretend like time has passed and when you return that TV applause plays upon your entrance! AWESOME!!! I love it!
OK so we set up camp in the house & raced forth to dinner at a weird restaurant themed after old men with crotch rockets that was around the corner from the Fantagraphics boostore. We ate some Nachos, guzzled some Horse’s Necks & were in full party & book shopping mode!!! We went to the gallery upstairs to see the release & art show for the new issue of Intruder. It’s a psychedelic new thunderstorm of madness! The show introduced me to the work of a new dooder, who happened to be the guy I tabled next to the next day, named Darin Shuler! Mountains of Portland buddies were trickling in & we all got awesome keg style between that upstairs gallery & Fantagraphics where Lasky, his writing partner Frank Young & Abe Lincoln were presenting their new books & art. Later that night Andrice, Theo & I had an intimate drinkypoo with Eroyn & Tim Miller before calling the night a complete party success! We got a good night’s sleep. Theo said that Pillow failed to live up to her name but PP DOODOO slept next to his face all night.
With the coming of the morning we raced to the Vera Project to get tabling! Bright eyed & bushy tailed we were greeted by mountains of friends & puffy-eyed smiles! Some who drove in that morning & many who partied with us all night long! We got set up, Andrice with her new & 1st ever zine and me with my new 66-page section of 2005. Within minutes people were crawling all over us! IT WAS AMAZING!!! TIME JUST SHOT BY!!! I talked to so many lovely people & friends, & before I knew it I was racing back’n’forth for performance in the animation & performance room run by Stefan Gruber. I did a 20-minute set of live music while doing a theatrical reading of 3 of my Church of Awesome Thought comics accompanied by my band Magic Caves (Julia Gfrörer & Suzette Smith). Later I caught the shadow puppet theater of mega buddy Erin Tanner. I was truly moved & also introduced to the music of Ray Lynch. All of a sudden I was back & performing with Magic Caves for my 3rd time a live music set to Stefan Gruber’s Brilliant Both Worlds. This was, in my opinion, our best perfomance of it yet! The addition of Julia on Theremin was epic! Peter Frampton, Jean-Michel Jarre, Autechre, & Ivan Maximov would be proud!
All of a sudden the show was over! WHAT!? Yep! It was as a whirlwind of fun that felt like it lasted 30min! Then I got to make faces at Theo who I miss so much! I got to hi-five millions! I also sold a bajillion books which feels so good as this doesn't happen in portland! I met so many nice new faces namely Darin, Elaine, Erin Birgy in person, Sean Ford, & Finn Colando.
With the feeling of instant nostalgia dividing me from the present, we went to party more. We went to party our ourselves clean, we went to party ourselves into a friendsy (yes a friend-sy), we went to get nuts but just before nuts we hat to eat dicks. Andrice, Suzette, Julia & I went off & ate at Dick’s. We had special Dick burgers & I had a vanilla Dick shake. It was filling. We got some whiskey & poured into the empty Black Lodge where in a short while we were all dancing into a sweaty cluster to the delicious house sounds of Airport! It was magic!
By morning I felt like a plastic doll all dry with a sweat gloss & Eroyn & Tim gave Andrice, Julia, Suzette & me a personal tour of the Soil Gallery art show which so many friends had work in. It was so well put together & such an amazing show! A true testament to how comics are an Art.
With heavy hearts, tired eyes, dehydrated shells, big smiles, & bags full of new books to pore over, we banded together for a very confusing mess that Bolt Bus & the Seattle Seahawks created for us & 50 other human beings.
The ride home was lovely. I missed Theo, PP DOODOO, & all of our out-of-town friends already & regretted a few macho party fouls I needed to apologize for, but I had such an amazing weekend with Short Run that I wished it never ended.
BUT WAIT! IT’S NOT OVER!!!! IT’S NEVER REALLY OVER!!!! IT LIVES ON IN OUR HEARTS & MINDS & BLOGS & IT WILL BE THERE FOR US NEXT YEAR!!!! WITH EVEN MORE FRIENDS & MORE FUN & MORE ART & BOOKS!!!!
LONG LIVE SHORT RUN!!!!
1 comment:
Oh! I really had a great time reading your post (even though it is quite long). I feel your excitement and fun as I read each line. I really appreciate you’ve shared something like this. This is really interesting.
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