Gush

Ok so now I have calmed down a little bit about last night and I can tell you. Fortuitously saw a listing in the Willamette Week that Sister Spit was coming to town. That's a mostly queer group of women who do spoken word, read from their journals, and are mostly hysterically funny. All super cool kinda punk rock. They played Michfest once and I know one of the organizers,Michelle Tea, through the lovely and talented Ricky Lee.

It was held in this great performance space in Old Town called the Someday Lounge. Brilliant stuff. Notably this woman named Arlene Textaqueen who joined the tour all the way from Australia. She came out in a red jumpsuit that was decorated with colored markers. not colored with markers. the suit was made out of actual markers. Her deal is that she draws friends naked with a sharpie and then colors it in. I bought some postcards from her that are probably not safe to go in the mail on account of all the nakeedresses. I got to talk to her a bit after her slideshow performance and i hope she liked me. i get nervous talking to visual artists about their work. But i do it anyways because I can tolerate humiliation and blank looks.

So after the performances, Michelle announces that they are all going to a bar called the Galaxy to sing karaoke. Yet another fine Portland establishment that serves up karaoke 7 nights a week. I sat down with Michelle when we got there and she introduced me to this girl Tara in the booth with us. And she said she totally recognized me from somewhere (turns out she went to antioch for five minutes in 1993) and so we got to talking and we both just moved to town for work. oh, what do you do? I manage a friend's band. oh, what band? um, have you heard of The Gossip? UM YEAH. we exchanged phone numbers and maybe we can be bffs because she seemed really nice.

Q: What could be more fun than singing karaoke with the Sisterspit girls? A: Nothing.

Two highlights included Tara Jane O'Neil doing a very fine Xanadu and Textaqueen shrieking out Smells Like Teen Spirit. I didn't realize it was Tara Jane O'Neil in the bar when we were talking about James Bond theme songs (because I did a rousing rendition of Goldfinger) and Louisville and Freakwater, but ended up bumping into her with Shayla this afternoon and she told me that it was TJO. As in the girl on my ipod. Neat. She remembered my Goldfinger when I complimented her Xanadu.