"now we've got the internet, so fuck it"

I've got two words for Lawrence, Kansas - fucking cold. We played there Thursday the 7th; the low was zero and the high was eight. For fear of death, the majority of Lawrencites did not attend our show. The local band Another Holiday set up the show and their singer/keyboardist had broken her left arm slipping on the ice just a few days prior. That's dedication to a show up to an ostensibly empty bar room basement with your arm in a sling and still play when it's zero. As the touring bands we made a total of $40. I was ready to get out of Lawrence.

Norman, Oklahoma on the other hand, was a balmy 14 degrees out. This trip of escaping south for the winter really seems to be panning out. The Deli was the dive bar oasis of Norman. There was the table shaped like a guitar made by Jim Beam; there was the red vinyl booth that was half red duct tape. The barkeep Doug was a jolly man with non-stop dad jokes, but alcoholic rather than christian dad. Beers were 50 cents in giant red plastic cups. The local band The Workweek played first, but they didn't start till eleven. The place was pretty full by then with a young yet fairly hip and eclectic crowd for a jock college town. The doorman was dressed in black leather with Billy Idol hair. There was a very drunk Eugene Mirman looking guy with a orange t-shirt that read “just accept it: DEFEATED” who was really into our Neil Young cover, one frumpy hippie girl with dreadlocks, and two extremely well put together female future buppies with matching afros who caught the eye of the single and not-so-single men a like. Those two girls walked out during our second set.

The crowd was fairly into the music we played, especially the few party numbers. The problem with the show starting at 11pm is that we finished playing at 1:40am. As soon as we stopped the bar started playing hip-hop and kids started dancing. Kyle began packing up right away, and being a group of decent bandmates, we all followed suit, though Dan and I were eager to get on the dance floor. We finished clearing the stage with enough time to dance one number before the music was cut off and the painfully bright house lights turned on.

Dan, being in the not-single club, being a foot taller than myself, and having the nickname Handsome Dan, acted as my wingman on his own volition. He introduced me to a woman named S. who informed us that this was the bar to be at in Norman. It had the best music, the best crowd, and everyone there had slept with at least three other people in the bar. She and I started talking and it turned out she had done her undergraduate thesis on transportation and had lived/studied in Holland. She was excited by the fact that I was applying to graduate programs in urban planning. I was only the second person she'd ever met who was pursuing such a line of work, and I gathered the other person had been rather conservative. Oh, to not be in Portland. She was very intelligent and did most of the talking. Apparently Norman had just torn down its old train station, which had two levels of tracks, ten wide, and replaced it with a highway. She lamented the destruction of such infrastructure and complained that it was only her and three other hippies that made a fuss about it.

We got onto the subject of how our country doesn't build any public spaces for people to congregate in except for bars and churches, and how that leads to social alienation. I brought up how car culture had focused so much on the ease of getting from one place to another and the ease of parking that we sacrificed making good places to be in--that we fixated so much on the ease of the getting somewhere that we forgot to make places we wanted to be in in the first place. At this point she added “and now we've got the internet, so fuck it,” as the ultimate defeat of actually being someplace. Our culture would rather be everywhere, and therefore nowhere, rather than just be somewhere. I had never thought about the internet in those terms before but I think there really is something to her sentiment. And even though I recognize how wrongheaded our culture's dominant line of thinking is, it is so steeped into my soul; I'm still pretty sure that's why I've run away from every town I've ever lived in.

Like I said earlier, the problem with starting a show at 11pm is that it doesn't end until 1:40am, so even though I met the only lefty urbanite in Norman Oklahoma who happened to an attractive 25 year old woman who leaned into me as she spouted her theories on spatial disconnectivity and told me about her time in Danish squats, her ride was leaving ten minutes after we started talking and we hadn't really been flirting long enough for her to decide to add me to the list of people she had slept with at the bar. While I have the urges of any man and just want someone to hold me at night, I am experienced enough to know the gamut from terrible to incredibly wild-yet-empty that any one-night stand has the potential to be. No fling is gonna' make me happy or expand my horizons at this point, but it doesn't sound like a bad way to spend an evening either. Enough self-indulgent over-analyzing of my base desires--I apologize--back to the story. So even though S. had left the bar, I was ready to party.

At this point I must pause the narrative of the evening and provide some overdue character development to the group of bohemians that I am traveling with. I'll start with the vehicles. First is Kyle's blue Chevy Astro mini-van, a.k.a. The Workhorse, a.k.a. The Dragmobile. Kyle is one-of-a-kind. Kyle doesn't drink, not even coffee. He drives the Workhorse for the majority of the time, and the Workhorse leads the caravan for most of the driving. Kyle is also the treasurer for the tour and he is the kind of thorough treasurer that, as we approach a toll booth, he calls the car following us to remind them to get a receipt. I have total confidence that the funds are being distributed fairly with Kyle in charge. The car picking up the rear of the caravan is Justin's blue Toyota Corolla station wagon, a.k.a. The Party Car. The party car has an astro-turf dash board, and the two rear doors only open from the inside. Justin often drives the Party Car with only a wife-beater on, even though it has been an average of 10 degrees outside. The Party Car has spent the past two winters in Mexico.

Back to story of Norman OK. Kyle, Samantha, and therefor Zeb, wanted to go to bed after the show. Dan, Justin and myself wanted to party. The first three started the 45 min drive to Sam's parents' house in Shawnee. Justin found out about a party and had a number to call to get details once we were done loading the van. The remaining three of us loaded into the Party Car, called the party connection number, left a message, and started to drive around. We drove around the block then left a text message. We then decided to start to drive to the highway that led back to Sam's parents' place and if we got a message we'd turn back and go to the party. At this point we realized none of us knew how to get back to the highway. Norman is full of terrifying landmarks, such as the demon horse with red lights for eyes, the fat-woman sphinx made by Botero, and the tiny shack in the parking lot that quivers in the cold of the night. I am usually good with directions, but boy was I off that night, and how. We'd get to an intersection, someone would shout out “right” or “left”--we may have well of been flipping a coin--turn, drive around the block again, and all scream as we passed the devil horse for the fourth time in three minutes, driving in circles all around Norman. We eventually did find the highway. A car followed a perfect 100 feet behind us for about ten minutes, which convinced Justin that we were being tailed by a cop who noticed our out of state plates and that we were all going to spend the night in jail. Eventually the car passed us, and it was a camouflage painted station wagon with antlers on the hood. Then we got a text message from the party connection that the party was lame and they had just gone to bed. The drive around Norman, however, was the most fun I'd had in a long time.