Bro when I say that I feel like a brand new person straight out of an isolation chamber ever since I got BIGBANG tickets….I mean, it’s really pathetic that concert-goers need to feel this level of anxiety when a band they love (especially if it’s Kpop) announces a tour. It just shouldn’t be like this, we have enough stress on a daily basis thanks to this fucking orange rapist and his gang of degenerates putting us in the crosshairs and obliterating basic human rights, let us at the very least have a normal, non-panic-inducing experience when purchasing tickets to a concert that we deserve to attend in order to restore our sanity and give us a small moment of joy before we head back into the reality of this corrupt world.

YOU KNOW WHAT I’M SAYING?

Here are some more little moments of joy that I have curated over the last week or so.

For the last year or so, I’ve used this photo app called Minutiae where you get a notification at a different time each day and you only have 5 seconds to open the app and snap a picture of what’s in front of you. Most of the time, I miss the notification. Most of the times when I DON’T miss it, I’m sitting at my work desk so my pictures are always of my house, depending on how fast I swivel to capture a new corner, lol. It happened when I was at DGD last week so I was really excited to have a picture that illustrated me actually having a life outside of the house.

ANYWAY!! While Chooch was home last week, I got a notification right as he walked out the front door to go see his friends. I screamed CHOOCH WAIT and took this through the screen door, lol.

Also, if you read my Waldameer post, the lady who was forcing her kid to ride Chaos WAS WEARING THIS SAME SHIRT which inspired Chooch to wear his the next day. I can’t believe he still wears it. He got it in some dorky gamer subscription box years ago, I think!?

Earlier that day, I made Chooch go for a walk around Brookline with me because I was bored. Here are some pictures I took with my Charmera, much to Chooch’s chagrin:

Lemonade we bought from two siblings on the corner of our street (I don’t know where they came from). The brother was the one we made the transaction with and there was not a lick of enthusiasm to be found on him.

It was $1 each so Chooch slid him a dollar bill and 4 quarters (we had to go back into the house to get cash when we saw the stand right at the start of our walk, and the two kids stood shoulder to shoulder, holding their lemonade sign, glowering at us like the Shining twins as we walked back down the sidewalk to get the money, it was scary).

“I don’t have change,” the kid said dourly, scooping out the lemonade with a ladle.

“Uh…that’s OK we don’t need it,” Chooch said, like BOY DO BETTER AT MATH CLASS. Sheesh.

“Do you want ice?” he asked in a monotone.

We did not.

The lemonade was actually pretty bad but we still sipped on it as we walked away. “That was an interesting serving technique,” Chooch laughed and I mean, really! It took him forever to scoop two small cups’ worth of liquid out of the pitcher.

I couldn’t believe how many people were actually PULLING OVER to support this local business. I’ll tell you why – BECAUSE THEY WERE WHITE KIDS.

The Teen Center’s lemonade was so much better (and the operation was diverse!).

This also made me think about how shocking it is in hindsight that Chooch never got into the lemonade slinging trade, but that’s probably because he was too busy diabolically banning people on the Minecraft servers he was in charge of.

The Moonlite Cafe redid its facade and it’s super cute. I have lived in Brookline since 1999 (!!!) and somehow have only eaten here twice and have no recollection of liking it or not.

Back on our block, the kids were still doing the lemonade thing. “Hi again,” the boy said to us like we were regulars.

I haven’t mentioned this much because the process has been so slow since we haven’t been home much for Henry to work on it, but we’ve reached the “accoutrements” portion of the record player buffet that we’ve (“we” lol) been refurbing. It’s exactly the same style cabinet as the one we clownified for the living room, but this one is purple and green. The doors will (hopefully) be a mosaic made from CD shards, with halved toy dinosaurs attached. The sides, which is what we’re currently working on, will be made from old cassettes and 8-tracks. (The theme here is prehistoric media, if you haven’t noticed.)

I’ve had these 8-tracks in a box in the basement for over 20 years. Freaking JOE gave them to me back when I worked at Weiss’s. I don’t even know why I took them, I did not have an 8-track player nor did I have any intention of purchasing one on eBay in order to listen to Lawrence Welk and Elvis albums. But, because Henry tends to just push things into the dark recesses of the basement, he found them a few weeks ago when he was looking for something else, and said, “Hey, can you think of anything to use those old 8-tracks for?” Well, it turns out, just using the cassettes won’t work, dimension-wise, but alternating between cassettes AND 8-tracks makes for a better fit on the sides of the cabinet!

So, here is a picture of Henry cleaning them the other night while we watched FROM.

Also, it’s super annoying because they wrote “WEISS” on a bunch of them like a mom tagging her kids’ underroos, so some of them can’t be used. (Sorry, it’s already bad enough that I have tangible evidence of this family’s existence in my house, I don’t need to see their names as well — this cabinet is already going to be haunted since we’re using these!)

Here’s the journal page from Father’s Day in Philly. Henry was not pleased with my depiction of him (mostly because I was using a picture of him as reference and he was insulted that I can’t draw him from memory, like bro calm down, I can barely draw a stick figure from memory anymore).

I fucking love my journal so much!!

All of these things have been keeping me afloat lately. Once I finally admitted that my life needed to shift, even if just the slightest, everything sort of fell into place and every day gets a little better. It’s not perfect, I still have sad days (ok, sad moments every day), I am still stressed, I’m still worried about Penelope constantly, I still have panic attacks reading the news. But these little things are my liferaft!

(+ HOLY SHIT I’M GOING TO SEE BIGBANG, BREATHE ERIN.)

We’re not going to talk about how fried my nerves are right now but the important part is that I am going to FINALLY see BIGBANG and I didn’t get Ticketmaster-scammed during the presale like I did last year with the G-Dragon concert!

I am going to cry my fucking face off seeing Lies performed in real life, holy shit.

Usually all of my weekdays blend together but this one had some shit going on.

First of all, it was almost hot as the flames in Hell as they flex and preen in preparation of Trump’s arrival. (CAN IT PLEASE BE SOON.) My face looked gooey, like someone who just removed face reconstruction surgery bandages on Days of Our Lives.

Sorry, I was trying to set a scene but then I lost interest.

It was hot and humid.

At one point that morning, I peeled my thighs off my chair (I’m a sadist and use a hard-ass plastic chair as my office chair, watch me give no fucks about my back and lumbar support, boiiiii) and walked over to the front window to do my hourly neighborly peek.

What timing! There were two cop cars outside with a young couple across the street from my house, standing on the sidewalk and presumably being questioned. I don’t. The guy looked like he was inebriated. Remember how I said it was very hot in so many words? Well, he was wearing jeans and had a fucking hoodie WRAPPED AROUND HIS HEAD. It was like 90-some degrees!

There was a young woman with him and she seemed to be the mouthpiece. Whatever was going on, she was at the center. Then I realized that she and the cop kept looking IN THIS DIRECTION and I was like, “Oh are you fucking kidding me, what NOW.”

I started to really look at her and realized that she is the on-off girlfriend of the landlord’s trash NRA son who lives next to HNC and his bitch-boat animal-hating wife aka Queen Cunt of Pioneer. I had heard through the GRAPEVINE that she hates the landlord’s son and his gf because “THEY SMOKE WEED” and she can smell it through her walls I guess, but meanwhile she and HNC suck up to this motherfucker SO BAD because daddy is the landlord, and HNC even cuts his grass! This fucking idiot bitch is cutting the grass of some able-bodied young man?! Bitch, couldn’t be me!!

Anyway, this alleged GF visits pretty often and I have started exchanging niceties with her. She is young and seems cool. We both wear Vans. Once, she was on the porch blasting music that sounded like something I would listen to. But then he made her turn it off before I could investigate further.

So my plan was to befriend this person in order to really get under HNC’s wife’s skin. Turn her into my ally before the Cunt has a chance to turn her against me like she tries to do with everyone on the street because she is miserable. Maybe I would even get this person to start feeding the squirrels on her porch too so then it would be ON BOTH SIDES OF THE CUNT.

Welp. Looks like my hopeful summer friendship is over before it started because it was definitely her talking to the cop, and then another cop came out of the boyfriend’s house while she was saying, “I understand, I just need to get my stuff.” I mean, she wasn’t being hysterical, she was very calm and collected and being super cooperative so I am going to ahead and assume that whatever was going on was 100% the fault of THE MAN.

One of the cops accompanied her into the house and she came back out with several plastic bags of…her belongings, I don’t know.

Meanwhile, I have this stupid CRIME RADAR app now ever since the suicide happened up the street, so I checked and it’s always nice to see your house on there:

I sent this to Chooch hoping he would assume it was me and Henry but aw, you guys, I guess he knows we don’t actually fight like that because he just said “Lol, no who was it for?” after I tried to get him to believe it was us.

(Apparently today, some 71 year old man fell on our street and injured himself so there was another CRIME RADAR update with another stupid Google image shot of my idiot house. Also, I was home when this apparently was happening and had no idea.)

THEN THERE WAS A STORM AND THE FUCKING POWER WENT OUT FOR GODDAMN HOURS and I was legit panicking that this was going to be another multi-day PIONEER LIFE on PIONEER AVE. I think that was last year when we were out for 3 days!? It was pathetic to really learn first hand how much we rely on electricity.

We had plans that night and I had to fucking put my makeup on in a semi-dark bathroom. I probably looked like the subject of one of the CRIME RADAR calls.

Um, yeah! Pretty close.

LOL.

Anyway this was at the Parkway Theater last night! We had tickets for an 8:30PM screening of George Romero’s The Amusement Park but we went early since we had no power and nothing else to do. Abjuration Brewing has a little thingie inside there and had a collab with the George A, Romero Foundation – it was a strawberry funnel cake smoothie sour so I had to treat myself and get a 1/2 pour.

I love that they serve their beer in little beakers! Oh, and the guy working remembered us from a few weeks ago when we went to the Hazelwood Brew House thing!

This was really good but very sweet and I felt kind of gross afterward.

There was trivia going on inside. I tend to not sign up for these things because I’m so competitive that I get stressed out. But it was fun to listen in and answer amongst ourselves since we were sitting outside with a few non-trivia players. I was mad because one of the questions was who wrote A Song of Fire and Ice and I was like George R R Martin but Henry kept saying, “Yeah, I think it’s George R Martin” and I was like “NO IT’S GEORGE R R MARTIN. TWO Rs” and I really don’t think that motherfucker believed me so I had to Google it and show him and even then he was like “Ohhhhhkay” but then later when the trivia host was saying the answers, I almost punched Henry in the face with my unhinged celebratory aggression at hearing the guy say “No, I can’t accept George Martin, the correct answer is George R R Martin.”

FUCK YEAH BITCHES!!

My favorite part of the trivia that I wasn’t officially participating in was that one of the team names was “I’m Looking for a Big Dick” or something so every time the host said their name, well, you know. Lol. It never got old! At one point he even said something like, “Hey, you never know how the night will go…”

Yay, then it was time!

First, the owner came out (he may have been the one doing the trivia?!) and told us a bit about the theater, the events they have coming up, etc. It’s a really cool place and I hope that something else catches my eye in the future so we can go back!

This event however was held in conjunction with the Living Dead Weekend – if you didn’t know, Pittsburgh is the zombie capital of the world and we have a big zombie fest every year because of George Romero and his ….Living Dead movies. So it turned out that a lot of the people there weren’t even from Pittsburgh! That was kind of wild to me because the sole reason I wanted to see this was because it was filmed in the long-demolished West View Park and I wanted to see it on screen.

Afterward, there was a Q&A with one of the guys from George A Romero Foundation and when he asked if anyone knew where it was filmed, Henry and I were the only ones who knew!

But anyway! Back to the film. So, aside from the West View part, I knew nothing about this. It was only just restored in like, 2018 I think? And had never been screened before that. It was filmed own the 70s and here’s the thing that shocked me — it was actually a PSA from the Lutheran Society about Elder Abuse! So, not a horror movie, but honestly one of the scariest hours of my life because as the theater owner prefaced it, “It’s scary because it’s something that is going to happen to all of us.”

AGEING.

Becoming invisible to society.

Being taken advantage of because of old age.

UGH.

Bro, it was very unsettling. There was also some humor to it here and there too and it totally felt like a Romero project. His fingerprints were all over this.

Two downsides to the evening: the group of people who clomped in and plopped down in the row behind us. It was like they had the theater all to themselves even though it was almost entirely full. Their presence sucked the air out of the room. One of them SNORFLED through the whole thing, OMG that’s one the sounds that gets under my skin the hardest. I fucking hate it. Go in the bathroom and fucking blow your nose.

And then there was a woman there who was all pspspspspspspspspspspspsp the whole time to her seat mate, like how about STFUing while the rest of us are watching this thing?! She was doing it afterward during the Q&A too and I thought that was so disrespectful!!

So behind her rude whispering and the other guy’s gross bodily sounds, I was in fucking Hell. Before Trump!!

Anyway. Ugh. One of the coolest take-aways I got from the Q&A was a story about lost Romero film reels that were found in a barn after the landowner’s died (one of his movies was filmed on their property and the reels got left behind, to make a long story short) and the Romero Foundation was like “Can we please buy this back from you before you take it to open market?” and they were like, “No we’re taking it to open market.” What a bunch of bitches!

I guess they were asking way more than the foundation could afford and they were panicking that some rich noob was going to get their hands on it and destroy it in an attempt to watch it, but SOMEONE WHOSE NAME I CANNOT NAME because everyone was asked to not film this part of the Q&A so I am going to use my big bright brain here and assume that applies also to a nobody’s blog, but it’s some who who is a well-known name in the horror realm (THE WALKING DEAD, for one thing!) and he was like, “I gotchu” and bought it. That made me emotional to hear!

Another cool thing is that I learned that Pitt now has a Horror Studies Center. No, that’s not intriguing enough to get me to come back and get my degree after 20 years, LOL. But I thought that was pretty cool. I mean, when I went to Pitt, I took a Vampire class which sounds amazing but it was actually super boring, the instructor was boring, no one would talk to me in that class no matter how hard I reached out because I was—wait for it—24 and they were all 18 & 19 probably, and the most exciting to happen was the time we had a legit fire drill because the class was in the same building as chem labs and someone’s experiment went awry and started a fire. So then everyone was standing outside in their little bitch cliques and I was all alone as usual.

Yeah, going back to college is not appealing to me at all.

Oh man, it was such a good night. I love that we’re doing more things like this. Like, I saw it advertised, sent it to Henry, and he was like, “OK I bought tickets.” He didn’t even know what it was!!

And we bought a can (love that were selling singles!!!) of the beer collab because I’m a dork and want to put the label in my journal, LOL. Henry also bought me a t-shirt that has the same design on it!

Aside from those jerks behind us, it was a nice night. Oh, and one last thing: I keep noticing that everything smells like clarinet reeds to me lately! IS THIS ANOTHER PERIMENOPAUSE THING or a sign to join a marching band just for the jacket.

(I am still on the prowl for someone’s old marching band jacket for FASHION.)

Then we came home around 11PM and the power was back! And some drunk guy was in front of our house being creepy to two women walking a dog so we were ready to call the cops but then he walked away. Oh, summer in Brookline. Let’s fucking go. Some day, I should just sit on my front porch all day and liveblog all the shit that goes on in front of my house.

I know,  I know – we just saw Cold twice last year but when I saw that they were coming back around again and performing the red album in its entirety, I couldn’t sit this one out. I have been having the best time reliving my old Cold Army days and it’s been so cool to see how happy and chill Scooter seems these days. We have all come so far!

It’s also been interesting doing these deep dives into my musical past. This year has been pretty stagnant so far for Kpop — at least for the groups I like — so I have not a single Kpop concert lined up on the horizon! Holding out for BIGBANG (OK SON DATES WERE JUST ANNOUNCED A FEW HOURS AFTER I TYPED THIS PART!) and maybe-hopefully SHINee?! But other than that, there hasn’t been anyone I like enough to throw down that kind of cash and travel for. In the interim, I’ve been kind of throwing myself back into the old stuff I liked, finding new stuff, even going to shows that I only moderately care about just to have something to do. I’ve been having the best time with it!

The only downside is that it’s putting me back into some unsavory crowd situations. Luckily with Cold, it’s a mostly older crowd—the kind of people that like to get to a show early and eat dinner, LOL. I guess that was us that night because Henry paid extra for early entry so we could get to Jergel’s at 5, grab a table and eat dinner beforehand. And like typical elders, we bitched about the traffic the whole way there!

Well, we already discussed the EVACUATION in real time – that happened before the show started. One of the Jergel staff guys got on stage with a mic and was like, “At this time we ask that everyone please leave the building”–no further explanation. But then we were passing firemen on the way out so that was A REAL FUN SURPRISE.

I mean, I guess it was OK because they let us back in after about 15 or 20 minutes. It was pretty exciting. I felt bad for the couple next to us because they ordered nachos and those were some soggy bitches after that.

We had so much time to sit there and people watch. There was one guy who knew everyone it seemed, and he was super LOOK AT ME about it too so I decided I didn’t like him, especially once I clocked that he had Henry Hair and the face of Cliff the Plumber who lives on our block now, in case you weren’t keeping track. I started calling him the Mayor of Jergels.

Well, guess what?? Turns out he was in the local band that was opening for Sierra Swan and Cold.

That’s him in the middle with his Henry coif. I liked him less and less as their set went on. He just really irked me, as did the two tables worth of entourage he had with him WHO CHATTED LOUDLY DURING SIERRA SWAN’S SET AFTER THIS. Total disrespect. I can’t with that shit.

Apologies for the super zoom but I had to do it.

I always want to like opening bands, especially when they’re local, but I did not like this one. I wanted to! Love a female-fronted hard rock band but it just felt kind of cheesy to me. JUST BEING HONEST.

But holy shit, Sierra Swan came on next and saved the vibe. She is INCREDIBLE. I love that she and Scooter have such a long and storied and friendship,  that she has featured on numerous Cold songs, Scooter has collab’d with her on her own album, and he brings her out on tour with them. She has one of the most bad-ass throwback voices I have ever heard—I don’t know how else to describe it but she makes me want to drink whiskey and smoke Pall Malls.

I was so stoked when I saw this! Back when I used to follow Cold around like a puppy, they occasionally toured with a band from Wilkes-Barre called Lifer. I LOVED THEM SO MUCH!! They were kind of short-lived (one of them actually left and joined Breaking Benjamin, also from Wilkes-Barre). Anyway, one of the members is now the drummer for Cold! I had no idea about their current lineup when we saw them last year but as soon as I saw him last year at the Crafthouse, I yelled to Henry, “IS THAT THE GUY FROM LIFER??” Of course Henry had no idea. But I was right! Anyway, it was cool to see that little piece of history on the side of the stage!

I don’t know what this was but I like it.

Anyway, when it was getting close to Cold’s set, Henry and I secured a spot over on the right side of the stage. There was one small woman in front of me, one woman to our right, and a guy to our left and this was the line-up during the whole show. It was THE BEST SPOT. The woman in front of me was so concerned about me being able to see and I had to laugh because he height was the exact reason I chose that spot!

The guy next to us had SUPERB spatial awareness and kept looking over to make sure we were OK—I could write an entire post just about this but I was absolutely floored at the politeness of this crowd. The woman in front of me (her name was Rhonda—we chatted a bit before I left, she was very wine-drunk LOL) actually moved away from the stage at one point during the show and insisted that I take her spot. It was INSANE.

Cold Army, man. What an amazing fan group.

25 years later and I am still so enthralled by Scooter Ward. He is definitely more chatty now than he was back then, that’s for sure! He seems like he’s in a good place, this current iteration of Cold seem super solid and happy together, the bassist Lindsay Manfredi is an actual joy to watch on stage—she looks like she is having a blast every time—and also they have the SWEETEST tour photographer–Amanda–who geeks out watching them on the side of the stage.

It was Angelo’s 30th birthday! A BABY!

Sierra came out to sing some songs with them!

TONY!

Afterward, I got a guitar pick! The guy who was standing near Rhonda and me all night was happy for me and not a pushy jerk like that one bro-dude was at the Black Queen show the week before! I LOVE YOU, COLD ARMY. I’m sorry that I went away for a while! I’m back now.

Here’s a little compilation of video clips I snagged that night – I’m watching it right now as I write this and am overcome with emotions all over again. All these years later and they still slap.

The only downside is that I’m too wild about how drunk people get though. The lady who was so drunk that she fell into a VIP booth at the show last year was there again, just as drunk! I made sure we were standing on the opposite side of the stage as her. I always worry that a fight will start when I see that amount of drunkenness.

Oh well, this has been my Cold recap!

I’m still out here having a grand ol’ time with this tiny Kodak digital camera. It was one of the best surprise gifts Henry has ever given me! IT’S SO STUPID AND SIMPLE BUT SLAPS.

I bought it with me to the Cold concert on Thursday at Jergel’s and now I will show you the pictures I took with it even though I have not officially recapped the actual show yet (that will be coming soon—rest assured it was simply magical).

I already posted about this IN REAL TIME on Thursday (actually fun fact it was NOT in real time because I ended up having no service inside Jergel’s so I couldn’t get the post to publish. I tried connecting to Henry’s hotspot but that didn’t work. Then our waitress was supposed to give us the card with the Jergel’s wifi password but never did probably because she got distracted by the guy who looked like an actual child sitting next to me ordering his 7th Moscow mule (probably not 7th but he was throwing them back like water and he and his gf were getting giddier and giddier as the night went on—cute at first but OMG who was gong to drive home?! Horrifying…). Then Henry was tired of me crying about it so he went and asked the lady at the door for the password so then I was able to finally publish it.

Don’t worry—all of this was transpiring before the show started. I’m not THAT pyscho about blogging.

But you better go back and read that if you haven’t already, knowing now the trial and tribs behind posting it!!

Anyway, please also enjoy this short video from the evac.

I’m still getting the hang of where to aim the camera when taking selfies so I always end up looking like I’m concentrating bigly.

Jergel’s is the epitome of older person venue. You can pay extra for early entry in order to snag a table and eat a mediocre dinner pre-concert. That’s what we did. You can even bring your knitting gear. That’s what the lady in the gray shirt at the table on the right did.

I actually wish I had brought a book—there was so much time to kill before the first band came on.

My non-alcoholic beer, lol. Not that we were ever big drinkers at concerts but when you’re specifically NOT drinking it makes it so much more apparent how much everyone else IS drinking and it’s horrifying. Especially at these older shows.

COLD!! I loved that this camera makes it look like I took this picture in 2001 when I was basically a part-time groupie for this band. (If you ignore the fact that Scooter is the only original member left.)

It is stupid how much I love this dumb little camera.

Made it to Thursday and I have tomorrow off so I’m in a super chill mood today! Even though it started with the hot water not turning off in the kitchen sink and Henry having to come home from work at 7:30AM to fix it, but you’ll have that when you’re renting a shanty in Brookline, I guess.

Before I get into anything else that’s on my mind, the Riot Fest lineup was released today and because I’m a cat that wishes to be killed I guess, I went and peeked. I had every intention of being like, “Cool story but I’m good.” I mean, we’ll be seeing PTV the next weekend here in PGH so there’s that. But I called Henry anyway because I got excited when I saw Sugar and Public Image Ltd. I even prefaced the call with, “Now I’m not saying I want to go to Riot Fest, but…” and then I read him the list of bands I was interested in, which happened to double upon second glance.

A third scrutinization has me 99.9% sold and adding tickets to the cart “just to see.”

What’s crazy is that before I even said I wanted to go, Henry was already acting like it was possibly in the cards and keeps saying, “We’ll talk when I get home.”

So, I guess I’m in the “negotiations” stage of Riot Fest planning. That was a whirlwind! From “not interested, but” to “I mean yeah, I do kind of want to” in 10 minutes.

(Also LOL @ Daisy Grenade—I can’t escape them! But that’s fine because I don’t want to!)

What else! Oh yeah, I never fully talked about our day on Monday because of the suicide on my street. But we did have a decent afternoon doing some antiquing after the god awful Memorial Day parade that slithers past our house every year, upsetting all of the animals and leaving trash and horse poop on the street. Thanks for that, parade organizers!!! Here’s Henry, “Oh, they’ll send someone back to clean that up.” LOL OK in what world? Because the shit remained in huge clumps all day, getting ground more and more into the asphalt as each car cruised over it, and then eventually sluicing away in a shit stream after it eventually rained.

Both antique shops were in Ambridge. The first one was mid and I felt that it had unreasonable prices.

I snapped this picture with my baby Kodak because I am getting into journaling again, but real journaling, and wanted to start adding sketches. So I used this one for my Memorial Day page! I’m still in the beginning “work with what you’ve got” phase a/k/a I have limited supplies and am just kind of scribbling to shake the rust off the creative side of my brain that has become stale and moldy from unuse over this last decade. Very low stakes! Here’s how it turned out, I spent approx. 10 minutes on this because I don’t have the time to be churning out “masterpieces” these days lol:

Bro I legit thought I spelled antiquing wrong and that would be the only thing that would bother me, to be honest!

There’s a vintage Hoover in there somewhere.

I didn’t buy anything from this place BUT there was a shelf of laserdiscs all the way in the back and I was excited because Amadeus was one. But then it got me thinking: Why have I never looked into laserdiscs as a collector item for my favorite movies?? So I went to eBay and not only did I find one for The Lost Boys, but I FOUND A JAPANESE IMPORT! The cover was so cool so I BOUGHT IT.

The second antique place was more my style – multiple rooms that were loosely themed, and the guy running the place was SUPER CHATTY and offered his shoppers popcorn and candy. OK, pal, I’ll stay! Say less!

I ended up buying a tin noise maker with clown faces on it (you know the things, they’re a dime a dozen at antique shops) and this folk art crucifix which is now hanging in the bathroom:

On the way home, we stopped at Rockin’ Cat Cafe for matcha, which Henry said they didn’t have (how did he know??) but they had a huge sign out front that literally said WE HAVE MATCHA or something. God he’s so annoying sometimes.

Just weird to think that while we were doing this, all the drama up the street was either about to unfold or already unfolding. Still feel sick over that!

Back to journaling though, I even got out one of my old vacation journals because I found a cup sleeve from the Ryan Cafe in Korea and I recently figured out that I can glue those in such a way to my journal pages that they become pockets! I’m sure there are millions of tutorials out there for that but I swear to god this is something that just occured to me when I found a cup sleeve I was keeping from one of our last trips to Philly and was about to paste into on a page when I thought: WAIT! JUST DO THREE EDGES AND THEN STICK THINGS IN THERE! This is in the back of my “everyday” journal:

Thank god I never throw things like this away, I’m such a sentimental pack rat!

I did, however, get inspo from a YouTube video recently where someone used a postcard as a page insert in her travel journal and I wanted to try it because this is GENIUS. I always end up with extra postcards because I forget that I don’t have a lot of friends to send them too (lol, #sadsackentersthechat).

In my old vacation journal, I had a postcard from Busan that I never ended up sending, so I taped it into the front to act as a page, and then printed out some pictures of us from Gamcheon Culture Village on the blank side. Then I sent it to Chooch because I have to giddily share all of my “journaling era” updates with him, like he gives even a shred of a shit. He did say “That’s cool” though, and then “Peenlop jump scare” so at least I know he watched the whole 8 seconds.

I usually don’t bring my vacation journal with me when we do small road trips but now I’m really stoked to bring it on the short, 3-day trip we’re doing over my birthday weekend (WITH CHOOCH) and he was like, “Great, can’t wait.” I even have a little carrying case for all of my journaling tools and accessories, LOL. I am definitely more focused on the actual writing portion of journaling though so this will be a fun exercise for me to maybe rely less on words and more on sketches and ephemera (tickets stubs, etc) that I accumulate. I was already doing that in my haunted house journals and my last two vacation journals but it was contained more to the front and back filler pages and less woven into the narrative, if that makes sense?

For example:

I’m just happy to have something to be excited about again!

What else….we finally started watching the show “From” after several friends hyped it to us. Will probs finish the first season tonight – I like it so far!

Meanwhile, I am still obsessing over “Obsession” and am dying for someone other than Henry and Chooch  to watch it so I can talk about it. I think I ruined Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie for Chooch because I became so hyper-fixated on it and texted him to death over it so I am trying not to also ruin Obsession for him because he is super stoked on it still. I just cannot stress how masterful this fucking movie was. I know horror movies tend to get shafted when it comes to awards because god forbid the horror genre is “lesser than,” but this film needs its damn flowers. If Amy Madigan was able to collect trophies for “Weapons” (liked that movie and she was cool in it but….huh? I was genuinely confused) then Inde Navarrette better be MORE than just nominated.

OK, I think I have successfully emptied my brain of all that it needed to transmit onto her. Ciao for now you juicy little steamed bao!

(I ALWAYS SAY THIS BUT SHOULD THAT BE MY SIGNATURE SIGN OFF???)

We met up with Amy and Dick yesterday at the Hazelwood Brew House. It’s a pretty cool place with three different breweries in one space so I was able to get three stamps and also hit my wall where I have decided I don’t like drinking and that OCD over these stamps is putting me down a path I don’t like. So, that’s cool.

But there were two highlights from the day that I want to talk about, aside from hanging out with Amy and Dick obviously and having a random guy take the below picture of us and completely cutting off the “Hazelwood  Brew House” sign which was the whole reason we asked a stranger to take the picture for us (AFTER HENRY WAS GOING TO PRECARIOUSLY PROP MY PHONE UP ON A RAILING!!!).

Highlight #1:

I was at the Abstract Realm bar by myself, asking the guy there about the different beers. I was still focused on making a decision so I didn’t quite hear what he said next but it sort of sounded like “Dance Gavin Dance.” I looked up at him dumbly and asked, “….huh?” and he goes, “Your shirt? That’s Dance Gavin Dance?”

BRUH. No one ever knows DGD out in the wild! (Well, at least not back when I was super into them but I have realized that they are definitely a bit more popular now since the pandemic.) We ended up having a LONG chat about post-hardcore. He has never seen DGD live and I was like, “NO, YOU GOT TO” and then told him that they’re coming to Stage AE next month and he didn’t know that! I actually JUST bought our tickets for this show on Friday, and then found out right after that it was also the 19th anniversary of Downtown Battle Mountain so it felt like kismet that that was the day I pulled the trigger and bought the tickets!

Then the Abstract Realm guy unbuttoned his shirt a little to show me that he was wearing a Circa Survive shirt (!!) so then we started chatting about Anthony Green and Sounds of Animals Fighting and the whole time I could hear myself like I was hovering up in the rafters and I realized, “Hey, she’s being herself! She’s talking in her real voice!” and then I double-realized that it was because I finally had someone to talk with about music. Fuck, it was invigorating. Especially to not be mansplained in the process.

HIGHLIGHT #2:

My Aunt Susie randomly (not so random, really – she and her husband go to breweries every weekend it seems!) came in right around the time we were getting ready to leave. It was kind of weird though because Amy has never met her and was JUST asking me if I have talked to her recently. I actually have not, it’s probably been since around my Aunt Sharon (Susie’s sister) died in 2016 aside from some Instagram likes here and there. And then – poof. Susie appears, lol.

I hoped she didn’t feel ambushed but I wanted to say hi and also give Amy the opportunity to meet her aunt. It was really nice to see her again — we used to jokingly call each other “brat” when I was growing up and spending a lot of time at my Pappap’s house and she was still living there until she got married so we were actually around each other a lot back then. My childhood BFF and I were even in her wedding!

Susie has always been super cool (and normal, which speaks volumes if you know my family) and I really hope that we get to hang out for real at some point now that we ran into each other.

I think I was overstimulated though because I was up almost all night, just laying in bed with my mind racing. I don’t know why this happens to me now–it’s like my social anxiety is mad at me for ignoring it in the moment so it rears its obsessive head right when I’m trying to fall asleep. So rude.

OK, no one is going to care about this, but something happened at last week’s The Midnight concert that had me S H O O K. Before I further explain, there is some required reading to prep you (“you” as if anyone is reading this) for THE SHOCKING STORY I’m about to tell. The tale starts in 2019 and involves Chooch and I LOVINGLY HARANGUING JANNA, as we were born to do.

———————————————–

JANNA’S FUTURE HUSBAND

OK how to even start this story. Well, I guess it starts the same way they all do: I became obsessed with this one YouTube channel that features a group of guys who go to amusement parks and carnivals and vlog about it, but sometimes the friend of one of the guys shows up and for some reason, I have really taken to him.

In an effort to keep my blog out of search engines, let’s just call him Fleece Radkins.

Now, Fleece sometimes shows up in the vlogs of his friend, Flint Yesvac. Their home parks are King’s Dominion and Busch Gardens Williamsburg, and actually, one of the Busch Gardens vlogs was the first time I saw Fleece. I liked him because after every ride, he would stoically and confidently state, “That’s my favorite ride in the park.”

So then Janna was visiting one time and Chooch was like “JANNA WATCH ME PLAY FORTNITE JANNA CAN I HAVE YOUR GAMING COMPUTER” and I was like, “JANNA CHOOSE AN NCT127 BIAS AND WATCH THESE ROLLER COASTER VIDEOS!” so I showed her one of the vlogs that featured Fleece and yelled, “ISN’T HE FUNNY” and she was like, “I guess?” and I was like, “OMG JANNA LIKES FLEECE!”

And then Chooch abandoned Fortnight in an effort to help me harangue Janna mercilessly like any other Saturday night in Hell House and we decided that we needed to hook them up.

So the first step, naturally, was to find him on Instagram. I did, but his profile is private and he doesn’t have a lot of friends so I didn’t want to request him.

“I feel like he’s much too young, though!” Janna pointed out, which means that she was at least considering it.

That fall, Henry, Chooch and I went to King’s Dominion. We were walking to Grizzly when Henry casually asked, “Hey, wasn’t that one of the guys in those videos you watch?” and I was like, “Huh? Who? Where? Why?” because I am the most unalert when it comes to other people while I’m walking. I mostly keep my eyes on the ground so that I don’t trip.

However, when I turned around to look, even from the back and with eyes as jacked as mine (and I do not mean jacked as in muscular, my eyes are basically saggy orbs that are close to serving as just facial decoration) I recognized one of the passersby as FLEECE RADKINS.

“Holy shit!” I screeched to Chooch, and we were frozen, watching him walk away with his group of friends.

“Was it really him?” Chooch asked, and there was only one way to find out: CHASE HIM SUPER STEALTHILY AND STARE AT HIS FACE FROM CLOSE RANGE.

We caught up with him just as he walked up to the Wayside Grill, so I stood right next to him and said, “HMMM, LOOKING AT THE MENU” while,  you know, looking at the menu. Then Fleece walked away and sat down on a wall while his friends stayed in line, and at that point, I was 99.9% confident that it was him so I made Chooch pose for a fake picture.

FLEECE RADKINS, ladies and gentlemen!

I sent the picture to Janna.

She was a bit less enthused than I expected her to be. I guess I wanted her to be upset that she wasn’t there but she seemed pretty flippant about it, what a bitch!

YOU GUYS, TWO HOURS LATER, WE SAW HIM AGAIN IN THE SAME SPOT!!

Henry didn’t know that Fleece was behind him, so Chooch ran up to Henry and whisper-screamed, “DON’T LOOK BEHIND YOU BUT FLEECE RADKINS IS RIGHT THERE” and I was standing behind Fleece close enough to see that Fleece’s eyes were honed in right on Chooch and he totally had to have known that he was the subject of their DON’T TURN AROUND conversation.

I never did approach the guy because he’s not even a part of that YouTube channel, he’s just kind of like an occasional tag-alonger so I would have felt uncomfortable being like, “HEY I HAVE SEEN YOU IN THREE VIDEOS ON YOUTUBE AND I HAVE CLEARLY WATCHED THOSE THREE VIDEOS ENOUGH TIMES FOR EVEN MY BOYFRIEND WHO ONLY HALF-WATCHES THE VIDEOS TO RECOGNIZE YOU CAN I GET A SELFIE?”

Yeah, no thanks.

Back at work (a/k/a The Place Without Roller Coasters), Glenn thought this was such a great story that he made me tell it in our weekly meeting and absolutely no one was shocked that I was stalking some guy that I kind of know from 3 YouTube videos. So, your typical Tuesday meeting.

FLASH FORWARD TO 2023

OK, got that? You marinating in those juicy, wet fact-globules?

Now picture this: I’m sitting at home, chained to my computer, doing Law Firm stuff (remember when Chooch thought I was a stock broker, though?) when Chooch texts me from work. It’s a picture of someone’s Chipotle order, and I’m like, “What am I looking at, the fact that this bro is a meat-psycho, or what?”

And then I see the name.

Mmm, no way. I’m sure Fleece Radkins isn’t that uncommon so probably just a funny coincidence. But then I remembered that there is an ACE event at Kennywood this weekend, so MAYBE he was in town for that? I mean, odd to come in so many days in advance considering this is PITTSBURGH, but who am I to judge.

“Send me his picture, I forget what he looks like,” Chooch texted, just on the off chance that this was the same guy. Because my blog goes down EVERYDAY NOW, this was of course one of those times so I couldn’t search my blog for his picture and instead had to google his name plus the name of the guy whose YouTube videos he sometimes has cameo appearances in.

In doing so, I saw that the second result was a LinkedIn page for a guy with the same name, his profile picture was definitely the same guy, and it said PITTSBURGH, PA??

My heart started racing (LOL why tho) and sent it to Chooch who replied: lol should i say something to him

UM YES PLZ LOL.

Anyway, Chooch finally texted me back a few minutes later and said it was definitely him, they talked, it was awkward. “I’ll tell you later, I have to go back to work,” he said, leaving me hanging for approx. 4 hours. Meanwhile, I was frantically trying to tell Carrie and Nate this over Jabber at work, knowing they would be the only ones who would care. I did NOT know what to do with this useless information!!

By the time Chooch came home from work and I accosted him for the 411, he had already half-moved on with his life and didn’t know what I was asking him at first?? How was this story not just PERCHED on the tip of his tongue, ready to roll the moment he walked through the door??

“Oh, that,” he laughed, “Yeah, it was really awkward.”

And here’s why: BECAUSE CHOOCH MADE IT THAT WAY.

First of all, instead of being straightforward and saying, “Hey, aren’t you in some of Flint Yesvak’s coaster videos?” he instead decided to play a weird psychological game by pretending that he looked familiar but wasn’t SURE HOW.

So of course, Fleece is probably on guard. I know any time someone says, “Hey, do I know you from somewhere?” to me, hundreds of “wrong place/wrong time” scenarios whiz through my mind like a Rolodex of Ill Repute.

“Is this a hitchhiker I picked up in 1999?”

“Is this one of the moms from Chooch’s first (Catholic LOLOLOL) school where I was publicly shunned for being the MEAN GIRL who was blogging about all of the douchey parents??”

“Is this one of the people I met on WEBTV and invited to my house when I was going through an ‘Interviewing for New Friends’ phase???”

You see what I mean.

“I think I saw you in a video,” Chooch ended up saying to Fleece, like it JUST CAME TO HIM.

He said Fleece very cautiously asked, “What….kind…of video?”

“Oh, I think…coasters maybe,” Chooch said, still toying with him. I’m so glad I didn’t witness this. I was actually squealing in embarrassment just listening to his replay of the interrogation.

From there, Fleece deduced where Chooch had seen him which was good because Chooch legitmately couldn’t remember the name of the Fleece’s friend’s channel. Not having anything else to say, they exchanged “Nice to meet you”s and then Fleece took his burrito and left. Watch him never come back to that Chipotle.

“Didn’t you see the screenshot of his LinkedIn that I sent you? He went to school for Computer Science – you could have talked to him about that!” I cried.

“HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO LEAD INTO THAT??” Chooch asked incredulously. “‘Excuse me, but when I was perusing your LinkedIn page while waiting for you to come in, I noticed that you went to school for Computer Science’???”

Chooch also said that it was funny because when he first got the order, all he saw was the “Fleece R” and that the full name doesn’t come up until you print it, I guess? He said he immediately thought to himself, “Fleece Radkins lol.” AND THEN HE SAW THE FULL NAME AND WAS LIKE, “………….nah.” What a small fucking world.

But yeah, now that we know he lives in Pittsburgh, Janna has much better chances of marrying him! I’m so excited for her!!

(As I was telling this to story to people, it was kind of alarming to me to realize how many times I start off by saying, “OK remember that one person I was obsessed with from [insert CVS, MY NEIGHBORHOOD, THE PARKING LOT OUTSIDE OF A RESTAURANT, THE TROLLEY, OBSCURE BAND, NICHE YOUTUBE CHANNEL, AMISH CHEESE SHOP]???”)

OK now we are back to 2026 (JFC I almost put 2024 and then 2025, could not remember the year, awesome) and you know all about us shipping Janna with the inimitable FLEECE RADKINS. But what I didn’t mention back then is that we had a BACKUP SHIP for Janna. There is another coaster YouTuber we love (he’s the best one, honestly) and he has friends from all over who make appearances in his vlogs depending on which park he’s visiting. He calls himself and his friends the Coaster Idiots and most of them do not have their own YouTube channels but have become “known” in the coaster scene (yes, I realize how weird this is the more words that I type, life is so unserious sometimes) and TWO OF THEM WERE ACTUALLY ON THE COASTER CREW TRIP WE WENT ON IN 2023!! Chooch and I chatted with one of them several times and because Insta friends with him afterward and I’m still so happy about that because he is one of my favorite coaster idiots.

Anyway!!! There is one Coaster Idiot who is jokingly referred to as Uncle Nate. He usually is wearing a trucker hat and big mirrored sunglasses and gives off an ironic predator vibe. Well, at least in the past – he seems to have toned down that character lately and is just “himself” now. Chooch and I were pushing Uncle Nate on Janna at one point and she was not happy about it because of his sleazy persona.

Truly though he is so funny and I’m always happy when he pops up in a Coaster Idiots video.

The guy who runs that channel is from NJ and I’m pretty sure he has mentioned that Uncle Nate lives somewhere in rural PA and that his home park is hilariously Conneaut Lake Park (which I believe is closed now after all kind of scandals and fires, it was its own untelevised soap opera). This is about an hour or so outside of Pittsburgh, so when Henry and I were standing in line waiting for doors to open at the Roxian last week and a familiar looking guy walked past us toward the end of the line, it wasn’t THAT far-fetched to believe that it was Uncle Nate, but also, WAS THAT UNCLE NATE?? Henry and I both looked at each other at the same time, like, “You saw that, right? Was that—-?”

“I really think it was him,” Henry said, and then creepily commented on his leg tattoos. I’m sorry Henry, but I’m not typically studying Uncle Nate’s legs when I’m watching those videos?!

I texted Chooch immediately, like, “I think Uncle Nate is at this concert?!” and his response was, “Who?” I swear to god, that kid moved to Philly and immediately his brain became a sieve for all Pgh-related memories.

Once we were inside the venue and eventually found our “forever spot” (I hate the Rosina, truly, there is no good place to stand in that fucking place), HE WALKED PAST US!?

There is he along with the tattoos that Henry has apparently saved to memory.

I was seriously going to say something but then the show started. I was standing RIGHT BEHIND HIM for the entire thing. I was going to wait until after the show to hopefully-not-creepily ask, “Hey, you’re not UNCLE NATE the COASTER IDIOT are you?” but then!! He almost got in a fight with the super tall and super drunk and super annoying bro next to us, whose gf was also super tall and super drunk and super annoying and kept bumping into Uncle Nate, who was getting visibly ruffled. Then she kept STROKING UNCLE NATE’S ARM while apologizing!? I could kind of read his lips and it sounded like he said something about having a new tattoo under his sleeve that she kept flailing into. He did NOT look like he was accepting her apology and then a few minutes later when she tripped up against the back of him, he stiffened and shook his head.

So then her annoying bro bf (who HAD HIS SUNGLASSES ON FOR THE WHOLE SHOW, WOW SO COOL) leaned across me because he was apparently about to start to a fight with Uncle Nate but his gf stepped in and slurred, “No, don’t start, please!” So it never escalated from there but poor Uncle Nate’s night was tarnished because of that. They were annoying me too—the gf hit me in the face at one point when she was drunkenly flailing her arms about in some weird jellyfish dance, but then they eventually left for more drinks (I imagine) and their vacated spot was taken by another couple who were cool and normal.

When the show ended, Nate and his gf (wife? sorry Janna) split with a quickness so I never did get to say anything. Besides, I was sweating my ass off and my throat hurt from screaming and singing (well, yelling words, I can’t sing) and approaching a stranger was the last thing I wanted to do at that point.

However, we are probably in their picture because as we were waiting to cross the street in front of the Roxian, he and his gf were already on the other side of the road taking a picture of the venue and marquee. I’ll have no way of knowing because he’s not on Instagram! (I know this because he’s always the only Coaster Idiot not tagged, duh.)

I just thought that this was so funny, that Chooch and I jokingly chose two random coaster channel side characters to ship Janna with (from two different channels, too!) and somehow I have seen both of them out in the wild. Chooch’s second Fleece Radkins encounter still takes the cake, though!

It’s times like this when I wish we still worked in the office because I was dying to talk about this all week! Well, there’s always therapy this week, get ready Julia, lol.

My fragile VIP heart is so full today! My ultimate favorites BIGBANG finally had their time to shine last night at Coachella. They were supposed to headline in 2020 and well, we all know what happened in 2020! Then they lost two members and between all of the scandals and backlash, G-Dragon’s hiatus, etc., it seemed like the possibility of a BIGBANG comeback was never going to happen. But it’s their 20th anniversary this year and they made their official comeback at COACHELLA.

IN AMERICA.

The last act to perform on the Outdoor Theater at 10:30PM on a Sunday, not headliners anymore, and still pulled THIS CROWD:

YouTube livestreamed it and I thought for sure my old lady ass was going to have to miss it, but I decided to go to bed early and then Henry woke me up at 1:25AM, saying, “Hey….five minutes.”

My eyelids shot open and I sat up like I was on a string. Grabbed my glasses and went downstairs to wait on the couch for it to start and when I say my heart was RACING.

I of course REALLY got into Kpop toward the end of 2016, and this was essentially the end of BIGBANG’s golden reign. They all began enlisting in the military shortly after. Then T.O.P. had his “scandal” which almost killed him. Then Seungri revealed his true colors with an ACTUAL scandal.

I long ago gave up hope of ever seeing them live. Whether as a 4 person group or 3 at this point, it was seeming less and less likely.

But this! It simultaneously made me feel unwell while also being healed?! I watched the whole hour and fifteen minutes with my hand on my heart, trying not to pass out. Henry watched the whole thing too – we both sat there quietly, no commentary. Then I just started sobbing, lol.

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This morning, it was the first thing I thought of when I woke up.  I immediately started scrolling through IG and Threads and was so happy to see how much praise they have been getting. The Kings of KPOP are back. They did that.

“Haru Haru” made me nostalgic for a time in Korea I didn’t actually live through. It BROKE me. Especially without T.O.P. Respect his wishes but jfc I really hope that one day he changes his mind and comes back.

Taeyang and G-Dragon performing “Good Boy”? Stop.

Daesung BRINGING KOREAN TROT TO FUCKING COACHELLA? He did that shit.

I have been so stoked all day (OK, while also slipping into sporadic sob sessions too!) and for the first time in years, I feel that old joy I used to get listening to their songs. Being a VIP is not for the weak, you guys. It’s been a rough 10 years. In fact, several years when Henry and I were in line to see Kang Daniel in Toronto, the girl in front of me asked me who my ult group is. I said “BIGBANG” on the broken wings of a sigh.

“I’m sorry,” she answered somberly.

It’s like that.

But today, I woke up feeling like this is the start of a new era! I poured my coffee in my BIGBANG coffee cup and put on a BIGBANG playlist while sitting down to work. I smiled like a goof while doing my boring work.

BIGBANG FOREVER.

Welp, I had therapy today and wasn’t planning on mentioning it, but I ultimately shared with my therapist the agonizing “what even is this feeling??” that has overcome me since hearing about Mark Lee’s departure from NCT last Friday. She helped me understand that it’s not weird or dumb, this emotion that I can’t pinpoint, but it really does signify the end of a golden era in my life and that it makes sense that I am feeling this grief-but-not-grief because no one died unless you count a past version of myself.

Please indulge me here, but I thought it would help to go back through the pictures Henry took of me at every NCT / Super M / KCON concert where I literally felt like my best, most happiest, purest self. NCT has been with me for years now and I really feel like while all the members were growing up, I was growing up in a way too by putting more even space between the Erin of Now with the Erin of Then, which wasn’t a good Erin.

KCON 2017!

Not me wearing a Pierce the Veil shirt to my first Kpop concert lol. June 2017!

That’s NCT127 in the red.

KCON 2018!

Saw them again at KCON 2018!

This was back when Winwin was still with them. </3

SUPER M 2019!

20     

NCT 217 in Newark 10/22!

Mark Lee on a bus stop ad </3

I spent so much $$$ on my ticket that Henry had to wait until the day of and get a nosebleed seat for himself. This was the selfie he sent me from his literal last row seat haha.

We stayed afterward too and waited for their vans to leave the venue just to get a split-second glance of them through the tinted windows, it was so much fun.

This was when I had FULLY accepted that in addition to VIP and SHAWOL (KPOP fandom names, don’t try to understand) I was now an NCTzen.

NCT DREAM 2023 in Chicago

This was the one that really sent me. NCT 127 had been to the States numerous times but the Dreamies never had. Until spring of 2023. Again, I threw down some serious cash on my ticket and I will live the rest of my life having not even a single regret. This was one of the best concerts and nights of my life. I bonded with the other NCTzens around me. I saw my bias Renjun for the first time ever. I cried so hard but also smiled so big and screamed so loud that I gave myself a headache.

That’s  me on the screen, smiling a genuine smile which doesn’t happen very often (I’m the President of the Fake Smile Club).

This was one of the happiest days for me and I think about it a lot.

This was when I escorted Henry to his seat, lol.

NCT EXHIBITION IN SEOUL 2024!!

OK this doesn’t really count as “seeing them live,” but there was an NCT127 exhibition happening at the DDP when we were in Korea for our “marriage mission.” Chooch was off Pokemon Go’ing so I made Henry go to it with me and I loved every fucking second of it.

I got this delightful mug in the gift shop at the end. They had one for every member and I got Haechan’s of course because he’s my ult NCT bias (tied with Ten who btw also just announced his departure from SM although he is allegedly still going to participate in team activities with NCT and WayV – we’ll see) but I wanted to get one of each, honestly.

Another fun fact is that we were in Korea for NCT Dream’s comeback, so I got to buy their new album from the SM Store and watch their video FROM SEOUL. Short of actually seeing an NCT concert in Korea, that was next level for me. (Although Chooch and I did see one of the Dreamies in 2019 – Jeno – when he was hosting The Show and we attended a live taping of it!)

NCT DREAM 2024 – LONG ISLAND

They didn’t have Renjun with them for this tour and that made me sad but I was still grateful to see them again!

There’s this inside joke within the Kpop fandom that no matter what the concert is, you are guaranteed to see at least one neobong (NCT lightstick) in the crowd and I have definitely found this to be true! It’s funny because now it’s crossing boundaries into non-kpop territory too.

Henry sits alone – again LOL.

JINGLE BALL 2024 DETROIT!

One of my work friends tried to talk me out of buying tickets for this since I had just seen NCT Dream 2 mths prior BUT THERE WAS A CHANCE THAT RENJUN WOULD BE THERE.

AND HE WAS.

Henry got to sit with me this time. I used my Capital One card for the presale and got really great seats.

This was on TV as well and some of my friends were like THAT GROUP YOU LIKE IS ON MY TV RIGHT NOW. YEAH BOY!

I was so grateful to get to see Renjun again but now, in hindsight, this would be the last time I’d see NCT Dream with all 7 members. JFC that stings.

NCT 127 3/25 CHICAGO!

I ALMOST DID NOT GET TICKETS FOR THIS TOUR. Some of the members were in the military. One was kicked out and we do not speak of him. I almost said, “Well, I have already seen 127 three times, I can pass on this one.” But then I was like, “Hello, what kind of shit talk is that for an NCTzen!?” So, I got the tickets. AND THIS WOULD END UP BEING THE LAST TIME I SEE MARK, MAYBE AT ALL.

Henry sits alone again LOL.

We made a bunch of pins to give out as freebies.  This is just a few – there were at least 100! <3

MARK.

Literally. The end of an era. I’m really sad.

So, I woke up at the crack of dawn this morning to the news of Mark Lee leaving SM and halting all NCT activities. First, I saw it from his own Instagram – you know it’s not going to be good when the post is a picture of a handwritten letter. I still didn’t fully understand the context – what was he apologizing for? Was there a scandal? Did he get hurt?

But then right after, I saw SM’s statement confirming that they had mutually decided to part ways after 10 years. Mark Lee! Literally carried 4 teams on his back at one time. The backbone of NCT. Haechan’s bestie.

It’s no wonder why there were so many videos of the NCT Dream members straight up sobbing during the finale of their Dream Show run in Seoul – we all thought they were just sad because that era had ended, but no, they knew. They knew it was their last time performing with Mark. Ughhhhh.

Sorry to be MELODRAMATIC, the man isn’t dead, but yo…NCT has been my antidepressant for YEARS. They were also at the first Kpop concert I ever went to – KCON 2017! I feel blessed that I got to see Mark so many times with NCT127, NCT Dream, and even – gloriously – Super M. I will support him no matter what, especially since it sounds like he made this decision for himself and he has admitted that he is scared of what’s to come.

FUN FACT, back when Chooch was a Kpop stan with me, Mark was his bias.

This is true with bands of any genre because aging is aging no matter how you slice it, but there is something especially jarring about watching Kpop groups grow up. There is little in life that makes me feel as old and panicked about time & mortality as going through an entire life cycle of a Kpop group and realizing that you’re reaching the inevitable expiration date. I hate it so much. I fear that NCT won’t survive this and their current & future military enlistments. I mean, I thought that all of the viral “NCT Dream crying” videos from this week were because they knew Haechan was due to enlist soon. Not this. (BTW, Mark is Canadian and exempt from military enlistment in Korea so Henry and I are always talking about how with NCT Dream, at least they would still have him, Renjun and Chenle (both Chinese), and NCT127 would have him, Johnny (American) and Yuta (Japanese), but I guess that is not going to be the case after all.

This is making me spiral out for so many strange, personal, possibly neurotic reasons. I have attachment issues (bigly). I take everything so hard. And it’s such a weird thing to be like, “Hi, I’m upset, can I talk to you about it?” to anyone other than Henry, who has been bracing for the fall out and of course it happens when he leaves to go to Lowe’s and I’m here alone, thinking about all of my favorite NCT memories, how I never got my NCT Dream tattoo (but really need to), and just how they have always been my cozy/comfort listen. Tears incoming.

This will always be one of my favorites:

And before I end this: A BIG FUCK YOU TO SM. I know it’s been said that this was a genuinely respectful departure and not the typical LEGAL NOTICE that these agencies are also putting out in these situations, I just feel like they could treat their artists better. They worked this man to the fucking bone for 10 years.

ETA: I just heard someone say that Mark chose himself and you know, TRUE. That takes away some of the hurt knowing that Mark is going to be able to do what HE wants to do now (hopefully starting with a vacation and lots of rest!!).

I love Mae Martin. Like, lovelovelove Mae Martin. Ever since watching their show “Feel Good” on Netflix several years ago, I’ve been enchanted by their nervous comedic delivery and pure adorability. When I saw they were coming to Pittsburgh on their The Possum* comedy tour, I was all in. Originally, I was going to go alone, but then Henry watched “Wayward” with me and I sent him some of their late night show interviews, and he was on board too.

*(SPOILER, THERE WERE NO POSSUMS AT THE SHOW.)

I thought I lost this jacket!

Having Chooch home this week has been so great – for us, anyway, LOL. It’s been pretty annoying for him, like when I made him take pictures of Henry and me before we left.

LOL, what faces.

Then, to further Chooch’s annoyance, we made him drive us downtown to the Byham Theater so that we wouldn’t have to either take the T or pay exorbitant parking prices. This was actually almost as funny as the Mae Martin show because Chooch was SO PISSED IMMEDIATELY when I put on NCT127 at high volumes and then Henry was nagging him for driving too fast through the church parking lot across from our house, and then!! Henry was digging around the backseat of the car (we make him sit in the back when Chooch is driving, LOL) for his hat and Chooch was like, “Oh well, I’m not going back” but then Henry was like, “NO, I THINK I HAD IT ON THE ROOF OF THE CAR!!!!” and then I realized it was his Canada hat, so I said, “Oh, you HAVE to turn around then!”

So, Chooch grudgingly looped around Brookline and went back to the parking lot.

“THERE IT IS!” I screamed, while Chooch was breaking his fingers in his intensity to get NCT127’s “Sticker” off the radio.

You can hear a clip of my unhinged cackling in the background, but it actually went on for so much longer – that irate flourish with which he snatched his lost hat SENT ME.

“Anything else you’d like to report missing?” Chooch said drolly after peeling out of the parking lot before Henry even had the car door shut.

“YOU,” Henry spat.

This of course made me lose it all over again and after another full minute, Chooch side-eyed me and said, “OK, it wasn’t that funny, you can stop now.”

AND THAT JUST MADE ME LAUGH LOUDER as I reached over to crank the volume on NCT’s 2 Baddies (another of Chooch’s most hated songs).

It was only about a 10 minute drive to downtown, with Henry and Chooch bickering the entire way over directions. Oh, I was wheezing. I missed this so much.

I’m surprised Chooch actually let the car come to a complete stop before booting us out at a curb.

I realized that I hadn’t been to the Byham since pre-Covid when my pal Michelle and her daughter were in town and invited me to the TROCKADERO BALLET with them!

It was such a great night, even when Henry the Doof dropped his phone under the seats in front of us (thankfully it was during intermission) and made me hold his beer while he gently tapped the shoulder of the woman in front of us to tell her he had to retrieve his phone which had landed near her purse and didn’t want her to think he was trying to rob her. She was super impressed by his politeness and commented on the gentleness of his shoulder tap, which irritated me because I hate when Henry’s inner feminist is on display and stealing my spotlight.

Sigh.

Her partner seemed equally impressed and I was like OMG WE GET IT, HENRY IS AN ALLY.

I wanted to pop into the conversation with a reminder that I have had to correct Henry’s misuse of pronouns when referencing Mae Martin all night, BUT THEN HIS BEER SPILLED ON MY LEG AND PULLED ME AWAY FROM THE SCENE.

Aside from Henry shifting uncomfortably in his seat all night, miming his discomfort and earlier diatribe of how poorly-designed theater seats are (maybe it was because people weren’t fat asses back then who ate king-sized Twix during shows, HENRY), it was a really great night. We had good balcony seats, everyone was respectful, and there were lots of laughs! Mae Martin is a treasure. Canada,  you produce the best people, I swear to god. I am fully in my Canada-era right now, I think. I mean, we came home and I forced Chooch to watch more episodes of the Nirvana the Band web series, which he said I’ve ruined for him and made it feel like homework, LOL.

The first half of Mae’s show was stand-up (I could have listened to them talk all night – they have such a nervously hilarious vibe that I am so attracted to!), then after intermission, their friend Matt came out for some improv (this was Henry’s favorite part of the night) and then Mae ended the show by performing several songs. Yes, they can act, make people laugh, do improv, sing, play guitar, AND they just taught themselves how to play harmonica after getting inspo from the Bob Dylan biopic.

I need, need, need Mae Martin and Matt Johnson to work on something together. PLEASE. My two favorite Canadians. <3

Anyway, it just felt really good to laugh so genuinely all night, starting with the drive down there courtesy of Chooch’s surliness and Henry’s rooftop hat mishap. This was almost one of those events that come up in my feed and I go to myself, “That could be fun” and then take no action. I’m glad that I bought tickets though! I had that niggling sensation that I would get FOMO if I didn’t. I think I was right to trust the niggle! I think I’m doing pretty good in my mission to “get out there more,” as prescribed by my therapist.

Afterward, Chooch was waiting for us in the parked car a few streets over, sitting there reading a book (The Martian) like a real dad. He went to the bookstore and visited his friend at work and then grudgingly came back (in time!) to retrieve us. What a sweetheart.

I can’t explain fully what my deal is with Mama Steve’s, but I just really super love it so much. I was actually more excited about going here than Busch Gardens, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the food. It is all about the outdated ambiance for me. Please do not ever renovate, Mama Steve and Fam.

I was positively shaking with giddy anticipation. It was just as I had remembered!

Henry and Chooch were not even a fraction as stoked as I was. They’d have preferred the free hotel breakfast, I’m sure.

I’m not even going to pretend like this is the best food ever (although I’m the wrong person to ask since I’m very limited to what I can eat from this menu) but it’s just the fact that I truly get such frivolous joy from eating while swathed in a palette of baby blue. I mentioned this in my first ever Mama Steve’s blog post from…2021?? But it reminds me so much of my Pappap’s living room and dining room, color-wise. I feel instantly comforted every time I’m there!

Chooch was so over it before we were even seated, me taking pictures of everything like it was my first time there. But I was just so excited about everything in that moment! Chooch was back with us AND we were at Mama Steve’s!? Both of these things happening at once?!

I’m fairly certain that I took this exact picture the last time we were there but oh well. I love the coffee cups and I love the table tops and that’s that.

I became outrageously incensed because Henry’s meat-fists ruined this picture and you better believe I cried openly about it.

“Oh no,” Chooch said drily. “It’s too bad that nothing you wanted a picture of is still there. Like the tables. And that wall. Gone.”

NIRVANNA THE BAND THE SHOW THE MOVIE!!!!!!!!! Chooch said that I actually made him hate it with my zealous enthusiasm and wow, no one could have predicted that.

Anyway, in mock-excitement, Chooch blurted out, “Wow, 10 silver dollar pancakes?! Maybe that’s what I’ll get.” And then, “How big do you think they are?”

“Uh, silver dollar-sized??” Henry answered, incredulity pooling in the corners of his mouth. It was a whole thing. You had to be there.

That’s our server back there! Her name was either Lemon or Lenora. But she truly seemed to get a kick out of us and left our table chuckling to herself every time. When she took Chooch’s order and he hit her with the swerve of “vegetarian omelet,” she acted REALLY SHOCKED and goes, “OK! Vegetarian omelet….I thought you were gonna get the pancakes!” and then as she walked away, she said out loud, “I heard him say ‘10 silver dollar pancakes!‘” and then she chuckled so hard to herself. It was the cutest.

I don’t know what was going on behind my pancakes, but Henry clearly must have had the gall to ask Chooch to pass him the pepper and Chooch can’t complete any task without mouthing off in one way or another.

Anyway! I asked Henry if he would eat some pancakes if I ordered them because 4 p-cakes is too much for me. He said sure so I got a stack of blueberry and then immediately doused it with blueberry (or “blueberp” as it appeared on the carafe thing) syrup. “Wow, first you get my least favorite pancakes – blueberry – and then cover it with more blueberry,” Henry sighed. I almost peed my pants laughing because WHY WON’T MY BRAIN RETAIN THE FACT THAT HENRY HATES BLUEBERRY?!

Every time we go, we are usually only one of 2 or 3 tables. Lemon even told us not to hurry when she brought our check because, “as you can see, I don’t have any other tables,” she said with her patented chuckle. But then the hostess said, “The bus hasn’t come yet,” and Lemon chuckled some more so we weren’t sure if there really was a tour bus on the way or what? I mean, it’s freaking Williamsburg so I have to imagine that Mama Steve’s must get waves of crowds. I think every time we’ve been there, it’s been a weekday morning.

I look exhausted and my hair was wet. But I was so happy to be there! Henry looks like my prisoner.

And now for a series of pictures taken by Chooch which is always scary.

This was after Lemon busted us posing for pictures and did her “Pee Wee-watching-the-movie-about-himself-at-the-end-of-Pee Wee’s Big Adventure” chuckle.

Genuinely happy with a bellyful of blueberry pancakes from Mama Steve’s very own kitchen. Why does Henry look like he’s in the middle of psychological break, though. Like someone just put him out to pasture and told him to look at the flowers.

Oh! Speaking of the kitchen, we were desperately trying to figure out what they were listening to back there. It just sounded like the same several notes over and over. Chooch said it sounded like Nine Inch Nails because, “all I can hear is screeching and that’s what it sounds like.” I could see where he was coming from, but the cooks in the kitchen were a middle-aged black man and an old white lady. I mean, who I am to judge but they didn’t seem like the demographic for NIN.

My guess was that it was some sinister classical piece, something that would be used in an old horror movie. It was actually chilling. Henry even walked past the kitchen on purpose on his way to the restroom to try to get a better listen, but he said it only sounded worse the closer he got. We shouldn’t have sent the one person in our party who is hard of hearing.

(I actually really want it to have been NIN though because it just makes no sense, similar to my love for Mama Steve’s.)

Chooch always does this thing where he ultra-zooms on Henry when he’s supposed to be taking pictures of us, so I have a whole-ass collection of horrifying Henry close-ups on my phone. I sent this one to Alyson because it also happened to be her BIRTHDAY! She was excited because it was the live version of it, so she got to see Henry hee-hawing in motion.

And then we started our 6 hour drive home (well, first we had to stop at the Goodwill down the street from Mama Steve’s because Chooch’s latest obsession is starting a DVD collection). This was Henry whenever he was relocated to the backseat when it was Chooch’s turn to drive:

Wow. The end.

P.S. The last time we were at Mama Steve’s!

Williamsburg to Orlando: A Live Blog

The first Saturday of March was pretty great, not gonna lie. It was in the 70s here in Pittsburgh which definitely lent a hand to th eongoing battle against winter depression. March is so underrated as far as I’m concerned – maybe I’m biased because 2 of the 3 times we went to Korea happened to be in March so I can’t help but think of my favorite place on Earth while anxiously awaiting the arrival of spring. That sounds so corny—who am I, an author of books of inspirational quotes for purchase at Turnpike rest stops??

Anyway! We had a few plans for Saturday so it was nice to get out of the house. First, we had to pick up an order of seitan from Self-Reliant Seitan at the Bloomfield farmer’s market. I didn’t feel like getting out of the car but I was able to zoom in and take this picture to send to Chooch of Henry being creepy. “Ew, I just heard him do HYUCKHYUCKHYUCK laugh” I texted Chooch, who then sent back a “gross” in response.

Then we went straight to the Monroeville Mall for the ENHYPEN concert film. I love love love this trend because it’s fun to get to relive concerts that we went to but up close. Henry and I went to see ENHYPEN on this past tour in Long Island, but this was specifically their stadium performance in Tokyo – a huge deal for a Kpop group that’s only 4-5 years old.

This is the first time I’ve ever had a use for this Hipstamic filter! Anyway, that’s Jungwon, my bias in ENHYPEN. It was such a good time but I have some grievances to air:

• Henry kept falling asleep and denying it (he genuinely like ENHYPEN – I know there are people who can’t fathom that he actually enjoys this stuff but oh well, be miserable – so I’m chalking it up to old age) which was pissing me off because these tickets were $20 each since it was a “special event” I guess, so that’s an expensive nap, Old Man.
• The downside to liking these newer/younger groups is that the fans keep getting younger too so the theater was full of middle school girls, including the two behind us who:
  • never shut their fucking bitch mouths
  • kicked the backs of our seats like we were on an economy flight to pre-pubescent hell

I did have a moment where my quiet, internalized rage grew so powerful that I seriously thought I was going to have to get up and walk out rather than be THAT KAREN going viral on TikTok for fighting a 60 year old narcoleptic and two 11 year olds at a kpop movie in a near-defunct mall in the Zombie Capital of the World.

Viral video averted, we then went to the nearby Squatch Brewing for an afternoon beer and Henry ordered at the wrong part of the bar even though I pointed out the cordoned off section with the giant ORDER HERE sign hanging above it. He refused to move though so I left him alone at the bar and got a seat at a table the farthest from the bar because I didn’t want to be associated with him.

I had a RED ALE. It was actually very nice and refreshing.

Henry got a flight – did I mention in here that I’m over fights? Every time I get one, I end up feeling SO DRUNK and not great – I don’t know if it’s the mixing of different types of beers/alcohol levels?? I’m not a drinker in general so my tolerance is pretty low (even at home, I usually will pour myself the tiniest amount from a can/bottle and then give Henry the rest – sometimes I really just want a sip) so I truly have no idea what I’m talking about but I have noticed that now if I just order one full pour of one beer, I am totally OK for the rest of the day instead of coming home and collapsing in bed at 3PM with the spins (this happened several times after hanging out with my sister! I can’t do that shit anymore).

It was an OK place. Kind of out of the way for us so I can’t foresee going back anytime soon. But at least it earned me another stamp in my stupid book – I haven’t gotten a new one since December when I finally got my 20th! Now that I know this book doesn’t expire, I have had no fire under my ass to seek out new stamps. (I do want to get to 30 though because there’s a prize for that one too.)

In my ENHYPEN concert shirt :)

I took this on the way home because I liked how my nails looked #vanity

Not too much else to report from Saturday other than we watched another MATT JOHNSON movie because I’m on a giddy mission to becoming a MATT JOHNSON COMPLETIONIST. We watched Operation Avalanche and I’m not just saying this because I’m a ho for MAT JOHNSON but it was fucking incredible. Literally, this man’s brain makes him so freaking hot. He is a genius. The best part is that Henry is also strapped into the passenger seat for my wild descent into Matt Johnson madness and I love that for him, and for me. Get you a person who goes along with all of your obsessions and will basically be your GIRL TALK sounding board when you want to sit here and glaze a Canadian all day long for having high emotional intelligence and huge arms.

This is basically just a Nirvanna the Band / Matt Johnson fan site now. I just saw it in the theater for the THIRD TIME last night (after I said I didn’t want to go to the Waterfront on a Friday, that’s how you know this is Big Time Fixation) – I cannot recommend it enough. As I have already ranted: Go in cold, don’t watch trailers, don’t google. Then come home and binge everything they’ve done as Nirvanna the Band up until this point. Obsessed. Bought the poster. Dying to go back to Toronto.

There were these guys sitting at the bar near us beforehand and they ran into someone they knew who asked what they had come to see.  One of them giddily said, “Nirvanna, for the second time!” to which the other guy responded, “Nice! I saw it three times!” I could feel Henry tensing up next to me, knowing that what I actually heard in my deranged mind was “Paging Erin Buttinsky, Mrs. Buttinsky” which caused me to nearly fall out of my seat in my desperation to blurt out, “ITS OUR THIRD TIME TOO!!!” throwing three fingers wildly into the air like I was celebrating my third gold Olympic medal in the game of Obsessing Over Niche Things. (And fuck the White House invitation!)

The guys weren’t dude-bros so they didn’t mind my outburst and instead celebrated along with me for a second. (Maybe that’s me romanticizing the scene as usual.) “Yeah, Canadian pride!” one of them said to me and I felt like I was part of something.

When I get this fixated on random things, I start to wonder if I really am on the spectrum, somewhere, maybe riding it side-saddle down at one end. Because I will get these obsessions and then there is no room in my head and heart for anything else. Like, I’m at work wanting to spam my friends on Teams about this knowing full well that none of them will give a shit.

Anyway, if you catch me around town wearing thick headbands it’s because I belong to the Church of Matt Johnson now. Sorey. (Henry agreed that Matt Johnson can be my free pass, so Toronto here I come.)