From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V7 #181 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Thursday, May 7 1998 Volume 07 : Number 181 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Feg Fest 98 -- the Web site [The Great Quail ] The coming onslaught [Capuchin ] Probably Redundant Travelogue Part Three (Driving Home and Being Poor) [C] Probably Redundant Travelogue Part One (The Drive and Chris) [Capuchin Subject: Feg Fest 98 -- the Web site I have just uploaded the Feg Fest 98 Web site! It details just about everything I can think of concerning the May 23 Feg Party -- time, directions, information, activities -- it's all there, including a list of people who have signed on so far. (Well, the direction page is not yet complete, but will be in a few days!) The URL is: www.rpg.net/quail/fegmania/fegfest.html Check it out when you have a chance, and feel free to email me any suggestions, comments, bug-shoots, or additions! Oooh . . . I am so excited. This is going to be more fun than even a Dead flame war! - --Quail - ---------------------------------+-------------------------------- The Great Quail, K.S.C. | Literature Site - The Libyrinth: TheQuail@cthulhu.microserve.com | www.rpg.net/quail/libyrinth www.rpg.net/quail | Vampire Site - New York by Night: riverrun Discordian Society | www.rpg.net/quail/NYBN 73 De Chirico Street | Arkham, Orbis Tertius 2112-42 | ** What is FEGMANIA? ** "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents." -- H.P. Lovecraft ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 7 May 1998 19:19:52 -0500 From: nicastr@idt.net (Ben) Subject: Re: takin' the Eb bait >Family? The Fugs? Hot Tuna? Ehhhh, I don't think so (and I even like the >Fugs). And Cream and Spirit, BARELY. Bowie's SIXTIES work really doesn't >stand up, either. As for Pete Brown, I barely even know the name, which is >almost argument enough for his lack of influence/relevance today. Some >jammin' boogie-bluesman, I'm guessing? But, you must admit Cream probably did the most for cementing Eric Clapton's status as a "guitar god", and the band did have a number of classic songs that people are still familiar with, "Sunshine Of Your Love", "White Room", "Crossroads", "Badge", and "Strange Brew" come to mind. And they are considered by many to be the prototypical "super-group" (whatever that means!). The only David Bowie 60's thing that I think anyone will know is "Space Oddity", and that wasn't a hit until 1973. The pre-Space Oddity/Man of Words stuff that I've heard is pretty bad, although "Love You 'Til Tuesday" makes me crack up whenever I hear it! As for other 60's bands who's music stands up, let me submit the entire Mowtown catalog!!! ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 7 May 1998 18:56:57 -0500 From: "JH3" Subject: I shouldn't, but... ...Sorry, I can't resist. >>I can't see "Heroin" or "Run Run Run" or >>"Waiting for the man" as being on a level above "Words", "Salesman" >>or "Daily Nightly". Check out any songs written by Peter Tork, too. >Oh, dear. This is where I give up and write off this discussion as >an utterly lost cause. So, then the way to get him to give up and write off a "discussion" is simply to compare the music he likes with the Monkees? I'll be damned! This is even better than "Godwin's Law"... Just so this doesn't necessarily look like the convenient excuse for a wise-crack that it is, allow me to join the chorus of those stating the obvious: Having a lack of concern for lyrical content in popular music does not make you a philistine. I even know some rock critics (or former rock critics, at least) who would agree - my wife, for one. Look at it this way - what would the world be like if everyone insisted that you couldn't make an intelligent judgment about Celine Dion's work unless you "understood" that her lyrics were uniformly poignant, intelligent and thought-provoking? (Wait a minute, that *is* what the world is like...) Y'know, my opinions and 25 cents probably wouldn't even get you in the door at Starbucks, but when I think of The Great Sixties Bands, I think of Lothar and the Hand People, the Turtles, the Stooges, and maybe the Ventures. Oh yeah, and... the Monkees! Robyn Hitchcock himself would probably think I was a philistine. - -John "eagerly awaiting the new Sonic Youth CD - seriously" Hedges PS. The Beatles too, I just don't listen to them much these days. PPS. Really? *None* of you are Glen Baxter fans? Hard to believe. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 7 May 1998 17:30:18 -0700 (PDT) From: Capuchin Subject: The coming onslaught OK... I'm going to push up my travelogue now. It's long and dull. I didn't want to bore everyone, so I pulled out the very relevant feg material (with a bit about Alcatraz in the middle) and put it in a separate post. So read what you want. Part Two has the important stuff. Parts one and three are just more garbage. I was asleep when I wrote most of it. I have no quality of self-censorship, so you'll have to just skip over the really boring parts. Um... actually that middle post might be too long, so I hope Woj forwards it in a timely manner. Sorry. J. ________________________________________________________ J A Brelin Capuchin ________________________________________________________ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 7 May 1998 17:30:50 -0700 (PDT) From: Capuchin Subject: Probably Redundant Travelogue Part Three (Driving Home and Being Poor) The next morning I slept in and made everyone wait. When finally I did get up, it was time to take Karen to the hostel where she would stay for the next three or four days. We all piled in Eddie's Geo. Chris sat in the back seat. It was amazing. The Green Tortoise seems to be in the heart of yet another red light district. San Francisco, I think, is a thousand points of red light. But there was a video arcade. We went inside. They had all kinds of great video games from amazing new things like Propcycle to wonderful old things like Tempest and Star Wars. Damn, it was cool. But for the sake of my dear feg friends, I played one game of Super Mario Brothers and we left. We stealthily followed a walking Karen down the street until she entered a bookstore, then it was off to Berkeley. Berkeley was really hot. There were many wealthy street kids asking for change. Since last I was in Berkeley, the women have again taken to wearing bras. Who can keep up with fickle fashion? Telegraph is the most boring busy street in America. We actually overheard someone say "Well, do you want to come and be intellectual with us, or what?" First we hit Rasputin. He didn't die. There was far too much to see. Nothing really interesting in the Robyn department. I almost bought Love Songs For Underdogs. I almost bought a Bogmen album. I almost bought something by The Damned. Chris found the Dan Bern cd in the stacks downstaird for three bucks. I bought that. I got a Circle Jerks compilation that has their cover of I Wanna Destroy You (once saw a snippet from the video for that on Beavis and Butthead... that's how I learned of its existence). I bought a copy of Barton Fink that I now find fades heavily back and forth between good color and bad color. That, to me, is the hallmark of a bootleg dub. I spent twenty dollars that I did not have. Next was Amoeba. We were so burned out from Rasputin that we spent barely 30 minutes there. But it was a fruitful thirty minutes. I picked up a Glass Fish version of Eye for like six bucks. I paid an outrageous 25 dollars for the Gotta Let This Hen Out! video. I feel like I bought something else, but I can't seem to locate any physical evidence to corroborate those feelings. I spent another 30 dollars that I didn't have. It was a quiet walk in the too warm sun back to Eddie's car. We really had to scurry back to Chris's to get him home before rush hour hit. We wanted to be outside Concord by the time those freeways filled up. And after dropping Chris off at nearly four in the afternoon, I'm surprised we got out of San Francisco at all. It was slow going, but we had open highway by five. Once we were on the real road, I broke out the instruments of torture. I carried with me throughout the trip several books. One of those books was James Morrow's Bible Stories For Adults. It contains what I think is one of the finest short stories ever written. In fact, it's probably currently my favorite short story (and I'm a big fan of the short story as a form). The story is called The Assemblage of Kristin and I read it to Eddie on a stretch of Highway 80 from San Francisco to ... well, somewhere in the middle of nowhere. I like reading aloud. I get a certain satisfaction from pronouncing every word -- enunciating so clearly and perfectly each syllable that the story itself takes on a physical existence. It's like trying to hold an author in your mouth. To keep the plot from spilling out of the corners or the characters from tripping over your tongue. Eddie claims he enjoyed the story, but I don't know how far to take that. (We ARE talking about a man that refused to sleep on the futon-like chair padding in exchange for the floor even though he admitted that the pad would be more comfortable. "You know, Eddie" I said "suffering doesn't make you a better person." "That's not what the Buddhists say" retorted Eddie. "Well, the buddhists are wrong" I said.) Eddie eats onion rings. I don't say that lightly at all. Eddie really eats onion rings. I bought him something like three large orders at a fast food place near Davis... three large orders and a shitload of mustard to be precise. He ate them without pause, one after another. It was really impressive. The drive from Sacramento to Ashland was about as long and tedious as this travelogue. It just didn't seem to want to end. The only break in the tedium was the double run-through we made of Monday's Lunch. It's really good. Eddie particularly liked Mayor Of My Town... he went positively hysterical when he saw it was a bonus track. Despite pleasant tunes, the drive dragged. Something was holding us back, I think. Something that wanted the mess of Ashland to be as bad as can be. See, we pulled off I-5 and drove the length of Siskiyou Boulevard into Ashland. We got to the college and yelled into Ian's window. There was no answer, so we had someone let us in. We knocked on Ian's door. There was no answer. "His TV's on" said Eddie. We knocked some more. We walked down the hall to the Hall Director's apartment. The hall director was always an authority figure when I was in college. This guy was just a kid. Some girl sat on his sofa and watched TV while he washed dishes. I asked to use his telephone. I called Ian... there was no answer. So much for that. We walked back and knocked again with the same result. We went outside. Ian's window was open. I figured I'd just throw the sleeping bag through the window and go. So I tossed it up and in. Here's where logic left me. "Hey," some part other than my brain thought. "That window's open... I could lift Eddie up there and he could SEE if Ian's in there." Quick Note: If someone doesn't answer the door, they don't WANT to talk to you. Don't peak in their window. I shouted "Ian! I'm about to invade your privacy!!!" and lifted Eddie to the window. He reported back "There's nobody here." But no that's not good enough for him. "Eddie, don't climb in... Eddie... don't go in there! Eddie!" Too late. I have no idea what happened in there. Ian was home and hiding in his closet. I'm not giving details. It was a mess. Consider this part of the story over. Eddie and I did the voyeur's walking tour of the campus looking into residence hall windows. We saw a guy doing laundry... he closed his blinds. Laundry, I guess, is very private. It was fun. Eddie pulled an empty water bottle from teh back of the car when we got inside. He wanted a full jug of Lithia Water. That's just sick. The town was dead silent. It was nearly midnight already. We found a parking space very near the fountain. Two girls sat on the bench facing the fountain. I think we interrupted them as well. Eddie filled his bottles while I chatted with the kids on the bench. They were students. They live together in Ashland. When Eddie finished he came over to where we stood. We told the story of having our picture taken by a fellow from city hall. Eddie offered them a print. When they agreed, Eddie asked them to post several prints of the photo around the city. (Boy, those socialists sure do throw their money around.) They said they would. I have one of the girls' name and address. I'll pass the photo along when Eddie gets me that tape of Wednesday night's show. We hit the road again. It was late and my friend Karen was waiting up to give me my keys. You can't beat that kind of devotion. It's good to be loved. I fell asleep as soon as we hit the freeway. I woke up off and on for a few groggy minutes at a time. Eddie didn't seem to mind at all. Bless him. Portland came at around 4:30. Eddie probably hit horrible traffic in Seattle. Karen was sitting up in the lobby of her building reading my copy of Microserfs that she'd stolen when feeding my cat that week. I got a hug and my keys and went home. Upstairs, my apartment was clean and tidy and welcome. I guess I'll really miss this place when I'm evicted in three weeks. There was a note on what passes for a mantle in my place. This is how it read: Jeme, Thank you for letting Karen watch me. Can I stay over at her place from now on? While you were away, I ate, in addition to my usual cat food, five waffles and the (paltry) supply of candy you left behind. I also lent Karen a Douglas Coupland novel. I hope you don't mind. You should call Karen immediately and thank her profusely. Sincerely, Mr. Cat How cute is that? OK. That's traveling. I'd like to note that it's 5pm on Thursday. It took me 84 hours to write this (no, not at all constantly writing. I don't think I added anything on Wednesday and I didn't touch this at all until midnight on Tuesday... I've been too busy figuring out how to pay enough phone bill to keep my line active and then pick up enough cash to pay rent. It's already 8 days late). I guess it took me about eight hours more to write this than I spent on the trip. You'll get it quite close to exactly a week after I got home. Man O Nam. Good things, J. ________________________________________________________ J A Brelin Capuchin ________________________________________________________ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 7 May 1998 17:30:28 -0700 (PDT) From: Capuchin Subject: Probably Redundant Travelogue Part One (The Drive and Chris) Yipes. I'm just sitting down to write this. I've been home for almost exactly seventy-two hours. I'm really afraid of what might come out. At first, I was afraid to write this because I got so many comments on my last travelogue that there's no way this one could measure up. So I waited... Now I'm afraid because I waited until my lunatic memory had rewritten the entire event and it's five o'clock in a morning viewed from the wrong end. We'll see what comes out. I think I'm going to keep this short. By the way, I came home to maybe 400 messages in my inbox, mostly from fegmaniax. I decided I'd start reading the messages in the order I received them until I hit the first review, then I'd stop write my story. That's exactly what I've done. I read the subject and maybe first sentence of Nick's email begining "WOW!" and realized it was the dreaded review. I closed the message and popped up this composition screen. Here goes nothing. As some of you know too well and others only heard vaguely from the periphery, Eddie Tews drove from Seattle to San Francisco in his Geo Metro, picking up Karen Reichstein and myself in Portland on the way down. Eddie had to deliver his anarcho-socialist newsletter in the evening and so he couldn't leave Seattle until after 10pm on Monday. It's usually just shy of a three hour drive from Seattle to Portland, another twelve to San Francisco. Monday night, I went to the 10pm showing of The Sweet Hereafter with some friends. Golly, that flick was glacial. I must have checked my watch eighteen times in those one hundred odd minutes. Maybe I was just a little unsettled because Eddie should have left Seattle already and I hadn't even begun to pack for the trip. The movie ended and we ran from the theater to my place and my ever-helpful compatriots helped me pack, clean up my apartment, and take inventory. Things got packed (I somehow only brought one pair of long pants, no short pants, and a shirt still on the hanger.) and I called my neighbor Karen (not Reichstein... try not to get confused) who was to take my keys to feed my cat while I was gone. She was asleep. I somehow dragged her out of bed and met her downstairs on 11th Avenue, made the handoff, and turned to walk to Ringler's to meet Karen and wait for Eddie. So there was me, walking 11th Avenue at some time minutes before one in the morning carrying a bag stuffed with T-shirts and matching underpants, more socks than I could wear in four days, two extra pair of shoes I didn't put on the entire trip, a couple dozen CDs of which only seven were played, all the sundries a young man could need, but no trousers whatsoever on one shoulder and a camera bag that I never openned, four books I really didn't get a chance to read (except the short story in the car on the way home) and a notepad on or under the other shoulder and carrying a shirt that I still hadn't had the sense to take off the hanger. Ringler's is a pretty nifty little brewpub. It contains what was once the world's longest wooden bar. The building was condemned in 1978. The ceiling of the pub supports one of the country's few remaining mechanical dance floors. They have good apple cider. Karen and Carole were sitting in a booth by the door with all of Karen's luggage gathered around them. I took a seat and ordered an apple cider. The subject came up right away. "So, Jeme... what are you doing to get by? When are you going to get a job?" The answer to both was and is "I have no idea." This was a consistent theme in all conversations throughout the trip, so I won't bring it up again. At the table next to our booth at Ringler's was a group of laughing men and women in light make-up. They all looked familiar, but I couldn't place any of their faces. I mentioned one of them to Karen. Karen pointed out that the fellow on the end of the table was a local television sports reporter who was also allowed to news bits now and again (if you can call local television journalism "news"). Karen knew his name at the time... I guess I did, too, after Karen said it. I have no idea what it is now, but I'm guessing it's the same as it was then. It seems that very night he had done a story about people stealing from Goodwill charity drop boxes and Karen and Carole had watched. I guess it was a kind of sting operation where they'd find drop boxes with good stuff exposed to view and hide their cameras only to confront the unsuspecting folks as they tried to make off with other people's donations. Apparently all of the people caught on tape wer I couldn't be more sorry. I fell asleep writing that last paragraph. There's no telling how many people fell asleep reading it. It is now noon on Monday and I'll continue with a somewhat more clear head. I would just erase everything above, but I wouldn't know what's worth keeping and what isn't. Sorry. Eddie showed up maybe 25 minutes after I did. He wasn't wearing that big blue cape. He carried no Thoth sign. We wasted no time and I payed for my cider and grabbed my things. We packed up in Eddie's car and hit the road. There's something about that drive down I-5 that I've never been able to understand. Portland to Salem takes no time at all. Blink and you'll miss it. Salem to Eugene is a good long drive, but you're there before you're even bored. But from Eugene down, it's like watching The Sweet Hereafter at every rest area. You just can't get to Ashland quickly, no matter how fast you drive. Speaking of Eugene to Ashland, there's a strip of road that curves through the hills there just before Roseburg (or is it after Roseburg but before Grant's Pass?) where the trucks all slow down and drive to the shoulder of the road and any car that can flies up the hill. As we passed through there, I told my car mates the story of a car that took this a step beyond a step too far. While driving to school in Ashland (I went to college there, so the three hundred mile drive from Portland to Ashland is about as well-known to me as the three block walk from my apartment to Safeway), a friend and I were passing through those very curvy hills. A big, wide American sports car passed us on the right as we came into a long, upward sloping left-hand curve. The car didn't appear to be making any attempt at all to follow the road. I looked at the front tires to see if they were turned and sliding. They were turned slightly into the curve, alright, but there was a small dark patch where the wheel should meet the pavement. It was a shadow. "Hey, is that car's front end touching the ground?" "Huh?" Just then the entire sports car lifted off the ground like Doc Brown's DeLorean. It cleared the low guard rail easily by two feet and kept rising; all the while headed straight forward at whatever the lift-off velocity of a large American sports car might be. At maybe nine feet off the ground, the car rolled and from the T-tops spilled a man and a woman. They hit the ground rolling as the tumbling car hit top first into a stand of trees. We pulled off the road and got out of our car to see if anyone was hurt. I hopped the guard rail and ran up to a man sitting with his elbows on his knees and looking like he'd just been asked if his sports car could fly. Before I could say anything, he looked up at me and said "That was... weird." I agreed. The woman was lying not too far away. She was breathing pretty heavily and holding her elbow. It didn't look broken and she was more shocked than anything else. By this time two other cars had stopped and one of the drivers had a cellular phone and offered to call for help. We couldn't really do anything, so we offered up our names and numbers and headed back toward Ashland. We wanted to make it before But closed. Eddie really liked the story. Karen slept through it. We made it to Valley Of The Rogue just after dawn and got out to stretch our legs and look at the mighty Rogue River. Eddie's very good at skipping stones. If Eddie is Andy Taylor, Karen is a close Opie. I skip stones like Aunt Bea. Walking back across the field to the car, I got dandelion slime on my cuffs. It was shaping up to be a great day. Before last Tuesday, I hadn't been into the town of Ashland proper since leaving school three years ago. I asked Eddie to pull off at Exit 19 instead of Exit 14 so we could drive the length of the town. Ashland is still a faux Elizabethan hamlet stuck to the side of the Siskiyous and charging a 5% tax on all meals. The Best Western hotel at the far end of town is still horribly named The Bard's Inn and every poor facsimile of a Tudor home is still a bed and breakfast from spring to autumn. Then we drove past Lithia Park. The town of Ashland was build around a natural spring. The spring is still bubbling forth more than a hundred years later, but now through a concrete slab holding eight porcelain fountains like you probably had in your very own elementary school. The spring was named Lithia and Lithia water comes from it. Lithia water was thought to have healthful properties because of its richness in wonderful minerals like lithium, sulfur, bicarbonates, iron and copper. Lithia water is naturally effervescent and foams up from the ground in beautiful globular spurts. Lithia water also tastes like rotten egg soda. Ashland's a college town and home to the oldest Elizabethan theater in the United States (and second largest Shakespeare festival behind New York City). High school kids come to town in droves to see plays each spring. College kids come to town in droves to go to college each fall. That adds up to lots of fresh, unsuspecting meat. The game is to get your friends that have not been to Ashland to come down and Taste the Healthful Lithia Water! It never fails to get disgusted looks and big laughs. Now I'll never have the pleasure of pulling this prank on any of the fegs that read this, but I doubt I'll be driving through southern Oregon with many of you other than those that have already been duped. When I saw the fountain, I screamed that we had to stop the car and get some wonderful Lithia water. We found a parking space and descended the Shakespeare Stairs at around 7:30am. I explained the importance and healthful properties of Lithia water to my faithful and trusting companions. We reached the fountains and I actually had to put my face down to the corroded spout as if to drink (the fountains are replaced a bout annually, but that doesn't do much to alleviate the crusty orange and green deposits around each opening and staining each drain). Eddie and Karen took big tastey mouths full. Karen spat and nearly wretched on the spot. It was very satisfying. I was jumping up and down and smiling. Eddie gulped and smiled. Wouldn't you know it. He actually liked the stuff. Kept saying how healthful it is and that you had to like it. I guess I should have realized that a guy who could swallow Socialism and smile could drink in just about anything without spitting it up. (Sorry, eddie... it was cheap and easy.) But he really did seem to enjoy the stuff and I'm still freaked out by that. Eddie ran up the hill to find someone to take our picture near the Lithia water. He eventually came back with a man in jeans and a striped, short sleeve button up shirt. I want to believe he's the mayor of Ashland. He was on his way into City Hall when Eddie accosted him. He came around and Eddie showed him how to work the camera. He took a picture of the three of us hanging upside down and drinking Lithia water. I don't know about the others, but I was faking it. Eddie asked the man where to mail a copy of the picture. The man said "Just send it to City Hall." Eddie, in case you didn't get it, that's just be: City Hall Ashland, Oregon 97520 We headed up to the other end of town, toward the college, to see if we might wake up Ian and get some free food. We found a parking place on campus and walked across the lawn to Suzanne Homes where I once lived and Ian still lives. The window was open and blocked by a big Union Jack. I yelled a few times. A minute passed. Ian's big, disheveled hair popped up from under the flag and he smiled his doofy grin. "Hey!" said Ian's sleepy voice. "It's Eddie Tews, Karen Reichstein and Jeme Brelin!" "Wow... that's pretty good!" I don't think I was the only one who was impressed. "Yeah, well, it's midterms this week. I can answer just about any question in my sleep. I just don't know what I'm saying. What time is it?" "Oh, just about 8o'clock." "OK, let me call Kathy and tell her not to wake me up." Ian popped back in the window and came around to the door to let us in. We went to his room and sat around on his homemade furniture while he dressed a little. I borrowed the coolest sleeping bag in the world and he gave me a wool blanket for padding in case I was to sleep on a hardwood floor (which I was). We had somehow ignored most of Karen's delicious car snacks and I was pretty hungry. I turned to Ian. "You buying breakfast?" "You know it." We went to Eddie's car to drop off the sleeping bag and then to But Food. Cascade Food Court is the official name of the campus residence hall cafeteria. The students just call it But Food. It is so named because they serve anything you could want... but food. Cascade But Food Court, But Food, But. It's all the same. I lived on it for three and a half years. I've never really recovered. Students buy meal points on their cards... a penny a point. If you pay for something at But with your card, you pay usually about one third what you would pay if you used cash. A pancake is 45 cents or 15 points off your card. Although Ian is in his late twenties, he still lives in the dorms and his parents still pay for as many meal points as he'd like. Breakfast was on him courtesty of his parents. Breakfast for four including about two pounds of hashbrowns, two orders eggs benedict, two donuts, four glasses of orange juice, six pancakes, half a dozen scrambled eggs, seven slices of bacon, a couple bowls of fresh fruit and one bowl of Lucky Charms ran up a total of about three dollars and fifty cents for Kathleen and David Kennedy. Karen said everything she ate tasted like Lithia water. We felt really really sick afterward. Breakfast was good, though, because Ian and I always have fun and because we found out that Eddie is often called a Limosine Liberal by his colleagues at Eat The State. This still cracks me up. I'm sure something else happened at breakfast, but I don't remember. There were lots of high school kids around But that morning. The college sometimes rents portions of the residence halls to groups of kids coming to town for the Shakespeare Festival. For a while there, Karen and I thought they were Freshman and felt really, really old. Ian walked us to our car and didn't stop waving until we were nearly to the freeway. On the road again. About six miles south of Ashland is Siskiyou Summit. This mountain pass is the culmination of the slow climb from Grant's Pass to Ashland and then the steeper slope up Mt. Ashland's north side. The south side of Siskiyous Summit is about five miles of 6% downgrade and a half dozen runaway truck ramps. Eddie put the Geo in neutral at the top of the summit and said "Hang on... I like to see how far I can coast without using my brakes. I almost died doing this in Pennsylvania." Thanks, Eddie. We picked up alot of speed very quickly. The first curve we came across was clearly marked "40". We weren't doing a milimeter less than 80. I was scared. I was really, really scared. When Eddie asked later "you didn't trust me?" I said that I DID trust him... and it was my trust in him that kept me from knocking him out cold with my right hand and pulling the E-brake with my left. We all made it to the bottom of the hill conscious and unsoiled. I'm pretty sure Karen hid her eyes. Eddie didn't once use the brakes. We came to rest right at the California border check. We had coasted 9.4 miles from the top of the summit. We lied about our apples. We were halfway there. The rest of the drive was as uneventful as can be. Eddie failed miserably at trying to take some weird double-exposure concept shot of Karen and me against Mt. Shasta. We drove on. The morning was pretty dull. Eddie made me listen to The Hooters and I'm still not happy about that. We got to San Francisco at about three in the afternoon. We found a two hour parking space where the car stayed, unchecked, for two and a half days. One of the windows was partially rolled down the whole time. Everything was safe. There was no ticket. The three of us grabbed some of our things and headed out looking for Chris's address along the street. We came to one of those generic San Francisco townhouses with what I thought was the right number out front. I said "I think this might be it." Karen pointed to the big Thoth sign hanging on the front door. "You think so?" I'd been outclassed. Chris answered us at the door with a little white yippy dog. Chris was taller than I remembered from Seattle last summer which put him at about seven cubits. He helped us up with our things and showed us the floor we'd call home. I took a shower and shaved and felt fantastic even though I had to wear the same old pair of pants. Mark Gloster showed up after a while. He brought what I assume now to have been his sweetie. He told me that he really liked Stan Ridgeway. I said "Stan who?" Someone put on Monday's Lunch and I heard a really good song that made me buy both that and Glass Flesh from Mark for the low, low price of $18 ("You get a break because there's no shipping charge." He said. "Yeah, I guess it doesn't cost you much to just hand them over." I said. "More than you know." He said.) I can't find the track that I liked on the CD now that I have it at home. He's a tricky, tricky man. Watch him carefully. In no time at all, we were headed to the Patio Cafe where Mr. Feg had a reservation. Continued in Part Two: Feggathering, Movie, Alcatraz, and The Best Show Ever. ________________________________________________________ J A Brelin Capuchin ________________________________________________________ ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V7 #181 *******************************