toby young is a liar.

a close friend buys wine according to the axiom "you can't judge a bottle of wine by its label, but it's a good place to start" and it was with this in mind that i took up with GREAT EXITEMENT the relationship manual "how to lose friends and alienate people" by toby young only to find that it was NOT A RELATIONSHIP MANUAL AT ALL, but rather a whiny "memoir" about being hired by vanity fair magazine, shipping from london to new york and successively FAILING AT EVERYTHING. no hints on how to "alienate" people. um. . .come on! throw us a bone here! there's 500,000 people in this sorry metropolis and THERE'S NOT ONE ANTI-FBC BLOG ANYWHERE! WHAT AM I DOING WRONG??? PEOPLE STILL TALK TO ME!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

anyway. we were at the mural amphitheatre last night checking out the moondoggies' groovy-but-ultimately-disappointing set when we noticed a random guy DANCING BY HIMSELF. i thought, "is this actually happening?! we're in SEATTLE for God's sake!! DANCING???!!! REALLY???!!!" he was WAY into the music, something akin to being WAY INTO JELLYFISH AND "DANCING" ALONG WITH THEM. he was also missing a tooth, wearing mid-nineties "realaxed-fit" jeans and a "loose fitting" button-down that was obviously meant to be worn by sweaty jersey locals to their jobs as extras on the set of "the sopranos". basically, HE WAS FKN AWESOME!!!!!! people in seattle have ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE OF HUMOUR ABOUT ANYTHING--which explains why it took EIGHT LONG YEARS to oust greg nickels--and this righteous fellow was flouting the (breaking character for a moment of honesty here) utterly pretentious, stayed, spineless, stultifying seattle ethic. (okay, back we go.) when the moodoggies finished (thank God), this man rushed the stage in utterly ecstatic anticipation of FRUIT BATS' return, after six or so years--where the @#$(*& were you guys?--and PROCEEDED TO DANCE HIS @$$ OFF EVEN THOUGH NO ONE WAS PLAYING ANY MUSIC. to his later-apparent dismay, he was joined by other people at the stage. the crowd continued to grow, as did this man's anxiety. FRUIT BATS started their groovy-and-entirely-awesome set, and this man started dancing in earnest. when the crowd round him joined in, we could sense his fear. "what were these people doing?" he seemed to be thinking. you could see in his face his confusion when he turned away from the stage. "this is seattle, and people are dancing! what is wrong with this?" he then showed his stronger stuff, dancing his way out into the crowd where he proceeded to dance with now wild abandon. he was alone, just like he thought he should be, and he was dancing only for himself. the smartly seated crowd around him ignored him in practice, though they were mocking him in typical passive-aggressive seattle style--the palm-face stage whisper. by the time FRUIT BATS crowned their set with a typically groovy and restrained cover of INXS' anthemic ballad "never tear us apart", he looked utterly spent, AND HAPPY AS THE HINDENBURG.

in other news, the horrible, TOTALLY UNDESERVED heat of the last week of july has brought on the feeling of an early fall. the leaves are dropping already and there's colour in trees that usually don't break till late september or early october. when the weather pattern turns to more of a marine push, it feels like such a reward. we got through that horrible week, and now we get an early dose of fall, THE BEST SEASON OF THE YEAR. and if you haven't watched the train video moe posted last week, do! it has snow. snow is God's way of saying "I love you."