The Crown Motel, N Interstate, Portland

Interstate has some awesome old neon Motel/Hotel signs. Sadly this one is getting removed on Monday, I believe. The Motel is getting torn down to make room for some affordable housing complex thing. The sign, however, is being salvaged by some group in order to preserve it. From what I read they don't know exactly what to do with it yet, but they don't want it to die.

This Interstate renewal program can be argued as either bad or good with great points on both sides, I'm sure. Honestly though I don't know anything about it other than its title and goal, but as far as taking this place down, it is probably for the best. A lot of the motels on this stretch are "by the week," which is telling, sadly. Down-on-their-luck families trying to get from here to there, facing the numerous speed bumps and chasms that fate has thrown in front of them, or that they themselves have thrown in front of themselves. Drug dealers, prostitutes, the various and sundry elements of the lower strata of our society. For those Humboldt people, this is a stretch that Eureka's Serenity Inn (aka the Ranch Motel) would easily fit into.

This place in particular, I'd like to think that it had a heyday as a primo motoring lodge before the freeway system came along and relegated it to what amounts to a back road.

That may be giving it too much credit though, and I realize this. It may have been scabby and cursed from the get go. I'll never know for sure, but I do know that I love this sign and on my walks home at night, I am going to miss its neon glow that lets me know that I am coming up on Killingsworth. The beacon of gaudy light that tells me that it is only 15 more minutes until I can wrap myself up in my comforter and fall into a deep, untroubled sleep on what is essentially a balloon.

Cheers, Crown Motel! May you be reincarnated as something prouder, grander, and in a location that cannot be usurped by any sort of freeway system.

Fat Cobra Adult Video

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Lost in Translation

The big question:
What does Bill Murray whisper to Scarlett Johannson at the end?
Only they know for sure...
My guess, what I would have said after all that had happened:
“No one is flawless, but you are as close to flawless as I have seen. Never settle for less because you deserve it all. Do you hear me?”
And she nods her head, and everything ends and is butted smack-dab up against a new beginning.

Oh man...

I suck... but I love Pam Beasley.

Broadway Bridge

If you guessed Portland, You guessed right...

Sunny's Market, Alberta and Interstate

Nuff' said.

Eavesdropping

Overheard at a coffee shop on Lombard and Interstate:

"If I have any more coffee, I'm gonna start my period."

For Carly:

(-My friend Carly really doesn't like cats. This is for her-)

I was on foot…
She was in a Subaru…
It was a 4-way, neighborhood intersection…
quiet, never busy, I will go out on a limb and estimate that it saw roughly 10 cars an hour—peak hours, mind you.

She didn’t have a stop sign and I wasn’t in a hurry…
I waved her to go.
She waved me to go.
I waved her…
She waved me.
This went on for at least three whole cycles.
Portland drivers are funny like that.
On the rare occasion when I am behind a wheel…
I am not a Portland driver.

I stood defiant and playful, crossing my arms to signal that I wasn’t going anywhere…
At least not until her fly-eye green Subaru passed me by.

This was all playful, mind you.

The glare on her windshield obscured her appearance,
other than the fact that she had pigtails and thick-rimmed old lady glasses.
This signified cute to me, but that is an unnecessary aside.

Game up, she was in more of a hurry than I was, or less patient.
She accelerated through the intersection a little too fast,
As she was parallel with me, I saw that she was cute-ish, but not as much as the pig-tails and glasses let on.
She looked at me and smiled as she passed and then promptly ran over a cat.
I didn’t see what type it was.
I will go out on a limb and estimate that it died on impact.

I stepped off of the curb as her brakes screeched,
walked on by,
and went to get that coffee that I really, really needed.

I am back, dammit!

Well, here I am, fresh back from Kenya and Uganda. I haven't shaved or cut my hair in about 2 months and more than one person has informed me that I look like a hobo.
Whatever, it's cold as hell here. I am working the winter coat thing. You should see my ass and my toe knuckles. I am serious, in this town you need as much hair as you can get for the 9 months that the temperature refuses to crack 64.
A homeless lady offered me some of her free, closing-time pizza the other night. And the guys at the diner on Mississippi gave me a lot of extra food on my plate the other morning during a wicked hangover breakfast of biscuits and gravy (two full biscuits), one egg (I ordered one, they gave me three), and a giant disk of pan-fried hash browns.
If only I could use this new power on bartenders.
So I return, I am back and through effing around.
Well, I suppose it is more accurate to say that I am ready to start effing around again. If I was truly through effing about then this Blog shit would not be happening.
That said, for better or for worse, here I am.

Public Notice of Creative Bankruptcy

cont...

It must be a Thursday (insert [sic]s wherever you want, as I had not the wherewithall for editing)

So we sit and spin and feel all things right, wrong, misguided and right on. The drinks come in quick succession and they go down like honey. That is to say, slowly, and mucousy, but it is OK as we feel no pain, demonstrated by the fact that for every drink absorbed, 87 cigarettes are activated by casual and non-smokers. What is it with alcohol that makes some people that rarely, in sober times, light up like chimneys? Have the scientists look at that.
But here I am in a new bar with old people that I still don’t know but are nice enough and try to yank me out of my shell. The jukebox is awesome, Master of puppets, early Suicidal Tendencies and Black Flag, I hear Slayer for a second, then some other stuff I don’t recognize so intensely that I don’t even hear it, then “Mother” by Danzig. I laugh as I haven’t heard this since sometime in the early 90’s. I still know the words and wish I could swap that information with all of the vital statistics of some small island nation like Tuvalu.
But that isn’t going to happen.
So we sit and chat about this and that, some of us are in casts, some of us are unhindered by Scotch-fueled skatepark mishaps on 37-year old bones. I know I am drunk because I notice some girl, some woman, through my less than stellar peripheral vision, looking at me. I make the occasional glance over and smile at the brief eye contact, receiving a small smile back, and this tells me that I am drunk.
Here it is: If I get to the point where I believe any female, especially one that is this high class, is looking at me, it is time to get home and go to bed because I am obviously hallucinating and ruinously twisted on cheap beer.
So we up and go. My driver tired on Stoli, Percaset, and a big cheeseburger that made my incredibly not-hungry stomach want to eat..
So we go, through a desperate rain fall, towards my house where I have notions of confronting the guy who is living in my basement to tell him that when my fingers are typing he needs to not talk to me. Maybe, if things get heated and drunk (he is always there, drunk that is, as far as I have seen since he has invaded the basement) I will tell him that I believe him to be a walking, talking douchebag… but my, that girl was cute and she was looking at me… SHUT IT!…
But he is on the garage with the other roommate and another person playing some D and D game that involves 20-sided dice and diet Coke. They are drunk, that is some consolation, but I can’t tell on what as there is nothing but diet soda cans scattered hither and yon.
So I get to the kitchen table, throw on Return to Cookie Mountain in a loud way, and type these words.
The night spins and I reel off vowels and consonants of no consequence until I up and fall into my sad a lonely bed, nothing more than a second-hand, strangely stained mat on the floor.