How Being a Jedi Got Me Into The Dead Weather, Part 1

Recently, Sora and I spent a rather proportionally large amount of time together. The following is an intimate account of our adventures during that time, steadily staying true to the conflict in our hearts and in our minds during the strain that was put on our friendship and the resulting budding romance.

Or in other words, half of this is complete and utter bullshit. Mostly the stuff about kissing and balls. Other bits are exaggerated beyond hyperbolic extents. The vast embellishing that occurs is nearly gastrocolic in nature. I just wanted to say gastrocolic.

Anyway.

In the assortment of bands that Jack White is in, which is to say, The White Stripes, The Raconteurs, and The Dead Weather, I tend to think of them each as a piece of development in a human’s life. The White Stripes represent childhood innocence, The Raconteurs represent growing up and finding responsibility, and The Dead Weather represent the type of growing your hair out and terrorizing young children that only the middle-aged are capable of.

Some people say that The Dead Weather is a darker band than the others Mr. White is in. Aesthetically, it certainly is. But music-wise, it’s simply much much heavier. It kind of reaches into your flesh, grabs onto your trachea, and makes you thrash around uncontrollably. When this happens, it’s best to simply let it take over and not fight it too much. It’s like a headcrab: the more you struggle the more it hurts.

I hate Half-Life 2. I am terrible at this stupid game. I keep holding barrels in front of me to guard from the Combine’s bullets, but then there’s a big explosion and I die instantly. I don’t understand what keeps happening!

So let’s jump into the story!

It’s about six or eleven or so in the morning. I don’t tell time before noon. And I’m home alone, watching Doctor Who. Whenever I’m home alone I watch a couple episodes of Doctor Who. I so rarely watch TV that when I have a chance to I feel as though I’m wasting it if I don’t. But there is never anything actually on TV, so I just go to the DVR, and we happen to have pretty much the entire latest season of Doctor Who recorded on there, so I tend to watch them. Over and over and over again. Hey, Sam, River gets sucked into one of the cracks..

Any way, here’s my text message newfangled technology conversation with my dad, who is at my Grandpa’s house, I believe:

Me: Could you possibly take me to Sora’s when you get home?
Dad: We’ll see.
Me: Okay, well, he just showed up here and his Dad drove away.
Dad: Oh.

So there we go. Sora was at my house. I was thoroughly not expecting it.

Okay, look, here’s the truth. I waited too long to write this, I remember hardly any of it. Probably because of all the drugs and threats.

Sora’s at my house all of a sudden, and all of a sudden we’re in the basement playing music. We play a rousing Seven Nation Army together, about six different times. Then all of a sudden we’re making out. I’m talking full mouth on mouth action. Our tongues are twisting and turning like erotic anacondas.

Erotic Anacondas is the new name of our band, by the way.

Anyway, next thing I know we’re at his house and we’re making sweet, sweet music together. On guitars. We write the beautiful song King Copa. Then we watch the cinematic masterpiece, Stan Helsing.

The next day, I hang out at his house all day. A bunch of stuff happens. It’s pretty cool, dude.

Then I go home.

The next day is the day. THE day. The DAY. THEDAYYYY!

The day of the Dead Weather concert. Yeah, back to that again,  sorry to keep harping on about it.

We go pick Sora up from Katie’s house. It is very exciting. My dad drops us off over at Sora’s pad where he, Sora that is, grabs some money and some… what were they, I don’t remember? Were they doughnuts? Whatever they were, they were delicious. And then we walked down the street to the bus stop to head toward the Crystal Ballroom. We stopped in at the nearby convenience store and bought popsicle things. Mine fell out of its lead encasement and got my hands all sticky. It was absolutely awful.

Then the ice cream man went by, and Sora absolutely needed to get something. It was a really hot day. So he got a rocket popsicle with balls on it, a la Stan Helsing.

I asked him to try and find me somewhere with a public bathroom where I could run in and wash my hands real fast, but to no avail. People apparently really like closing off their bathrooms. I don’t understand it. If I were running a fine public establishment like that, I certainly would want to show off my bathrooms to as many people as possible.

In fact, my beautiful public restrooms would be the biggest headline on my proposed business plan. It would just be like, “1. MAKE EVENT OUT OF PUBLIC LAVATORY, 2. HIRE ANDY GRIFFITH AS P.L.O., 3. SELL CANDY TO HOODLUMS”.

So, when the bus finally pulls up I’m sticky and I’m sweaty and I’m disgusting. It’s starting to remind me of the homoeroticism from earlier.

We get on the bus, which is of course a euphemism, and sit down. This is probably the most exciting part of the day, this bus ride, so pay very close attention. Listen, you do not want to miss a single detail of this enchanting bus ride.

So we sit there. On the bus, right? And we drive along. I think at some point we do what all the cool kids always do and we listen to music, each one of us with a headphone. We are just like the hippest kids on that bus. There is no way to explain the awe some people had when they got onto that bus and saw us there, listening to our music, singing along as loudly as we could, our heads tilted slightly toward one another so as to keep the headphone in.

“THIS SHIT IS BANANAS, B-A-N-A-N-A-S, THIS SHIT IS BANANAS, B-A-N-A-N-A-S.”

So cool, you have no idea.

Unfortunately, the day was the opposite of us. It was incredibly hot, and the bus was overheating every several minutes and needing to stop to cool down. This, of course, was no problem, as we left several hours earlier so as to ensure our ability to get tickets when we arrived at the ticket booth box office thing.

At one of the stops to cool down, I spot out the window a lady washing her car. She’s in a bikini, completely soaked, and in the process of rinsing soap off the car with a hose.

“Sora!” I say, “Check that out!”

“What?”

“A hose! Do you think I could make it over there and back in time before the bus leaves?”

“Why?”

“To wash my hands!!!”

At some point, as we’re driving along, Sora falls asleep. The poor little guy’s tired, resting head falls onto my shoulder. I put my arm around him and smile. I look around to see if anyone on the bus sees what a precious thing is going on.

Which is to say, he falls asleep with his head against the window and I don’t notice until I’m asking him “is this where we get off?”

I have to plead ignorance on how to get around down town. I wish it were untrue, but I have never spent enough time in Downtown Portland to know where anything is. I know that the Crystal Ballroom is on 13th and Burnside, and I know the bus we’re on is supposed to take us straight there.

So when the thing comes on saying “12th street” my brain comes on saying “12th street?! That’s almost 13th street! Maybe this is where we get off!” So I wake Sora up and say “SORA! IS THIS WHERE WE GET OFF?!?!?!”.

Drowsily, he wakes up and goes, “What? Um, yeah.”

So we get off at NE 12th and Couch. If you know things about Portland, you probably realize what our mistake was. We, however, didn’t know we even made a mistake and optimistically went about trying to find 13th and Burnside. We circled around the biggest school in the world about thirteen times.

No, seriously, what the hell Benson? Why are you so huge?

If you want to pull off the same idiocy as us, here’s a map and some detailed instructions.

View Larger Map

Get off the bus at Point A, and head north for an hour or so. Notice that the names of the streets are increasing in alphabetical value, so Burnside would be on the other side of Couch. Decide to just find 13th street and then double back to find Burnside. At the next turn, Point B, start going East for another hour. Reach Point C and realize that you just went from 12th to 16th with no 13th in the middle. Swear. Head south to Point D and start making arbitrary turns at Point E and F. At point G, smell doughnuts. Go south to Point H, then west, and realize, at Point I, that you’re back at the bus stop.

Swear a few more times. It helps.

At this point, ask for directions. For those of you playing along online, this is the point at which you simply zoom out the map and see the glaring mistake we made.

View Larger Map

We forgot about the fucking river.

Part 2 here!

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