Friday night at our place on the hottest night of the summer. Everyone comes over to enjoy central air, brews, smokes, and yes, more Guitar Hero. Tubs and Jeff duel on "Cowboys from Hell" by Pantera.
Jaws is back in town after her summer of photo-assisting across the country, and she brought back this little puppy. We are trying to help her with names and offer these options: Oprah, Harpo, Filthy McGriddles, Laquanda, Mammy, Angry Black Woman. None of those seem to impress Jaws. Tevs. The night ends late, with all the beers cashed and the oppresive heat outside subsiding to the point that one could drive home without being burned alive.
The next day we head up to Matt's parents cabin in Cross Lake, MN. It is so fucking hot outside still, so putting a plastic deck chair in the lake and drinking a can of Miller High Life is basically exactly what you want to do with your time. Consider it done.
Shirtless Jeff, ready to tube. He officially wins the title of whitest man alive.
50's pulls out his parent's speed boat, throws on the official captain's hat (aka a visor from a golf tournament in northern Minnesota), and flashes the thumbs up. In the back, the Frequent Flyer is ready for extreme tubing action.
50's and Jeff on the tube. Thumbs up means faster, thumbs down means slower, and moving your hand across your neck means I want to stop. As you can see, these assholes want to go faster.
The results of increased speed. The picture doesn't do the extremeitude of this stunt justice, as a millisecond after this shot was taken Jeff is thrown easily ten feet in the air and lands on his back.
Back at the cabin, 50's family is getting totes Mediterranean -- hand-crafting pasta noodles with the raw ingredients. What's next, planting an olive tree? Seriously though, the pasta was awesome.
Sitting down to eat the pasta. Sunlight coming in through the trees, the lake in the background, some white wine. We are feeling mad luxurious. Truly an awesome end to the weekend.
The next week, we head to 50's house Friday night and watch him do some homeowner Bob Vila-type shit. He's adding siding to his house while simultaneously dropping a huge hammer every 5 minutes, almost killing us in the process. We can't really complain though, because he's busting his ass while we drink Budwesiers and eat pizza on his deck.
The grime steez results. What a dirty asshole.
Later that night, peeps show up for a yard fire. I didn't take many pictures of this, but there were a lot of people that just randomly showed up. It was awesome.
A different night, now we're on Colezone's patio. Julie shows us her new surgery scar. Totally bad-ass.
BBQ, brews, animated conversations that I'm having a hard time remembering, some Ikea chairs that Jeff keeps calling "Knurgens." It's a patio-warming party for Colezone -- her dad is a cement patio guru and built her this huge awesome patio that takes up like half of her yard. We are breaking it in.
Not really sure what's going on here. Danielle is really sad either that her burger is gone or that this pickle said something really rude to her. Or both.
The party hostess in all her red-shirted glory. My memory starts to get hazy at this point. I got pretty awesome this night. Apparently some video exists of me snorting like a pig and burying my face in my hands. I hope it never surfaces.
Radio and Lucy play puppy games.
Another night, it's our friend Adam's birthday! We go to the Northside to hang out with him. He pulls out old, old, awesome videos from high school. This one is of our old band Poland, playing at the Foxfire. I'm 17 at the time and wearing a full-length pink dress with Pink Converse. I'm playing the bass. Adam is the singer, wearing what was essentially the outfit he wore everyday at that time to work at the Hopkins 6 movie theatre -- wrinkled white dress shirt, black tie, jeans. We are the best.
The birthday boy with his new hat. He is a member of the E.S.P. club -- Exciting, Sexy, and Polish.
The next day, Jeff and I drive down to Decorah, IA to visit his grandparents for the day. On the way down, we stop at this insane little graveyard in Preston, MN. This guy apparently thought hawks were awesome.
This family was buried together, and had marble cuttings of their faces made. There is some sort of weird hippie-ish dancing baby in the background, too.
Farmlands.
The next weekend is a busy one. On Saturday, we go to a wedding in the afternoon, then head over to the Soap Factory for Hardland/Heartland, a crazy-sweet art/music/visual installation by McTubbins and ETC, with help from Finger Tap and many others. Here, Jeff is standing over a hole in the floor. Beneath it is the bloodied skeletal remains of a beast, and written in blood is "Bleak Future." McTubbins is crazy.
Crazy shanty spheres of the apocalyptic alternate future. In the background is John Tapp's future city.
WTF, dudes. So awesome.
The Gamut start playing in an elevator shaft, dressed as quixotic minstrels of the alternate future. Really though, that's just Tall Bikes under there. He's trying to act all mysterious and crazy, but I'm all like "dude, you're still that guy from Iowa City with the funny glasses."
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We have to leave early to head over to the Turf Club, where the reception for the wedding we went to in the afternoon is being held. Cam and Mindy surround the bride, Jae. The place is packed with good, old friends.
Somehow this signs basically sums up my life.
The basement of the Turf Club used to be called the Clown Lounge and have clown-themed paintings all over the place. Now its more of a northwoods cabin from the 1950's kind of thing. 50's shows off the old beer cans they have everywhere.
Danielle shows off the trout. Jeff raises his beer to show his support for fish and Danielle.
I show off this illuminated northwoods photo and, I get pretty awesome.
Jeff and Slayer getting real.
Luke shows us the perks of being the brother of the groom. His is looking rather dandy in his wedding outfit, and the Guiness is really part of the whole ensemble. We close the Turf down. A packed day overall. Jeff and I go home, start listening to Led Zeppelin II and both realize at the same time that we're exhausted. We sleep like kings. Drugged kings with narcalepsy.
HLHL thanks your awesome face!
ReplyDeleteEnjoy the future while you can.