Sunday, October 16, 2011

Goodbye Ken and Aimee--happy for ya!


Last night we said goodbye (for now) to our friends Ken and Aimee, who are starting a long road trip and will end up eventually in Chattanooga. It's hard to see them go, but these days I am happy for anyone who leaves Eugene. I'm curious about what they'll find. They did alot of cool stuff and made their contribution as artists, business people, and teachers. When they had their store, Letterhead, downtown, it was always such a refreshing, worldly blast of style, a real escape from the Eugene thing--and it didn't require a trip out to Oakway. When voters chose not to support development down there, I was happy for all of the flies in the nut butter buckets at Rainbow Fog Natural Foods, but not for Ken and Aimee. 

One of my favorite memories of our friendship is watching film noir all day, one Christmas about ten years ago.  This Gun For Hire, bouche de noelle, lots of red wine.  That was a good one.

One of the things I'd miss about Eugene is The Bijou. We went there and saw Restless today. It was a sweet film--bittersweet.  At first the quirky-cutesy morbidity vibe of it was bugging the crap out of me.  I'd had a double americano and my toes were tapping and I was drumming on my knee, more in the mood to see The Thing, or a Metallica concert, I guess.  It took me a while, but I opened up to it. The audience was in good hands. Emerging to a beautiful autumn day, things had slowed down and I was in a different place altogether.  Hey, Eugene is a nice place to live. Pretty much everyone I know who loves it and stays here reserves the right to love it with maximum ambivalence.

We had a fun acoustic Golden Motors Acoustic Three practice yesterday.  We're gonna play as a trio at Territorial Winery on 3rd street.  Dan is playing his upright electric bass, I'm playing acoustic, Mike is playing snare and hi-hat.  7:00, 10/20.  See you there.