I went out to Club de Ville last night to say good-bye to my friend Emily, who is moving to New York next week to seek her fortune in the field of costume design. I met Emily when we became roommates.
She was very fun to live with. She made strong coffee, sewed her own clothes, and sang around the house a lot. If something funny or dumb happened, she would get her guitar and make up a song about it. The time we rented some lawn equipment and the weed whacker didn't work, she came up with a plaintive song called "Oh, American Rental, Give Us Half Our Money Back." When we unearthed Eric's old Nintendo and played Tetris for an entire week at the exclusion of pretty much everything else, she wrote a song called "Everybody Loves Pause" in honor of the (duh) pause button on the game.
She's small and cute, and she's from Tennessee and calls everybody "sugar" without a trace of irony, which makes people feel really good. The "sugar" thing caused more than one male visitor to swoon and understandably but incorrectly assume she was singling him out for affection. So it's sad to see her go, even though we've only hung out maybe once a year for a while now.
On the way to the bar, I had to fight the crush of sweaty, ecstatic dorks who had just been released from the They Might Be Giants show. No disrespect intended, but they all looked like TMBG fans, and they were so radiant that I wished I had bitten the bullet and paid $20 and stood in line in the heat to see them myself, even though the last record I have by them is "Flood."
Oh, well, I blew it. I had salt rubbed into the wound when I finally got to Club de Ville and the door guy asked if I'd just come from the show. I guess I looked like a sweaty, ecstatic dork too.
Later, Eric and I sat up talking for a long time about this and that. He dropped a bombshell when he told me he was going to put all of his action figures in storage. I was shocked. He has a huge toy collection, like an entire room's worth of toys, like when people walk into his part of they house they say things like "Holy fucking shit, that's a lot of toys." I'll try to find a picture of his room at its peak strength and glory and put it up here.
He's been packing a lot of his collection because we're moving to another house, and I knew he was thinking about storing some of them because the next place we live probably won't be big enough for a toy room. But all of them? I don't know. I don't share his love for action figures, but I've always been impressed by the sheer scope of his obsession. It's kind of sad in a way, but Eric said he's over it and he wants to sit on them for a few years and then go back through and see what he really likes, maybe sell the rest.
Jesus, are you still reading this? Go get something to eat and call your friends or something. That's what I'm about to do.