12:39 p.m. // 07 April 2003

I am trying to persuade myself that it is a dumb (DUMB!) idea to go to all of the Target stores in the vicinity just so I can try to win a shiny new red Vespa. PRO: I could enter me -- and my thirteen family members, friends and acquaintances whose addresses I've gathered up -- for a chance at a free scooter! CON: It would take so much driving around and wasting gasoline, ultimately setting me up for big disappointment, plus I could buy a vintage one and that'd be much cooler anyway. PRO: But... free!

I suck, I must dissuade myself of all these consumerist notions. goodbye I'm going to give all of my material possessions away and go live in a yurt.

Except that yesterday Dwayne and I went to recycled after eating ice cream, and forbidden media had sold a ton of videos to them. Dwayne bought two KISS videos, one of them bootleg concert footage, plus two books on how to fix his Club Wagon and his Maverick, plus The Crippled Masters. I bought Fast Food Nation, plus Terminal USA which we watched and it is weird, plus Half-Cocked which I have never seen but which I read about when I was too young to go see indie movies, so I still want to see it even if it sucks, plus the collected first two seasons of Mr. Show on DVD.

Friday I switched shifts with Yunter Yauk so I could go to Dallas with Dwayne Ray. I originally wanted to go to Fort Worth to go see this bike is a pipe bomb at 1919 but then they canceled! and, simultaneously, Dwayne booked a show for his band that night, opening for a band that was opening for a band that was opening for a band containing a member of Boss Hog.

Lo-Hi was all right, the singer Hollis was very nice. They didn't draw all the people, though: Baboon did. It was my first time to see Baboon, and they were um OK. The drummer was wearing a horse head! Also there was 20% Toby, and they were pretty good.

It was a really weird show for Jackson 8, at least where I was, standing in front of the stage all alone with like eighteen people all scattered around the back of the club. The soundman had the band playing at arena volume, and there were no bodies up front to absorb the sound, so it all went directly (especially the drums) into my stomach.

I was bored most of the night so I doodled in my sketchbook and on postcards, although Hollis Lo-Hi tried to talk to me and I'm not a good person to try to talk to. Then she and her bandmate went away to buy the new White Stripes. Todd liked my drawings of severed legs and wants me and Dwayne to do comics orgy.

Hollis the singer-guitarist of Lo-Hi changed into a tiny, tiny miniskirt for their show and it made me and Dwayne uncomfortable. I had decided during Baboon's set that Dallas is one big meat market, Deep Ellum is blocks and blocks of horny young professionals scouring the scene for other horny young professionals. They go to see live music because they can stand there and talk over it while their sweaty young bodies absorb noise. There were like twenty people left for Lo-Hi's set and half of them were dirty old or young men standing up front so they could get a peek at the singer's crotch. Because her skirt was really, really short and the stage was really high.

I am of two minds in regards to the miniskirt. One, yeah, you should be able to wear whatever you want. But, two, you have to be aware of the consequences. Including the consequence of all the dirty guys standing up front at the show going home to jack off to their mental image of you instead of taking your music seriously.

Dwayne and I had to move to the other side of the stage, away from all the dirty guys. I felt like some girls needed to push their way to the front, to force back all the dirty guys, to create some kind of buffer. Luckily I didn't have to do it and bella confessional and her friend moved right in front of Hollis and hassled her in various drunken but apparently well-meaning ways -- flicking lighters, blowing smoke onto the stage, screaming into the mic, pouring beer onto the singer's fishnet-clad thigh, dancing all the while. Bella/Liz seemed very drunk. I don't know her well at all but she gave me a huge hug and then asked: "Do you know who I am?"

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