11:10 a.m. // 21 January 2003

Last night Mable's felt like a whole different club; it's because there hasn't been a show there for three or four weeks, and there's a new bartender whom even Jeff doesn't know, and there was a totally different crowd there, it felt like a hetero college bar. The new bartender was playing bad music on the soundsystem and the TV was turned on to ESPN.

This guy and his band played, from out of Fresno. I think he played with Pedro the Lion, and he has another project called bel & the dragon. His name was something I instantly forgot -- it's something of two names, like Mark Williams or John Edwards or Matt Eileens... actually, it was Michael Walker, okay.

Dwayne nudges me and points at the bassist. "He's one of those young guys who dresses like an old man so he'll never age." -- oversized corduroys and an old plaid Wrangler shirt and a mesh gimme cap. Then a few songs into the set the cap falls off and he's got a mohawk underneath -- old man to young punk in one fell swoop.

I also realized last night that all of the brokenglasses kids are gone from town. Does this say something about the scene, or is it just that people move on and/or get enough money to fix their glasses? There used to be three, maybe four -- brokenglasses Christian, brokenglasses cowboy, and my friend Mark. The first two had tape at the bridge; Mark also had duct tape at the hinges. Mark moved away and so did the first guy, who used to work at Brickhaus. I don't know who brokenglasses cowboy was; I only saw him a few times and he wore a small white T-shirt and kept his cigarettes in the sleeve.

Here is my invention from last night:
A vegan stir-fry of tofu, shitake mushrooms and arame.