kate's tamale party

i spent most of the day of the gig with the mammals recovering from kate's tamale party in williamsburg on friday night and the late night hang that inevitably ensued elsewhere in the bowels of downtown nyc. this meant drinking a lot of water to hydrate my throat and sleeping well past noon -- a habit i can't seem to break because my life and my art won't let me. thank God i don't drink or do drugs. i never got into it. i'm way too cheap. and vain. not that i think i'm the most beautiful woman in the world -- i just want to take good care of whatever i've got for as long as i can. besides, how much fun can i have if i'm not healthy? a late night hang in my world revolves around long conversations into the night with interesting people while i put my feet up and sip tea. strangely, most bars i frequent know this and are glad to accomodate me.

kate's from houston. her grandma in tejas sent her seven dozen tamales, so she sent out invitations and everyone pretty much came running, including quite a few texans, which is always a surprise. i forget that we are legion here, probably because, although i'm happy to meet another southerner in this neck of the woods, i don't look for it the way i used to. i've circled the wagons together, so to speak. i've got enough ammo and provisions to hold out until spring. but that tamale party was something else. lots of fixings to go with, like sour cream and beans and what not. copious amounts of foreign beer and tequila. and somewhere in there, kate pulls four half-gallon containers of blue bell ice cream out of her freezer -- the best ice cream in the world, and you can only get it in texas. she ordered it online. they shipped it next day air but only if she would order as much as she did, as the minimum. she had ice cream cones and everything. and then there were dueling iPods, wherein folks kept whipping out their playlists and foisting them upon the home stereo speakers. so one minute we'd be listening to iggy pop ripping into "i snub you" and the next it was the hollies "long cool woman" wow. it was like being in south austin at a backyard party -- except we were in billyburg. nice way to crank into the weekend.

if you want to know how the gig went, click here.