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June 28 1998, Sunday

    

W

ell, let's see here. By the time Wacky Jen and I finally got around to leaving her house, it was already growing dark again. If you do that sort of thing in the Winter time, it means you killed a whole afternoon. But when you do it in late June, when the Sun goes down at 9pm, it means you killed a whole day. But, at the very least, it gave me a chance to get over my hangover before re-entering the world.

Jen and I decided to get a late breakfast at the Blue Moon Diner on Main Street. The Blue Moon was one of Charlottesville's most famous greasy spoons back in the day, but it closed down in 1995 only to reopen as a catering-only establishment (a move that received an overwhelmingly negative reaction from people as diverse as Jessika and Sydney the Elderly Sweeper Man). Recently, though, the Blue Moon has reopened and returned to being the same greasy spoon of its glory days, complete with a porcelain Elvis and other fine kitsch decor. According to Deya, Jessika and Joanna Road Rage, elated by the Blue Moon's return, were going there daily for breakfast up until their recent departure for Malvernia.

But when we got to the Blue Moon, we found it closed. The burgers we'd been smelling as we'd drawn ever-closer were evidently being grilled at the far pricier Blue Bird Café. It's damn hard to find an open restaurant on a Sunday evening, but we were determined to keep looking. We walked all the way back to the Corner to check out the White Spot, an equally-worthy greasy spoon where the Elvises are made of flesh, not porcelain, but it too was closed.

We finally settled on eating cheese pizza at Hot Tomatoes. The experience was an oddly pleasant one: sitting around reading grease-stained magazines and eating $1.50 slices one after the other, even though we couldn't hear what we were saying to each other because of the extremely loud classic rock that's incessantly playing there. While we ate, Tall Brook came by and ordered a slice, folded it in half, and snarfed it down. We were amazed to witness this guy, who works full time as a waiter at a pizza parlour, eating pizza on his free time as well. That's what you call dedication to the pizza cause. Brook said a few things to us while he was there, and we nodded approvingly, though we had no idea what he was saying. He tends to mumble, and his head is way up in the clouds far far above our ears. The only thing anyone can hear in that pizza place is classic rock. The employees have evidently mastered lip reading, even over the phone.

W

e went to visit Deya at the Wertland Mansion, but she was off at the Escafé in hopes of being entertained by Jamie Dyer and the Hogwaller Ramblers (though, alas, no one was playing there at all). Some time after Deya came home, Jen and I went up to her room to watch teevee.

For some reason, the best shows tonight were all cartoons. I don't usually enjoy cartoons, and was surprised to find myself being so thoroughly entertained by old Popeye the Sailor Man and Betty Boop, both in the original black and white. Something about the animation, the strange fantasy-organic nature of the movement, is subversively creepy and thus, to me, delightful and fascinating. When you watch these old animations, you come to realize that a lot of the fun-loving hyper-creative animator spirit has disappeared since the animation golden age. The animation in the Simpsons, for example, is rather dull in comparison to, say, Betty Boop. Of course, it's not the animation that keeps me coming back to watch reruns of Simpsons reruns. It's the material, and there I'd say the Simpsons has no equal.

Flies were buzzing around the room, and I killed a few with a fly swatter. Without them constantly landing on my feet, I was finally able to fall asleep stretched out on the floor.

 

 

    
 

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