Belmont street fair 2019

empty nesters

A young man from Denmark is in one of the rooms. He is keeping to himself.
Works for me, The other room has a nice couple from Seattle.
This is their first weekend being "Empty Nesters"
The couple dropped their son off in the Burbs and decided to have a Portland weekend.
As the two arrived on the dark porch I was sitting in the dark wearing only a kilt and fishnets,
talking to you on the internet, practicing a YoYo with my big toe and chomping on a joint the size of a jumbo crayon. I wasn't expecting company.
I fell all over myself trying to get me together. I dropped the cherry of my joint down my leg, lost my yoyo and spilled my coffee, then I clamored over to the keypad and typed them in.
They just looked at me smiling like I was a raccoon with a jar stuck on my head.
I showed them the house and rooms. She loved talking to Olive and I because we both had lots of the day's residual glitter on still. We sparkle when we talk.
After they showered and slept a bit they met me back out front.
The two had taken 19 y.o.kid on a last family camping trip.
They camped next to a Latino family. Across the river another family were upset at the brown family's existence.
They we shouting about the wall and "go back" epithets while parading around with guns.
So the family decided to crank up some Do Wop music to drown them out.
The Latinos family were all into that they said.
After the camping trip they dropped Sonny off with his Dad.
Dad said "You going to Portland? Watch out...they got them Antiffas down there and they WILL jump you."
(I listen to the cop radio a lot. The people getting jumped are typically gay or black.)
She told her Ex. "I'm not a fascist so I'll be fine." Of course what she found was more friendly people than she has seen in a long time. They love how nice we are around here compared to the Emerald City.
We talked about the whole "empty nest" situation. I was excited for them.
Great time to reinvent themselves and they know it.
We said goodnight. I didn't get to say goodbye to them but they left a lovely review about us.



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New bathroom each time.

I thought I would be grossed out by living with so many folks who use the same bathroom.
I found out that this place gets cleaned so often it's like getting a new paper towel.
New bathroom every time.
Those rooms are the cleanest places I ever lived.
It's a palace next to the gritty punk house bathrooms I used to share.

socio-economic worlds.

 Lots of interesting characters have come thru lately but I didn't have time to write about them. 
This Thursday a lady (mid 50's) showed us from LA. She said she needed to be someplace besides LA. 
Looking at us she seemed pleased. 
She was smiling ear to ear as we introduced her to Portland. The other room had a lovely couple from Idaho. 
They had befriended a group of folks in Las Vegas who travel around following a band. 
Now they go around seeing the band but unlike the other groupies in their group, they are parents of 3 little kids and not rich like their companions. 
So they have the awkward times of being the only couple who isn't a named member of the law firm. It works out. They couple loved hanging out with us too. 
They took lots of photos of us and we had a fine cannabis session on the porch. 
It's not legal where they live so they understandably got pretty buzzed on an amount I hardly noticed. 
They said they were having dinner and trying to explain to their companions about our bikes when there was a sudden buzz. A clamor in the restaurant. 
The people in the place we were eating were reacting to us riding by. He stood up and hollered "That's them!" 
Usually folks ask us a lot of questions about our life (and they did) but I was really into asking them a lot of questions about the mutual admiration society they have going on with the law partners. I'm fascinated.
When it's their turn to get the drinks they can't get 3 top shelf bottles for the table so they just get a round of beers and shots instead. I love that it works out. It's interesting to me. 
I like when folks find ways to mix in all the socio-economic worlds. 
Those folks are gone and now we have a lady from Seattle attending her elementary school reunion with other 60 somethings. 
I lost track of my elementary school chums in Jr.High I can't imagine keeping touch for decades. lol

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wine tastes like wine

What kind of Ice Cream goes with $30 wine?
Hope it's bargain bin, damaged freight butter pecan. We live in a house that rents out rooms.

Most often they leave their weed behind for us, this time it's wine. I don't drink but I never had expensive wine...even when I was a souse.
The wine came from a sun baked couple from SoCal. They were delightful, really smiley and it was adorable how they had such amazing tan lines from the flip flops.
They enjoy, coffee, cycling, reading books and taking phone clients even though they are retired.
Our tallbikes were no biggie to them, they are both hot air balloon pilots. My giant rig is a bug to them.
They had that grandparent vibe that made us want to impress them. Over and over again I had to stop myself from bothering them "um here is a drawing I crayoned for you, perhaps you can put it on your fridge?"
They took a shine to us too.

They bought this wine and only had a glass out of it, then left the rest for us.
Olive and I decided to make a date of it. We sat down with the bottle, ice cream and a 2001 episode of Amazing Race. I made myself a butter pecan wine float that tasted more than a little bit like burnt kitten ear medication.
I realized that the two taste sensations need to be separated.
The wine tasted like wine. I didn't have anything to compare it to since the last time I had regular wine (from a box) was over a decade ago

Dallas was here, San Fran, Toronto.Then we had an elderly country doctor from Tennessee.

 He wasn't here to enjoy the foodie and or nightlife like most. He was on the clock doing infrastructure stuff. 

We became his single serving friends. It was good to have a bunch of time with someone we disagree with. 

I don't want to be in a feedback loop. 

I care about truth so that means trying to understand everyone's perspective. He was very conservative. How conservative? 

He does missionary work. 

That is actually against our religion lol. We still got along great. We agreed on a lot of things too. 

He was certain that there shouldn't be a bunch of military weapons in the hands of regular citizens. He knew the president was an unjust man. 

He also had exciting adventure stories about sneaking bibles into North Korea.

 I loved how his eyes twinkled awkwardly as I rolled a joint. "We do things different at my house." No booze is allowed at his place while it's encouraged here. I also got to show him that it wasn't a problem. It was fascinating to get to know him. He took us to dinner one night. 

On the way he was marveling about how beautiful Portland is. He loved how friendly and informed the people are. He said Portland reminded him of the towns of the 1940s. Lots of people just on the street talking and enjoying each other. He was delighted to see so many small shops and booming local economy. 

I let him know it's not an accident. Portland used to routinely run out Walmart, McDonalds and tons of other chain stores that crush small biz and ruin communities. 

We had din din over on Hawthorne. It was a treat to hear his wisdom and life stories. 

I think what we had in common was the brothers keeper thing. We all had agency over our communities and do our best to take care of everyone.We were also all self made people. 

On the way home we saw Metro boutique and the Haberdasher across the street. 

We know he has the bread for some threads. 

We tried to convince him to let us pick him out some new flash clothing. Same as his Andy Griffith barbershop style, just updated and elevated. 

We wanted to trick him out and send him home looking dapper for his lady. "Clown Eye for the country guy" 

Of course he wasn't having it. 

He gently explained that he has old school conservative values and flashy stuff is not considered very becoming.

 Ok ok fair enough...but I want to hear his wife say that. 

I bet she would love to be swept off her feet by a sharp dressed man.

Minneapolis in the house

This week we had a couple a women from Minneapolis having a friendcation and enjoying one of their favorite subjects:food and booze.
They got me up to date on the crazy booze laws in the Minnyapple.
I can talk about that stuff all night. Later I was washing dishes as I heard them in the next room talking with Olive. It was a giggle fest. I kept hearing words slip in between the clank of scrubbed pots.
Words like "erotic, sci-fi, festival, dinosaurs"
then Olive "Is that a fest you are attending?"
Them: "Nope we are the organizers."
Without knowing fully what they were talking about I went into the room and said
"I just want you to know how much I love and cherish the Twin Cities."
One of them looked at me over the sunglasses she was rocking inside and said the perfect thing.
"Minneapolis, Austin and Portland baby."
LOL YES! I love Austin too.
Been there a lot of times and never had a bad day.

I have grown apprehensive when men show up.

They do gross stuff. Luckily our place is popular with mostly women and they are a lot cleaner.
The last guy must have had stomach problems. He kept leaving the commode looking like someone took a baseball bat to a bean burrito. Yuck.
Olive and I didn't realize we were both cleaning the same dude's mess over and over.
One night I left the lid open hoping he would notice his art project and take care of it.
Unfortunately Olive woke in the night and had to clean it up first.
We don't work here but bathrooms are one of our normal roommate chores.
Yesterday he got my attention.
"Um the bathroom is out of toilet paper"
and Olive and I looked at each other instantly wondering "What are you gonna do with that?" lol

Oh calamity!

Oh calamity!
Canadian blood has been spilled on our soil. The house i live in got an email. The last guests renting the room leaked some menstrual poetry in the fancy sheets.
Nosy, i went in with the cleaners (popcorn in hand) ready to survey the carnage! Well,it wasn't what I expected.

I was expecting it to look like a litter of Great Dane were born there. No luck. It was discreet and small.
A couple of faint pink dots the size of quarters.
They cleaned it up as best they could but still that pro bedding's career has effectively ended.
I'm so glad we all survived the ordeal without and casualties or an international incident.
Now us jackal clowns have scavenged the sheet.
We are thinking of making a banner that says "Welcome to Salem" to put on our roof...y'know... for the airplane passengers to freak out to.

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If you rent a room somewhere is it acceptable to ask that the toilets always be flushed?

Someone reserved a room and made that request. So now I'm working out how to make the tank always flush yellow water and how to glue a Baby Ruth candybar to the bottom of the bowl. I think it's gotta be contact cement. Guess I gotta drain the old commode tonight. #enrichment
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Both occupaddos (a lady from SF and two Canadian college women) made their beds when they left.

 I wonder who they thought would be jumping in after them. 
lol Doing that looks nice but it confounds whomever has to clean the room because unmaking the bed is like have i little unnecessary puzzle to break your stride. 
Now the rooms have two couples who both happen to be from Seattle. 
One pair are an anthropology team. 
There is a conference in town. They greeted us with hugs so I'm looking forward to picking their brains about one of my favorite things to research. 
Anthro-pros have a lot for storytelling. We are in the cultural icon business so I want to know what the most ubiquitous cultural norms across time and space. 
Hopefully I have something to offer them. There was talk of us being in their ear during some fancy social gatherings and public speaking. 
Those are great times to have clowns in your pocket.
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I was gonna tell one of the guests "Did you see who was staying across from you?

 I was gonna tell one of the guests "Did you see who was staying across from you? That was Noah from 1980's Mtv." I met him in the livingroom as we came home from a gig. 
We sat talking for a long time about the industry, Hollywood, New York. 
I told him where I was when Mtv started, he was appreciating my tale of the fresh crowd we just had at our show. 
"Gotta love a fresh crowd."
 I wanted to tell the guest about her neighbor but I don't think a millennial from Columbia would understandably give a shlitz

Guest staying with us (From the distant exotic land of Seattle):

 "I love Portland. I want to Portland.
 I noticed you have a staple gun. May I walk around posting your guyziz fliers?"
 Us. "Yes indeed!"

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Two flavors of confirmation bias

 I got to have heated arguments with two middle aged women who stayed at our place. They were separated by political persuasion and about 6 months but connected because they stayed in the same room...they both also got their confirmation bias played by a hyper observant clown.
"Obama isn't from this country" and "Most homeless people are on the street by choice." Were the conclusions they wanted.
I don't play that. 
It got heated both times. 
Both times it got so heated we teared up.
This is why it's so important for us to not be employed by the room rental people.
I need to have my own voice. 
My voice is of a benevolent carnie. One who sees the consequences of people's poor perception and conclusions.
I'm full of tricks and I know what people's motivations are almost always before they speak.
My goal is to sus out what they think, have them agree that I understand them, then offer my reality from my neutral perspective.
Then they can't backpedal saying "You didn't understand me." 
 I don't think I know everything, I just have the perspective of someone who has never been plugged in.
With the est. democrat lady (from Salem) we were talking about how liberal she is
and then she let go "Except the homeless, they want to be there." I say "WTF?" Then we spent 15 min. arguing about it.
Eventually she cited her source "The Tv"
I keep digging and eventually found out she was mentioning one person that she saw once on a tv news story. That person said he loved being homeless.
She threw everyone else under that bus over a tv news piece.
It was delicious watching her eyes disagreeing with what her mouth was saying.
We shook hands and moved on. I don't judge her, media is powerful. I gave her something to think about...her own words.
Months later, a lady came to rent a room who is from Orange county CA. 
Some folks were sitting around a table talking about old folks enjoying cannabis.
She jumped into the convo saying she is a nurse who keeps her patients as far away from weed as possible.
Instead she touted the synthetic version "Marinol" as a better way to treat people without appealing to folks who just want to get high.
As the night went on we would discover she didn't think anything about the president or his supporters was racist "He gives everyone a chance"
She didn't believe there were racists in town and if there were they certainly don't have Trump stickers on the trucks.
She had mentioned that she was a researcher so I was glad to debate someone who would have more info than the typical simplistic bumper sticker slogans the Trump supporters typically have.
I was hoping she would give me some good complicated explanations to why she thinks this Trump disaster is a good thing.
It never happened. 
She couldn't tell me why she liked Trump or why she thought Obama was such a crook. She also mentioned how France is under Sharia law
and mentioned other "hits" that were clearly from a think tank round table.
I wasn't a big Obama fan but if she doesn't know the difference, that is a huge citizen fail.
When I told her our friend was murdered on the train by a sectarian violence person associated with Trump flags she told me it was lie.
When I told her about the Hispanic yard guy who was shaken up by the "Trukka de Trump" she didn't believe me.
 When I told her that the only reason I met members of the Black Panthers, was because they were guarding black children from people
in Trump trucks (who were harassing them), she said it was all propaganda. 
She seemed to need to believe I was making it all up.
She insisted that she didn't believe me but I think her confirmation bias was reveling itself to her. For a person who is a Nurse and a researcher, she showed little compassion or insight.
It was delicious seeing her eyes not agree with what was coming out of her mouth. I gave her something to think about...her own words.

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Mother Goose Rock 1

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Olive went to Salem

hustling Pilates. We take any opportunity to make the daily bread.

"Had a good sized show this morning but didn't make much dough. 

So we went-a-vid poking and lost a little more. 

Got home to the lady we have been living with the last few days. 

We met when she came but hadn't much to say.

She is a fitness writer from New York city.

She hired us to be in her fitness viddy."

Our new friend Kerri had to do a video dispatch and Pilates demo for

 her fans back in the Big Apple.

We agreed to help.

 First we filmed funny banter and tallbikes with me,

then Pilates and convo with Olive.

She is a tough girl not into showing her cards. 

So tough she was mad at herself on the back of my tallbike for laughing.

"Damn it, I have been grinning non stop, I can't stop.

 I need to stop frikkin smiling, damnit!"

Olive was breaking Kerri's character too making her howl with laughter as we made her video segments and put them together.

We love when a normally reserved person belts out an awkward belly laugh at something. Adorable.

I made sure to have our camera going too taking stills. 

While her and Olive taped the workout I was crunching out graphics for her. 

Looks like we all respect each other as artists and basic super hero types. lol

Glad I didn't have to Pilate.

I like having abs that tell the tale of a clown who gets lots of free birthday cake.

So her favorite take of the intro she got my name wrong (Django)

 I told her I don't give a shlitz. 

My fans know who I am, 

I don't care what her fans call me.

We wrapped up and all went off in our own directions to finish whatever.

That was pretty fun.

I will try to share Kerri's dispatch as soon as her client publishes it.

Loud house

The floors squeak like mad in this house.
Makes for a lot of racket.
Daytime isn't so noticeable but late at night it's ridiculously loud.
I looked online about shivving the boards below but decided we love the security.

We are pretty loud too.
Clowns are pretty loud.
Sometimes it's not a problem.
The fellow staying with us is hard of hearing.
He thinks we are a riot and encouraged us to ham it up as much as we like.
We been having a blast doing midnight band practice, fake arguing and banging pots and pans around late at night.
He just smiles and reads his paper.