A post that will disclose what everybody knows

I am safely arrived in scenic Hartford, CT, site of matociquala, her Presumptuous Cat, her GRD, and last night's Evil Sexy Leonard Cohen do.

As expected, the 6:45am flight leading to the 9:30 train leading to the other train at 11:30 leading to final arrival at 2:00pm was crazy tiring, although as not-expected, all connections went off without a hitch and, in fact, with time to spare. Flying Porter? Is awesome. They give you free cappucinos, wireless, and a little box breakfast with a carrot muffin innit. And the seats are comfy. I completely approve.

Trains were not bad either. On the first one, Newark Airport to Penn Station, I was sitting behind a guy who was talking on his cellphone in the way one does when one is demonstrating how important one is to the class. Apparently he worked for the NBA. He kept saying "Maybe I'm speaking out of turn, but--" and then saying it. This amused me greatly.

I am not one of those people who romanticizes New York, but I admit when I came up and saw the Penn Station departures board, it was pretty sweet.

The second train was afflicted, sadly, by a gentleman with a banjo who felt that we, the rest of the train, really needed to hear his banjo. His banjo was, let's say, a work in progress. I would have been okay with this, except I'd had five hours' sleep in the last 36. I graciously did not snip his banjo strings with my teeth.

This gave me time to watch Connecticut go by. From the train tracks, the impression was that Connecticut is made of wetlands (yay!), old awesome-looking abandoned industrial buildings (woo!) and discarded tires (less yay). Apparently this impression is partial, but not too far off the mark.

matociquala, being a good Bear who loves me and wants me to be happy, met my sleepy, grateful self with iced tea and an unagi-avocado roll. And then we did the tour of downtown Hartford, including state capitol building, entirely ancient cemetery (surviving gravestones from the 1630s. 0.0 ), nice bridges, old state capitol building, which has a no-shit cabinet of curiosities in it, and Olmstead-designed park with rose garden and koi pond. We fed the ducks and koi in the pond my shortbread cookie so they'd come visit. The koi methodology of eating your shortbread is apparently two very separate motions: surface open-mouthed like a submarine first, nom next.

We then met Jeff of No Fixed LJ for thai and ice cream and went to see ESLC.

ESLC was in fact, E and S. He played like seven songs for the encore. It was like a third act. It was...in some ways odd and jarring to see this obviously old man, his vocal range really reduced in power and not all there at the top end, wearing a suit and hat that just screamed my grandfather, completely owning this crowd from the second he stepped onstage. He took off his hat after every song as a thank you for the applause, and when another of the band members was doing an extended solo. There was something of a dying era about it, but in the beautiful way, in the first half. And then he seemed to realize he could get a laugh or fifteen out of this audience, and the whole thing sort of...firmed up. And he wasn't rasping so much, and belting it more.

It was...quite the thing.

Also, when I am seventy-something, I hope I am able to rock a porkpie hat and skip merrily on- and off-stage four times.

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This morning I was woke by the GRD, who saw an opportunistic twitch and shoved his squeaky aardvark in my face in terrific joy. A monkey! An awake monkey!

And now there is internets, and soon there will be pancakes.

And that's the news from here. :)

Overheard at ESLCon

(And that's Evil Sexy LeonardCon, not English as a second language.)

cristalia: Okay, so I've pared down my list of concerts to see before I die: NIN and that's next month, the Tragically Hip, and Tom Waits. But Tom'll be hard. He doesn't tour much.
matociquala: He's the endboss.