Wednesday, June 13, 2007

spit on a stranger

Lots going on these days and I need to get some sleep, but I had to mention a brush with stardom I had this evening. Just this morning I was skiing at Mt. Hood in Oregon, and in the afternoon I flew to Chicago, where I'm spending a few days at the biennial conference of the Dictionary Society of North America. Exciting! My friend Shifra and her boyfriend Ben met me at Midway Airport to pick me up, and while we were waiting around for my bag, I saw a tall, familiar looking figure walk by. I was pretty sure I knew who it was, but then I was certain when he picked up a guitar case. "Holy shit! That's Stephen Malkmus!" I gushed to Shifra and Ben. They stared at me blankly. "You know, from Pavement?" I said. "He lives in Portland, Oregon so it makes sense that he would be at this carousel. Wait, he must've been on my flight!" But SM and his girlfriend had already made a hasty departure and I was left gawking fanboyishly, with a sudden urge to go check into my dorm room and listen to "Spit on a Stranger" and "Gold Soundz" and "Here" on my iPod.

UPDATE: I'm a total idiot for not knowing this, but it turns out that the Pitchfork music festival is in Chicago this weekend, and Malkmus is playing Sunday night! How could I have not known this?? And how am I going to get tickets on such short notice???

ANOTHER UPDATE: I'm a REALLY big idiot. Pitchfork Festival is JULY 13-15, not June. Malkmus has no dates scheduled anywhere until then. Who knows why he's in Chicago.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Great story! I just had a Malkmus moment myself yesterday. I'll confess I haven't listened to Pavement outside of the odd song from Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain coming up on iTunes shuffle mode. But just yesterday I put it together that one of my favorite TV shows uses a Pavement song. The daily ESPN gabfest "Pardon the Interruption" uses a clip of "Cut Your Hair" at the beginning and end of every show. That's probably because hosts Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon (both Washington Post sportswriters I read regularly growing up) are bald, the subject of many a joke on the show.

Richie Jay said...

Have you ever heard the Nickel Creek version of Spit on a Stranger? Soooooo good.