B-Fest 2011 Thursday

Despite being only 28 years old, I get up in the night to pee like I should be in a nursing home.  As annoying as that sounds, one nice thing about it is that when I’ve been drinking this gives me a chance to fortify myself with Excedrin in the wee hours to stave off hangover headaches.

When Thursday morning rolled around, we breakfasted at Seven Brothers.  There was nothing inherently wrong with this plan, and what I ordered was delicious at the time.  It was also the only meal I was to eat that day, and one I shall never eat again.  Pale*hurp*.  Palestin*whgag*.  Okay, we’ll come back to that.

The main goal of the day was to hit the Intuit Museum of Outsider Art.  It was a bit of a trick to find, but once we did it was a good way to kill an hour.  Smaller and less crazy than I was expecting.  It’s not, as we previously thought, actually art from mental patients, although it has that element too.  The idea is more general - art outside the norm.  Self-taught, or things that just don’t quite fit into any of the neat categories in regular art museums and galleries.  Anyway, it didn’t matter that it was small.  It only cost $5 to get in, and the works they did have were, on the whole, fascinating.

After a quick run across the street to CVS (I’ve been meaning to bring earplugs every year for the loud movies, and although I can grab them by the handful from work, I still wound up buying a box), our plan for the day had pretty well run out.  When in doubt, shop!  We parked right next to a used CD and DVD store, and were promptly and thoroughly disappointed by it.  0 for 2, way to go Chicago record stores!  Luckily, the bookstore a couple of blocks away was another story.  Almost immediately upon walking in, Santo dropped two film books I’d been hoping to find (Ghouls, Gimmicks, and Gold and Ghastly One, the Andy Milligan biography, for those interested) in my hands.  Not ten minutes later Monsters Are Attacking Tokyo and Barbara Tuchman’s Through A Distant Mirror (one of those history books he and Ed recommended) followed.  Remember what I said about him being dangerous to shop with?  I wound up with a big enough pile I had to put back Doctor Who books.  Serious stuff.  I wouldn’t have had to do that if they hadn’t been a cash-only place, but I needed some left over for a B-Fest shirt, and failing to split restaurant bills while ordering had rapidly depleted my cash reserves.

Shopping accomplished, funds all dried up, it was time to head back to the hotel to prepare for the traditional tiki bar trip.  Bergerjaques had arrived, and we met up with him briefly, but ever since we got back, I’d been pretty much laid out on the bed trying very, very hard not to move.  My greatest weakness is an extreme susceptibility to motion sickness.  Oh, I can ride in a tossing boat on high waves all day long and have a blast.  But anything that spins, or even hard and repetitive side-to-side motions, will put me out of commission for hours. 

When we were first dating, Malorie and I went to the North Iowa Fair.  She loves the rides, but I told her I couldn’t go on anything much wilder than the Ferris wheel.  She called bullshit, so I told her I would go on one ride of her choice with her to prove how sick it would make me.  Malorie being Malorie, she picked the goddamn Octopus, the worst nightmare of anyone with motion sickness.  The blood drained from my face almost immediately, and she had to all but carry me back to the car, which I only just had enough cognitive power left to drive back to her house so I could lay very still on the bed the rest of the night.

Spinning and repetitive side-to-side motion…curving off-ramp and dodging traffic…are you putting this together yet?  And I was riding in the very back of Santo's van.  An extra-long vehicle just adds to the problem.  The tiki bar was not in my cards for this year.  Fortunately the only person I missed was Skip, and he sat with us at B-Fest, so it all worked out.  In the mean time, even sitting still and trying to sleep didn’t help.  I yakked twice and Mal and I turned in for the time being.

Before continuing, I’m going to try to get back to that breakfast one more time.  Deep breath.  Here we go.  Pales*buuurgh*.  Whoof.  Palestinian crepes!  I did it!  Crepes, filled with sour cream and smothered in extremely sweet orange cointreau suzette.  It was so good when I was eating it.  Now, simply thinking the words “Palestinian crepes” makes my gorge rise.  I’m physically having a hard time typing this.

Well, after barfing up a surprising amount of those crepes considering how long ago I’d eaten them, and after a couple hours’ sleep (we gave up and went to bed around eight), I was feeling better enough to attempt being social once the crew returned from the tiki bar.  My compatriot from the Brotherhood of Bad Movies, Brother Fistula, had driven up from southern Illinois and was staying at the hotel, but he misunderstood my message beckoning him to our room, so we wouldn’t see him until the next morning.  In the mean time, Santo, Juniper, BJ, and Ed came back to our room after BJ convinced the desk clerk to turn the juice machine back on (he wanted cranberry and orange juice for his vodka, I just wanted cranberry juice to help settle my stomach and rehydrate).

Ed brought me two more books from the recommendation list (Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and Dreadnought), and had a hilarious look of “I don’t want to get sick but I don’t want to seem unfriendly” on his face when I gave him a hug.  Incidentally, he did get sick the next week, but it is most assuredly not my fault!  You hear that, Ed?  Not my fault!  Once I had convinced everyone they had nothing to fear unless vertigo was contagious, we settled in to watch Yokai:100 Monsters and enjoy some more nerdly camaraderie.  BJ was inordinately excited to have butt-dialed his wife for the first time.  Things didn’t run as late as the previous night, though, because of course, tomorrow was the big day.