Mmm, delicious traffic. The Triangle down in North Carolina can claim it’s part of our Eastern arena and can even point to how metropolitan it’s become, but it just doesn’t have ANYTHING on us when it comes to traffic. We’ve been experimenting with Kristen’s new GPS, watching as it fights traffic delays and reroutes – all weekend we’ve been hearing things like “your traffic delay is now… one… minute” and “a faster route is now available… it is… 2… minutes faster. Would you like to reroute?”
This morning it’s raining, always a recipe for sky-bred disaster. The GPS says “your traffic delay is now… forty… five… minutes. You are…. Still… on the fastest route”. Joy. Twenty minutes in it claims to have found another route which will shave four minutes off the time. I don’t know how much to trust it. I sort of feel it should be plugged into a weather satellite and as soon as there’s precipitation it would just start with soothing and cute kitten videos, because really – Jacob Haller’s right and it’s the ONLY thing that’s going to get us through the day.
Despite the owl-like eyes, this still counts as scary non-owl art.
Owl art. Scary owl art. And not as scary owl art. And scary non-owl art. This one was replete with little wooden flaps with sins beneath them. In case you needed a refresher. The main reason we’d headed over to the Arboretum was for the promise of MAN EATING PLANTS! Or at least carniverous ones. Above are some pitcher plants. The displays were a little dessicated and I feared for their future… Still, many beasties were in bloom – like these Venus Flytraps.
The trip to North Carolina was social goodness and as such I felt like I wasn’t doing my job. It’s probably the first time in my Living memory that I didn’t save my food receipts – though we tried to play open mics, we ended up only doing one, not nearly enough to claim the wandering as a business trip.
See? Some people have their formulae right!
The Big Easy, The Royal Bean – almost every open mic that claimed to be running this weekend simply WASN’T. Some had been canceled permanently due to lack of interest, some (like the North Carolina Songrwriter’s Co-Op) had been canceled because everyone had gone to NERFA (the whole East coast was suffering singer/songwriter depletion because of this), others (Jack Sprat) were now comedy only. Kristen claimed I could probably have gotten away with telling some stories at a comedy open mic, but I just didn’t have it in me.
The one open mic we DID go to was at a huge, beautiful coffeehouse… and house of worship. There are plenty of Christian coffeehouses out there. Even Java Mammas is one – they usually press the fact that they are “family-friendly” and there might be a cross or a little Christian prayer hanging somewhere on a wall – but the Hope Café was NOT subtle. From the sandwiches (The Ark has a LOT of different meats on it) to the logo (steam from a coffee cup rising up in the shape of a cross) and the large crosses available for sale in their corner of Christian literature (also for sale) next to their inspirational CDs (local Christian artists)… well, to the name, the whole place was largely unsubtle. Not that it had to be. It was right for its community, and though such a place probably wouldn’t survive in the largely faith-hidden, uber-PC and generally religion-challenged northern states – it is hugely popular in North Carolina.
Not that you’d know it when you walked in. Huge space, huge stage with drumkit, large, friendly staff – all important – clean restrooms… but when we came in, mostly unpopulated. The list was up at 7pm and as of 7.30pm we were the only people on the list and not far from the only people in the room. Five minutes later and there was a human flood of Biblical proportions as close to 50 people showed up out of the deepening night and 15 more people lined up to signup. Somehow Kristen and I still managed to be the first performers of the night, but we were very well-received with a lot of applause and those modern standing ovations of “You should be on ‘*insert popular entertainment television competition show*” and being filmed by multiple cellphones.
Most of the performers were very faith-based and even when the lyrics weren’t blatantly Christian the thank yous and explanations were. Even though mine weren’t the only secular songs, I was certainly the only person not thanking the stage for an opportunity to praise…. I thanked the stage and the audience and I was pleased to see that the audience and new-found fans seemed perfectly willing to agree to disagree. In most environments like this you spend the rest of the evening fending off invitations to worship and listening to people remind you to thank God for your talents. Though that sort of rhetoric was lobbed back and forth betwixt the regulars, I was glad that they didn’t make any assumptions about my own beliefs and didn’t proselytize. I’d come to THEIR territory and they seemed happy to accept me as-is – friendly and enthusiastic but not needing to convert me.
Great flute player, a couple of wonderful singer / songwriter types – and one of the best cups of coffee I’ve ever had – and even my strongly anti-organized-religion-type friends stopped rolling their eyes in the face of the well-treated bean. Now THAT’S outreach! T’was a great night. And sans traffic delay.
The rest of the weekend involved a lot of food, reading and checking out Megamind. We encountered Bobby Flay, which meant nothing to me, but Kristen was all excited about it. Driving North was punctuated by the usual ugly burst of “YOUR HOME” traffic… slowing to a stop south of Washington DC thanks to stupidity and construction. Man – DC can’t even deal with gridlock – how in Hell do they ever hope to deal with fiscal policy?
