South Philadelphia (Back From Another Planet)
ok, so this may be a tad lengthy and detailed, but right now it's all still fresh in my memory so i wanted to jot it down before i forget something. this was my trip to philly:
WEDNESDAY, 9/1/04
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so i had to stick around here in manassas for a little while on wednesday to get paid and do some shit before i left, right? well i went up to the office, got my check and ran into keith. hadn't seen him in like 2 weeks, so he and i wanted to go hang out for lunch. when he saw how much his paycheck was for he flipped out. 1200 dollars, but after tax and his garnishment it came out to something like 300, and he had car insurance and a speeding ticket (which was kinda sorta my fault) to pay for. so i offered to pay for half the ticket seeing as how he wouldn't have been driving if he hadn't been taking me somewhere. granted, my check was only 490, but i figured it was the right thing to do. so we went over to the courthouse, paid the fine and then we went to denny's for lunch. i had a potroast dinner and he had a soup and salad. then we went to the mall because i saw this "how do you like your pussy?" tshirt that i just had to have. so we went into spencers to get the shirt and keith saw this shirt with a picture of a chinese rooster on it that said "suk mai cock poultry farm." i went ahead and bought him one. and i saw this key chain that listed a rackload of reasons alcohol ought to be served at work, so i got that too. then we went back up to the office because i had left my car there and he was gonna drop me off so i could start my trip. only when we got there i realized i left my keys at denny's, and it was already 5pm. so we rushed over to denny's to grab my keys. renee and charlie were there but i had no time to go talk to them. sorry, charlie. grabbed the keys and ran back to the office. got into my car and hauled ass... to the gas station. had to fill up my tank. so i did. then i went home. i already had my clothes and shit ready, just had to put them in a bag (my cat had pissed in my luggage bag), get the bag in the car, and reprint directions. i had a set but i lost them. but when i got home my sister was online. so i asked her to print me up some directions. she said no, and kept doing whatever. then she offered my 20 bucks to drive her to haymarket on thursday, to which i replied "i'm supposed to be hanging out with liam." and she asked me if i could squeeze it in my schedule, to which i replied "liam lives in philly, sam. that's why i asked you to print me up some directions." so she logged off and got on under my name to print up the directions. liam was online so i told her to tell him i was on my way. she did and he thought it was me, so he started talking to her and she was talking back, and it was taking forever so she told him to shut up so i could get ready. all he said after that was to be dressed to go clubbing by the time i got there. sam printed up the directions and she got offline. then her boss called and asked her to come into work. so she needed a ride. i gave her a ride and 20 bucks so she could call a cab to haymarket. then i hurried as fast as i could to philly. i hit rush hour traffic on the beltway but it only lasted like 15 miles, and delayed me about a half an hour. but i made up for that in speed the rest of the way up there. i wasn't aware that i had to cross over maryland and delaware to get there, and i didn't expect to run into 3 toll plazas on the way, yanking 10 bucks in all out of my pocket. when i got to the pennsylvania border i gave liam a call. it was a quarter after 9pm. he told me i was only about 40 miles out from him and to hurry the fuck up. so i got back in the car and made it into jeffersonville (little town just outside philly where liam lives). only as soon as i got there the directions got all screwy and i got lost driving up and down the same stretch of road in a distance of about a mile repeatedly back and forth for about an hour trying to either find my way or get help. i suppose the people in that town don't pay attention to the roads because no one had ever heard of the road i was looking for. so finally i stopped at an applebees (it seemed as good a landmark as any) and called liam. he came to meet me there, and it turned out i was only like a mile away from his house. so he dropped off his truck and hopped into mine (i let him drive the whole time i was there because i didn't know my way around). then we left his house and went into philly propper to some club called "shampoo." a bum asked me for some change and a bouncer scared him away. we went inside, and the place definately had the look and the sound. everything was dark and decorated with red velvet, stone, and candles. very cool stuff. liam introduced my to some people he knew there, inlcuding the owner of dancing ferret which is apparently some big record company out in philadelphia. liam ordered 2 "red deaths," one for each of us. i had never heard of one but they were strong and really good. we sat and drank for a bit, then we went upstairs to go "stomp" around for awhile. it was fun. i had an athsma attack, a small one. didn't bother me too much. but i had to stop every ten minutes to let it subside for a minute. i think mostly it was just exhaustion anyways. we went back downstairs and i ordered us some blue hawaiians (so we had red and blue, both sides of the spectrum, lol.) and he introduced me to his friend lily and some friends of hers. anyhow, liam wanted to go upstairs and dance some more, so we did. but after awhile, i got a little flustered because people kept walking through my area, and some fucking midget kept fucking up my moves by bumping into me every 6 seconds. so i got out of there and went back downstairs. liam came down looking for me, i must have seen him walk by ten times. finally the comedy of it got a little stale and i got up to go meet him. he was all, "why'd you leave?" so i explained it to him. he convinced me to go back up, so i did. there were these blocks up there that i kept seeing all these girls getting up and dancing on, and i saw a couple guys doing it too. looked like fun, and certainly more room-friendly, so i found one and got up on it. danced my ass off until they turned on the lights and made everyone leave. we got outside and there was some guy trying to pick a fight with everyone, and i do mean everyone. so we stuck around to watch for a few minutes. after it got boring we left. liam told lily and her friends to meet us at the south street diner. so we went down there (i changed in the car because i was covered in sweat). met up with them and hung around. lily was cool. she was very nice, laughed at my jokes and all that jazz. her friends were a little annoying though, especially the canadian kid. anyways, some guy was sitting by himself and she felt bad for him, so she wanted to invite him over, but liam got all pissy and wouldn't let her. then he saw some girl sitting alone and he said "why don't you invite her over, lily?" in any case no one invited anyone over. i ordered a meatball sub, which was about 3 times as big as they are back home, i mean here, lol. lily thought it was cool to have someone busting liams balls for a change, since he's always making fun of everyone else. she and her friends left around 4am. me and liam stayed until about 4:30. the girl that was sitting by herself kept looking at me. she was cute. liam said her name was stephanie, but i never introduced myself. i didn't see the point. anyhow, me and liam went back to his place to crash out. i told him to wake me if he got up before me, and i'd do the same if i got up first. he said he'd probly be up at about 10am, which was fine with me because i never really require a whole hell of a lot of sleep. and that was day 1.
THURSDAY, 9/2/04
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10am exactly was when i woke up. i went upstairs and woke liam... he wasn't too pleased to be awake but it wasn't like i didn't warn him. so he let me use his computer to check my email and shit while he slowly rejoined the land of the living. i assisted with this process by talking to him as he awoke so he had something to focus on. i had had this really kinky dream the night before involving the club we had been to the night before, some girl i had never seen in my life and a blindfold. anyhow, we really didn't go into much deatail. he was looking over my shoulder to see what i was doing on the computer. asked me about some of you myspace people, "who's melanie b.? who's kim? who the hell is charlie? what's with the dancing hippo?" anyways, he gave me a towel and told me to go shower so he could wake up some more. so i hopped in the shower, brushed my teeth, the whole hygeine thing. surprisingly he was awake when i was done. i thought he was gonna go back to sleep. then he hopped into the shower and i rifled through his music while i could. when he got out he showed me some cool stuff he had on his computer. i gave liam a copy of my band's cd. we listenned to it a little bit. he liked it but he said the singer needed some work. then he got dressed and we left. back to south philly, we got there at around 12:30. i played him some cd's from my uncle's band, typhon vortex, on the way. lot of ministry and kmfdm influence so i thought he'd like it. but he didn't. oh well. we got to the city, and parking was a bitch. it's like 10 bucks to park.... ANYWHERE! so anyways, we parked the car, went walking around. we passed some interesting stuff, including some place called "condom kingdom." liam took me to digital ferret, which was a cd shop owned by dancing ferret records. i picked up some cd's while i was there (got "freak perfume" from diary of dreams, "daiminion" from project pitchfork, "solitary" from vnv nation, and "reclaimation" from frontline assembly) and i bought the new edition of "gloomcookie." the comic shops stopped selling it around here so i was happy to see i could get it there. same with the cds. project pitchfork i could have gotten at tower in fairfax, and diary of dreams i could have probably ordered, but the others would have been impossible to find. i was looking for something in particular, something i had heard once not long ago but i couldn't remember what it was called. something with numbers in the band name, and it was in a white cd case with a picture of a part of the earth on it. couldn't find it, not that i was much help with a description like that. so anyhow the place kicked ass because all they sold was hard to find ebm and darkwave music. so we left digital ferret and kept walking. i spotted a dairy queen so we stopped in to get blizzards. then we walked up to constitution hall. i got to sse the birthplace of our nation, y'all! then liam took me to zipperhead, this clothing store for "us" types. in the shop window was a manequin with a cheerleaders top on that said "go die!" i thought it was hysterical. we went inside and i found this really awesome shirt that zipped up all over the place. but i couldn't afford it, so i kept looking. liam told me that when i get paid if i send him some money he'll pick up the shirt and send it to me. i did find a pair of pyramid spike bracelets that i thought were cool. so i bought them. and we walked some more. funny, you know how in d.c. it's all numbers and letters for the street names? well in philly it's all numbers and trees. he took me into a fetish shop called passionals. they give b.d.s.m. classes every week and liam wanted to sign up for one. then, of course, we walked some more. we ran into this girl liam knew named veronica. she's a dominatrix, and apparently makes good money (200 an hour) doing it. is that right? is that what you told me, liam? well, something like that, anyhow. he asked her to have a drink with us at dirty frank's (a hole in the wall bar in philly) but she said she had a client to meet later and she had to go home and get ready. she was looking at me kinda funny when he introduced me. later he told me she was "sizing me up." lol. so liam and i went to dirty frank's. it was awesome! it was dirty. the bartender was sassy and cute, but had an ugly mole on her forehead and gapped teeth. you know what i'm talkin about... someone who'd look like they were hot shit if it werent for those hard-to-look-away-from characteristics that make you want to wretch. and her attitude absolutely rocked! i said i wanted a killians and she said they didn't have any. so i asked her what beers she had to drinkand she called me a pussy. told me to have a liquor drink and be a man. then she said she had yuengling if i wanted a lager. so i took the yuengleng, made liam pay for it too because i had payed for everything thus far. so we chilled and drank. they had a pinball machine in the bar called "no good golfers." so like a crack addict to the rock we went and proceeded to dump quarters into this thing for like 2 hours. we ordered another round of beer. i payed. then ian came in. liam introduced us. ian is veronica's husband and from what i gather, his line of work is much the same as his wife's. somehow, i don't remember, we got onto the topic of the dream i had the night before. the one about blindfolding a random girl at a club and... giggedy giggedy! weird discussion, and i don't remember all the details. he ordered a shot and then got a call and had to leave. so me and liam left and went walking some more. now, during the daytime i was able to see the city for the way it was. like dc, or any other city i suppose it's all crammed together so everything is really close. everyone either walks or rides a bike, and i assume that's because no one wants to fork over ten bucks everytime they want to park their car somewhere. and every street is a one way street. now the thing that made philadelphia different was the dirt. the place was dirty as all hell. and i know dc is dirty too, but this was different somehow. it was the dirt, it seemed to make everything more colorful! and the smells, everywhere you went you could smell a mixture of car exhaust and greasy food. and somehow i found this all appealingly stimulating. it was wonderful. and the people were so rude! it was great. they didn't give a fuck about anyone and if you were in their way, prepare to get pushed and shoved out of the way. but their dogs were so well behaved. that was the weird part about it. oh and the cobblestones! the roads weren't paved like here- well some were, but most of them still looked like this was the 19th century. in fact they even had horse roads. you know, roads that were too narrow for any car to fit through, you'd have to take a horse down these roads. anyway, we got hungry so we stopped at mickey d's. i thought it would be appropriate to get a philly cheese steak but i wasn't in the mood for one at the moment. this was about when i learned the term "prostitot," which i thought was hillarious. i was talking to liam about the club the night before, and how i wasn't too pleased with all the "synthie-boppers" that were there, to which he replied "oh you mean all the prostitots." you know, the one's who looked like it was way past their bed time but they were ready to whore themselves off on pine street (another of those "trees" as opposed to "letters") at 3am. so anyways, we ate and then left the city propper to go back to liam's. i wanted to call my mom because she didn't know i had gone to pennsylvania. so we went back to his place. his mom was on netflix.com and didn't know what a good movie to rent would be. so i told her to rent "may." she and liam watched the preview of it and liam was all "yea get that one!" then liam started talking about this band he knew of, cesium 137. it sounded familiar so i had him check out their website for me. when he did i saw a picture of the logo and another picture of a piece of the earth and i was like "that's the band i was looking for at digital ferret!" so i called my mom. told her i was in jail. she didn't buy it. so i told her i was in philly. she didn't sound like she wanted to talk though so i hung up and me and liam drove out to king of prussia to see "alien vs. predator." the movie rocked. it was a hell of a lot better than the book. then we drove around looking for an all night diner. finally we found one in jeffersonville called "the trooper diner." the food was alright but the waiter didn't know what a "soft drink" was. and when we were ready to go he asked me if i wanted a refill and i said "no thanks." so he brought me a refill. we left him a dollar. then we went back to his place. it was about 3am. we crashed out early.
FRIDAY, 9/3/04
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i woke up again at 10am. had another blindfold dream. so i ran upstairs and made liam wake up. i hopped in the shower, got dressed, and got online while liam took his shower. again i was looking through his noise. so he came out of the bathroom and showed me some more cool music and i burned a cd of some of it. then we went out. i wanted to go into the city again partially because i brought a camera on the trip and kept forgetting to take it with me everytime we went out. i wanted to snap some shots of stuff in the city before i left. but liam said traffic would be a bitch and i would end up spending all the rest of my money. so instead we went to ray's diner. i ordered a philly cheesesteak. i don't remember what liam had. some kind of burger. we took some pictures, i remembered my camera this time. cnbc was at the diner getting opinions about the upcoming election. buncha bullshit. so then we left and went back to liam's. watched "once upon a time in china" for a little while and then i had to hit the road. i left at about 3:30pm. i ran into traffic at king of prussia for about an hour, but once i got to the delaware border it ran pretty smooth until i got to the capital beltway in maryland. once i hit 495 on the virginia side it was pretty smooth again. i got home at 7:45, relaxed for awhile and then i had to go to work. so here i am. i'm back, and i wish i was still in philadelphia. it was so much more fun. lol.
WEDNESDAY, 9/1/04
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so i had to stick around here in manassas for a little while on wednesday to get paid and do some shit before i left, right? well i went up to the office, got my check and ran into keith. hadn't seen him in like 2 weeks, so he and i wanted to go hang out for lunch. when he saw how much his paycheck was for he flipped out. 1200 dollars, but after tax and his garnishment it came out to something like 300, and he had car insurance and a speeding ticket (which was kinda sorta my fault) to pay for. so i offered to pay for half the ticket seeing as how he wouldn't have been driving if he hadn't been taking me somewhere. granted, my check was only 490, but i figured it was the right thing to do. so we went over to the courthouse, paid the fine and then we went to denny's for lunch. i had a potroast dinner and he had a soup and salad. then we went to the mall because i saw this "how do you like your pussy?" tshirt that i just had to have. so we went into spencers to get the shirt and keith saw this shirt with a picture of a chinese rooster on it that said "suk mai cock poultry farm." i went ahead and bought him one. and i saw this key chain that listed a rackload of reasons alcohol ought to be served at work, so i got that too. then we went back up to the office because i had left my car there and he was gonna drop me off so i could start my trip. only when we got there i realized i left my keys at denny's, and it was already 5pm. so we rushed over to denny's to grab my keys. renee and charlie were there but i had no time to go talk to them. sorry, charlie. grabbed the keys and ran back to the office. got into my car and hauled ass... to the gas station. had to fill up my tank. so i did. then i went home. i already had my clothes and shit ready, just had to put them in a bag (my cat had pissed in my luggage bag), get the bag in the car, and reprint directions. i had a set but i lost them. but when i got home my sister was online. so i asked her to print me up some directions. she said no, and kept doing whatever. then she offered my 20 bucks to drive her to haymarket on thursday, to which i replied "i'm supposed to be hanging out with liam." and she asked me if i could squeeze it in my schedule, to which i replied "liam lives in philly, sam. that's why i asked you to print me up some directions." so she logged off and got on under my name to print up the directions. liam was online so i told her to tell him i was on my way. she did and he thought it was me, so he started talking to her and she was talking back, and it was taking forever so she told him to shut up so i could get ready. all he said after that was to be dressed to go clubbing by the time i got there. sam printed up the directions and she got offline. then her boss called and asked her to come into work. so she needed a ride. i gave her a ride and 20 bucks so she could call a cab to haymarket. then i hurried as fast as i could to philly. i hit rush hour traffic on the beltway but it only lasted like 15 miles, and delayed me about a half an hour. but i made up for that in speed the rest of the way up there. i wasn't aware that i had to cross over maryland and delaware to get there, and i didn't expect to run into 3 toll plazas on the way, yanking 10 bucks in all out of my pocket. when i got to the pennsylvania border i gave liam a call. it was a quarter after 9pm. he told me i was only about 40 miles out from him and to hurry the fuck up. so i got back in the car and made it into jeffersonville (little town just outside philly where liam lives). only as soon as i got there the directions got all screwy and i got lost driving up and down the same stretch of road in a distance of about a mile repeatedly back and forth for about an hour trying to either find my way or get help. i suppose the people in that town don't pay attention to the roads because no one had ever heard of the road i was looking for. so finally i stopped at an applebees (it seemed as good a landmark as any) and called liam. he came to meet me there, and it turned out i was only like a mile away from his house. so he dropped off his truck and hopped into mine (i let him drive the whole time i was there because i didn't know my way around). then we left his house and went into philly propper to some club called "shampoo." a bum asked me for some change and a bouncer scared him away. we went inside, and the place definately had the look and the sound. everything was dark and decorated with red velvet, stone, and candles. very cool stuff. liam introduced my to some people he knew there, inlcuding the owner of dancing ferret which is apparently some big record company out in philadelphia. liam ordered 2 "red deaths," one for each of us. i had never heard of one but they were strong and really good. we sat and drank for a bit, then we went upstairs to go "stomp" around for awhile. it was fun. i had an athsma attack, a small one. didn't bother me too much. but i had to stop every ten minutes to let it subside for a minute. i think mostly it was just exhaustion anyways. we went back downstairs and i ordered us some blue hawaiians (so we had red and blue, both sides of the spectrum, lol.) and he introduced me to his friend lily and some friends of hers. anyhow, liam wanted to go upstairs and dance some more, so we did. but after awhile, i got a little flustered because people kept walking through my area, and some fucking midget kept fucking up my moves by bumping into me every 6 seconds. so i got out of there and went back downstairs. liam came down looking for me, i must have seen him walk by ten times. finally the comedy of it got a little stale and i got up to go meet him. he was all, "why'd you leave?" so i explained it to him. he convinced me to go back up, so i did. there were these blocks up there that i kept seeing all these girls getting up and dancing on, and i saw a couple guys doing it too. looked like fun, and certainly more room-friendly, so i found one and got up on it. danced my ass off until they turned on the lights and made everyone leave. we got outside and there was some guy trying to pick a fight with everyone, and i do mean everyone. so we stuck around to watch for a few minutes. after it got boring we left. liam told lily and her friends to meet us at the south street diner. so we went down there (i changed in the car because i was covered in sweat). met up with them and hung around. lily was cool. she was very nice, laughed at my jokes and all that jazz. her friends were a little annoying though, especially the canadian kid. anyways, some guy was sitting by himself and she felt bad for him, so she wanted to invite him over, but liam got all pissy and wouldn't let her. then he saw some girl sitting alone and he said "why don't you invite her over, lily?" in any case no one invited anyone over. i ordered a meatball sub, which was about 3 times as big as they are back home, i mean here, lol. lily thought it was cool to have someone busting liams balls for a change, since he's always making fun of everyone else. she and her friends left around 4am. me and liam stayed until about 4:30. the girl that was sitting by herself kept looking at me. she was cute. liam said her name was stephanie, but i never introduced myself. i didn't see the point. anyhow, me and liam went back to his place to crash out. i told him to wake me if he got up before me, and i'd do the same if i got up first. he said he'd probly be up at about 10am, which was fine with me because i never really require a whole hell of a lot of sleep. and that was day 1.
THURSDAY, 9/2/04
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10am exactly was when i woke up. i went upstairs and woke liam... he wasn't too pleased to be awake but it wasn't like i didn't warn him. so he let me use his computer to check my email and shit while he slowly rejoined the land of the living. i assisted with this process by talking to him as he awoke so he had something to focus on. i had had this really kinky dream the night before involving the club we had been to the night before, some girl i had never seen in my life and a blindfold. anyhow, we really didn't go into much deatail. he was looking over my shoulder to see what i was doing on the computer. asked me about some of you myspace people, "who's melanie b.? who's kim? who the hell is charlie? what's with the dancing hippo?" anyways, he gave me a towel and told me to go shower so he could wake up some more. so i hopped in the shower, brushed my teeth, the whole hygeine thing. surprisingly he was awake when i was done. i thought he was gonna go back to sleep. then he hopped into the shower and i rifled through his music while i could. when he got out he showed me some cool stuff he had on his computer. i gave liam a copy of my band's cd. we listenned to it a little bit. he liked it but he said the singer needed some work. then he got dressed and we left. back to south philly, we got there at around 12:30. i played him some cd's from my uncle's band, typhon vortex, on the way. lot of ministry and kmfdm influence so i thought he'd like it. but he didn't. oh well. we got to the city, and parking was a bitch. it's like 10 bucks to park.... ANYWHERE! so anyways, we parked the car, went walking around. we passed some interesting stuff, including some place called "condom kingdom." liam took me to digital ferret, which was a cd shop owned by dancing ferret records. i picked up some cd's while i was there (got "freak perfume" from diary of dreams, "daiminion" from project pitchfork, "solitary" from vnv nation, and "reclaimation" from frontline assembly) and i bought the new edition of "gloomcookie." the comic shops stopped selling it around here so i was happy to see i could get it there. same with the cds. project pitchfork i could have gotten at tower in fairfax, and diary of dreams i could have probably ordered, but the others would have been impossible to find. i was looking for something in particular, something i had heard once not long ago but i couldn't remember what it was called. something with numbers in the band name, and it was in a white cd case with a picture of a part of the earth on it. couldn't find it, not that i was much help with a description like that. so anyhow the place kicked ass because all they sold was hard to find ebm and darkwave music. so we left digital ferret and kept walking. i spotted a dairy queen so we stopped in to get blizzards. then we walked up to constitution hall. i got to sse the birthplace of our nation, y'all! then liam took me to zipperhead, this clothing store for "us" types. in the shop window was a manequin with a cheerleaders top on that said "go die!" i thought it was hysterical. we went inside and i found this really awesome shirt that zipped up all over the place. but i couldn't afford it, so i kept looking. liam told me that when i get paid if i send him some money he'll pick up the shirt and send it to me. i did find a pair of pyramid spike bracelets that i thought were cool. so i bought them. and we walked some more. funny, you know how in d.c. it's all numbers and letters for the street names? well in philly it's all numbers and trees. he took me into a fetish shop called passionals. they give b.d.s.m. classes every week and liam wanted to sign up for one. then, of course, we walked some more. we ran into this girl liam knew named veronica. she's a dominatrix, and apparently makes good money (200 an hour) doing it. is that right? is that what you told me, liam? well, something like that, anyhow. he asked her to have a drink with us at dirty frank's (a hole in the wall bar in philly) but she said she had a client to meet later and she had to go home and get ready. she was looking at me kinda funny when he introduced me. later he told me she was "sizing me up." lol. so liam and i went to dirty frank's. it was awesome! it was dirty. the bartender was sassy and cute, but had an ugly mole on her forehead and gapped teeth. you know what i'm talkin about... someone who'd look like they were hot shit if it werent for those hard-to-look-away-from characteristics that make you want to wretch. and her attitude absolutely rocked! i said i wanted a killians and she said they didn't have any. so i asked her what beers she had to drinkand she called me a pussy. told me to have a liquor drink and be a man. then she said she had yuengling if i wanted a lager. so i took the yuengleng, made liam pay for it too because i had payed for everything thus far. so we chilled and drank. they had a pinball machine in the bar called "no good golfers." so like a crack addict to the rock we went and proceeded to dump quarters into this thing for like 2 hours. we ordered another round of beer. i payed. then ian came in. liam introduced us. ian is veronica's husband and from what i gather, his line of work is much the same as his wife's. somehow, i don't remember, we got onto the topic of the dream i had the night before. the one about blindfolding a random girl at a club and... giggedy giggedy! weird discussion, and i don't remember all the details. he ordered a shot and then got a call and had to leave. so me and liam left and went walking some more. now, during the daytime i was able to see the city for the way it was. like dc, or any other city i suppose it's all crammed together so everything is really close. everyone either walks or rides a bike, and i assume that's because no one wants to fork over ten bucks everytime they want to park their car somewhere. and every street is a one way street. now the thing that made philadelphia different was the dirt. the place was dirty as all hell. and i know dc is dirty too, but this was different somehow. it was the dirt, it seemed to make everything more colorful! and the smells, everywhere you went you could smell a mixture of car exhaust and greasy food. and somehow i found this all appealingly stimulating. it was wonderful. and the people were so rude! it was great. they didn't give a fuck about anyone and if you were in their way, prepare to get pushed and shoved out of the way. but their dogs were so well behaved. that was the weird part about it. oh and the cobblestones! the roads weren't paved like here- well some were, but most of them still looked like this was the 19th century. in fact they even had horse roads. you know, roads that were too narrow for any car to fit through, you'd have to take a horse down these roads. anyway, we got hungry so we stopped at mickey d's. i thought it would be appropriate to get a philly cheese steak but i wasn't in the mood for one at the moment. this was about when i learned the term "prostitot," which i thought was hillarious. i was talking to liam about the club the night before, and how i wasn't too pleased with all the "synthie-boppers" that were there, to which he replied "oh you mean all the prostitots." you know, the one's who looked like it was way past their bed time but they were ready to whore themselves off on pine street (another of those "trees" as opposed to "letters") at 3am. so anyways, we ate and then left the city propper to go back to liam's. i wanted to call my mom because she didn't know i had gone to pennsylvania. so we went back to his place. his mom was on netflix.com and didn't know what a good movie to rent would be. so i told her to rent "may." she and liam watched the preview of it and liam was all "yea get that one!" then liam started talking about this band he knew of, cesium 137. it sounded familiar so i had him check out their website for me. when he did i saw a picture of the logo and another picture of a piece of the earth and i was like "that's the band i was looking for at digital ferret!" so i called my mom. told her i was in jail. she didn't buy it. so i told her i was in philly. she didn't sound like she wanted to talk though so i hung up and me and liam drove out to king of prussia to see "alien vs. predator." the movie rocked. it was a hell of a lot better than the book. then we drove around looking for an all night diner. finally we found one in jeffersonville called "the trooper diner." the food was alright but the waiter didn't know what a "soft drink" was. and when we were ready to go he asked me if i wanted a refill and i said "no thanks." so he brought me a refill. we left him a dollar. then we went back to his place. it was about 3am. we crashed out early.
FRIDAY, 9/3/04
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i woke up again at 10am. had another blindfold dream. so i ran upstairs and made liam wake up. i hopped in the shower, got dressed, and got online while liam took his shower. again i was looking through his noise. so he came out of the bathroom and showed me some more cool music and i burned a cd of some of it. then we went out. i wanted to go into the city again partially because i brought a camera on the trip and kept forgetting to take it with me everytime we went out. i wanted to snap some shots of stuff in the city before i left. but liam said traffic would be a bitch and i would end up spending all the rest of my money. so instead we went to ray's diner. i ordered a philly cheesesteak. i don't remember what liam had. some kind of burger. we took some pictures, i remembered my camera this time. cnbc was at the diner getting opinions about the upcoming election. buncha bullshit. so then we left and went back to liam's. watched "once upon a time in china" for a little while and then i had to hit the road. i left at about 3:30pm. i ran into traffic at king of prussia for about an hour, but once i got to the delaware border it ran pretty smooth until i got to the capital beltway in maryland. once i hit 495 on the virginia side it was pretty smooth again. i got home at 7:45, relaxed for awhile and then i had to go to work. so here i am. i'm back, and i wish i was still in philadelphia. it was so much more fun. lol.