Social Engagements

Since I don’t get back to Bloomington often, I made a point of getting together with folks.

First on my list: lunch with Lee at the Trojan Horse. Lee has been laboring over the ROX Season One DVD Set for years, and he was my chief collaborator on the ROX Season One DVD Release Party & Twentieth Anniversary Celebration. So after lunch, we stopped up at the Comedy Attic to scope out the venue.

The next morning I hit the farmer’s market (via the B-Line, natch) and afterward met Eric Ost at the Runcible Spoon for breakfast. We talked and talked and talked some more, and afterward he gave me a brief tour of the Astronomy digs in Swain West.

On Sunday a funny thing happened. A bunch of us who’ve been hanging in an online forum decided to get together in real life. Strangely enough nobody showed — nobody, that is, except Nick Jacobs. I’d never met Nick int he flesh before. We spent a pleasant hour shooting the breeze in Third Street Park.

(I understand its official name is now Waldron-Hill-Buskirk Park but it will always be Third Street Park to me. And to Nick. And most local residents, I suspect.)

Eventually we nipped over to Rhino’s, where Plan-It-X Fest was unfolding into its third day, to say hello to Brad Wilhelm.

Have you picked up on the pattern here? All the people I looked up have been white males. Given the racial and ethnic demographics of Bloomington (when I lived there anyway) the whiteness is not surprising but I’d have thought I had more female friends.

Fortunately on Sunday evening we went to a party on the outskirts of Bloomington, hosted by friends of the family, where there were plenty of women and girls too. I had a long conversation with Mary Ackerman and caught a fun live bass solo.