It all Started with a Skinny Mustache

I don't even know why I thought it was a good idea to go to a medical provider located in Portland's Pearl District.  Oh, that's right - I'm lazy and that particular optometrist office is five blocks from work AND in network.

Seriously, I've been going there for about 18 months, and my hatred for that office increases with every appointment.  Since I have a chronic dry eye situation that arises in the middle of the night  hasn't significantly improved  in the past 18 months of eye steroid drops, Omega 3 pills, twice daily eyelid washes, warm eye compresses, and regular appointments with my optometrist - my hatred level for this office is beyond words.

Not only is there the obligatory gay guy with a skinny mustache,* but you've also got the waif-like blond with a pixie cut,^ rockabilly loving brunette with a passion for cat eye eyeliner, and a hot Asian chick.

In short, it's a hipster petri-dish.

An allergy to hipsters is a burden that I have to bear.  I've been using this doctor's office as a way to build up my hipster tolerance, and today it backfired.

All I wanted was my annual eye exam.  They couldn't cram it into my last dry eye follow up, so I went today.  It was a bad visit from the start. 

Not only was the doctor running 15 minutes behind schedule and I got to hang out in a waiting room littered old water and tea cups, but I had to deal with the creepy hair lip liner guy.  I was trooper and didn't stare too hard.

I was more than a little bit relieved when the doctor strolled in.  That relief lasted exactly as long as it took for the doctor to introduce herself and shake my hand, and all bets were off when she pointed out the long term ramifications if I didn't consider addressing my dry eye condition - soon.

The same dry eye problem that she had been treating for over a year and checked on two weeks ago.

It was during her lecture that I realized two things, 1) she had no idea who I was and 2) she didn't even bother to look at my patient file before launching into my exam.  And, honestly, I'm more concerned about the latter.

So, I'm going to wrap up my little contact fitting project and then head to another optometrist's office. Maybe I'll be lucky enough to find a doctor who can treat my peepers without the mustachioed posse.

Hey, a girl can dream.


*A la Austin Scarlett

^If you're thinking Mia Farrow in "Rosemary's Baby", you'd be right on the money.

Borrowing Other Peoples' Interests

Sure, I have my own interests, but I’ve also been known to fill my time with other peoples' interests just so I can hang out with them.  

Thanks to my many ex-roommates, I’ve watched a lot television shows that I otherwise wouldn’t.  (See: Boy Meets World and Who’s the Boss?)  When it comes to Jaimee, I go to The Gypsy more often than I should, and end up tipsy on rum and Cokes, hearing a lot of bad karaoke, less than a block from my house and glad that I let her talk me into another night out.    With Robyn, I end up consuming a lot of vegan food all the while thinking how much better it would be with meat and/or cheese, but discover Blossoming Lotus‘ amazing Coconut Chai.  Alexis takes me into the world of Vietnamese barbecues and Asian eateries, and I happen upon Frank’s Noodle House (fresh noodles make a HUGH difference) three weeks before I move out of the neighborhood.  

I've come to enjoy trying new things and spending time with my friends and family members, which is why I jumped at the chance to join Halley at a Tally Hall concert and Allie’s organized outing to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2.  Needless to say, it was busier than my average weekend.

Halley LOVES her some Tally Hall.  And, when I say “love,” I mean she likes them more than the 35-year-old mother I met at their Mississippi Studios concert who was bribed with a free concert ticket by her teenage daughter to chauffer the daughter’s posse to and from the concert, but less than Kathy Bates’ character in Misery.  To put it another way, if Tally Hall was Phish, Halley would have spent the last five years selling veggie burritos out of a Volkswagen van.  But, since we’re talking Tally Hall  – not only was I able to wear shoes to the concert, but my deodorant was also a welcome tagalong.

Mississippi Studios is an adorable venue with a capacity in the neighborhood of 250, which I would consider intimate.  Casey Shea opened the show.  It was either the balcony full of minors calling out amorous phrases or it could have been the two audience members he pulled on to the stage, dressed them up in animal masks and gave them party poppers – either way, he worked that venue like it was nobody’s business.

Speak followed and if I had been 14-years-old I might have thought they were dreamy, instead they gave me a reason to drink – more.  If I learned anything from Airheads (other than Adam Sandler can be strangely hot) it is this, “If it’s too loud, you’re too old.”  And, it appears that I’m too old for Speak.  Of course, this feeling could have been the result of Halley referring to my “Thirty, flirty, and loving it” phase of life as “middle age,” but since the two coincided – I may never know for certain.

While talking me into the show, Halley described Tally Hall as Indie Rock and Power Pop.  Now that I've heard them, I agree with the description but it feels like an over generalization.  It’s kind of like categorizing both The Radio Active Boy Scout and Chelsea Handler’s My Horizontal Life as nonfiction – it’s true, but you could say so much more.  Maybe it’s the suits or maybe it’s their harmonies, but Tally Hall sounds like a throwback to the rock bands from the 1950s and ‘60s.  Let’s try it another way, if The Monkees were reboot with a touch of The Everly Brothers and took a few writing tips from Wally Pleasant  – I believe the result would be something like Tally Hall.

Their songs are catchy.  Some are catchy in their repetitiveness.  (See: &).  Others are catchy in their quirkiness.  (See: Banana Man).  However, and I'm just going to put this out there, there are other songs that are intriguing because of their pairing of bubblegum pop beats with lyrics I would describe, in literary terms, as rooted in the same zip code as Gothic horror.  (See: Cannibal).

Halley told me  the main reasons she likes Tally Hall – it’s a tie between their nerderiffic music and they’re appreciation for their fans.  And, Halley’s right.  Members of the band circulated through the crowd before and after the concert.  Halley hobnobbed and introduced me to all of them except, “Ross, Gray Tie, because he’s quite.”  (That's actually how she talked about the band members.  "Rob, Yellow Tie, postponed med school to stay with the band."  And, "Andrew, Green Tie, is over there," even though Andrew was in his civvies and no where near a tie.)

It was great to experience Halley’s favorite band through her eyes.  I kept forgetting that I was with Halley and would do things, like a whole head eye roll when she suggested that I not put my beer down on a table when the closest person was 20 paces away.  Well, that was when Halley thought I was having a seizure.  You'd think I'd know better by now and not use things like sarcasm or exaggerated facial expressions around Halley.  But, then again, last week I was told not to color my hair without her (even though it turned out super kick ass).  But, I digress.  I can see why Halley adores Tally Hall.  They had witty banter.  And, they had not so witty banter, (e.g., Andrew trying to start a game of Truth or Dare when all he had in mind was a dare and Joe, Zubin, and Rob all wanted Truth.  So, instead they played a song).   

The problem is that Halley's not the only one who likes these guys.  Looking at my fellow audience members, I'd say that they're a hot ticket with teenage girls and the over 50 market.  I'm glad that I was able to borrow her interest before I had to do something like shell out $8.50 for a beer or stand in line for 20 minutes to use the restroom, because I'm pretty sure that it’s only a matter of time until they move out of the sweet and adorable venues like Mississippi Studios and into the likes of the Crystal Ballroom and then Edgefield* where the crowds would be  too large to allow for the one-on-one attention that Halley has come to love.  When that day comes, I hope she’ll take comfort in knowing that it’s Tally Hallmanacs like her who moved Tally Hall out of New Jersey Spring Fling gigs  and into the Portland, Ore. Mississippi Studios in the first place.

* Maybe I have McMenamins' Cajun tots on my mind.

Ten Things I will not miss about the Northeast side of Portland

10.   Waking up at 5 a.m. to the sound of a transient pushing a shopping cart full of empty Pabst cans.

9.     Having to cut through packs of roaming teenagers on my way to the grocery store, because the fastest way to get to the grocery store after work was to cut through the Lloyd Center Mall.

8.    Memories of the six months my youngest sister spent living with me and Robyn in The Original Crap Pit, and that she spent most of the time in a consistent power struggle with my cat.

7.    The 48 minutes it took me to travel 2 miles (one way) to work on TriMet.

6.    Crazy Neighbor Jane@

5.    The Original Crap Pit*

4.    The crazy ex-roommate’s sex noises

3.    Crap Pit Part Deux^

2.    The Crazy ex-roommate

1.    The property owners of Crap Pit Part Deux.%

@ Jaimee swears that she caught 60-year-old Jane sunbathing in the nude (complete with ‘70s bush) the first month we moved into the house.  Plus, every time Jane would take a vacation, she would give us a business card with her contact information and a different business listed (pilates instructor, opera concert organizer, author of an organic ice cream cookbook, etc.), who never seemed to work but always had time to tell the property owners with whatever new ways she thought we were breaking the terms of our lease (e.g., having a black roommate, having one or more men repeatedly stay the night, or having a 4th of July barbeque).

* Think: Moving in to a broken window that took the entire summer to fix, and was only fixed after calling the property management company every other day; black mold – in the closets; discovering that the only thing that had kept the black mold at bay was the drafty windows, which were sealed up with window insulation kits for the winter; a bubbling floor under the second floor toilet (conveniently located right about the kitchen stove), which turned out to be a pipe that had rusted years ago; basement walls leaking combining with an overflowing floor drain to create a kiddy pool in the basement.  This place had it ALL!

^ After moving out of The Original Crap Pit, I made sure to move into a house that had been renovated within the last three years and a place where I wouldn’t have to deal with a property management company.  So, I moved two blocks down the street and into Crap Pit Part Deux where the walls made of sheetrock and the bathroom caulking in two of the three bathrooms was “decorative.”  Luckily, I no longer had a property management company to deal with.  Instead, I had a whole family to deal with.  And, this particular family included a mother, her three grown daughters, and one of the daughter’s husbands.  

% The cherry on the top was that these five individuals contradicted each other, and sent me e-mails and mail signed with each other’s names.  Even when I would be dealing with what I assumed was my primary contact, her e-mail signature rotated through to include at least three different limited liability companies in the one year that I communicated with her.  The piece of mail containing one part of the returned deposits was especially interesting, given that the envelope had the mother’s return address in Hood River, Ore., a check with a company address in Carbondale, Colo., the fact that the check was signed by the sister who had supposedly moved to California, and a letter signed by a second sister who was allegedly in Hawaii. 

I’ve seen United States of Tara.  I know what’s up.  And, I can’t help but imagine that all of these people are really just one person with dissociative identity disorder, a compulsive liar and an old lady with alzheimer's disease.  After all, I’ve only really met three of them, and they all seemed off to me. 

But, really, the reason why I want to believe that the ex-property owners are one big crazy person is because that’s a half way reasonable explanation for all of their behavior (e.g., holding themselves out to have years of experience renting a variety of properties and then asking me to sign a lease that I had to redraft because simply having roommates would have violated the terms of the lease; contradicting each other when it came to simple things like how they wanted to reimburse me for paying the city leaf removal bill that was more than 30 days overdue because they would not come to a decision; not making sure that when the mother moved out of the house she did things like remove her series of Balzac books from the shelves or pack up her silver penguin candle holders; not believe me when I told you that the basement carpet was SOAKED to the point where I spent a month wearing rain boots in the house, and when you finally did believe me – each of you had a different way that you wanted to deal with it; and hint at the fact that you planned to keep our $600 refundable pet deposit two months before the lease was over and before any of the owners had seen the rental property or evaluated any “damage”).