Last night my friend E and I saw Liz Phair at the Fillmore. I wasn't expecting much because her stage fright etc. is well documented, but she's one of the few people that I've never seen, so I had to go. E totally called her outfit. She was wearing a short skirt, knee-high come fuck me heel-boots. I'm totally stuck in the early 90's, so I said, uh, jeans and sneakers?

The good thing is that she played lots of old songs, so I wasn't disappointed at all. The not-so-fabulous thing is that a lot of the spare productions from Exile in Guyville were muddied up by full band arrangements which made her garage-style vocals seem very out of place and accentuated her off-key-ness. But if you like, go here to see a video of her on Morning Becomes Eclectic Scroll down and you'll see her.

I've been trying for an eternity to get a group together to play a board game with me, Settlers of Catan. And the more my attempts are thwarted, the more I become psycho-obssessed about playing the game. Last night I thought the groundwork was laid and I was sure that we were going to play. But then plans were made to meet at a bar (wrong off the bat) and then we moved on to a new bar--a smokey one at that where I copped an attitude with the bartender about the proliferation of smokers. We're in California fer chrissake, I don't have to put up with this! So I sat sullenly against the wall with my game under one arm, sipping water with my nose in my Myers-Briggs personality book.

read this column in which Kevin Smith disses Reese Witherspoon. Very Funny.

A friend of mine recommended a few books to me, and I haven't decided if she's trustworthy for that sort of thing yet. She doesn't like Sarah Vowell, didn't like Adaptation, liked the Hours...Jesus, I don't think that we have a thing in common, and yet, I'm forging ahead with one of her recommendations, Michael Cunningham's A Home at the End of the World. I identified with this one sentence, so I wanted to share.

"Adam alternated between listening to me and staring at the people sitting at other tables, with the unabashed directness of one who believes his own unimportance renders him invisible."

For an unrepentant starer, I find this to be an interesting and somewhat profound description of my favorite pastime.

Tonight I was settling in to a night of web browsing, when I came across a listing stating that one of my favorite singers was performing across town tonight--starting half an hour before. So, I started panicking. Should I get dress and race across town and then be disappointed because her set is over (this happened to me once before with the same artist a couple of months ago) or should I stay in my cozy pajamas?

I called the club, and the person who answered said that Tami had just finished her second song and if I came right now I could catch most of her set. I was skeptical, but got in the car, drove down the street, decided to take a cab so as not to have to deal with parking, parked, changed my mind, got back in the car, drove to the club, searched for parking for 5-10 minutes, and finally got to the club.

Of course she was done playing. This is no cliff hanger. I knew it would be so in my heart of hearts, but I was holding on to my shred of hope. I decided to ferret out the singer and give her a berating for not playing longer. She was fabulous and sweet (the only work for it) I told her how disappointed I was that I missed her and she apologized, asking if I was the one that called. She then asked if I'd like her to play a song for me. I envisioned Tami on stage dedicating a song to me. I would get starry-eyed and bask in the over-flow of her spotlight. Then she asked if it was weird if she played for me in the bathroom. "No, not at all." yeah, totally weird, but romantic in it's own down and dirty way.

Well, we didn't end up in the bathroom. It was an office of sorts turned into the greenroom for the night. I requested a song from her first album, Light in August, which she played on an unplugged electric guitar, practically whispering the lyrics at times so as not to disturb the band on stage. "They won't hear you," I told her, which seemed to free her up a bit.

Something about the proximity of our bodies, the unorthodox nature of my impromptu concert, and my insistence upon making inane conversation made me feel like we were doing something illicit.

I stayed for the next act, a brilliant woman playing under the moniker Bonfire Madigan. This was one of those nights that made me feel distinctly shitty about what I am doing or not doing with my life. I didn't even go to the peace rally today because I had to sleep all day. Life is hard for vampires.

I think that stories of vampires must have been started about people working graveyard shifts.

Every day after I'm finished working I try to rush home before the gold off the sun washes over the Bay. There is a short window of time in which I can settle in for a good night's sleep and pretend that it is still night. If I don't make it, I feel sick and dirty--flopping into bed all grimy. Who stays up all night and sleeps away the day? Losers. Certainly not the early bird catching the worm. Nope.

That's how I felt this morning as I stumbled into bed at 9 am, light washing my room in a sickening mauve collected from my sheer curtains.

It's not just sleeping through daylight hours that evokes images of vampires for me. I think that night workers are emotionally unstable. There is a lot of night time going on at my work. Two girls got fired for threatening eatch other. One wanted to shank the other one in the parking lot with her box cutter. One guy accused another of being some secret agent.He got all crazy eyed--the way only people with electric blue eyes can get--and said that he wouldn't want him following him home late at night.

Maybe it's a lack of melatonin--a supplement that I am taking by the way. There was a study that showed that women who worked weird swing hours were more prone to certain types of cancers. But then, there's a study for everything. I'm sure it messes you up though. I believe in staying in tune to your body's natural rhythms. I don't like to stay up too late or get up too early.

Maybe it's the hours or maybe it's all that hip hop we listen to at night. Eminem makes people want to kill.