baby steps!

Baby steps!

So. We joined Keri and Aberdeen and Angie; introductions were made, and Keri remembered me, I think, ’cause I’d been in proximity to Michlvis when we were there in November. (Well, that and I’m from Alaska. That seems to stick in people’s minds for some reason … ). Conversation ensued.

For three hours.

I couldn’t *possibly* cover everything that we talked about, but I’ll give it a shot. *laugh* First off, Keri was *supposed* to go running off relatively early that evening because he was supposed to be doing a scratch recording (I think I have that phrase right) for some some ridiculous commercial thing in which he was doing a soul-man singing … monkey.

Keri is a black man. You should have *seen* his expression when he was talking about this. You should have seen *Sarah’s* expression. It is possible you should have seen *all* our expressions. Keri was like, “But it’s cool! They’re paying me! It’s cool!” It was *really* funny. He had this /grand/ expression of “The things I do for my art/the things I do for money/is this not sort of painfully ironic?” He clearly wasn’t *offended* by the gig, but it was just as clearly a source of ironic amusement to him.

We got into this HUGE discussion about astrology, for heaven’s sake. He was wearing a Pi.. pic .. fish necklace! Y’know! The astrological sign! Pisces. Boy, that looks wrong. That! Anyway! He was wearing one! And I commented on it! So we got into this big old discussion about astrology, and Keri knows a bunch about astrology, it turns out, and upon Sarah telling him that she was a Pisces (are you *sure* that’s right?) with Leo rising or something like that, he said something helpful like, “Oh my god, are you confused,” and then in like two sentences nailed Sarah’s personality. It was scary.

‘course, then he did me. Er. Nailed my– you know, I’m not going to come out of that sentence unscathed, am I? I think I was born at 2:50 or so in the afternoon, and he thinks that makes me a Cancer rising, and I’m embarrassingly typically Gemini anyway (“Geminis,” Keri said, “are the only people scarier than Pisces.”), and he said something to the effect of, “You’re basically right all the time,” and for the REST OF THE WEEKEND, they wouldn’t let me live that down. Every time I said anything, they were like, “Kit’s right! We know Kit’s right! She’s always right!”

Of course, we were also running around saying, “Jesus nightlights!” all weekend, too, which is something we wouldn’t let Sarah live down. The other day online, she was looking at some website, which evidently had Jesus nightlights, and she said, “Jesus nightlights.” on Too, and we all thought it was an inventive new curse phrase. “Jesus nightlights!” So to express surprise we kept saying, “Jesus nightlights!” *laugh* We might be silly . . .

Jesus nightlights aside, we stood in line for about an hour and a half, edging our way towards James, although miraculously, hanging out with Keri made all of our feet stop hurting. Or we stopped noticing them, anyway. Every once in a while the line would move, and I kept saying, “Baby steps!” and we’d baby-step a few steps closer to James. Well. We girls would. Keri watched us every time and then did a slinky step or two forward. He was a lot more — I’m not sure dignified is the right word. Slinky. He was a lot more slinky than we were. :)

*helpless laughter* A woman walked by an a guy’s arm, and although Sarah and Angie and I missed it, Keri and Deen both saw her snap her gaze around to *seriously* check Deen out. As soon as she was out of hearing range, Keri said, “Let me *out*!”, and I think it may have even made Deen blush. *grin* There was, as Deen said, cleavage inspection.

There was a lot of cleavage going around. As Sarah mentioned, Keri kept doing this sort of, “Boobs. Okay,” glance, as if, indeed, making sure none of our breasts had scampered off while he wasn’t looking. (They hadn’t.) Sort of as part of one of those boobs-okay glances, he ended up smacking my shoulder and going, “Okay, I gotta ask, what *is* this outfit? This is *not* Alaska clothes!” I said, “No, this is we-went-shopping-today clothes,” and I think ultimately it came around to him being impressed I’d had the balls to wear it. (‘It’ was a bustier and black jeans, fwiw.) It was flattering, anyway. :)

I no longer have *any* idea why I told him to chew on Emily’s finger, but I did, and for a priceless moment there he considered it. *howls of laughter*

OH OH OH ULTIMATE EGOBOO MOMENT. Well, for me, anyway. Again, not sure why, but we were talking about UFD’s music and I mentioned — oh, I was saying that I thought ‘What In God’s Name’, which is one of the pieces they did in November, was one of the most powerful pieces of music I’d heard in a long time, and I wanted to know what the actual title of the song was. Keri was like, “Thanks, oh, In God’s Name? You kinda named that for us. In that email, you called it In God’s Name and that was *way* better than anything we’d been trying out for it, it was perfect.”

Excuse me while I fall right over dead. *beam*

After the evening was over — you’ll notice there’s absolutely no order to this writeup — we all admitted to each other how we all knew Keri was flirting with everybody, but we all felt that he was *particularly* and *especially* flirting with ‘me’, for whichever value of ‘me’ fit the person speaking. We were all very impressed with his skill. *giggle*

*laugh* We eventually made it up to James, and I’d *told* my friend Trent that I’d say hi to James for him, and I really *meant* to, but when I got up to him, he looked *so* *tired*, and all thoughts of Trent popped out of my brain and I said something to the effect of, ‘Oh, sweetie, you look exhausted, go home and go to bed’. I don’t *think* I *actually* said ‘sweetie’, but I’m sort of afraid I might have. *laugh* And he said, “Oh great. That’s the worst possible thing you can say to an actor, love. Might as well say, “You’re out of a job, fired tomorrow, you’ll never work again, get out!”” which caused me to laugh a lot — he was just giving me a hard time, not actually offended — and I admitted I was a terrible human being but he still looked like he needed rest. :) And Keri took a picture for me, and then I took pictures of Deen and Sarah and Angie, despite Deen being all startled and claiming she had photos and didn’t need any more, but it was good she got one taken ’cause he hugged her and said, “Nice to see you again,” as she was leaving, which, well, excuse me, mind boggle! Go Deen! Emily has become a Repeat Figure in James’ Existence. That’s pretty cool. :)

And the poor guy really was exhausted. Leaning on the bar table they’d brought out so he could have something to sign autographs on, and he just looked pooped. I’m just *blown away* by the fact that he stayed for two hours, to talk to *everybody*. He is really, *really* good people.

Okay, there’s like fifteen thousand more conversation bits to record, but I’ve forgotten half of them and my brain is turning to goo anyway, so I may give up for the night. After we staggered out of the club, we went to Denny’s and had a 2am dinner (as usual, we hadn’t eaten since, um, lunch), during which Sarah became so tired she almost fell asleep in her food. I actually thought she was going to. *laugh* Tired, *tired* girls. But we had FUN!