Creepiness in Chez Broad this morning: Last night, I fell asleep on the couch, as is my wont, and was startled awake by my buzzer. Now, as we know, I don’t answer my buzzer after I’ve gone to bed unless I’m expecting company, so naturally I wigged and hit the double bolt, but not before I heard voices downstairs and a whole lot of knocking on one of the downstairs apartment doors. So then, my one downstairs neighbor calls me up and says, “Hey! Did you hear what was going on this morning?” and proceeds to tell me that it was the cops doing a welfare check on one of the other downstairs neighbors—the woman half of the couple—because her sister called the PD and said she hadn’t heard from her in a few days.

Now, none of this would be particularly creepy to me, except that:

1. He told the cops she was there in the house, but she told my landlord last week that they’d broken up and he changed the locks, THEN told her today that she’s in St. Louis;
2. Her name has been taken off the mailbox;
3. One night a couple weeks ago when I was coming in from being out, I was walking up the stairs and heard this huge, sickening “THUD” coming from their apartment. As I was wondering what the hell it was, I heard their door open and then close, as if someone was making sure no one heard it?checking to see what fell;
4. I haven’t seen her van in at least a week, and
5. They had a cat living with them that I also haven’t seen in at least a week.

As they say, developing ...

In the meantime, it’s BUS DEMOLITION! weekend, and after a very rough week with Mother and other things, it’ll be exceptionally lovely to get together to watch things crash and drink mass quantities of alcohol with people who value me. On tonight’s agenda is viewing the Railcats game from the hot tub suite; it has been said that the game announcers always call a shout-out to the group in said suite during each game, so we decided that we had to come up with a disgusting name. My vote was for “NWI Psoriasis and Eczema Support Group” or “NWI Random Boil Support Group,” but our ring leader may just surprise us when we get there.

[UPDATE ass o’clock 7/28: Just got back from the game—and can I just say that all games should be watched from a hot tub?—but I meant to update that one of the cops called me earlier to tell me that the couple downstairs returned home and that they identified her, even going so far as to have her call her sister in front of them. Well, that might be, but I personally won’t feel safe until I physically see her for myself.]

Here’s what it’s played for me so far this morning:

“Johnny Feelgood,” Liz Phair (back when she was badass)
“Shambala," Three Dog Night (No bustin’ on my 70s music love, yo.)
“Radar Gun,” Bottle Rockets
“Kill the DJ,” Peeping Tom (mmmmmm ... Mike Patton and his unit ...)
“Nickelback," Bluetip
“Rod of Iron,” Relaxed Muscle
“New York Groove,” KISS
“Young Folks,” Kanye West
“Drownin’," Shurman
“Walk Right In, Walk Right Out,” Levay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers (from dong resin’s own special blend of tunage that I like to pretend he whipped up just for me but understand that he didn’t because he doesn’t know me to like me in that way)

Could be a good day, y’all.

I drank me some shljivovitca, and holy CRAP! Is that shit strong. Dang. The Hungarians gave it to me at their picnic today, or rather they dared me to throw back a shot which, you know, you gotta do when your hosts are offering. Had my first swig of Hennessy, too, but man! that shljivovitca. Serbian freakin’ moonshine, that shit is. It will definitely be coming with us to BUS DEMOLITION at the end of the month. (Yes, it’s that time of year again, folks!)

Did you guys hear about this? Mike Doughty, former singer for Soul Coughing and rockin’ artist in his own right, had one of his songs off excellent album Haughty Melodic ripped off chord for chord by some French chick singer named Maidi Roth. HIS song is “I Hear the Bells,” which I read somewhere this week is a tribute to the amazing Jeff Buckley, but hers is titled “Apres Toi” which, if I remember right from my piss-poor French skillz, is “With You” or “In You” or something like that. Anyway, this was no “Well, it maybe kinda sounds like it,” either. Observe: This is Mike’s version:



Now, here’s Maidi’s version:



You be de judge.

sometimes, the universe really does pull through and keeps one from diving off the ledge. Thank you, Universe!