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The Good Neighbors are leaving the neighborhood. One of Chisel another casualty in the history of It’s a familiar story: A group of talented young musicians gets together, gets good, gets a following, gets frustrated by the financial realities of life in our isolated city, and eventually gets gone. Over at the Go for the familiar – for Williams and Shanley — if that’s what it takes to get you into the darkened Advertisement My wife DaLynn is all psyched about the National Folk Festival, which takes place July 11-13 in Butte. It’s only the second time in the history of this annual festival that it’s been held west of the Mississippi; there are acts from around the world performing. “There’s an a-capella quartet-style gospel group from [...] For the past few years I’ve worked in the same building with a guy named Matthew. I would say we work for the same company – which we do – but that might give the impression that we have a lot of close contact. In truth, I have little occasion to enter his department of the Missoulian: He works in classified advertising, on a different floor of the building. Nevertheless, I’ve met Matthew in passing in the break room. I also knew that he was a friend of a good friend of mine, a woman who seems to keep company with a good number of gay men. Matthew is thin, exceptionally well-groomed and almost unnaturally pleasant in demeanor; so it didn’t take much of a leap for me to assume that he fit in with my friend’s friends. Turns out, I was completely wrong about his sexuality. But Matthew does have a secret home-life, one that was – to me – rather a shock: He plays guitar in an industrial-metal band. Paint me all scribbly-headed. I woke Monday morning to the tender, pulsating sensation of Julian, my one-year old, kicking me in the head — my wake-up alarm for the past couple of months. I opened my eyes and was startled to see my bedside table. MY bedside table — not my mom’s, not Holiday Inn’s, not the Guilin Bravo Hotel’s. It was the first time I have woken up in my own bed in almost a month. As I tumbled out of bed and into my familiar world of piled laundry and full-sized shampoo bottles, I found myself noticing things that had gone unnoticed perhaps too long: The pile of magazines I’ve already read, the toothbrush in need of replacement, the caulking I never touched up around the banister, a missing outlet cover, a painting hanging crooked on the wall. For the first time in a long time, I saw my house as an outsider might see it. Yikes. Sometimes life in the newsroom is kinda surreal. Like when you hear a nearby reporter ask on the phone: “So…do you consider yourself, like, a person who would regularly throw parties for dogs?” I really have no idea what this conversation is about. Guess I’ll just hafta read the paper tomorrow. Share on Facebook I was sitting in the den of my mother’s house, listening with her to a recording of my father talking, when I heard a commotion out in the living room. “Joe, come check this out!” my wife, DaLynn, cried out. I scurried out into the living room, where my sister-in-law, Glenda, was holding my one-year old son, Julian. She placed him on his feet in front of her. “Come on, baby!” she urged. “Come to me!” Here’s something you don’t want to hear your wife say while visiting your mom (and your mom’s dog, Scout): “Oh, crap! Joe, um, help! Scout pooped, and Julian ate it!“ Julian, our one-year old, found the ensuing hubbub quite amusing — even if, judging from the spitting and screwy faces he made, he [...] Today, the last two stories chronicling this China adventure were published in the paper; both can be read here. In a couple of weeks I think we’re planning a photo essay for the Sunday Territory section; but today’s stories are the last play-by-play installments. Hope you’ve enjoyed them. Share on Facebook |
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