Dawn Xiana Moon: Melodic folk pop infused with passion and honesty. From Chicago.

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Monday, May 30, 2005

Memorial Weekend, Part I

Or: four days of BBQs and out-of-town visitors. Highlights:

BBQ #1 was at a farm in Saline (well, not quite a farm, but they have two horses and the neighbor across the street is a farmer). Alex and Emily, old friends who got married last summer and moved to North Carolina, were in town for her birthday and gathered many people that I don’t see very often. And Emily brought me a much-belated Christmas present (when they visited for Christmas, they had problems with their luggage).

I left the BBQ early to play a concert at Zou Zou’s in Chelsea, a little café I’ve enjoyed for years. This was the first time I’d played there, and the wonderfully talented Rachele Eve opened for me. You need to hear this girl--she has a beautiful voice. Afterward, I had a rare I'm-almost-being-Asian night by hanging out with Tom Carroll and Bryan Kao, another of the whitest Asians I know; we had bubble tea (Thai tea for me, since I think having to chew tapioca balls while trying to drink is annoying) and played DDR at Pinball Pete’s (Ann Arbor’s resident arcade). We spent a good hour after that at my house telling all the jokes we could remember offhand. (Why do ducks have webbed feet? To put out forest fires. Why do elephants have large ears? To put out flaming ducks.)

BBQ #2 was in a southeast Detroit suburb, a joint birthday party for a friend from high school and his sister. Again, lots of people I hadn’t seen in a while, including a friend I hadn’t seen in years who toured with Sesame Street Live and afterward started a dance company with an old director/acting teacher of ours. It’s fun to hear that so many of my creative friends actually did end up having a career (or part of one) in the arts.

I left that BBQ early with my roommate Christina, Dave O. (another person I see sporadically because he lives in another state), and Bryan Kao because Christina wanted to go to a Polish festival. The festival was rather amusing--the only Polish things there were the pirogies and maybe some of the people--and the musical entertainment consisted of a band playing horrible covers. But we all decided to dance anyway (since there was a large dance floor set up under the tent for that purpose), and because Bryan and I are swing dancers we became the rock stars of the evening: a number of people kept coming up to us and telling us how great we were and a tiny old woman told us that she’d been teaching ballroom for 40 years and was impressed because we were so smooth. Obviously everyone should learn lindy. :-)

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