muted

lil' frankie was around this weekend which was cool because i hadn't seen him in a while. on saturday afternoon i took him outside to play some catch which quickly turned into him trying to chuck the ball at me as hard as he could. each attempt was accompanied by cackling from both of us. "you laugh like a girl, uncle stevie!" here he is wearing my red sox hat. awesome kid, yo.




lil' frankie watches me leave to go visit brett for the night.





i got a call from brett as soon as i hit the highway. i had told him i'd probably be in northampton by 4pm. he wanted to see "american gangster" at 2 and since it was 2.5 hrs long, he wasn't sure if he should. "definitely see it, dude. i saw it. it's great. we can talk about it! i can kill time. call me when you're done." i stopped off at orchard hill to take photos. more this is your life, yo. these are tanks in the orchard hill parking lot.




top row, third set of windows from the right of the stairwell between the two buildings - that's the room nick and i shared for 2.5 years. great times. i definitely remember some heavy conversations with martha in that stairwell, too. when we first met, she lived on the other side of it.




so many friggin' awesome memories on this balcony, yo. sooooooo many. i've been on it once, i believe, since nick graduated and remember being blown away by how huge it felt having not been on it in forever. you could grow A LOT of corn up on that bitch. A LOT. are you reading me, mark?




uh-oh. where's steve heading now? come on, don't play dumb with me.




ok. so i found this to be sad yet beautiful at the same time. it was sad to see that it's obviously not used like we used it anymore. but it's also beautiful because, well, if it's not being used anymore, then that makes the ritual a little more ours, doesn't it?




this is the view from the nolongerused.




i don't remember these signs. i think they're new....ish.




some tower in the parking lot.




after orchard hill, i stopped at the hampshire mall to pee. walking through the mall made me feel like i was living in one of those movies where the main character (in this case, me) wakes up a buttload of years into the future and slowly walks around with a look of confusion plastered across his sexyass mug, taking note of how much his surroundings have changed. k-mart is a target. mediaplay is a bestbuy. there's a dick's sporting goods now. and this one crushed me - TACO BELL IS NO LONGER A PART OF THE SMALLEST FOODCOURT I'VE EVER KNOWN! like, what the fuck? i don't want to live in a world where college kids no longer appreciate a perfectly placed taco bell. so sad, yo. so sad. yet somehow, sbarro has survived. it just ain't right.

i didn't have any cell service once i got back to my car. i thought brett might be watching denzel and russell duke it out in movieform at the very same mall but then i said "that's stupid. he could be at any movie theater" so i headed to northampton. i drove through its center and past smith college (ivoland, yuck) and was right near cooley-dickinson hospital when my phone rang.

"hey man, where are you?"

"i just drove by cooley-dick. where are you?"

"at the hampshire mall."

hahahaha. too funny. anyway, i drove back to northampton and met brett at fitzwilly's. pooja was in iowa with her family. we grabbed dinner plus two blueberry beers (mine) and two bloody mary's (his) while we shot the shit. good times. then we headed for our cars and i followed him to his place in the easternmost of the massachusetts hamptons.

here brett moves his bike to get his crazyass landlord off his booty.




"here's the bathroom. i painted it myself!"




"that's a ceiling."




pooja and brett simpsonized. i also love the picture of van gogh wearing ONE mickey mouse ear.




brett talking to mark on my superawesomephonefromthefuture.




brett is more than just a musician when it comes to art. and he may or may not have eaten spaghetti-o's at one point.




"don't worry, man. it's the rumpus room. that's what it's for."




brett contemplates his next move.




brett's friend shannon came over. he lives in one of the other two apartments in brett's building and is cool as fuck. brett's known him for a long time. shannon is a musician and a painter. very talented dude. he's in a bunch of bands. anyway, we talked a lot about music and movies while we drank. well, i mostly listened because shannon is a motherfucking encyclopedia of knowledge. i could listen to him all night. i was soaking that shit up. and he wasn't pretentious at all. that's what made him so cool. i would ask questions and he'd learn me up something fierce. i know it sounds dorky but, seriously, just sitting there and learning all this stuff was so cool. after the three of us talked for a while, we went to a local bar to catch "rusty belle" play. they're a band that shannon's played with a bunch of times and knows pretty well.

this bar, like lots of others, had a dartboard. i shit you not.




rusty belle guitarist/singer.




2 outs make an in?




brett and shannon outside the bar.




i forget what the bar was called but it had something to do with a lion or a cat. i think.




the kickass pizza brett made for us when we got back to his place. we ate it while watching an episode from season 2 of the office. brett and shannon LOVE the office. they were laughing out loud and shannon had all the lines memorized which blew my mind. it'd been a long time since i watched the office with someone other than myself.




brett and i hit up a local diner sunday morning. if you look closely you can see him on the right and me on the left.




brett took this picture inside the diner and i liked it so i posted it. see how that works? he took a few pictures of me as well but those were deleted pretty quickly because...they were pictures of me.




brett makes me laugh. often.




brett showing me the utility tool he keeps in his car. "see, it can be pliers. and...some other things. AND i can measure things that are three inches or less."




some kind of stuffed animal his neighbors had hanging.




bob dole berry blend, motherfuckers!!!!




taken on the way home. i think the police officer pulled him over only to learn more about the friend he has in jesus.




on the way home i decided to listen to the new sigur ros live album because i had a feeling that it would compliment the non-highway portion of the ride perfectly. it's a peaceful drive through winding, tree-lined roads and sigur ros sounds like a movie soundtrack. i knew the combination of the music and the fact that i was driving through a part of my past might lead me to feel some not-so-positive emotions, but i guess i welcomed those. a few songs into the cd/drive, i noticed that maybe i'm not as far along in dealing with this past year as i recently thought i might be. the tears that welled-up but never fell gave that much away. anyway, as i drove past this sign, i thought "that might make a good picture" but didn't stop. then i got pissed at myself because it was the fifth time i'd passed a potentially good picture without stopping. so i turned around and headed back. i pulled onto the side of the road just as the song i was listening to began its climactic finale. i got out of the car and left the door open as i took the picture and the music spread into the air around me. i thought to myself "i miss a lot of things right now and i'm a little jealous of ed because i wish i had a sign. but i'm happy for him too."