Ladyfingers, Alerte Orange, the Dead Sexy Inc., Pravda, etc.
What an insane week this has been.

Late last week, I made brunch plans with Courtney and Agnes for 11am on Sunday. Then at about 3:30am the night before, I told myself I’d better go to bed if I wanted to make it to brunch on time. I checked e-mail one last time and saw that I’d just received at that very moment an e-mail from my friend Ladyfingers (Adam) saying, "hey, I’m arriving in Paris tomorrow morning, see you at your place around 11am." Whoa! I’d totally forgotten that Adam was showing up then and staying with me and Alexis for three days while he played a couple solo gigs in Paris.

I’d only ever met Adam in person one time before, and that was in Philly last June. I found him on Craigslist while searching for sublets, and I met him at his house in South Philly to talk to him about renting his bedroom as he was about to go on tour in Texas for the whole summer. I immediately liked him a lot and was surprised to learn that he was from the same area as me and was a musician too and we liked the same kind of music and everything. I’ve often described him as a guy who I was really happy to meet and immediately really sad to say goodbye to, due to the circumstances of our respective schedules. I told him at the time that I’d be moving to France after the sublet was up, and he mentioned that he’d be touring in England, France, and Germany sometime in December, so I told him to keep in touch and he could crash at my place in Paris any time. Funny how you make plans like that and they seem so distant and so unlikely to actually happen and then before you know it they’re in your face and you're cancelling brunch at 3:30 in the morning.

So it was really nice and easy to have him here. Alexis and Lada and I went to see Adam’s show on Sunday night at a little rock n’ roll bar called La Feline, and it was really fantastic; Adam’s songs and performance were incredible, and I was completely inspired to go home and play music right away after seeing how much fun he was having and how much the crowd was eating it up; no one there had ever heard of him, I think, but they got so into his music that when he was all done they hooted and hollered for more and demanded that he play some of the same songs again; they yelled them out by name, songs they had just heard for the first time that night. It really was an incredible reaction, and even Adam said it was an unusual experience (although in his blasé way that made it sound like it actually happens every other show — not unlike the way I write about my life in this LiveJournal).

Adam had another show on Tuesday night at a bigger club, La Fleche D’or, but I couldn’t attend because I’d already been invited by Alexis to a huge party he was helping organize. Some of you may remember a little bit of this background story; Alexis’ band is produced by this company called Alerte Orange that publishes music, books, video games, advertising, dvd releases, etc, and they’re the company that will hopefully be republishing some or all of my comic books in French pretty soon. Anyway, they had a gigantic party for their tenth anniversary on Tuesday night, and Alexis was the organizer for the whole thing and also played with the Dead Sexy Inc. and his new band, Pravda. It was a private party at a club called La Bellevilloise, with maybe three or four hundred people, and they had an open bar all night and a huge free sushi buffet and the party was all Japanese-themed and they decorated the whole place with paper lanterns, etc. It was a pretty swanky affair, and I drank tons of free champagne and ate a lot of free sushi. I also played Guitar Hero. But I did not participate in the karaoke.

When the bands were playing, I was at the front of the stage and having a great time, and somehow, strangely, I began to dance, and proceeded to dance my fine ass off for the rest of the night. I’ve honestly never danced before in my life, literally, so this was a very very strange moment for me. But I think it was good for me, and I got a lot of bad energy out of my system, lots of boredom and loneliness and uncertainty and other miscellaneous nasty vibes. It was pretty cathartic, and I really wore myself out during the three bands (interspersed with performances by Tokyo Decadence, the dance/performance group from that bizarre party a couple weekends ago, all dressed like raver drag queens with wigs and platform boots, etc). It was a pretty insane night, and I walked out of there really exhausted but feeling exhilarated. Talking to Adam back at the apartment (he was done with his gig by then) I sort of figured out that dancing, like drinking, is something I had been avoiding for a long, long time mostly just because everyone who knows me knows it’s something I don’t do, so they like to make a big deal out of that fact and give me a hard time about it, and it feels really hard to start doing something new in front of your friends because they’re going to make fun of you so bad. So being really and truly alone at that party was what let me finally loosen up a little bit, I guess; no one to impress, and none of those people were ever going to see me again. Anyway, I had a blast and tore shit up, and I think I really needed that. The party was so surreal and lavish and Alexis’ two bands were so good, I felt like the luckiest, coolest kid in the world for one night.

Here are some pictures from the party, from before it really started cookin'...

















And some (mostly crappy, blurry) pictures of Alexis’ bands...

The Dead Sexy Inc.


Stephane, Emmanuel, Alexis.
















Pravda