If I learned one important lesson this weekend, it was that my body can no longer handle running around until the wee hours of the morning, two nights in a row. And when you factor in the heat, the dehydration, and all the walking and standing for hours on end – I think my immune system was pretty run down. As a result, I picked up some kind of cold and was congested, coughing and running a 100-degree temperature by the time we returned home from Tulsa, Sunday afternoon.

And since we’re just about to head down to Austin for a few days’ fun, I stayed home yesterday to rest up. I am not going to be sick in Austin. I’m guzzling fluids, popping pills and willing myself to recover. Today, I was back at work and feeling better, although still a little congested, a little cough-y, and a little tired.

Aside, from that, D-fest was terrific – great bands, great venues, great times. I love the Blue Dome District. It’s kind of like how Bricktown should be, how Bricktown perhaps could be, if it catered less to tourists and frat boys. No chain restaurants or dance clubs, please.

Our D-fest experience went something like this:

Friday, July 27th

5:00pm – Pre-drinks at Arnie’s (I love this little place. I remember going to the old Arnie’s years and years ago.)

7:30pm – Dinner at Tsunami Sushi (I broke down after almost seven months and ate meat. A spicy tuna roll. It was delicious.)

9:00pm – Seis Pistos at First Street Lofts Lounge (Mexican punk band. They rocked. Hard. We bought one of their t-shirts for the bargain price of $5.)

10:00pm – Ali Harter at Capella (We were stuck in the back, behind an inappropriately loud crowd. Not the most conducive atmosphere for a singer-songwriter performance. I liked what little I was able to hear, though, and hope to catch another show somewhere around OKC in the future.)

11:00pm – The Flaming Lips at the Main Festival Stage (a.k.a. a huge parking lot. With like, a billion other people. Claustrophobia set in. And somewhere, someone passed me a nice little cold. Great show, though – the Lips even broke out their giant U.F.O. set piece. Good times.)

1:00am – Rook at First Street Lounge Lofts (We’d met up with my brother and his friend, it was their suggestion we see this band. Those two are way more into metal than I am, but this band was okay. There was a violin-playing, female singer, which made it kind of cool, and perhaps slightly more on the “art-metal” side of things.)

Saturday, July 28th

7:00pm – Pre-drinks at 1974 Bar & Grill (Nothing exceptional here. I was beginning to feel pretty run-down and sick by this point.)

8:00pm – Ten Feet Tall at McNellie’s (We more or less picked this band at random. My brother’s friend had been given their CD the previous night, so it was the one act in this time slot we recognized. The band, curiously labeled as “art-rock,” had more of a mid-90’s, Dave Matthews-type sound. Not my cup of tea, exactly. And certainly not art-rock.)

9:00pm – Dorian Small at the Blue Dome Diner (This band was okay, but I was much more impressed with the next band…)

10:00pm – Student Film at the Blue Dome Diner (We’ve never seen them perform, and although we only caught about half of their set, I really liked them. I’m making it a point to catch them again sometime soon.)

11:00pm – El Paso Hot Button at Tsunami Sushi (While their sushi is delicious, Tsunami is a god-awful venue for live music. We couldn’t see a thing. I did enjoy some yellowtail nigiri and a shitake roll, though. And I discovered that I don’t really like pepper on my edamame. Sea salt’s fine, thanks.)

12:00am – MC Chris at First Street Lofts Lounge (MC Pee Pants in person! This show was insane. Hundreds of people were packed into a venue that wasn’t really that large. This guy’s great, though. How could he not be, with a brilliant Goonies rant as part of his set. “This is our place! This is our time!”)

1:00am – Elliott the Letter Ostrich at The Continental (Although once again, I was unable to see, or even really hear, the band, I started out loving this venue. Big, plush banquettes to curl up on, good beer, cool art. However, things went downhill once I got yelled at by a bouncer for smoking. How was I supposed to know it was a non-smoking place? I’d just spotted like, five other people smoking. Five people who never got yelled at, by the way. Too much beer and too much illness turned me into one angry drunk that early morning, and I spent the next several minutes ranting incoherently about injustice or something.)

That about sums it up. On to Austin!

What do you think is the biggest problem facing America today?

I tend to read mostly non-fiction, but on my way between Fast Food Nation and The God Delusion, I opened up a novel that a dear, dear friend sent to me recently – Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated. It’s the story of a young man who travels to the Ukraine to try and find the woman who may or may not have saved his grandfather from the Nazis. I just finished it two minutes ago, and the tears are still flowing.

I loved it I loved it I loved it.

I can’t remember the last time I read something so moving, so profound, so beautifully, brilliantly flawless. You want to luxuriate in every word, each phrase – roll them around in your mind, soaking up their sounds and their meanings. This is a story that could have easily fallen into melodramatic cliché, but it’s told so cleverly and with such honesty, that you realize this story could not be told in any other way than the way in which it was.

It very nearly makes me want to never write again. It makes me feel that if I spent the rest of life writing every single day, and only managed to come up with one of Jonathan Safran Foer’s irritatingly perfect sentences, I’d die happy. It makes me feel unfit to even sit before a keyboard, or poise my pen over a blank sheet of paper. It makes me feel utterly unworthy.

At the same time, it makes me want to write like I’ve never written before. I want to spend the rest of the afternoon pounding away at my keyboard with reckless abandon, spewing out anything and everything that comes to mind. It reminds me of how much I love words, and inspires me to keep hunting for just the perfect one to describe what I mean. It makes me want to be a better writer.

Read this fucking book.

There’s a new study out that says people with an obese friend are 57% more likely to become fat themselves. Kate Harding does a nice job debunking this study – its blatant absurdity makes it all the more depressing that this kind of obvious bullshit is being paraded around morning news shows and trumpeted as Important New Scientific Research.

Okay. The implication of this study, at least as I hear it, is that fat is “contagious” – a “social disease,” if you will. So, unless you want to (horror upon horror!) get fat yourself, you’d better start nagging your fat friend to lose weight, or else ditch your friend. I hear this as “we, the almighty medical community, have decided that you fat people haven’t been shamed quite enough yet. Now, you need to take responsibility for your friends’ weights, too. If they became disgusting fat slobs like you, then it’s your fault, piggy. Oink. Oink.”

I have several thin friends. One of them has gained 10 or 15 pounds over the last two years. I suppose I should take responsibility for this, because every time she starts whining about her weight, she gets a lecture from me on how obsessing over your weight is a colossal waste of time, and that she’s absolutely beautiful just the way she is. Basically, I try to tell her all the things I wish people had told me over the years. It might have saved me from a lot of depression and self-mutilation.

But little did I realize how much destruction my little self-esteem pep talks are wreaking. I might as well be pinning my poor friend to the ground and stuffing Big Macs down her throat.

The thing that pisses me off most about this new study is, when the bloody hell are we going to get over this bizarre mentality of “thin = good,” and “fat = bad and scary?” There have been several studies recently indicating that many overweight people are as healthy, if not healthier, than many of their “normal-weight” peers. It’s entirely possible to eat well, exercise, and still be many pounds above what’s traditionally been considered “healthy.” It’s also entirely possible to be a 120-pound woman who does nothing but lounge on the couch all day – chain-smoking and drinking Dr. Pepper. It’s your habits, not your weight, that matter.

Sadly, we live in a culture that is probably never going to let go of this last acceptable prejudice. Bullshit studies like this one only reinforce it. I mean, seriously – what other purpose does this study serve other than to reinforce our fat-phobia?

“Could your fat friends contaminate you with their fat germs?”

Oh my God!

Won’t someone think of the children?

Save yourselves!

It’s not my intention to sound whiny, but in all seriousness, I’ve worked my fat ass off over the years to develop some semblance of self-esteem. It’s not an easy thing to do, when you have to deal with stuff like this all the time. Over the years, I’ve trained myself to become aware of the negative weight-related thoughts that cross through my mind, and immediately try to counter them with positive ones. Most of the time I’m successful, although I still have a really dark moment here and there. But it still feels like, one step forward, two steps back. There’s so much information out there telling me to hate myself, to feel guilty and ashamed about my body, that sometimes (like this morning) it just feels like a losing battle and I simply want to give up and submit to the pressure.

DFest is coming up in a couple of days. 150 bands in 2 days for only $20. I can’t wait.

Unfortunately, I’m currently residing in that pre-festival cloud. It happens before each deadCENTER. It’s happening now. I’ve got a schedule sitting in front of me chock full of bands. But, I’m only one man! I can’t be everywhere!!! So, I’ve got the painful and harrowing task of picking and choosing.

Luckily, Wayne Coyne (who will be performing Friday night) offers some advice:

The idea that you go to a festival and you feel like you have to see everything, all your favorite bands, I think sometimes that can kind of wear you down. It has to be like eating at the Golden Corral, where it’s all you can eat, until you try to eat the barbecue chicken and the calamari. By the time you get to the fourth thing, you’re burned out. My suggestion to people is just enjoy your day. Your band is playing, you get to see a little bit of them. Go see them for 10 or 15 minutes, and enjoy your friends and enjoy your day.

I wouldn’t choose either the chicken or the calamari, nor would I eat at Golden Corral. But that is neither here nor there.

So, anyway, here’s a list of the bands playing. Anybody out there got any suggestions on who we definitely must see (except those in bold who are already on my list)? Click “(more…)” for the full band list.

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