Finally, something interesting happens with my life, which means I can update my blog.  I feel bad, because my last blog was harping on Portlanders, calling them “two-dimensional.”  I should say some Portlanders are two-dimensional.  It was all tongue-in-cheek to begin with, I swear!

Anyway, this past weekend was, since Musicfest all the way back in September, my favorite weekend that I’ve had since moving to Portland.  Why was it my favorite weekend since moving here, you ask?  Because I got to see the Decemberists play twice, AND I GOT A BACKSTAGE PASS.

Read on, reader.As some of you may know, I am a big fan of the Decemberists.  So much so, in fact, that I have been a regular poster on their online message board, /orate, since 2005.  While not the most frequent poster there, I do post with enough volume and wit¹ that I am pretty well known.  When I lived in Boise, I was the lone Idaho poster (there was another guy for a while, but he has long since disappeared from the board).  It was nice because I had a unique location, but it sucked because I was nowhere near any other posters.

But now I live in Portland, and one of the great things I’ve been able to do is meet some fellow /orators.  It all began with Missy and Paul, with whom I went to Musicfest NW.  A great time was had, but I was broke back then and had no job, and constantly felt like a mooch.  So it felt good to have a bunch of money now and the freedom to use it as I wished!

But that’s not the point.  The Decemberists played the Edgefield, an outdoor venue in Troutdale, on July 18th and 19th.  I bought tickets for both nights².  As I waited for these two fateful days, I learned that two fellow /orators, Nate and Nate (heh, okay, Nate and Natty), were coming from Kansas City and Atlanta, respectively, essentially “trying on” Portland for size, and also to hang out with us awesome /orators.  Additionally, Guin and Emyli, boardies from here in Ptown, had tickets³.  We decided, with this many people, to enact the 2nd Annual /Orate Field Day, wherein we would go to a park and hang out and play some kind of Outside Game (not to be confused with Video Games, a popular indoor venture).  I missed the first field day, for reasons I do not remember.

Okay, that’s all backstory.  The two Nates went to Seattle to see the whole D’s show (Blind Pilot, Andrew Bird, the D’s) with Missy and Emyli on Friday, so Saturday meant they were driving into town.  Eventually we all met up and headed straight to the venue.  This was about 2pm.  Please note that there were other folks with us (Missy’s husband, Nick; their roommate Gabby on Saturday; and Guin’s husband Jeff on Sunday), and they are all very great people, but this is a /orate blog post, so it might center mostly on /orators.  I’m just saying.

The heat was something else.  It wasn’t terrifyingly hot, but it was hot enough to be Extra Sweaty.  I had arrived in my Old Skool /orate shirt.  The board has two /orate shirts, one made a couple of years ago by a very very awesome man named Chris (though the design was by someone else … Casey, I think), and one recently made by Julie and pressed? silk-screened? whatever by Missy.  They both turned out great, and I still wear the old shirt even though it’s an XL and it’s a bit big for me.  It’s also one of those thicker cotton shirts, which meant I was in Sweat Mode very early in the line waiting.  Fortunately, Missy had brought me one of the new /orate shirts, which was a light American Apparel affair that helped cut me down to Light Sweat Mode⁴.

So we waited for the gates to open, and drank McMenamins beer and hung out, etc.  The only thing of interest at this point was when Nick busted out his guitar.  I learned that Nick was left-handed, and played guitar left-handed.  This intrigued me, and I asked to borrow his guitar.  I spent the next ten minutes or so trying to figure out how to play chords upside down, because playing a guitar left-handedly if you are right-handed⁵ is damn near impossible.  But playing it upside down actually isn’t so bad.  It’s just a matter of relearning chords, which is easy if you are good at non-traditional chords.  Also if you find how to play an E chord and just barre it up and down the neck, that works too.

Anyway, to bust through this: the gates opened up, we got front row center, we waited in the nearly-blistering heat for an hour, then the bands played.

Blind Pilot was first, and they were really good.  I was a little disappointed (a little, honestly, just a tiny bit) because all of the wonderful musicians I saw live aren’t on the album.  I hope they get used on subsequent albums.

Then came Andrew Bird, who sort of blew me away.  The looping (ironically?⁶) gets repetitive after a while, but the songs were really strong and “Imitosis” is just an awesome song.  The second night he played “Dark Matter,” but he introduced it with a bunch of names, one of which being “Sweetbreads,” which made me think he was going to play the totally awesome acoustic version of the song from Fingerlings; alas, this was not to be.

Then the Decemberists came up and were fucking awesome.  As usual.  Hazards of Love is like watching a theatrical piece: it has ebbs and flows and it builds and falls and it’s just great.

One of the funny things about Saturday night was that Colin threw a pick right in my direction — and it bounced right off the top of my head, flying behind me, into the crowd.  I was bummed that I didn’t get a pick, but hey, who else can say that Colin Meloy threw a pick at their head?  (Strangely enough, this was attempt #1 of 3 to get a pick in my hand.  More on this later.)

After Hazards, the D’s go off and then come back on to play a second shorter set (shorter because of the Edgefield’s noise curfew, not because they wanted to).  Saturday’s second set was relatively par (though Oceanside was unexpected).  As they’ve been doing for the whole tour, they did play a kickass cover of “Crazy On You” by Heart, which was rad.

After the show we waited for Nick to return (Nick didn’t have tickets to the two nights, and went off to perform guitar magic) so we could leave.  But it took him too long so we went to get food instead. He ended up arriving right when we made this decision, but we still got food.  I don’t know why I’m typing all of this, it’s very trivial.  My point is that the McMenamins 1/4lb happy hour burger is Pretty Good.

Then I went home and went to sleep!

SUNDAY started with the 2nd Annual Portland /orate Field Day.  This is a fancy way of saying we ate cupcakes and played kickball.  It was boys vs. girls and yes, the girls won, mostly because we men were too distracted by their complaining and general girlishness to see that we were losing.

After the game, as we were eating cupcakes with enough icing to caulk a bathtub on them, Missy received a very important call.  It was from an important man telling her important news: that anyone who was wearing the green /orate t-shirt would be getting backstage passes after the show.

Needless to say, we were all kind of stunned.  I can’t (and don’t want to) go into details as to how these backstage passes were obtained, but let it be known that I am deeply grateful and indebted to those who procured them, and also must thank Colin and Jason, the D’s band manager, for being so totally and completely awesome and kind towards us nerdy message boardies.

At some point after getting this information is when we decided to improv a song.  Gabby has video of this song, and I will share it with you when she decides to upload it to YouTube.  Regardless, it’s silly, and I’m ridiculous.

Anyway, prior to going to the show we stopped at Guin’s house to gather ourselves.  Emyli wasn’t able to get a ticket for Sunday’s show and was left to babysit Guin’s kids (hehe, I make that sound so awful … sorry).  In the end we lost Gabby and Nick as well, as they had to drive back to Tacoma to work on Monday.  But we did pick up Jeff (Guin’s husband) and Shelby (their friend, very stinky), so it kind of evened out.

This post is getting long.

The point is that Guin and Jeff had a bunch of pirate masks.  Jeff’s a pirate in his spare time.

… I can’t believe I just typed that.

But he is, and so they had a hundred or so paper pirate masks just, you know, lying about.  So everyone⁷ at first thought, Hey, let’s wear pirate masks during the second set!  Which turned into, Hey, let’s bring ALL the pirate masks and hand them out for the second set!

My favorite part was when we decided that we⁸ would hand out the pirate masks to everyone else, but not wear them ourselves, making it extra “WTF”.  Finally, cleverness invaded our⁹ stupid idea.

The second day of music was just as good as the first.  Blind Pilot, great.  Andrew Bird, awesome.  The D’s, awesomely great.  Like I mentioned earlier, Colin threw a pick at my head.  Well on Sunday night he threw ANOTHER pick at me, which I missed.  And then, later on, he threw a pick which landed almost directly into the palm of my hand, which, mind you, was not outstretched to receive said pick.  It was destiny!

Before the D’s played, Jason, the band manager, came up and presented us with six! backstage passes.  As the people around us began to wonder just how the hell we got these passes, we just smiled and remained calm, because we were, at that moment, Total Badasses.

Then we realized there were seven of us.

Shelby somehow got short straw’d as the one who would stay behind while we went backstage.  It was a sad, sad moment, and generally kind of awkward.  But fear not, dear reader!  Because we got her in.  Read on.

As the Hazards set closed, those damnable pirate masks got passed around.  When the second set began, no one from the band really noticed that a group of people were wearing pirate masks on their head.  Now, the second D’s set from Sunday was much more awesome than Saturday.  Why?  Because they played Bachelor and the Bride, but also they played SLEEPLESS.  If you’re a D’s fan, you may not have seen that coming.  Neither did Jenny Conlee, the keyboard player; she was asking Nate, the bassist, for the chords before the song started.

Two other things: one, while doing his ridiculous spiel for “Dracula’s Daughter,” Colin FINALLY noticed the scent of weed pervading the venue.  He said something really funny regarding it and the song, but I can’t remember it well enough to reprint it in the same hilarious fashion.  So, like many stories, I’ll just say, you had to be there.

Also at some point, I think during O Valencia, is when he noticed the pirate masks.  He said, tongue-in-cheek, “We didn’t sanction those,” and asked everyone to take them off, so “we can see your beautiful faces.”  Or something like that.

Now!  The most important part.  Backstage!

Honestly, most of it is a blur because of the free PBR, but it was still awesome.  We met all of the bands, Peter Buck! from REM! was there, Shara had hurt her knee at some point and was icing it outside, so we all crowded around her like the nerds we were.  The other members of Andrew Bird’s band were there as well, Mikey and Jeremy, and they were great.  Jeremy was even kind enough to use his all access pass to get Shelby, who had been waiting patiently, backstage with us.  So thank you for that, Jeremy.

Everyone was very gracious to us, especially Nate (the D’s bassist), who looked exhausted.  We ate tacos and Missy finally got her “glare” from Colin on camera, and we didn’t make total asses out of ourselves.  All in all, a great success. And a lot of fun.

And that’s that weekend.  Thanks to Missy for setting up the backstage passes in the first place, and to all the /orators and friends and family of /orators who came out and had a blast.  I can say without hesitation that it was one of the best weekends — hell, best TIMES, period — that I’ve had here in Portland since moving.

My only regret is that I wish I had written a better blog post encapsulating it.  Oh well! 

I will end by saying that the Wednesday after this whole weekend shebang, I got on the bus to head home from work and, long story short, Andrew Bird was on my bus.

ANDREW BIRD

I know, it’s impossible to tell that it’s him, but trust me, after seeing him backstage and saying, “Your set was great” to his face (to which he mumbled, “Thanks”), I can say with assurance that it was him.  That’s his violin case, too.

THE END!

- Went to Music Millennium to get my vinyl copy of the Decemberists’ The Hazards of Love signed by members of the band.  Very weird experience, especially after making this video/song in response to this tweet by Colin Meloy, the lead singer.  I couldn’t look him in the eyes for fear of catching a glimpse of recognition … That’s the guy who did “Linda”?

- After signing, proceeded to get completely trashed with my /orate friends at Paul’s house.  Like, drunker than drunk.  I’ll put it this way: I puked.  For the first time since I was, oh, eleven.  I am not proud of this whatsoever.  In fact, it’s kind of infuriating.  It was partially because I am used to parties with Keystone Light¹.  It’s not hard to pack away a few of those in a night and not feel anything.  But I was drinking good, strong beers, and I was drinking far too many of them. There is a video of us singing “The Rake’s Song” on YouTube but if you want to see it you’ll have to search it yourself, cause I sure as hell am not posting it.  Regardless, I am so drunk I’m on the floor, semi passed out. Ugh, it makes my stomach churn just thinking about it.  I had fun and I love my friends, but I refuse to be inebriated that much ever again (especially cause my dad reads my blog, for pete’s sake!).

- The next morning found me calling in sick to work².  I slept at Paul’s mom’s house, which is in the wilds of Gresham, and besides I was hungover.  Now this would not have been a big deal whatsoever … except that my brother decided to head into the clinic that same day to get a check.  So the following conversation occured:

BRO. Hey Boss, I’m here to get a check!
BOSS. Hi Josh’s brother!  How’s Josh doing?
BRO. He’s great.
BOSS. GREAT, HUH?
BRO. Yeah, I mean, I guess he’s great ’cause he didn’t come home last night.
BOSS. EGADS!

Meanwhile I’m at the Tin Shed on Alberta trying to determine if I really want to eat biscuits and gravy³.  When I went to work the next morning I wasn’t sure if everyone knew I played “hooky”⁴.  This made the bus ride rather worrisome — would I be tested?  Tricked with questions created to deceive?  Led astray by the same people who hired me?

Instead I found out that no one else knew besides my boss, and she gave me lighthearted shit about it all day long.  God I love my job so much⁵.

- This past weekend I traveled back to Boise, just to hang out and see my friends and family for a bit.  It was a lot of fun, and a lot of really interesting things came from it.  I saw a Snuggie for the first time ever.  I wore said Snuggie, complete with a wig.  I drank a lot.  I also found out that I am an idiot and should’ve pursued a particular woman in the past, rather than shrinking back and being a socially awkward nerd.  I couldn’t help it (at the time); I was broke and felt like a loser.  Now I don’t feel like a loser at all but I am in Portland and she is in Boise.  Ugh, it’s always something, isn’t it?

So, uh, if you’re reading this, dear lady, you know who you are and maybe you should move to Portland?  That would be awesome? kthxbai

- Oh, and recently I released a free single that you can download.  It’s called “Mary! (Get Frisky!)” and you can grab it from my other website.  Here is a picture that you can click that will help guide you to a favorable destination:

- OH AND MY DAD HAS A BLOG!  He is the coolest.  Check it out!  http://rockinjohnnyb.blogspot.com

Okay that’s all! Hooray!

The Sea Wolf lineup.  They were having some kind of technical difficulties, but they sounded great and their songs were downright awesome.  Plus I want to marry their celloist.  She was cute and was wearing a plaid dress.  They had to cut their set short because, well, they weren’t paying attention to how long their set was, so that kind of sucked, but it was good music anyway.

Then came Okkervil River.

I didn’t know what to expect coming in, but their set was flawless and extremely exciting.  They put on a good show and everyone in the audience loved them.  Paul and I had gotten to the floor by the beginning of Sea Wolf’s set and were decently close (this was in the all-ages section, not the 21+ section), and I am always tall enough to get a great look at the stage.  Sorry people behind me.

The set went from great to greater to holy shit this is awesome.  Will Sheff has an undescribable charisma on stage.   I really don’t understand it, other than, unlike Zykos, he knows his fanbase and knows that he is singing songs to people and he was having a great time doing it.

Sheff singing alone in a spotlight he personally requested.

The rest of his band was somewhat motley, I thought.  A lot of older musicians, which I liked.  The drummer was annoying me, only because he looked like he was fifty but acted like he was in Def Leppard or someshit.  He kept twirling his drumstick through his fingers and I was like, “Yeah, I get it, you can do that.  Great.”  The multi-instrumentalist, Lauren, I think is her name, was great.  She could really shred, and let’s be honest, it’s fuckin hot when a girl can shred.  The trumpet player was great, the bassist played with his thumb, which I thought was really weird (and has a great voice; “Lost Coastlines” was fantastic), and their keyboardist looked too old to be in the group, haha.  But it was a great show overall.

They played all the hits (Unless Its Kicks, of course), and some Black Sheep Boy and A Girl in Port started it off and it was great.  Plus I met another /orator, maarvi, who is going to college here.  She was cool, though we met only briefly.

And that’s all!  Good show.

The Wonder was giving out free ice cream, which was bad ass. It also had this sectioned off VIP area with some cool hipster kids doing their thing (you know, looking generally apathetic). There was no line when we got there (around 5:30) so we walked in and the first band, No Age, was just beginning.

No Age is a two piece band, Randy on guitar and Dean on drums. Their songs would generally start like this: first, they would ask us if we were doing alright, a typical staple of most bands; then, they would make some horrendous noise with their guitar or drums or some kind of noise making device; after that, they would launch into an indiscernible song that was loud, punkish, and completely unlike the noise they were making earlier. The song would be two minutes long, then it would be abruptly over, and I would turn to Missy and say, “I wouldn’t be opposed it we got food right now.” No Age has gotten a lot of good press recently, but I think I’m too old to enjoy loud, annoying punk rock. I’ve got no particular angst right now, you know?

So we went to the Russell St Bar-B-Cue, which was recommended to us by Paul, and where we ate fried chicken that was approximately the size of my head. Seriously. I’ll have to make Missy send me the picture she took, but that thing was huge. And we got two sides and cornbread. Needless to say, we couldn’t finish it. There was an awkward point when Missy was outside smoking and the waiter came up to me and asked if I wanted boxes. I knew we didn’t need boxes, because we wouldn’t be able to take it into the Wonder, but for some reason my mouth said Yes, so we got boxes. We hauled our chicken into these boxes, paid, and promptly threw them away. I feel bad, but at the same time, that was too much chicken.

The line was forming for Battles, a pretty badass band of four dudes who were fed up with the typical musical structures and decided to make amazing songs with vocal samples and egregiously awesome drum beats and odd time signatures, etc etc etc. I like to call them a “futuristic tribal” band. Their percussion is so steady and repetitive that it sounds like something you’d hear in some African tribal dance, but the guitars and Tyondai’s weird vocal samples, where he would pitch shift his voice up an octave or two give it a distinctly futuristic, if not weird, feel.

So long story short, it was a loud, and awesome, set. I’ve never seen four men get so sweaty before (well, unless you count my old college days …). John Stanier, their drummer, receives special accolades for his amazing beat skills, his ability to change the time signature almost on a whim, and to start beats in what you would assume is the middle of the phrase. He looked exhausted as he played, but it was fantastic. Tyondai’s shirt started out white and ended up a dark beige as it became increasingly covered in sweat. Their songs were layered and amazing, and “Atlas” is as great live as it is on the album. All in all, I’m so glad I watched that set. I almost didn’t, but it was totally worth it.

After Battles Missy and I had a battle of our own: to try and make it back downtown. Once again, Paul had given us directions and proper buses, but in the end I fucked it up, as I am wont to do. It wasn’t terrible though, just a wrong stop on the bus, the need to take the MAX, and then some walking, at first in the wrong direction, then in the right. We had to get to the Roseland to see the Cool Kids and Del tha Funkee Homosapien!

First, though, we went to Berbati’s and listened to Love as Laughter. We weren’t feeling them that much, so we left at 9:30 for the walk to the Roseland, which is when I got a little lost and started walking south when I should’ve been walking north. We got there, though, and with plenty of time. There was a metal detector! I’ve never been to a show with a metal detector before. And a guy frisked me, and he felt my keys a little too sensually. So I gave him my number.

The Roseland is a great venue with a fairly large stage and a balcony where the 21+ kids go to sit and drink. My license is still expired, and they were scanning IDs at the lounge (probably to find felons or something), so I didn’t risk the balcony. Instead Missy and I went onto the floor and hung out.

Apparently the Roseland had been doing DJ and hip hop all night long. The Cool Kids came out when we got there. They were pretty good, nothing exceptional, but definitely fun and full of energy. The two guys have different pitched voices, which made their “harmonies” when they rapped together really cool. Their set was only about a half an hour long, which I thought was odd.

Afterward, some hype guy named Bookoo (or however he decided to spell it) came out and rapped a bit, and he was alright.

But then, then!, then Del tha Funkee Homosapien came out with A-Plus and the DJ whose name I cannot remember, and it was awesome. Del’s set included “Virus” from Deltron 3030 and “Mistadobolina” from his first album, AND “Clint Eastwood”, which I’m pretty sure featured new or different verses than the Gorillaz version. I’d bet that he brought out all the hits because the crowd was 3/4ths hipster white kids who only want to hear the hits, but I would’ve given my right arm to hear “Memory Loss” (my favorite Del track) or anything from Handsome Boy Modeling School. By the beginning of his set I smelt the familiar whiff of pot circulating through the room, and by the end of the set there were two opposing dance groups on each side of the floor. It was great. It was my first hip hop live show and I can’t wait to see more.

The second night of MFNW was a huge success, and tonight and tomorrow night are sure to be even bigger and better! I’ll keep you updated.

Wednesday night was pretty low-key, being the start of the fest and all. After getting a quick bite and wandering around town, doing typical touristy things (Powells, of course), we descended upon Berbati’s (“descended upon” is a literary critic way of describing getting somewhere. never will they say “we walked to Berbati’s”, instead they will say, “we found ourselves in the midst of Berbati’s” or “after dinner we slowly hovered on the wings of angels to Berbati’s,” etc) and waited for the bands to play.

Okay, the bands.

First were The 1900s, who are from Chicago. They were an excellent start off to the night, a good, jangly three-minute pop band with seven members stuffed onto the relatively small stage. They have two female vocalists (i’ll get to them in a second) and one male vocalist who plays guitar and everyone did their job very well. Their sound was tight and crisp and I found myself bobbing my head to most of their song (hipsters, as you well know, are not allowed to dance, with the sole exception of “that girl”, who dances like a maniac by herself in a small circle of room she carves out with wildly flailing arms whose movements are dictated by the amount of ecstacy she has ingested prior to the show).

We were standing beside and slightly behind the stage, which was great because it meant not getting the full blast of the speakers, and also because I could stare at Jeanine O’Toole’s ass all during the set. The 1900s are a seven-piece band (though there’s another girl in the picture I’ve posted … the one on the far left, I don’t know who she is), and three of them are women. Jeanine (girl at the top of that picture) was wearing a halter top and high-rise jeans, a throwback to the 60s, and she was hot. And totally into the music, which is also hot. Anyway, my point is, Jeanine, if you ever read this blog, I think it would be great if we got married. That’s all. Simple ceremony, maybe in my backyard, some friends, cheap beers, that sort of thing. Think about it.

Did Missy get a setlist? Yes.

The second band was Norfolk & Western, which I’ve never been a huge fan of but they pulled off a great set last night. Some of you might know that N&W’s drummer, Rachel (right of the guy in the middle, Adam), used to be the drummer for the Decemberists, but her boyfriend is in Norfolk, so obviously she chose them over the D’s, which is fine. I didn’t like them before because their songs were kind of slow and I just didn’t get into it, but last night they were a little more upbeat, a little more rocking, and Rachel kicked the shit out of those drums. Seriously, I saw shit flying right out of the bass drum, hitting the audience and making them cry out in disgust. She later apologized.

N&W was a four piece last night, with the bassist and keyboardist switching roles almost every other song. Sometimes one would play guitar, too. It was pretty cool, each guy utilizing his own experience with each instrument for each song. Overall, they won me over with a strong setlist.

Did Missy get a setlist? Yes.

We unfortunately had to miss the Old 97s because we had to catch the MAX back home, so our last show of the night was Langhorne Slim. Now, I had never heard of this band before in my life, which just goes to show how un-cool and un-hipster I am (I think I was the only person in the entire room wearing shorts — it was hot that day! I am a warm person!), and Paul was super excited to see him, and I was thinking, “Oh boy, this is going to be one of those soft folk picker types, and I’ll have to sit through five minute songs about the plight of the narwhal.”

Further from the truth.

The bass player, Paul, looked like a frat boy yet played an upright bass, the drummer, Malachi, was approximately 98% too cool for school, and the lead singer, Sean, wore a golfer cap and slightly nautical looking pants, and the crowd went wild, and they started playing and it was like a more Americana Flogging Molly, and it was awesome. Langhorne Slim is a lot more diverse, musically, than Flogging Molly, which made it a whole lot nicer. The energy was 110%, loud and raucous, each song two minutes or so, except for a couple of songs stretched or medley’d together. There wasn’t one dull moment in the entire show. Their set was short (they even had to play an extra song at the end) but it was intense and amazing. I’m glad I saw them.

Did Missy get a setlist? No, cause they didn’t have one.

Overall, day one was a success, a lot of fun, and especially good to hang out with people who were very cool and tons of fun. This weekend should be a blast.

I bring this up because of a conversation I had at /orate, about meat and vegans and, you know, the general shit that gets discussed on an online message board because we’re all trying desperately to show how mature we are. It was in a thread about “Walls of Glass,” a slideshow of pigs and cows being butchered, from the moment they’re wrangled up and killed to the moment they’re hung up on racks. Now, of course, that kind of imagery is shocking and disturbing, and I’m an animal lover so it sucks to see animals being killed. But on the other hand, I like meat. I think it tastes good and I think it’s good for me, so I eat it. I’ve had plenty of arguments (most of them on the internet, go figure) about the morality of eating animals, so let’s just skip that and move to the heart of this post: why I dislike veganism.

People who practice veganism range from really cool people to downright assholes. This may not seem surprising, as that wide range of personality extends to the general populace — ah hell, what am I talking about? Let’s get down to brass tacks.

Vegans are setting a double standard, and it goes like this: if I am having a dinner party, and a vegan is coming, it is usually assumed that I must make something for the vegan to eat. So if we have steaks, then I gotta make some kind of non-steak dish for the vegan. This way the vegan won’t feel “left out” (and also won’t starve, I guess). This would be okay in my book if it were reciprocated, but it’s not. If a vegan has a dinner party, the vegan will make only vegan foods, and will not make “meat” foods. This is a double standard. In fact, if I go to a vegan’s house for a dinner party and, knowing that they won’t prepare any animal products, bring a steak to make myself, there’s a pretty good chance I’ll be chewed out because of it. Why? Because of the poor treatment of animals, blah blah etc. My point is this: that’s not fair. At every party I’ve been to where there is a vegan (and Heidi, if you’re reading this, know that I think you’re awesome but hear me out), the vegan will always get some “vegan food.” For example, if we’re eating pizza, there will be one regular pizza and one pizza without meat or cheese on it. No one else is going to eat that pizza. Only the vegan will eat that.

Which means the vegan gets their own food! A whole pizza to themselves, while I have to share a pizza with a bunch of partygoers who are now going to eat twice as much because they’re terrified of gnawing on a bunch of crust and tomato sauce. That’s not fair! And alternately, if I’m at the vegan’s party, I have to gnaw on that crust! I’m forced to!

“You’re not forced,” the vegans say. “You don’t have to eat.”

Well you don’t have to eat at my party! Take that!

Sometimes vegans, in order to placate the dirty meat-eaters, will use strange alchemy skills to change the taste of tofu into the taste of something like meat, only rubbier and not like meat at all. They say, “See, this tofu tastes like meat!” This leads me into my second point: vegans eating meat-tasting things that aren’t actually meat. This is a disgrace to veganism. Vegans, to me, are an ascetic people, who live by extreme and stringent rules. They’re monkish, in other words. If this is true, then wouldn’t eating something that tastes like meat betray their own morality? Wouldn’t it mean that they want to eat meat? I think that if you’re going to abide by such stringent rules, then you shouldn’t eat things that taste like meat, because that shows that you want to eat meat, which means that deep down in your tree-hugging heart, you have a taste for murder!

My solution for this issue is for vegans to bring their own food to the party. A lot of them do that already, and those vegans are nice people. Or they help pay for their vegan pizza. But alternately, you have to allow us meat eaters to bring food to your parties, and if that is meat, then by god it’s meat, and we’re going to eat it and love it.

And that’s what I think about that.