CLICK HERE FOR BLOGGER TEMPLATES AND MYSPACE LAYOUTS »

Monday, October 27, 2008

When I Was a Boy....

I had another girls night out with my mom and we had a blast. We started off the night by heading down to Fremont for dinner at Costa's Opa. But before we could eat we had to find parking. In Fremont, on a Friday. So we drove around a little (open to interpretation of what a little means (and crossing the Fremont Bridge several times)) and drove past Troll Avenue which is under the Aurora Bridge. I told my mom we had to go up and see the Fremont Troll. She had never seen it before, so I was excited to show her. The troll was put under the bridge and yes, that is a Volkswagon Bug in it's grasp. It's cool. I would looove to live on Troll Avenue. Who wouldn't?



Walking back towards the restaurant we saw a sign celebrating the installation of the J.P. Patches statue, so we decided to find out where it was. For those who don't know, J.P. Patches had a local t.v. show for YEARS. Maybe 20? He was a clown and the Mayor of the City Dump. He had a lot of fun friends come visit him like Ketchikan the Animal Man, Boris S. Wort, The Swami of Pastrami, and Ggoorrsstt the Friendly Frpl. My personal favorite was Gertrude, his girlfriend who is the masculine lady in the statue with him. She has hands just like a Michelangelo statue. And all the other parts too. (Don't get the wrong idea, she was only played by a man.)



You can almost see her 5 o'clock shadow.



The statue was designed so that people could add their own pins to J.P.'s jacket. I thought that was such an awesome idea.



ICU2TV



My mom and J.P.

Cool side note - We got to see J.P. Patches at the Stanwood-Camano Fair a couple of years ago. He was just as funny as I remember. My girls loved him and still talk about him. The fun was that there were a lot of adults in the audience who didn't have children with them.


Costa's Opa is a fabulous Greek restaurant where they set cheese on fire right in front of our table and shouted OPA! Awesome. The food was amazing and I plan on returning in the near future. Avgolemono, mousaka, souvlaki, dolmades, spankopita....drool. The only thing I didn't eat was baklava - I was too full.

And for the last part of our fun night we got to go to a Dar Williams concert. She is another singer that I discovered in college. Ah, the good ol' days when you had unlimited access to friend's CD collections! She had Shawn Mullins open for her. He had the hit "Rockabye" ("Every thing is gonna be alright"....that guy). He was good, but Dar was awesome. She is quite the storyteller and the stories that led into her songs were so twisted and convoluted that I had a hard time keeping up/not peeing my pants cause I was laughing so hard. She's that funny/subtle. It was my first time seeing her in concert and I was not let down. Here are two of my favorite (of many) songs of hers:


When I Was a Boy



The Christians & The Pagans




OPA!

4 comments:

Calley said...

Thanks a lot, now I want greek food for breakfast right now. And, holy cow, I actually love Dar Williams! Because I've heard her songs on my one favorite radio station 103.7 the Mountain, I just never put the name with the songs. What a deelish post :)

Hope said...

I LOVE J.P. Patches! Every year the day after Thanksgiving, we would try to chase him from Mall to Mall (after we had our pictures taken with Santa in Downtown Seattle). He would be at Southcenter, and then once we were there, he would be at Northgate. I never got to met him though. Mason's kindergarten teacher is a Patches Pal.

Lucy van Pelt said...

I work on Troll road, so I pass him every morning on my way in. I love that sculputer! I'm not from here, so the JP Patches thing isn't as meaningful to me, but that "girl" is really something.

Unknown said...

the flamming cheese is the best!!!!!!!!!! glad you and ma had a good time!.....again!