For the past three days I've been in Reading, England. There's some sort of rock festival here. And about 80,000 people. I've seen Franz Ferdinand, Duels, Fields, the Long Blondes, Gogol Bordello, Peaches, the Futureheads, the Fall, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Arctic Monkeys, and bits of Panic! at the Disco (stopped by a bottle), Fall Out Boy, Slayer, the Streets, Muse, Dirty Pretty Things, the Raconteurs, My Chemical Romance, and Broken Social Scene. Some of these bands I like, some I think are awful, and some I only saw because I was walking past the main stage to get to the guest area where the bathrooms aren't so horrible. Reviews TK. Tonight will be capped off by Maximo Park and possibly a peek at Pearl Jam.

I was wearing this skirt I made today and some woman from one of the sponsors approached to interview me for a webcast. The three people I was with (a journalist, an A&R guy and a musician's better half) immediately backed away from the cameraman leaving me to talk to her; luckily she wanted to ask about the skirt.






I saw this great sign in London on Holland Road in Kensington:






And this one on the festival midway:

Evan Serpick's article "Soundtrack to the War" (Rolling Stone, August 24, 2006), about the listening habits of our fighting men and women in Iraq, was unexpectly insightful.

Sgt. Brandon Welsh: "You can't put a Dashboard Confessional song on and expect to go out there and kill somebody."
Well, not unless Chris Carrabba is in your sights.

Nothing like taking a couple of long flights, one of them international, when there's a heightened security alert. It was alleviated slightly by good timing and the frequent flyer express lane, thankfully. And by flying business class, so that I had enough water to drink.

The diversity of London really brings home the total whiteness of a city like Portland (whitest city in the U.S., have you heard?). The prices emphasize the weakness of the dollar. The coffee has improved greatly. No one's talked about the president, but at the V Festival last night Morrissey exhorted his audience to run over Condoleezza Rice.

Today I'm planning to spend hours at the British Museum. We have three days in London before heading out to Reading and I mainly want to wander around, look at old buildings, and try to figure out why America developed a culture of pride in ignorance. Maybe hit a British strip pub if I can. Apparently, at these establishments a woman passes a beer pitcher around and all of the patrons drop in a pound or two towards the goal of getting her to do a striptease. I wonder how you get one of those gigs?

If you've spent time here, you've maybe read a couple of my earlier references to Mary's Club, Portland's oldest strip club and a fine, fine downtown bar. I'd first heard of it about ten years ago from a couple of Portland girls who were working on a B-movie in Memphis I had a bit part in; they told me about the punk rock dancers in Portland, how Mary's was run by women, how the stripper fanzine Danzine had its genesis there. The first time I visited Portland, it was the club I had to visit. When a reporter emailed me for comments on an article about the ten best strip clubs in America, I had to talk about it.

When I moved here in December they weren't doing auditions as it was the beginning of the busy Christmas season, when everyone wants shifts, and I went ahead and just started working at the Dolphin II. They only audition one day a week and I never got around to heading down there.

Last month, Roy Keller, the owner and founder of Mary's as a strip club, passed away at 90, and we went to the wake at the club. I met and spoke with Vicki, who's the longtime manager/bartender/waitress, and realized it was high time I finally started working at this unique club. So I auditioned, and began getting shifts. I am utterly thrilled with the club; the atmosphere is all I've ever dreamed of. I've had a couple of customers I met at the DII come down, and while the contrast between the two clubs is glaring, I think they had a good time, too. It's really nice to have the changeup from pure selling to pure dancing – most of my money at the DII comes from private dances, while at Mary's it's nearly all stage money – which lets me enjoy both a little more.

Check out the Mary's website. It's a great little piece of Portland history and an example of how a club can be run to the benefit of the owners, dancers, and customers. As a student of the history of the business, I was excited when I found out about Mary's. As a customer, I had a great time there. As a stripper, I love the work environment.

Soldotna, Alaska has a Home Depot, a Fred Meyer, and a 24-hour diner, so it wasn't quite as remote as I'd thought before heading out there. The club was a hoot; seating consisted of those white molded plastic lawn chairs, and the lapdance area was considered technically off-premises (so we could do lapdances, otherwise they're illegal) since you couldn't take alcohol past the little curtain into it. I made some terrific money, at least twice as much as I would have in Portland. And the people were nutty. You know how Alaskans are a little different? And so are the people who live year-round in tourist/resort towns? If you combine the two it's nuttiness multiplied rather than merely added.

I have to give enormous thanks to my dancer friend and her girlfriend who generously bunked me. It was the closest to a Wild West experience, in a good way, that I think I'm likely to have as a dancer.