Please, Stanley, tell us about your evening.
So glad you asked. I think I'll work backward.
Getting 6 hours of sleep is a royal bite in the arse. But there was just nothing for it. I woke up at 10:30, &, man, I was up. Goddamned circadian rhythms.
Thank all the gods that were, are, and are to be for Liz. Liz, who rescued my sorry ass at Hard Times at 1:30 in the morning. In her pajamas. Yeah, I should've taken PetiteFadette up on her offer to walk me to my car - I put the key in the lock, turned it, & it snapped clean off. It was like a little key-bris. But then I thought, Ah-hah! My spare key is in my wallet! Only, when I went to MI last month, I decided to save myself some grief with the metal detectors & leave the blighter at home. And, because, behold, I am a complete & utter dork, I'd forgotten to put it back. And so, alas, my spare key was not in my wallet. Lucky for me, I was a mere block & a half from that most venerable of almost-never-closed-establishments, the Hard Times Cafe. I ordered myself some green tea (not the wisest of maneuvers at that hour of the morning, but I wasn't exactly at my shapest just at the moment), mainly for the quarters, & called the only car-having person whose phone number I could remember off the top of my head. Liz the Magnanimous. Liz the Deserving of Canonization.
Dead Influence is a f*cking excellent band. And I'm not just saying that because their guitarist happens to be PF's brother. The extreme bitingness of the scheduling cock-up that only allowed them time to play 4 songs (& the 4th was only because the crowd put up an unholy clamor demanding another) cannot be overstated.
That band that played before Dead Influence? Um, well, I think PF's dad said it all when he said, "This band sounds like my truck after it's been idling for 10 hours." And that's a truck-truck, folks, not a pickup. Or, as PF noted, "We should find out the name of this band. I think I'd rather have 4 teeth pulled than listen to them ever again." They seemed to be on some kind of quest to ruin as many different kinds of music as possible.
So, yes. I went to the Dead Influence show at the Red Sea Bar last night. Got to meet PF's kith & kin. Her mother brought a camera to take pictures of the band. Hmm. Does that sound like anyone else's mother you might've heard tales of?
If nothing else, it's not an evening I'm likely to forget any time soon.