i frequently enjoy musical events

Was this guy singing sweatily all up in my face Saturday night? Yes. Did I like it? HELLZZZ YEZZZ.

(Okay, I just received a memo from The Alphabet informing me that due to my gross misuse of the letter "z" in that last sentence, I am banned from using that particular letter for at least the next 24 hours. So let's just hope this entry doesn't contain any stories about striped African horses or humped cattle. But dammit, without humped cattle, what the hell will I have left to talk about?)

The stories in this entry is going to occur less in chronological order than in McAwesome order, which means it will follow a pattern of logic only eight people on earth can understand. Two of those people secretly control the workings of the universe and the other six take enough acid, individually, to disable a sperm whale. For you kids at home: Katharine Hott McAwesome does not advocate taking aquatic mammal-sized doses of acid. She does, however, strongly advocate secretly controlling the workings of the universe. So get on that.

Back to the sweaty singing guy. That is the lead singer of the Cold War Kids, a supremely good band that played at Pearl Street this weekend. We get some really good shows around here, especially for not having a big city around, and Kate and I have dedicated to seeing as many of them as we can this semester. We missed my Brightest Diamond because she was playing the same night Kate got back to Costa Rica, but as Kate had just spent two weeks scaling 150-foot trees in 100% humidity, fighting off bullet ants, and getting less than three hours of sleep a night, I guess it made sense not to go. I'd just like to take this opportunity, again, to mention that science kids are crazy. This Costa Rica trip was for Kate's Tropical Ecology class, and when I heard about the crazy, Rambo-style shit her professor had them do, I was like, "Was there any sort of physical fitness test before this journey? Because I actually don't understand how you survived." She did drop her glasses in a crocodile-infested river, though, which means she kind of lost her face, but this trip was hardcore enough that I'm pretty sure she could have just as easily lost a hand. Which would make for a great story, but not a great Ping Pong career. (No, I have no idea why I said Ping Pong, either, especially since I'm fairly certain you can still play it with just one hand. But the other Ping Pong players might mock you and then you'd be forced to resign from the team until you discovered your most respected Ping Pong mentor also only had one hand. And then I think you'd be in the plot of a Lifetime movie.) But back to the concert. Like I said, we get some sweet shows, probably because we have some really good venues. There's the Iron Horse, which is kind of a chill, sit down or stand around bar set-up, Pearl Street, which is more of a jump around and dance like you're on fire deal, and the Pearl Street Basement, which is basically reserved for all the bands, usually from your adolesence, that you really want to see but don't really want to admit to the general public that you're going to see (Kate and I saw Rasputina there, for instance...it was actually the coolest thing ever, but a little shameful.) There's also the Calvin Theatre, where you get the really big name, mainstream people, but I don't think I've ever actually been to a show there. Anyway, this show was at Pearl Street on a Saturday night, which meant crazy dancing and general debachery.

We got there during the first opener--Tokyo Police Club, who were really good and had the most adorably spazzed-out keyboard player ever--and stood awkwardly at the back for a minute before I decided to use my Cripple Power to get us spots at the front. So I edged my way up, using my cane to gently nudge/whack people out of the way. Occasionally they'd turn around and be about to give me a look, but then they'd see my cane and be like, "Awwww...she's hobbling. Let her go wherever she wants." So I ended up pressed right against the stage, directly in front of the piano-playing lead singer, which was amazing. I managed to pull Kate and Amy all the way to the front with me, too, but somehow we ended up surrounded by the most bizarre, obnoxious people in the entire crowd. There was this one group of about four drunk guys that had somehow ended up behind Amy the entire night--they were behind her in line, singing and shuting into her face, and then they were right behind her at the show, yelling their completely nonsensical commentary about everything that was happening everywhere. When the roadies were setting up for the Cold War Kids, they were like, "Look at that guy! He's carrying a thing! That's heavy. That's heavy, guy, isn't that heavy? That guy's carrying something heavy! Yeah, go, that guy!" There was also this bottle on top of the piano with a drumstick stuck in it, which they somehow all decided was a candle, so they kept shouting, "Light the candle! C'mon, light the candle! I bet you won't do indoor fireworks!" Then, to the left of us, there was this tall guy who I immediately resented because he was wicked tall and yet standing right up against the stage. I could have forgiven him for his genetic differences, though, if he hadn't been hardcore making out with his girlfriend the whole time. I mean, hardcore, right in the front row, blocking a large section of the crowd's view with sloppy, over-eager lip gropage. They were right in front of this other tall guy, who looked over at us and was like, "Man, I wish they would cut it out." We agreed and thought we had an ally, but then he would not stop talking about it, which was really awkward since he was about two inches from their heads. He was like, "I did not pay $14 to stare at these two getting it on! If they don't cut it out, I'm just going to punch them. What's it going to take them to stop--the Apocalypse? A firehose?" So we just stood their uncomfortably while the couple doubled their efforts in response to his death threats.

Meanwhile, there actually was a concert happening, I swear. And it was sweet. I like the Cold War Kids a lot--I have no idea how to describe their sound, since my music criticism vocab basically encompasses the terms "sweet" and "not so sweet," but I've posted some songs so you guys can agree with how right I am. They put on a really great show, including this part where they brought the two opening bands back onstage to perform "Saint John," which is kind of a drunken, racuous chorus song. It was like 20 dudes just rocking out and singing at the top of their lungs while Amy and I were like, "Oh man, we so want to be them." They also know how to rock the piano, which was a big plus. This world needs more piano-rocking.

Speaking of piano-rocking:

This guy also sang all up in my face last week. If you do not know who this guy is, you are probably not as cool as you think you are. Or you are cool, but you just have a particular aversion to spastic gypsy punks. Which may be kind of safer for you, in the long run, but definitely not as fun. This dude is called Jason Webley, and he is awesome. I knew I liked his music, but I had no conception of how ridiculous a human being he is until I saw him perform at Hampshire's Red Barn on Monday. The Red Barn is the most homey of our performance spaces--it's a big, wooden...well, barn, but you know, nice and warm and not filled with humped cattle. It's also about two minutes from my mod, so it was probably the most conveniently located show I will ever attend. Our circus collective (Circus Folk Unite!) opened for him, and did their usually crazy acrobatic tricks, including a two-person burlesque dance on stilts to "All That Jazz." It was good, but kind of terrifying--I can't watch people on stilts without being like, "Oh my god they're going to topple and annihilate everyone with their tallness." It was especially anxiety-provoking since they did all their stuff without any mats, and the hard wooden floor of the Red Barn made this awful thwacking sound every time anyone rolled/jumped down on it. Circus folk and science kids--all actually insane. They should form a support group, except that it would just end in the funniest gang war every. Evolutionary biologists versus contortionists is a match I've wanted to see for a loooong time. So once the circus kids had stopped making their bodies into boxes and whatnot, Jason Webley performed. And--the dude rocks. Really. I know I said the Cold War Kids put on a good show, and they absolutely did, but it was very much a, "We're going to get up here and do our stuff and do it really well, but it's polished and in order and we're performing for you, not with you." Jason Webley, on the other hand, pretty much forced group participation. It was a pretty good-sized group of people, for a small venue on a Monday night, so he was able to kind of balance between conversational, confidential performance banter and racouous, foot-stomping mob hysteria. He plays the guitar, the accordion, and the vodka bottle--he fills it with change and manages to make it the loudest instrument ever. He also enjoys stomping--greatly--and having awkwar interactions with audience members. Like, early on, he wanted to do a singalong to "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean," and this one girl started groaning because her name is Bonnie and she hears people sing that all the time. But she consented, and he instructed us to stand up on every word beginning with "B" and then sit down on the next "B" word. Only problem--Bonnie was on crutches. So she points this out and Jason Webley was like, "You've been sent by God to punish me! What have I done?" Then he went on these rants about the movie Footloose and the time he accidentally managed to smuggle a gun from Seattle to Berlin in his luggage a few months ago. He did a lot of singing, but most of the time it was more like he was just doing whatever he came into his head--standing on his accordion, suddenly breaking into songs that sounded similar to what he was in the middle of playing, and often stomping vigourously until his hat fell off. For the finale, he wanted to do a drinking song, but the crowd was pretty uniformly sober. So he made us all stand up, point our fingers in the air, stare at said fingers, and spin around twelve times. Kids, I strongly recommend doing this at home--or, better yet, in the middle of a very large crowd, with everybody doing exactly the same thing. You will get reeeeeeal messed up. And it's cheaper and more legal than booze!* (Man, I strongly hope this catches on and some conservation Congressman tries to introduce a bill against finger-spinning. "It's destroying America's youth! They're all so goddamn...dizzy!"*) Then he made us form a giant, swaying circle around him, grab our neighbors shoulders for support, and sing, "If God wanted us sober, he'd knock the glass over." Public service announcement, everyone: you do not need drugs to get high. You just need your finger, some circus people, and some crazy dude with an accordion screaming in your face. Works every single time I've tried it.

*You should know the alphabet fined me $2,500 all the “z”s that appeared in this entry. Apparently it’s more essential to my life than I thought. I expect all of you to contribute at least $500 to the bill. At the least, next time you see a letter, throw it a few bucks.

And now, the award-winning soundtrack for this entry:
Cold War Kids
Saint John
We Used to Vacation
Hospital Beds

Tokyo Police Club
Nature of the Experiment

Jason Webley
Map