In April 1984, the Easter Bunny hopped into our home and bestowed my sister and I with matching Thriller muscle tees. It was the BEST EASTER EVER.
Over the course of his life, Michael Jackson touched a lot of people. I couldn't believe the news when Sissy texted me today. Wacko Jacko was...dead! I decided to bring my MJ doll out for a special photo shoot to commemorate this sad occasion.
Last night Hubby and I went to hear our friend Corey's band play at Church.
I can be insecure. I like to think it's part of my charm. So when a husky, sturdy looking blond woman gave me a dirty look the minute we walked in, my initial thoughts were: Is my dress too short? Why did I wear these leggings? etc. and so on. I had to be imagining it, right? Because it did seem an awful lot like this woman wanted to...kill me.
Truth was, my outfit actually had very little to do with why she was giving me the evil eye. She thought I was somebody else, you see.
"Oh, you know her, you know who SHE is," she slurred to the lead singer's girlfriend, who for her part looked absolutely mortified. There was another woman standing next to them who looked a bit less hostile than blondie, but even more intoxicated. She was celebrating her 43rd birthday and licked my hand when I put it out for her to shake. What the?
It was pretty much the filthiest thing a stranger has ever done to me. After I'd scrubbed up in the bathroom, more drama ensued. The brawny blond was walking towards us again, saying something malevolent yet unintelligible. This broad was two times my size and looked like she could do some real damage.
When I went over to Hubby and informed him that two ginormous ladies wanted to beat me up, he looked at me like I'd lost my mind. Surely I must be overreacting? I felt like that old lady in Throw Momma from the train. ("They're trying to kill me!")
I looked up at my husband with genuinely concerned eyes and reminded him that I don't really ask for much, (that made him chuckle), but at that moment I needed him to protect me from two strapping brutes who for some unknown reason wanted to hurt me.
I'm not going to lie; I was outsized and a little terrified. Hubby kept his arm around me for the rest of the evening, but at one point he had to hit up the men's room and warned me to watch my back.
HA HA. So funny I forgot to laugh.
Luckily for me, Blondie and her gentleman companion ended up getting into a brawl and were escorted out of the establishment. I'm not really sure what happened to Licky McGee. She was cutting a rug on the dance floor for a while and then all of a sudden she was gone.
After the show, I found out from the lead singer that the women did indeed think I was somebody else, namely a girl, also brunette and dressed in black, who'd been putting her drinks on other people's tabs earlier that night. He thought she may have been a hooker or something?
So apparently I looked like a prostitute. (A prostitute wearing a dress from Ann Taylor Loft. What the?) But they really did want to clobber me! It wasn't all a figment of my imagination! What a relief.
The singer apologized and said his acquaintances (actually the wife of his boss and her friend) were ordinarily very nice people who'd simply had way too much to drink. They'd attended the Yanks/Red Sox game at 4:00 and had spent the rest of the afternoon boozing it up while waiting for the show to begin. I feel I should mention, the band didn't go on until midnight. Hiccup.
It's quite possible that these folks are lovely, upstanding citizens, but let's face it, I'm just relieved they didn't bash my face in.
I'm a writer, not a fighter! xoxo
My plan was simple but inspired: two punk rock shows in five days. And Reader, I have to admit, if I've been feeling oldish as of late, I certainly don't feel that way now.
Tuesday night was Flogging Molly. The tickets were a Christmas present from me to Hubby, though in the end his midterm projects nearly caused us to miss the show. Indeed, it was 10:15 PM when he finally finished working and I came into the living room in my pajamas and suggested we walk over to The House of Blues. It was all very punk rock.
We could still smell the fresh paint at The House of Blues. I'm not going to lie, it had been the shittiest of days; I'd been trying to sell our concert tickets to no avail, at one point even going into McGreevy's where Flogging Molly was making a pre-show appearance! No luck. But I'm glad we went. We stood next to a bunch of guys, one of them a clean cut middle aged man wearing a Pogue's shirt and a scally cap, with a couple of tattoos on his forearms. His son looked about fourteen. I noticed he was texting someone in the 603 area code so I figured they were from New Hampshire. "Look!" I whispered into Hubby's ear, a little tipsy from my Pabst, "That'll be you someday!"
Hubby then remarked that taking your kids to punk shows was just one more thing that was wrong with New Englanders. Oh dear. It had been a really long week. It wasn't long before both of us had relaxed a bit, though. It ended up being the most fun I'd had in a long while. And next up would be The Dropkick Murphy's. My cousin Keely asked if I was planning to go onstage this time. I'd been wondering that myself, actually. I mean, seriously, wasn't I getting a bit too old for these shenanigans? Had I crossed some imaginary numerical threshold, barring me from making a jackass out of myself?
"I'm not going onstage," I told Hubby. "We've seen them three times already; I'll just relax and enjoy the music." He didn't really believe me.
They were filming each of The Murphy's shows this past weekend for a special St. Patrick's Day dvd/cd. There were cameras sweeping from the ceiling, it was all surprisingly high tech. "They're gonna play our song" Hubby whispered. "Maybe!" I enthused. But I knew Ken Casey only sings it when his wife is in the audience.
Initially we tried to stand in the same spot as last time. And guess who we saw, leaning over the balcony? The same crew from New Hampshire, with the dude and his son! What were the odds? It was way too crowded up there, though. Later, when I remarked that maybe we should've stayed next to dad and junior, Hubby shook his head and said, "Nah, that guy kept farting last time!"
We ended up downstairs on the outskirts of the mosh pit, because after all, we're thirty. Hubby does this endearing thing where he puts his arm around me and sticks out his elbows, jabbing anyone who comes too close to me. It's all very "Edward Cullen". (Yes, I'm totally reading Twilight.) At one point I had to turn to him and shout, "Stop elbowing people in my honor! I've been around a mosh pit or two before!"
Hubby was certain: "They're gonna play our song, babe." By this time we were both pretty wasted. I decided I might sneak in a trip to the ladies room before it got too late. I was just making my way back through the crowd when I heard the bagpipes signaling the beginning to Kiss Me, I'm Shitfaced. And just like that, in the pit of my stomach, I knew what I had to do. "I'm going onstage!" I squealed up to Hubby.
Time has turned me into a mother. There I was, making my way through a sea of sweaty adolescents, yelling, "I'm trying to get onstage!" That was all I needed to say, really, and they'd step aside and make room for me. But this wasn't some crappy dive bar; by the time I reached the front a security guard who looked about eighteen shook his head and informed me and about five other girls that we couldn't get past. What the?
It wasn't going to happen. I made my way back through the stinky throng and found my husband. "I can't get onstage!" I said, more than a little disheartened.
"Ya, you can only get on if you go through the middle, I just noticed."
By this time the song was nearly over. Reader, for five seconds I was honestly okay with it, watching the rest of the girls who'd made it onstage. For those five seconds I even thought, there's a new generation up there, it's time for me to hang back, to enjoy from afar...
And then I came to my senses. Who was I kidding, I wanted to be up there! Thirty or not, I wanted to have fun just as much as the next idiot! I'd tried. There was something very comforting about the fact that at least I still had it in me.
"At least in Boston they know all the words," Hubby noted. "Ya," I agreed, with just a hint of bitterness in my voice, "But this is the only song those girls know!" The Odd Broad was back. Perhaps she'd never even left. I gave all those green-clad youngsters the finger, in time with the beat, just for good measure.
They never played our song. They did do a nice encore of Badlands, however, and another song with Dickie and the rest of The Mighty Mighty Bostones. As we began our short walk home, we saw him outside the stage door smoking a cigarette.
"Hey, Dickie!" Hubby called.
"Hey man, how ya doing?"
Hubby's rather fond of spontaneous celebrity shout outs.
I was feeling a little bummed out that I hadn't made it onstage. Hubby was disappointed that they hadn't played Upstarts and Broken Hearts. We'd never heard them play it live before, you see. It wouldn't be until we were home that Hubby would tell me just why he'd been so certain that the Murphy's would play our special song. The one he'd played for me the day he left Boston for California, back in 1998. The same one we'd played eight years later when we cut into our wedding cake.
He'd emailed the Dropkick Murphy's, he told me, two weeks beforehand, and asked them to play it.
"You did that for me?" I asked, in disbelief. Reader, he had.
"What did you say in the email? Were you drunk at the time?"
"Maybe a little."
My blue eyed Scorpio then turned on his I-Tunes and played our song, and we listened, right there in our living room. Sometimes I just love him so much that I can't even stand it. Who needs a vampire boyfriend? I've got my very own dreamboat.
Below is the tune that makes me feel nineteen again:
PS: The Stephen Talkhouse venue is named after a Montaukett Native American named Stephen Taukus "Talkhouse" Pharaoh. Throughout the evening, I couldn't stop staring at the massive, majestic picture of him hanging behind the stage. I was drawn by the beauty and quiet dignity in his face, and I've posted the image for you below.
Reader, I must admit, there is a sick, twisted part of me that desperately wishes to attend the monstrosity below. But alas, one does need to maintain some shred of dignity in this crazy life. Plus, it's unlikely I'd ever get there early enough to be one of the first 150 customers, even for Joey Joe.
