Okay, so I'm writing this a couple of days later, so everyone who got all excited that I wrote five entries over the weekend (six actually, but one needs links added to it and I haven't been home for a second), is all back to the normal weep weep weep, Kymm's behind again, thing.

Sorry, ducks, you know I love you, but the fact that I updated on time every single day for four and a half years doesn't make me any less a flake than I truly am in my heart. The flakiness always comes out in the end.

Anyway, on with the entry. Even though it's 9.44a and I'm not dressed and the cats are not fed and I have to go to work soon! Alright, alright, don't hit, I'm writing, I'm writing!

What was I talking about? O yeah, Dan Tyminski's band playing at the movie theatre in Somerville, MA! The band with the cutest bass player in all the land.

I swear, he walked on stage and I could not take my eyes off him. I would occasionally glance at the front man, but mostly it was like having tunnel-vision, everything around Barry Bales the Bluegrass Bass Player (sounds like a superhero, or a host of a children's show) was sort of dim and fuzzy and only he was sharp and lit.

I wondered about it, because certainly he was cute and everything, but I am rarely drawn to someone in that can't-look-away fashion, not immediately upon seeing them, and when I got home I looked him up on the web and it turns out that we have the same birthday, which explains it.

That has actually happened to me five or six times in my life, where I meet someone and just have this astounding connection with them, and it turns out that we were both born on 23 August. Or, in one case, his birthday was the 22nd, but it was the same feeling, so I am lumping him in with that group.

If you ever do a search on your name, Barry Bales Barry Bales Barry Bales, I live in New Jersey and I'm free most nights!

Anyway, during the few spare moments that I wasn't watching my birthday twin, I was mostly distracted by the two completely insane audience members.

"But it was a concert," I hear you cry, "How could you pick out the two insane audience members so easily?" because is was a concert in Somerville, MA, that's why! Shae would clap along with things, then stop and mutter, "These damn Massachusetts audiences! These damn Puritans! They never clap along!" and basically they did not. They definitely were enjoying themselves, and they would cheer at the ends of songs and applaud solos, but otherwise they would sit decorously in their seats, sitting up straight, hands folded in their lap, looking attentively at the stage. It was as though they were at a particularly interesting lecture.

This was before the intermission. I must have missed the beer funnel in the lobby, or the tequila shots, or the cocaine table, but two previously quiet Puritans went wild in the second half!

The secondary one was the lady about halfway down the second section, who, everytime they would finish a gospel number, would wave her skinny white pipe-cleaner arms around and raise her little reedy voice and say, in the otherwise silent theatre, "That's what I'm sayin'! That's what I'm talkin' about! That's what I'm talkin' about!" and they boys would smile and say something like, "Amen, sister!" or "Testify!" and her little arms would pinwheel a little longer and then she would sit her bony ass down and wait for the next song where someone would mention Jesus.

She was like a Jack-in-the-Box for Jesus. Maybe that was on the bumper of her car.

The other woman, though, was a real piece of work. And again, no particular noise from that section in the first half, but in the second there were suddenly all these strangled howls and clapping more or less in vague time to the beat and flailing around from the audience right section down in front. At this point, Shae stopped trying to start clap-alongs, because she didn't want to be mistaken for being in league with the Loony Woman in the Front.

And intensely loony she was, too. At one point I watched her clapping along, about six or seven times, but then the noise stopped and her arms were still moving, and I realized that she was, in fact, still clapping, but missing. She was constantly moving, but constantly, so much so that at one point Shae whispered to me, "I didn't actually know that you could headbang to bluegrass music!" She got up and danced a couple of times, I'm pretty sure that she clipped someone in the ear once, and at the end, the best part, she grabbed this little girl and dragged her up to the lip of the stage and accosted the boys as they walked offstage, getting them to say hi to the child. Who must have been her daughter. And who was the perfect age to be completely scarred for life by having her mother make a complete tit of herself at a bluegrass concert.

As we filed out, I said to Shae, "You know how I know that God loves me?" and she answered, "Because you weren't seated anywhere near that weirdo?" and she was right!

Today's horoscope:
You and the kids (or your inner child) can do lots today, so channel that energy and enthusiasm into constructive activities.

One year ago today:
...the nacho cheese in the little cup mis-labeled "Spicy Nacho Cheese", when it should more accurately be called "Ass-Flavored Nacho Cheese That You Just Wasted $3.50 On".

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Last Updated Wed 6 June 10:26:09 2001