Wednesday, August 18, 2010

The Stone Temple Pilots

I went to see The Stone Temple Pilots with Liz and Stacey Monday night. Liz calls me in the afternoon and says that she will meet me at my house at around 7:00. They show up around 7:15 or so. We have a couple drinks and are talking in the basement. We decide to leave around 8:30ish. I get into her car and as we leave, Liz tells me that her brakes are shot. As the car begins to roll ahead all you can here are the brakes grinding. And that grinding was loud, to the point where you really need to turn up the radio. I got emailed free vouchers to get into the show through The Rave's website. Liz informs me that a friend of her's has some free tickets for us, and originally over the phone she told me his house was on the way. She also said that she thought these were VIP tickets. We continue driving and we are now in the heart of West Allis, far from on the way between my house and the The Rave. I am in the backseat with the following things going through my mind, #1. Where the hell are we? #2. Am I going to die in a car accident because the brakes don't work. #3. Am I going to die in a car accident because Liz is currently doing all of the following: driving the car, fixing her hair in the mirror, talking on the phone, changing the radio station, also talking to Stacey and looking for a ring that fell off her finger. We end up driving to 51st and Howard. I ask Liz "Why didn't you pick these tickets up on the way to my house?" She says "I thought you would be mad if I was late." I tried to explain to her the error in her reasoning, you know that by delaying picking up the tickets is only going to make us more late later on in the evening, but she didn't seem to understand what I was saying. Liz gets the tickets and hands me one. They are vendor tickets, general admission with a ticket value of $0.00. I then tried to explain to her, that we were just as far ahead if we had just drove straight down to The Rave. Then she tells me that maybe we can sell them. I tried to explain to her that it is pretty hard to sell tickets that have a face value of $0.00 for much more than $0.00. We now have our tickets and are headed to the show and Stacey says that she is hungry. Liz imediately says "I am hungry too!" We end up going to Rocky's for pizza. Rocky's doesn't have a rather extensive drive through menu, and these girls are trying to buy a regular slice with toppings that are not available and never were available on the regular slices. Now you can add eating to the list of things that Liz is doing while driving. We get down to The Rave and Liz is looking for a parking spot. The opening band came on stage at 8:00, it is now 9:15 and Liz is looking for parking on the streets that are on the same block that the venue is on. There isn't much chance of Rockstar parking at this time of the night but she somehow thinks she is going to find one. Again an idea that I mentioned to Liz that she didn't seem to fully grasp. We finally found a spot 4 blocks away. We get around the corner and Stacey says "Why didn't we park right here under the light?" Stacey who is wearing 4 inch heals is starting complaining about the walk and her feet hurting. We finally get into The Rave, grab a drink and actually worked our way pretty close to the stage but right in front of the left speakers. When The Stone Temple Pilots came on stage it got pretty loud. I got a little separated from Liz and Stacey and was about 3 or 4 people behind them. My ears were ringing and it was only the second song. A mosh pit breaks out just to my right. Seeing the opportunity to upgrade my seats, I darted through the most pit to the other side and I was then much closer to the middle of the stage. I just stayed about 3 people to the left of the mosh pit for the rest of the concert. But for the entire concert that mosh pit kept following me. By the end of the show I was in the same location right in front of the speakers but now on the right side of the stage. It was a decent show. Here is one thing I found somewhat puzzling about the show. It was after the third or fourth song, Scott Weiland (the lead singer) was talking to the drummer over the microphone and made mention of Jon Bonham from Led Zeppelin. I thought, great they are going to do a Led Zeppelin cover, but then they just went into another one of their songs. Later on in the show they did cover "Dancing Days". I just found it odd that they didn't play that right after talking about Led Zeppelin. I found the girls after the show and we made our way back to the car. As we walked by the parking spot where Stacey said we should have parked, I noticed that that car had one window busted out and the owners were on the phone with the police. We get into Liz's car and head toward my house with the brakes just grinding away, it made me laugh. I will say this for Liz, going anywhere with her is an adventure.

Lyric of the Day:
Why did you throw the Jack of Hearts away?
Why did you throw the Jack of Hearts away?
It was the only card in the deck that I had left to play.

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