Velcrometer
Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks
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M. Giant's Velcrometer Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks |
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Wednesday, July 10, 2002 My band (and I say “my band” not because I’m the leader or manager or owner or whatever, which I’m not, but because saying “my band” is easier [not to mention more grammatically correct] than saying “the band I’m in… Okay, that parenthetical was getting a little out of hand. Let me start over. Our band has a gig tomorrow night, as I mentioned last week. I had an anxiety dream about it last night, which is odd because I didn’t think I was all that anxious. In the dream, it was the night of the gig (in other words, tomorrow, Thursday, July 11) and it was time to set up (in other words, around sevenish). But instead of playing where we’re really going to be playing (in other words, Mueller Park in Uptown Minneapolis, on 25th street between Colfax and Bryant), we were going to be playing in my back yard. That meant I had to stress not just about my performance, but about playing party host as well. Especially considering the people who were showing up. I’m talking about former coworkers I haven’t seen in years, friends who’ve moved to New York (hi!), people I’d never met but still expected me to know who they were, et cetera. And none of them seemed to be in a particularly good mood. It was like Willow’s nightmare from the fourth season finale of Buffy: “Your whole family’s in the front row, and they look really angry!” At seven o’clock, I tracked down the only one of my bandmates who’d bothered to show up so far. I offered to help him set up his drum kit, intending the offer as a not-very-subtle way of saying “let’s get this going, already.” He just said “Eh,” and turned his full attention back to the snack table. I should mention here in all sincerity that our drummer would never do that in real life. At this point I decided to haul out my saxophone and get it ready to play. This was cause for concern for three reasons: 1) I couldn’t seem to get my reed properly aligned, 2) the reed kept morphing unhelpfully into a pencil, and 3) I play the bass guitar. By now my other two bandmates had arrived, but they didn’t seem to have any more interest in setting up than the drummer did. They didn’t even bother unloading their gear out of their cars, if in fact they’d brought any. Apparently they’d just come over to use my Internet connection (which, again, they would never do, not least of all because they have perfectly good Internet connections of their own). At around seven-thirty, we’d made absolutely no progress towards taking the form of an actual band. I looked out the back window. A number of our guests were frolicking in several inches of freshly fallen snow. In July. Any non-Minnesota readers who don’t know any better than to think this is perfectly feasible in this city are welcome to Shut Up at this time. “Screw it!” I said to my bandmates. “We’ll set up in the garage.” “Whatever,” they said, and went back to what they were doing. Did I mention that several characters from the movie Dogma were also in attendance? Somehow their presence indicated to me that our little gig was of such great metaphysical import that if we didn’t rock the house, the entire universe would cease to exist. How’s that for pressure? In my case, it woke me up. I’m not a dream expert, but you don’t need to be Freud to analyze this sucker. Clearly, unbeknownst to myself, I am losing my mind. Only you can save me. Come to our gig tomorrow night, Thursday, July 11 at Mueller Park on 25th Avenue between Bryant and Colfax in Uptown Minneapolis (not my house). We’re going on some time between 7:00 and 7:30 p.m. And it’s absolutely one hundred percent free of charge. You have the ability to rescue my mental health before I give myself an aneurysm in my sleep. All you have to do is show up, dance, clap and cheer wildly, and approach us afterwards to offer us loads of cushy gigs and lucrative recording contracts. See you there. posted by M. Giant 3:55 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:
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