But Where Was I Going?

There are those small, esoteric vanities that we all like to indulge in. "I was Mrs. Horton's all-time favorite student." "I went 6 months without losing to my roommates in video-game football," etc. Well, I am pleased to inform you dear readers that I have resumed my assault on the record books of Irrelevance because as of yesterday, May 4th, 2009, I can say with a high degree of certainty that I am the only living human to have attended the Kentucky Derby and a Fastball concert in the same weekend.

Who is Fastball, you ask? Why, surely you remember that pretty popular late 90's rock trio. If you don't, here's a reminder - the pianist Tony really sounds like Elvis Costello:



(ordinarily here I would include an odd or particularly random bit from the band's Wikipedia entry. Unfortunately, in addition to I'm pretty sure having been written by the band itself, this particular corner of Wikipedia is really pretty boring)

Now, back to the topic at hand. Some highlights from the trip to Kentucky:

- I met an exceedingly nice man at the gas station in Lebanon, IN (which, for the record, looked like a pretty legit town and has a top-notch website as far as small-town websites go). He filled me in on the best places to fish nearby. I do not own a fishing pole but it was still generous of him to share.

- The Kentucky Derby was a ball as expected. I drank a lot of whiskey. I saw a lot of pretty girls in pretty hats. I also saw a lot of public urination. Pretty frequently, all three of these things happened at once.

- I met the most in-shape older woman in the world. She was shepherding around a group of teenage(?) girls, none of whom were taller than 4'10." I can't remember if they were gymnasts or synchronized swimmers or what, but I do remember this: after talking with this woman, we figured out that she used to babysit a guy I went to high school with. Small world, huh?

- On the way back, I stopped in West Lafayette, IN and had what is unequivocally the worst cup of coffee I will ever have in my life. Ordinarily, I don't distinguish between such things; coffee is coffee, but this stuff was truly horrid. It tasted like a muppet's bathwater.

The drive home was pretty nice. I stopped off in Oak Park to see my parents for a bit, helped a couple of buddies move some stuff into their new place and then returned my rental car, getting home around 4 p.m. I said hello to Gower, found out about his weekend and then we decided to make the most of our day. We headed over Phyllis' Musical Inn to sit in the beer garden and have a cocktail like gentlemen. While at Phyllis' (where I beat a really unfriendly girl in a game of H-O-R-S-E), we were Gower and I were having such a good time that we decided we were going to let it ride and take in a show that night. Digging up a copy of the Chicago Reader, we saw the Empty Bottle's listing for the night looked something like this:

FASTBALL
WAYATT

Wait, could we be so lucky? Was Fastball really playing the Empty Bottle on a random Sunday night? Was it just some band called 'Fastball Wayatt'? Were the guys from Fastball even still alive? Well, there was only one way to find out, so we tied our shoes, walked over to Western asked the hipster dudes at the door, paid our $15 and prepared to let the waves of nostolgia overtake us.

Something strange about the crowd that night: a lot of older folks. It's not that I have a problem with that in any way, but I'm pretty sure a full third of the audience was comprised of family members of the opening band. Another out-of-place thing I noticed was a girl standing against the wall by herself, crying fitfully. I went over to ask her if everything was OK and from the ensuing conversation I gathered three distinct pieces of information:

1. This girl was major league crazy. I've had girls send me hate messages about sex with robots and I've had girls sneak into my apartment at 3:30 a.m., so believe me I do not throw that term around lightly.

2. This girl was really, really, really drunk (this may have informed large parts of item 1, above). I thought long and hard about doing a bar version of a citizen's arrest and taking her beer away from her. I couldn't make out a ton of what she was saying but I did pick up on the following:

3. She was divorced and her ex-husband (perhaps her ex-husband's best friend, it wasn't clear) is in the band Fastball.

Upon hearing Item 3, I felt pretty bad about myself because the opening stages of our interaction had gone like this:

GIRL: [crying]

ME: "What's wrong? Is everything ok?"

GIRL: [sniffle, dries her eyes] "Nothing, it's fine, forget it."

ME: (trying to make a good-natured joke) "Hey, it's ok. I always get emotional before Fastball shows, too."

Needless to say, she didn't laugh at that. And I don't think it was because she was too drunk to understand what I was saying. We talked kind of uncomfortably for a few more minutes when I excused myself and told her I was going to get another beer. She acted like she didn't believe me and then went off into the bathroom. When she came out, Fastball had started playing.

The guys from Fastball seemed to be pretty cool and didn't have any of the "You know, we don't need this, we used to play football stadiums" vibe you might expect from a group that's down on their luck. That didn't change the fact, though, that things were about to get a little awkward. The girl/ex-wife/friend's ex-wife spent the first part of their set maybe two inches from the stage, alternating between shouting the band members' names at them or else mouthing along every word to every Fastball song ever made. Then, between tunes, when the guys from Fastball would try to introduce their next song, she'd scream over them to "Play the hits! People want to hear the hits!"

I can't imagine many people there knew all the elements at play, but everyone in the bar was keenly aware of a high quotient of 'What the fuck is going on?'

To the Fastballers' credit, they were pretty self-effacing in defusing(?) the situation, pointing out that being a One Two-Hit Wonders was indeed still better than being a Zero-Hit Wonders.

Eventually, the woman tired herself out and spent the second-half of the set in semi-consciousness at a table partway towards the back of the bar. All in all it was one of the better two-day stretches of the last ten years for me.