so... the Eels concert friday night!

it was fucking GREAT! we got there at 9. no line. walk in. McHonkey ( i found out he's a dj) is on stage mixin' it up. go upstairs. 2 guys on a tiny mini stage playing. they're called "the local stars" i thought the were good. nothing spectacular. Ordered a salad. now this thing... this 6 dollar concotion BARELY deserves the title of "salad" cause it was fucking horrible. it was the most bitter crap i've ever tasted. not even lettuce let alone REAL lettuce. it was solidly purple. can we say "CABBAGE?!" yea. it was pretty bad. so me and andrea walk about... steal a menu, buy a McHonkey cd and an Eels shirt. look atht ehpictures on the walls. then we find a place in the crowd. it's SO not satisfactory... so i pull andrea and we get to the very very side. but right up front. the security gaurd tells us to move in cause he needs an Aisle and i figure "safety precautions, ok." and we move.

after a bit of waiting and talking and fuckin' around the lights dim. there they are, all one stage. Goldenboy: the lead guitarist, Koool G: the Bassist, and Puddin': the new drummer. Alas, E is no where to be found. so they all begin playing and a stage hand man steps out with a spotlight sorta thing and just starts waving it through the crowd. it's extra lighting, right? wrong. it's a spotlight. and it WHOOSH's back after lollygaggy-ing about for a minute or two and there he is. There's Mr. E standing on one of the back balconies closest to a set of stairs and he rocks out. he's got a harmonica and he's going at it. the crowd cheers like no other. Arms thrown into the air, and he dissappears into the balcony. Spotlight lowers. He's walking through ever so bad ass with his sunglasses on and a strut like no other through none other than the aisle. yes. the aisle that i was the edge of. I'm tempted to try and touch him but don't. he gets on stage and they begin. So they begin their set. they're playing and everyone's just having a good time, myself included. Maybe i shoudl take this time to explain the crowd. They're all pretty much older than me. age ranges from what looks like twenties to fifties. I might have seen a couple people that looked like they could have been about in my age range but i can easily say we didn't fit in. So, E is on stage blabbing about how grand san francisco is and yammer yammer yammer. sorta boring. i like the way his mouth moves though... and i get the genius idea to yell "take it off!" but i'm afraid. so i tell Andrea to do it. she refuses but upgrades the idea "Sydney, scream 'get naked!'" no. way. but since like usual i'm a sucker for a laugh and decide to do it. "SO since san francisco is *so* great you deserve something to do. Want to know what E REALLY wants you do? What i want you do to do is..." and sydney cups her mouth and yells "GET NAKED!" everyone turns and stares. needless to say, no one gets naked. E is a bit surprised, half laughs... "well if you REALLY want toget naked then that's your own thing... i mean... getting naked is.. well.. . you can do that if you really want" or somethign to that same extent. it was amusing to andrea and i. i think we were the only ones. The guy next to me taps my shoulder. Leave it to sydney to find probably one of the only flamers in the crowd. "You do NOT want to see him naked. i mean.. look at his ass. have you stared at his ass? he has no ass." and the conversation proceeds as thus. THe guy leaves. many people do. The eels take their bows and leave stage. NO WAY i'm leaving. we stand about cheering like all hell and E and goldenboy come back on... play a couple songs... then Koool G. then the drummer... they play a song... and they leave again... even MORE people leave. we're still stickin' around and we scream ourselves raw. They come back for yet another Encore preformance. This time it looks like they're really gone... THe lights go on and more than half the crowd is gone. Andrea and i sit down. we're waiting out the people traffic. The some random guy comes onto the stage and announces "the Eels have left the bulding..." I stand up. we're ready to go. "YEA FUCKING RIGHT!!!!!!" and in run the eels as the stage is rushed. Andrea and i are in the front. and when i say the front i mean we're up against the stage and if i reach out, just reach out a little i could touch him. i don't. they're great and i'm totally pumped and this is one the greatest times i've had in a long while. it's good. So they finish and this time they really do begin to pack up and Andrea and i await the people traffic to clear. eventually we go outside where there are people at the door passing out these free poster things. I have no clue as to how we thought up the idea or decided to do it but we do. We decide that Sydney is going to get her poster signed. There's the bus. there's the backdoor exit. There's the Exit. we wait. We wait and we wait and we wait. We made friends with thise one roadie guy, i'm hit on by a security gaurd, we make nice with the only 3 other Eels fans out there. Moral of the story? I got my Eels poster signed by all of them. yes. all of them. all glorious fucking four of them. That was *my* friday night... it ended with a dozen krispy kremes at 2 in the morning and then home at 3. it was a good fucking time.