Propped up on Red Bull and DayQuil (two great tastes that go great together!) I managed to shuffle like some sweaty zombie to Double Door with Singular, Lupe, Vix, and Serene for a concert. Experienced Double Door patrons know that in order to get from the green room to the stage, rockstars must pass through the downstairs billiards room, where nobody ever hangs out during a show except the band and those in the know. So if you have a really important, obsessive-fan question to ask your favorite rockstar, that's the place to catch them alone. You're guaranteed to at least have a 'brush with fame', in the sense that they will brush by you on the way to the stage. It was so cute watching Serene and Vix and Lupe squeal like N'Sync fans when Melissa Ferrick passed that I refrained from approaching her and saying, "Dude, I like, really liked that song you wrote, 'Both Hands', where you go 'and your bones have been my bedframe and your flesh has been my pillow' cuz that like, really expresses what it's like to sleep with someone". Besides, I was getting enough entertainment watching Serene, last-year dumpee of Vix and still roommate, play "who's better friends with Vix?" versus the incoming challenger Lupe, current sweetie-pie of Vix and leading contender in said game.

The "special guest" (movie-industry slang for "opening scum") was Andrew Kerr, a really funny folk-rocker who had dreamed of being a rapper until he realized he was a rich whiteboy and totally out of touch, at which point he became a standup comic. So his music could be described as White-Folk-Rap-Standup. His first song was about receiving, by accident, two pieces of fan mail addressed to Brittney Spears ("I'm ten and a half and I think/You should marry Justin from N'Sync") and his subsequent ones involved a lot of drunken sing-along. This guy's likely to be playing in a bar near you rather than a concert hall, go see him, he's better background to beers than the damn jukebox.

The second opener was Anne Heaton, who seemed to me to be a very technical musician, the opposite of Andrew. Sometimes musicians get up on stage and just goof around and you feel gypped, but if they're entertaining like Andrew its okay. With somebody like Anne, they seem very concentrated on the performance, and you feel reassured that you're getting your money's worth even if you don't enjoy the music. :) I guess her problem is that, as a lesbian singer-songwriter, she needs a shtick to distinguish herself from the other countless lesbian singer-songwriters (do you KNOW a lesbian who hasn't done a little singing or songwriting?!?!) and being technically (but not actually) cute and playing piano rather than guitar don't really get you that far.

Which reminds me of a tangent, a hint to all the unlucky guys out there. Most guys I know, the manly, knuckle-dragging, Maxim reading, always-talking-about-getting-laid-but-seemingly-always-in-the-company-of-six-other-guys guys, spend a lot of money and time in pickup bars looking to score with armpit-purse-wearing, Old-Navy-Cuffed-Capris bottle-blond-Barbie-doll types. Of course, they never do. THOSE types of women end up with guys who a) have lots of money, b) play guitar or drums, or c) drive a sportscar/motorcyle. They take this to mean that the only way they'll ever get laid is to get one of those three things. Wrong, fellas! Because even if you DID get one of those things, you'd end up with a woman who thinks the way women are taught to think, which means she's only going to sleep with you in order to (in the case of a) attain some security, which means you're in for a lot more than a casual score, or (in the case of b and c) piss off mom and dad or the ex, which means you're in for a lot more than a casual score and you might get beat up. What you want is a woman who thinks like a guy, and a shitload of lesbians think like guys.

So hang out in lesbian bars! Go to lesbian concerts! Sure, the vast majority of them are strictly-no-dickly, but there's bound to be a few who are looking to toy around with a boy for the evening, and YOU'll be the only one in the house except for the occasional wussy fag! I guarantee you that a stated lesbian is not going to want a relationship, as that would betray some sort of political stance they've taken, and even if only 2% of the dykes in the place are looking to sleep with a guy, then your odds are way better than the million-to-one that exist when you're a tight-white-turtlenecked dingleberry standing with your cup at chest height among a crowd of six other tight-white-turtlenecked dingleberries and nodding slash hooting at the hoochies in some pickup bar.

WARNING- This method may occasionally result in you ending up on the- ahem- receiving end of the sexual transaction. If this happens to you, BEND OVER, STRAIGHT BOY! What the hell do you think the phrase "take it like a man" means anyway!?!?!

So anyway, then came Melissa Ferrick, who you might have heard on the radio playing that song that goes "everything I need is right here in my hands". The crowd was insane with lust. She was working it up there, but not for the benefit of my gender. This is a woman who belts out a song like she wants to kick its ass. I love it when your headliner demonstrates exactly why they're the headliner by kicking all sorts of opening act ass. Otherwise the evening's anticlimactical. I remember in high school, seeing a tired Red Hot Chili Peppers go through the motions of putting on a concert, while opener Pearl Jam was slightly better though much too whiny, with then-unknown opener-opener Smashing Pumpkins rocking the house and showing those old men Chili Peppers how it's done.

Speaking of the Smashing Pumpkins (sheesh, I saw them the year they put out their first album and they're broken up already? Damn I feel old), Billy Corgan's new band Zwan played Double-Door earlier in the week. If you're a Billy fan and don't care about the whole Pumpkins ensemble (and if you listen to Siamese Dream, you're listening to Billy, he played everything but drums on the album, the perfectionist bastard), come to Chicago and catch them in some dinky bar before they start to do the stadium tour thing. I'd be happy to tell you if the venue has a nosebleed section or not. Heck, if you hang out in the billiards room at Double Door, you might catch a glimpse of a very famous cue ball. ;)

Had to leave the "wallbanging" (as my dad would refer to any modern music) early as I was still suffering from the draining effects of some tropical disease that scientists thought we'd eradicated in the first world. Among the hallucinations I suffered the past three days were a six-hour nightmare about finding a part for my bike, thinking I shot Singular in a failed attempt to shoot an invading monster, and Neptunians popping out of my body. I simply must stop allowing the monkeys to bite me when I go to the zoo.