Update (4/22):
It seems, by the confused email I got, that not everyone knows what the Evil Fingers are. Perhaps you know them as the vastly inferior "Rock On" fingers. I am here with a visual to help you all out:
Please also notice my new (not so evil) glasses.
Rock on.
I'm having a real shitter of a day. The engine light in my car lit up on Friday, and has stayed on (note to new readers: My car is 4 months old). I have a treMENdous pimple on my chin, and it's the kind I always get. Never comes to a head, hurts like crazy, goes away but leaves a dark brown mark for 10 months afterwards. I already have one on my chin, this will make for a nice matched pair. As I was walking from my parking lot, I noticed that my pants were swishing around suspiciously. Know why? They're too short. By at least 2 inches. I didn't notice it the last time I wore them because I'd paired them with some backless shoes and no socks, but with black socks and these pants, everything's coming up Milhouse. When I got to the bathroom on my floor, I took off my socks, because the pants aren't bad--they're just bad with my socks showing--and when I took off my socks and attempted to cram my bare feet into the shoes, it was a sweaty, sticky pitiful mess for me. I lasted without socks for about 20 minutes. Really. It was THAT bad. When I called my dealer to schedule a time for them to take a look at my car, my glasses snapped. You might not know this, but I NEED my glasses. They aren't a beauty prop I use to make me look cute. They are a necessity.
I lay my broken glasses on the desk beside me and shot them (at least, I THINK it was at them) a filthy look. I gave a very quick thought to taping them together, but as anyone who wears glasses knows, it's DEFINITELY worse to have taped together glasses than broken ones. Broken glasses means I sit an inch away from my monitor, and I squint a lot. Taped glasses means my self esteem is somewhere between "I Walked Around All Day With a Giant Hunk of Green Shit Stuck Between My Front Teeth, Including During the Meeting About My Promotion" and "That Time in the 8th Grade When I Wore The White Shorts and My Maxi Pad Leaked". There is NO POSSIBLE way to feel good about yourself with taped glasses.
You know, of course, that someone saw my broken glasses and taped them together for me. Not only taped, but bandaged. They did it to be nice, but you know, I think I would have been better off squinting.
Broken car, broken glasses, broken pants, broken skin. You know you want to date me.
The other night Nick and I took our nephew and his friend to see Bad Religion. We decided that we had no interest in seeing the two crappy opening bands (Snapcase and...and...I don't have any idea, despite them shoving a CD at me as we left. I waited till I got home to throw it away) and so got there at about 8:30, figuring we were going to have to wait until at least 11:30 before they went on. Imagine how pleasantly surprised we were when we totally missed the 1st crappy openeing band and after about a half hour of the second crappy opening band, they announced "BAD RELIGION ARE ON NEXT!!". Never underestimate the power of a band who've been around forever. They're likely to be older, and thus, too tired to stay up a lot past midnight.
Anyhow, the point of this was to talk about something I'm not quite sure I understand. Throwing the Evil Fingers.
Nick and I stood in the crowd, away from the pit (when I was 15, I was in the mosh pits like nobody's business. I punched and got punched with everyone else. At 32, I leave the moshing to the kiddies, and I think that all 32 year old males should bear that in mind as you strip off your t shirt in a Jack Daniels and loud music induced frenzy and go storming into the pit windmilling your arms and trying to get the horrified kids around you to make a wall of death. Pits are for the under 25 and--this is important, for both male and female--UNDER 250 pound set.) and when the band finally came on, it started happening. At random times during songs, people would throw their hands up in the air, dramatic as all hell, and do the evil fingers. They'd thrust their 4 fingers emphatically at the sky as though to say to the singer: "Hey, Greg!!! What you just said??? It ROCKED!!!" or "ME TOO, MAN!! WORD TO YOUR FUCKING MOTHER!!!I FEEL THE EXACT SAME WAY!!!!" Evil fingers!! I mean, seriously. I tried my best to figure out what about the lyric:
"You are the government....."
would entice me to raise my hand in Evil Fingers, but I can not.
I was standing about a foot behind and to the right of a girl who spent the first, say 30 minutes of the show Evil Fingering at random intervals, and then what I think must have happened was that her meds wore off, because she spent the rest of the time rocking back and forth on her feet, weeping profusely with her head in her hands, then--suddenly--NOT weeping, flailing, screaming, fist in the sky giving way to Evil Fingers, disintegrating into her shoving anyone who happened to walk too closely to her Private Space. That was the rest of her show. I couldn't stop watching. She sang along and cried and shuddered and Evil Fingered!
I think that maybe, just MAYBE, I am getting too old to go to shows like that. I don't like standing for 3 hours. I don't like my ears ringing, and I no longer feel cool. Perhaps that's because I am not.
the other day - home - email - tomorrow