In which I may be too old for live music

6/52
Project 52: Date Nights logo

  • Wilco tickets!
  • Babysitters!
  • Our date night this weekend was actually an out of the house date! After we dropped the kids off at my brother’s house, we drove a few hours* to meet some friends for dinner before the show. (At a real restaurant! Where we didn’t have to ask for a high chair or crayons or a kids menu!) After dinner, we walked over to the show venue. The concert was terrific, despite the people sitting in front of me who spent most of the show leaning over talking to each other and thus blocking my view.

    (Attention: People who go to concerts just to drink beer and/or make small talk all night! Take it to the lobby! Sheesh. I think I’ve gotten old and grouchy enough to need to pony up more money for better seats, so there are fewer irritating people in front of me. Either that or just stay home and listen to my record albums on the Victrola.)

    After the show, we drove about half way back to my brother’s and checked into our 3-star-according-to-Hotwire hotel.** The hotel was just around the corner from an exotic car wash — which I assume means it had a tropical theme or something — and it was attached to a “sports bar” from which poured a steady stream of ladies dressed in various configurations of spandex. The room itself wasn’t terrible, so long as you didn’t look very closely. In other words: Wow, Hotwire, you and I? Our stars do not align.

    Fortunately, I was too tired to care all that much about the noise levels or the big rip in the curtain. It was a terrific date.

    *There aren’t many bands that I’d go to that much trouble to see, but Wilco is one of them. In fact, Wilco is probably the only one.

    **The conversation that was had when booking said hotel:
    Me: “It isn’t telling me what hotel it is.”
    Rockford: “But it’s a 3-star hotel! It’ll be fine.”
    Me: “Three star according to?”
    Rockford: “Zagat! It’s Zagat-rated.”
    Me: “It is not. But fine.” Click