"The Albanians are rowdy tonight"
So the BNL concert last night rocked. Awesome. I finally got through the day at work and went home and watched TV for a bit until Alex met me there. We decided to grab some dinner downtown near the theater before the show started. We drove down and parked near McGeary's and decided to run and pick up the tickets from the box office first and then go back to McGeary's and have some dinner. The tickets were picked up without problem but when we got into McGeary's the crowd was so thick it was obvious there was no way we could have dinner there. We retreated and headed to the Big House and had dinner there. We ordered the spinach artichoke dip and two burgers (mine with Swiss and mushrooms and alex's pretty much plain). We waited forever. After a half hour our burgers sort of came. A guy (not our waitress) was wondering around from table to table with two baskets and he finally came to our table and said, "I think these are yours... Swiss?" and put the burgers down in front of us. Mine was a little too rare and Alex's had cheese and mushrooms on it but we decided that since it took forever to get the burgers to us and we needed to get to the concert. About two minutes later the guy came back with a plate of bacon and gave it to Alex saying, "here, I forgot your bacon." We both kind of looked at the bacon and Alex plopped it on his burger. A few minutes later the waitress came to get us another round and we asked about our spinach dip and she brought that out with the next round. I'm so glad we bothered to ask for that because it was excellent. At the end of the meal the waitress brought the check and she deducted one round of drinks and the spinach dip because the service was so poor which was really smart of her because then we ended up leaving her a pretty big tip.
We walked over to the palace and found our seats just before the concert started. The seats were pretty excellent... The theater isn't all that big and we were on the orchestra level just underneath where the balcony started. So we were close enough that they looked like real people up on stage. They started energetic as always bursting into one of the songs off their new album (which I, for some reason, can't remember right now which it was). Ed played the first song shirtless and the combination of the random mohawk style of his hair and his tattooed (and pretty buff looking) upper body made him look like a Red Hot Chili Pepper. The lights went black after they finished the first song and they immediately went into "Maybe Katie", also off the new album (with Ed newly shirted). After the second song they chatted for a bit (and they explained that Tyler had told Ed he'd give him $100 if he played the first song shirtless) and then it was back to the music. As ever they did a couple of spontaneous rap-like numbers where they made it up as they went along, this time Ed saying he'd "take that hundred dollars and turn it around" if one of the other guys in the band went pantless on stage. During the question and answer section (which was really short) a fan asked if they had ever had a limbo contest in the band which they answered that they hadn't because they always assumed Jim would win and they spontaneously had a little limbo contest on stage between the band members. Steve took over for Tyler on the drums and Tyler ran off stage for a second and came back in his boxer shorts to do the limbo, evening the score between him and Ed. Providing percussion back up on stage and working the wireless mic in the orchestra section was "The Lord, God" (a guy dressed all in white with a white wig/beard) which was just entirely random. They played everything off their new album (the one kind of low light of the night was when Steve was prefacing the rather serious song, "War On Drugs", which is about suicide with a short story about it and some idiots from the back started yelling for the song, "Alcohol") and a few of their very popular old songs (including "Old Apartment", "One Week", and "Brian Wilson"). The concert was about 2 and a half hours long and high energy the whole way. Everyone stood for most of the show, sitting down only for the very slow songs (such as "War On Drugs"). There was a girl sitting in front of us who wouldn't sit all the way down in her seat and was blocking Alex's view half the time we were sitting which was kind of annoying. She was a largeish girl and the back of her shirt said "Bid Night" which was unfortunate because we started to refer to her as "Big Night". Large people should not wear words on the back of their shirts that can easily be turned into "big".
Anyway, so the concert was awesome! :)
One odd thing: we met Alex's friend Joe and his fiancee, Kathy, during the intermission before. Kathy and I had never met so when we were introduced she reached out and shook my hand. Then she said that she was really sick and still contagious and shouldn't even be at the concert. In fact, she had pink eye. And she shook my hand. All I could do was stare at my hand after I found that out. The concert was about to start up again so there was no time to go wash my hands so I kept thinking, "don't touch your eye... don't touch your eye..." as I sat back down. People: when you have pink eye, don't shake people's hands. I was doing no reaching... she reached out to shake my hand. I'm not a hand shaker and only shook because she offered. And she's an EMT! She knows you should be limiting your contact with other people when you have such a communicable sickness! I know I touched my eye that night before I got to wash my hands... But I haven't developed pink eye yet so I guess I'm fine... Still, it really skeeved me out...
