nineteen

There’s a small group of people dancing to a cover band in the private-party room … well, they’re gyrating in some form or fashion, doing more to set back the cause of caucasian-kind than Vanilla Ice ever did.

There are ninteen people at a large table trying to ignore the party. I am one of them.

After a show at the Phoenix & Dragon bookstore, Suzan and I went to dinner with the Three Weird Sisters and their extended ‘family’ of musicians & friends. Brenda, Mary, George, Teresa, George & Teresa’s kids, Dave … I think they need to buy a school bus.

Add various friends & relations and there’s ninteen of us. We have commandered a large table at the back of the Five Seasons Restaurant, sliding in just as the SEC Championship game is winding down.

A split table with this many odd folks generates pockets of conversation. Suzan and I are near the center of the table, so we drift in and out of various threads. It’s kind of like having multiple IRC channels going at once, only the grammar is better and nobody is asking for naked pictures.

Mary and I are discussing the concert, and how I have to resist the urge to play along (Mary invited me to play drums on her new CD, so arrangements for her music are still moving through my head).

Suzan is listening to Aaron discuss Frank Zappa & ‘parental advisory’ stickers for albums (turns out Zappa put an advisory sticker on an instrumental album just to spite Tipper Gore). This somehow leads into a discussion of Kevin Gilbert & ‘Shaming of the True’, so I ALT-TAB into that room for a while.

That thread traverses into movies for a while … Why George Lucas needs to stop editing old Star Wars movies, will Jar-Jar end up in the DVD edition of ‘Howard the Duck’, how the release version of ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ should have been the directors cut … Once that hits the subject of Harry Potter I go back to Mary’s side of the table.

Nineteen people sharing food, conversation and the pain of knowing that ‘Play That Funky Music White Boy’ still lives on in the hearts of cover bands.