Saturday, June 25, 2005

I visited a petting zoo with a murderer.

Or, rather, went to San Francisco to see the Mountain Goats with a stranger from the Internet who could easily have been a murderer, for all I knew.

Obviously, I lived to tell the tale.

So the story is this: Last Monday, someone replied to my repeated requests for a show buddy. He said he was qualified to be my Mountain Goats friend and claimed work for a San Jose altweekly. As the editor. I looked it up and it seemed legit, so I wrote back and said he could definitely have the ticket, but I'd have to think about being show buddies with a total Internet stranger, for obvious reasons.

In subsequent emails, he came off as a cool guy, plus the whole editor thing, plus he has a girlfriend so there went that whole potentially-creepy factor. I decided to take him up on his offer to drive.

This worked out well. We had fun talking (about bands that suck, movies that are scary and give some people panic attacks, how Silicon Valley is boring, the journalism game) before and during the show, even though it was a ridiculously late night. The opening acts started at 10 and were pretty annoying, and the Mountain Goats didn't get onstage until 12.

They played for a lovely and amazing hour and 20 minutes, ending the second encore with crowd favorite "No Children." Though we all wanted a longer set, despite the late hour, "No Children" was enough to shut us all up and make us go home happy.

I'm not effectively communicating the level of hilarious good fortune involved in this encounter, but believe me, it was there.

At 2:30 a.m., I finally arrived home. I got to sleep around 3 and woke up at 9. My mom was here by 10, and we were on a sailboat by noon. It was a great day for sailing, and I learned a few things about sailing and ropes. Not much, but a little.

Now I am tired, but I cannot nap.

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