Poke the Bear! Poke the bear!

Date: 8/5/07
Location: The Mutiny
Bands: Disrobe, S.S.Ex, and Demonslaught
Cost: FREE!



So in three weeks, I'm going to be 25, and I'm starting to take stock. By most people's accounts, 25 isn't that old, but it's around the time a lot of people stop going to shows, at least at the level that my friends and I have been doing it, but I can see it in them and I can feel it in me. I just don't have the energy I used to. This really is a young man's game, and if you're not part of it, you're some just some sort of spectator; you're Dan the Fan, Max Hippie, Thax Douglas, or that guy Jerry who's always at naked people parties, who probably doesn't mind being referred to as Old Naked Guy because he's got a really big dick. Either way, you're either somebody's mascot, or somebody's sad sack, maybe some permutation of the two, and if I can't find away to participate, that's going to be me, if I'm lucky. If I'm not lucky, I'll just be some old, normal guy, who's happy to have a job and a girlfriend which wil eventually lead to a carreer and a wife, and I'll forget about fun things and fade away. That's how I feel about a lot of the people in my family. I get it, but I don't like it.

Most writers don't even know anything else that Dylan Thomas wrote, but everyone kinda knows him because he wrote the words, "I will not go gently into that good night," which is itself one very notable quotable...well that's me, and if I can't fight nature and be the man I think I should be, I could leasr approximate it for a few fols or a little while. I almost choked on my drink a couple months ago when an old acquaintance of mine said, "Lab Rat, I wish I could be more like you, just quit my job and focus on making art but I've just gotta work.

I was shocked. I mean, I make art, or, at least, I make things but I never thought of it as what I was doing, because I make art (or things) even when I am working and as far as I could tell, I was just serially underemployed. Now that I've got a job, I feel kinda like a sellout, but I'm working and I have a place to go when I wake up, and I'll just have to work around that.

I was opening at 7:30 in the morning, which is a time I've been used to falling asleep recently, so I had to play it out carefully. There was no way I was gonna fall asleep, though and it is around that time of year where second-year juniors and third-year sophomores announce that Wednesday is the new Friday, so I might as well go to a show. If I was sleeping at my folks' house, I would go to the open mic at the Heartland Cafe but that's too far from work; if I was sleeping at Sarah's house, I would've gone to the show to see Sir Vixx, Sounds Happy, Xrin Arms, Insect Deli, Saskrotch, Pommel, Ersatz Modem and Common Denominator play breakcore and noise, but Sarah found roaches in her cupboard so she'll probably never sleep there again. In the odd event that I was sleeping at my house with my parents' car, I would've gone to Danny's because it's soul night and a pretty girl invited me, but I was sleeping at my house, and the Mutiny was the closest place I could go to.

The Muriny was the Mutiny, and anything I could say about the show, I could say about a million others. For some reason, I missed S.S.Ex just like the half dozen other times I've been to shows they've played at, and you could tell that Demonslaught had played without even going in from the number of punks milling around outside with light-up plastic swords holstered to their belts, and just like the last year's worth of Disrobe shows I've seen, I couldn't believe how good they've gotten, how much better than the last show they played, and how guitarrier the band seemed to be.

There was even a game to it. As Disrobe's singer Josh barreled into the crowd for the umpteenth time, like Matt Foley on a speedball binge, knocking motherfuckers over, spilling half-pitchers of Pabst, and instigating numerous circle pits, the goal became clear: knock this motherfucker over.

And people tried, none more adamantly than my friend Ryan, an eager little bikepunk who's maybe a biscuit over 21, if that. Every few secinds he would take a flying leap at Josh who would flick him off like a bug or else keep singing on the floor, or in a pile of equipment or from within a leglock. Eventually people got sick of Ryan, and the game morphed into how many times can I sneak a punch or a kick into this kid before he gets up off the ground. A lot of people had fun with it, roo much fun if you ask me, especially for Ryan, who, undeterred, started performing fake blowjobs, one by ome, ro every member of the band like some attention starved Andy Dick/GG Allin hybrid. Eventually, my friend Catherine stood on his chest and ordered him to the back of the bar "because nobody wants you here" and he complied. When I talked to him there, his face was ten kinds of bruised, and through a proud shit-eating grin announced that he'd just dislocated his knee, and even though there was a time when Catherine was pulling a drunk me out of the room for my own good, I knew that I would never be that young again.