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Wednesday evening Irish step resumed after the summer break. But instead of 10 am on Saturday, class is now at 7:30 pm on Wednesdays. As someone who's usually in bed by 9:00 I was a bit concerned about whether I'd have the energy for this, but having slept through almost the entire day (more on this later) I certainly did.
About half of the core group from the previous three sessions is back and it was great to see everyone again. There are a lot of new people who also seem very cool, so that's nice. I had not been practicing as frequently as I should have been (especially toward the end of the break) but previously tricky stuff came more easily; it's good to know that my brain had been consolidating everything we learned during the break instead of forgetting it all.
Tuesday evening was Weird Al Yankovic, which, it goes without saying, was fabulous. As a bonus he performed at a venue that lets lawn ticket holders bring their own food and drinks, and I cannot tell you how wonderful this is. You can get to the venue before doors, grab a good spot once you're in, and just relax and enjoy a massive picnic until the show starts instead of going hungry and thirsty for 2+ hours or cursing the world because they're somehow charging $40 for a 12 ounce can of the shittiest domestic "beer" and heat lamp tater tots.
We went with M.O., a party member from Oldest D&D Game (alas his wife stayed home with a recovering kiddo), and two of the Geek BBQ crew (a third had a seat in the arena, so we never managed to catch up him) and spent the time between doors and the opener chatting D&D and Assassin's Creed Shadows.
The opener was Puddles Pity Party, who we were vaguely aware of as a previous opening act for Primus. He was very entertaining and I would definitely see him again. He has stage presence, a great voice, and a wickedly sly sense of musical humor. For instance, he added little musical quotes from Disturbed's The Sickness to his cover of Little Roger and the Goosebumps' Stairway to Gilligan's Island...but you had to already know Disturbed to catch them; he did not point out what they were. There were a bunch of other moments like that, too, and I just really appreciate people with the confidence to trust that the audience will either get the punch line without rubbing their nose in it, or enjoy the performance without realizing there was a joke at all. I'm sure there were a bunch of other musical references I did miss, and I enjoyed the show anyway.
And then, holy crap, Weird Al. This was the third time we've seen him live and he just gets better. He is so talented, and such a consummate performer, and you can tell he is having the time of his life on stage. He opened with Tacky--a personal favorite--and things just got better from there. I was really hoping he'd play Foil, which I've never seen live but thought there was a good chance would be on the set list as Lorde has a new album out. But alas, it was not to be. (Maybe it's too expensive to perform now that Lorde has a new album out?) But he did do Mission Statement, Party in the CIA, Smells Like Nirvana, and Dare To Be Stupid, which I loved given that Devo were local heroes when I was growing up. Then he performed Fat, complete with the costume, at which point the GC turned to me and said, "...This has not aged well, has it?"
And no, it hasn't. I know it's historically one of your biggest hits, dude, but maybe retire it?
Anyway, after that he played eBay, Stop Forwarding That Crap To Me, White & Nerdy (for which I popped), and Amish Paradise. The encore included Yoda and The Saga Begins (for which the Geek BBQ crewmembers popped). And then it was time to go home.
We got back to the car and out of the venue in under 15 minutes--record time, compared to the hour+ it's taken us after previous shows we've seen there. We drove M.O. to congenial place to grab an uber sans surge pricing and then headed home, congratulating ourselves on how early it all was.
Haha. We'd been on the highway for about 8 minutes when the GC turned and looked at me. "Does that sound weird?" he asked. "Yeah," I said.
So we pulled off onto the first safe(-ish) place we could find: the semi-private drive to two Virginia 1- (and possibly 3- π«’) Percenters' McMansions. Sure enough, the rear right tire was flat, as in "that weird sound was us driving on the rim" flat. An irritant to be sure, but not terrible. We got the car jacked up, retrieved the donut, wrench, and lugnut key, and got to work. And then could not get the freaking tire off.
Not only was this thing just stuck on fast, but the GC and I were both wearing leather flip flop-style sandals with .5 mm soles. In other words, footwear that was not up to the task of kicking an obstinantely stuck tire off of a vehicle. Okay, not great, but that's why the GC pays for roadside assistance with his insurance. He called, spoke "with" the AI-generated "person" on the other end and sure enough, the app showed that someone from "[Name] 24-7 Towing" would arrive within 20-85 minutes. Twenty minutes later, nothing. Thirty, 40, 60 minutes later? Nothing.
Eighty-five minutes later, the app reloaded and reset [Name] 24-7 Towing's arrival time back to "20 to 85 minutes". At this point, the GC called [Name] 24-7 Towing. The dude who finally answered assured us that his driver would be there "soon" and promised to "call back in two minutes with an update" in such a way that, when the GC got off the call, we both looked at one another and said, "He is only now sending his driver."
Sure enough, two minutes passed with no call and no driver, so the GC contacted the guy again. "He's on his way," the guy snapped, and hung up.
Reader, he was not on his way. It became increasingly clear as we waited that the "24-7" in "[Name] 24-7 Towing" referred not to said towing's availability, but rather the earliest point in time (possibly 24 hours but more likely a week from now) at which customers could expect assistance to show up. By this point we'd spent close to two hours on this semi-private drive in the middle-ish of nowhere off of an increasingly desolate highway. We're talking no businesses, no sidewalks, no streetlights, no nothing aside from "random passing muscle pickups that slow down, creepily shine their high beams on you for awhile, and drive away" desolate.
Finally, the driver arrived at just shy of 2 am. Dude produced a mallet with a rubber head about the size of my own and, after several attempts, managed to thwack the tire off the axle. As a bonus, he also had a wrench capable of getting the cap off the donut, so we were able to properly inflate that ourselves before driving back. (Note to self: get your own rubber mallet and don't leave your donut in the car for 12 years without checking on its condition.) We got home just after 3:00 am, meaning that we spent over twice as much time waiting to fix the flat as we had actually watching Weird Al.
Which was why I slept through most of Wednesday. So that was a bit of a damper on an otherwise fabulous show, but at least we ended up waiting somewhere relatively safe and came out of it having lost nothing more than several hours out of of our lives and a good night's sleep.
γγγ§δ»₯δΈγ§γγ
About half of the core group from the previous three sessions is back and it was great to see everyone again. There are a lot of new people who also seem very cool, so that's nice. I had not been practicing as frequently as I should have been (especially toward the end of the break) but previously tricky stuff came more easily; it's good to know that my brain had been consolidating everything we learned during the break instead of forgetting it all.
Tuesday evening was Weird Al Yankovic, which, it goes without saying, was fabulous. As a bonus he performed at a venue that lets lawn ticket holders bring their own food and drinks, and I cannot tell you how wonderful this is. You can get to the venue before doors, grab a good spot once you're in, and just relax and enjoy a massive picnic until the show starts instead of going hungry and thirsty for 2+ hours or cursing the world because they're somehow charging $40 for a 12 ounce can of the shittiest domestic "beer" and heat lamp tater tots.
We went with M.O., a party member from Oldest D&D Game (alas his wife stayed home with a recovering kiddo), and two of the Geek BBQ crew (a third had a seat in the arena, so we never managed to catch up him) and spent the time between doors and the opener chatting D&D and Assassin's Creed Shadows.
The opener was Puddles Pity Party, who we were vaguely aware of as a previous opening act for Primus. He was very entertaining and I would definitely see him again. He has stage presence, a great voice, and a wickedly sly sense of musical humor. For instance, he added little musical quotes from Disturbed's The Sickness to his cover of Little Roger and the Goosebumps' Stairway to Gilligan's Island...but you had to already know Disturbed to catch them; he did not point out what they were. There were a bunch of other moments like that, too, and I just really appreciate people with the confidence to trust that the audience will either get the punch line without rubbing their nose in it, or enjoy the performance without realizing there was a joke at all. I'm sure there were a bunch of other musical references I did miss, and I enjoyed the show anyway.
And then, holy crap, Weird Al. This was the third time we've seen him live and he just gets better. He is so talented, and such a consummate performer, and you can tell he is having the time of his life on stage. He opened with Tacky--a personal favorite--and things just got better from there. I was really hoping he'd play Foil, which I've never seen live but thought there was a good chance would be on the set list as Lorde has a new album out. But alas, it was not to be. (Maybe it's too expensive to perform now that Lorde has a new album out?) But he did do Mission Statement, Party in the CIA, Smells Like Nirvana, and Dare To Be Stupid, which I loved given that Devo were local heroes when I was growing up. Then he performed Fat, complete with the costume, at which point the GC turned to me and said, "...This has not aged well, has it?"
And no, it hasn't. I know it's historically one of your biggest hits, dude, but maybe retire it?
Anyway, after that he played eBay, Stop Forwarding That Crap To Me, White & Nerdy (for which I popped), and Amish Paradise. The encore included Yoda and The Saga Begins (for which the Geek BBQ crewmembers popped). And then it was time to go home.
We got back to the car and out of the venue in under 15 minutes--record time, compared to the hour+ it's taken us after previous shows we've seen there. We drove M.O. to congenial place to grab an uber sans surge pricing and then headed home, congratulating ourselves on how early it all was.
Haha. We'd been on the highway for about 8 minutes when the GC turned and looked at me. "Does that sound weird?" he asked. "Yeah," I said.
So we pulled off onto the first safe(-ish) place we could find: the semi-private drive to two Virginia 1- (and possibly 3- π«’) Percenters' McMansions. Sure enough, the rear right tire was flat, as in "that weird sound was us driving on the rim" flat. An irritant to be sure, but not terrible. We got the car jacked up, retrieved the donut, wrench, and lugnut key, and got to work. And then could not get the freaking tire off.
Not only was this thing just stuck on fast, but the GC and I were both wearing leather flip flop-style sandals with .5 mm soles. In other words, footwear that was not up to the task of kicking an obstinantely stuck tire off of a vehicle. Okay, not great, but that's why the GC pays for roadside assistance with his insurance. He called, spoke "with" the AI-generated "person" on the other end and sure enough, the app showed that someone from "[Name] 24-7 Towing" would arrive within 20-85 minutes. Twenty minutes later, nothing. Thirty, 40, 60 minutes later? Nothing.
Eighty-five minutes later, the app reloaded and reset [Name] 24-7 Towing's arrival time back to "20 to 85 minutes". At this point, the GC called [Name] 24-7 Towing. The dude who finally answered assured us that his driver would be there "soon" and promised to "call back in two minutes with an update" in such a way that, when the GC got off the call, we both looked at one another and said, "He is only now sending his driver."
Sure enough, two minutes passed with no call and no driver, so the GC contacted the guy again. "He's on his way," the guy snapped, and hung up.
Reader, he was not on his way. It became increasingly clear as we waited that the "24-7" in "[Name] 24-7 Towing" referred not to said towing's availability, but rather the earliest point in time (possibly 24 hours but more likely a week from now) at which customers could expect assistance to show up. By this point we'd spent close to two hours on this semi-private drive in the middle-ish of nowhere off of an increasingly desolate highway. We're talking no businesses, no sidewalks, no streetlights, no nothing aside from "random passing muscle pickups that slow down, creepily shine their high beams on you for awhile, and drive away" desolate.
Finally, the driver arrived at just shy of 2 am. Dude produced a mallet with a rubber head about the size of my own and, after several attempts, managed to thwack the tire off the axle. As a bonus, he also had a wrench capable of getting the cap off the donut, so we were able to properly inflate that ourselves before driving back. (Note to self: get your own rubber mallet and don't leave your donut in the car for 12 years without checking on its condition.) We got home just after 3:00 am, meaning that we spent over twice as much time waiting to fix the flat as we had actually watching Weird Al.
Which was why I slept through most of Wednesday. So that was a bit of a damper on an otherwise fabulous show, but at least we ended up waiting somewhere relatively safe and came out of it having lost nothing more than several hours out of of our lives and a good night's sleep.
γγγ§δ»₯δΈγ§γγ
From:
no subject
I'm glad you survived the flat tire debacle. I wish those places would just say "we're really behind, it might be a while" but they never do.
From:
no subject
I wish those places would just say "we're really behind, it might be a while" but they never do.
I know, and back in the day that would have made sense, but now? When it's easy to review and warn future customers that they'll leave you stranded in the middle of nowhere for 5 hours in the dead of night, you think it would be to their benefit to be honest about that ETA.
From:
no subject
I am so glad that you at least had someone with you while you waited for the tow truck. It can be super disconcerting to be out in the middle of nowhere by yourself.
From:
no subject
And yes--very thankful I was not stranded on that road by myself. Having someone else there made a huge difference.
From:
no subject