PriorBlog

I hate to sound like an old fogy, but my review of the Arcade Fire show last night will be nothing more than a litany of my aches and pains and discomfort, as well as my wife’s.  For starters it was hot.  Once in the Orpheum I headed for a beer.  Did I say to the “bartender,” “One lukewarm beer for eight dollars please?”  No, I did not.  I expected a crisp refreshing (what a cliché way to describe a beverage, but alas, as we shall see, I did not get my cliché of choice) beer.  Instead I got a warm Harpoon… in the gut.  $9 beer in hand (you have to tip, of course, otherwise you become the jerk, and once that happens all of your complaints are negated) my pregnant wife and I (how’s that for an announcement?  I try to keep my family out of this, as anybody who really knows who Ali Larijani is already knows.  Due October 21, in case you are wondering.  Expect a long rambling post on the man at Valvoline on that day.) begin to ascend a series of lengthy carpeted (threadbare) switchbacks to arrive at our nose bleed seats, perfect for a view of the puckering and in need of immediate restoration murals (i.e. please discard the mold is tough on the allergies this time of year)  who call just below the magnificent (magnificent circa 1881 that is) ceiling home.  Heat rises.  The heat of a few thousand hipsters rose to the top of this decrepit old stove.  Two rotisserie chickens turned on slow rolling spits to my left as the opening band took their turn on the stage.  Right before going off, after announcing that they were local, somebody in the audience shouted out a request for the singer to tell the audience the name of the band.  The tickets certainly didn’t let you know who they were.  Ticket fee is only a meager $9, barely enough to get the date on there, much less the opening band or the price of beer.  The singer guy, even from the vast distance, appeared beyond pleased that somebody would ask.  It was really very sweet, to be truthful, because you knew, or at least, you suspected, that this local band, Wild something (I forget really) was on the biggest stage they’d ever been on, and this request, for recognition, not from them, but of them, aw shucks.  For all I know somebody might stumble upon this little outpost of spleen and rebuke me for not knowing the history of this immeasurably successful band.  If so, fine, but that means no tender feelings from me ever again, so take your pick.  But back to being miserable in row 389, did I mention that I wasn’t allowed to drink beer there?  No?  Oh right.  You can buy overpriced beer, but you can’t drink it, or you can drink it, but only while standing outside of the theater, in the wings, majestic fluted columns left and right, marble maybe I forget, it was all so lost of original intentions, like a sophomore’s essay on the Kantian sublime (written as an all-nighter in the Boston College dorm room Walsh 216 on February 18th in the year of Our Lord 1993.  Got a B+ for what it’s worth, or worth inflated at least.) gulping down the stuff quicker than a late to the party frat boy.  Meanwhile, my wife, or your wife if we are to continue on in this peculiar second person thing I sometimes drift into for reasons unknown but not interesting anyways, stares indignantly, hands drifting across her swollen mid-section as Magic Johnson’s might one of his collection of golden basketballs, that judgment, the proclamation of a subtle (subtle hell!) guilt derived from an unsavory and/or unsatisfactory (take your pick, I am all about choices today) encounter so many moons ago.  Why I suffer so.  One final swig and then back to the chicken coop, husbanded as we all were by the friendly but ingratiating seat finder boy (how many times last night did I have him ask me “Do you know your way?”  Answer, every time I returned from taking a leak.).  Finally the music, cast in a bath of sweat.  I was determined to hear song number four from the new album first, I almost put money on it, but my wife lost interest in whatever I could say before I could spit out the period of my sentence.  It was the perfect starter to a concert, I thought, you know the one, the one that starts with the organ music.  And no, they did not pick that one, they chose instead another, saving song four for the first number of the encore, which occurred simultaneously as we were on the way out the door.  Oh well.