Thank God For Cigarettes pt 2

So the show....holy shit! Dean and I left CT @ 2pm, had some good conversation and music on the way up, beating out the rush-hour traffic. We wandered around the city for a bit while waiting for friends to show up. Walked through Northeastern, down to Copley Square. Stopping into and Irish pub for a pint is where things began to get interesting.

No sooner do we sit down at the bar than this shit-housed, weird east islander looking dude starts trying to make conversation. After making small talk and pointing out my trucker hat, he states, "White trash from CT, huh?". What the fuck?! Then he backed off, did his little drunk apology. Dean talked him up a bit and found out about another bar further up the street. So we pound our pints and get the fuck out of the twilight zone episode our experience has become. Up the street, we go to the Pour House.

Damn, what a great bar! Cheap PBR on tap, cheap (good!) food, friendly bar-tenders, good music. A win-win situation. We definitely found the silver-lining to the cloud looming a bar back. We ate, drank and generally had a good time. On the way back we hit one last irish pub in Dean's buddy's neighborhood while we wait for them to call us. Hit the packy, pick up some Sparks and head to their house. We pre-game a bit and then take the T over the Roxy for the show.

Get up to the doormen at the entrance at which time we're told that the show is sold out. WTF!!!!! We start chatting with them a little and 2 of our crew zip right in and get to the floor. Fuck! So we back off around the corner and I check out what the hand stamps look like at the door. Our brains start going into overdrive about what we can do to get in. There are four of us at this point w/ two inside. No one has a black marker, is there a back entrance? Let's go buy a scalped ticket....The 2 come out and spin some ideas with us. I spy a cigarette butt on the ground and try to ash the back of my hand. Nothing. Dean puts out his cigarette and ashes my hand for me, then himself. One of our four decide he's not getting in and leaves. Time to give it a shot.

We walk up to the door like we own the place, breeze past the two guys at the door (who are stamping hands and have no idea what's going on). We go up the stairs, and are asked for ticket stubs or hand stamps. We show 'em the "stamps" and they ask where the 'Over 21' is. Ummmm, must have rubbed off, it's hot as fuck out! We're told to go back downstairs and get restamped. We get the same questions at the door by the guy we breezed past minutes earlier. Dean and I tag-teamed the dude with answers to his questions...'yeah, we've been here for like 15-20mins...it's super humid out, the stamps rubbed right off, the guys upstairs told us to come back down.' Aparantly, it worked, cause next thing we know, he's asking if we're with the band (we are if it gets us in!), and we're back in getting wristbands and are on the floor!

We run around a bit, checking out the floor. I randomly run into my friends Jay and Natalie. Haven't seen them in about 3 years! They're getting married, and life is great. Now I'm on cloud-fucking-nine, getting into a sold-out show using the oldest trick in the book, running into friends who are great, my brain is exploding!

I get up front for the last few songs of Lifetime's set, and wait for the Souls. They played great, I got a couple of Ghostship stickers up to the band, just awesome. There was a ton of crowd surfing going on. I didn't catch too many boots to the head. The worst part was some dude stage diving and gouging me in the eye. When you're jumping into a sea of people, keep your goddamned hands up! I was literally cross-eyed for about 3 songs! It must have been bad cause 2 guys in front of me were asking if I was alright.

An awesome show. Great night out, nice and cool. We grabbed some pizza on the way out and headed back to CT. An amazing evening if there ever was one. Good times!