so, a pirate walks into a bar, sits down and orders a drink. the bartender notices that the pirate has a captain’s wheel down his pants. he says to the pirate, “hey, do you know you have a captain’s wheel down your pants? doesn’t it hurt?” and the pirate says, “arrrr, it’s drivin’ me nuts!”
- ben folds
the show was most excellent. i’d been to la zona rosa before (to see blue october last year), but it looked different this time. apparently, with its seventeen zillion garage doors inside, la zona rosa can expand or contract to any size it wants. for ben folds the place was huge, so between the stage and where shaun and i stood at the back of the room near the soundboard, there was a giant sea of bobbing heads, waving arms, airborne black t-shirts. i’ve always liked being near the back at general-admission, standing-room-only shows; the view most of the time is nearly unobstructed, and there is a happy lack of crowd crush, of armpits and sweat and bushy hair, of plastic cup condensation and accidental cigarette burns. standing near the back, there’s plenty of room for shuffling around, for leaning over to talk to a friend, for being able to leave, get drinks, and make a successful and quick return to the exact spot you occupied before you left. i think i’m older than my years.
ben folds is ferocious on the piano. he trips out perfect, haunting melodies just before smashing into the keys with his forearm, just before smashing into the keys with a guitar, just before standing atop the piano and yelling into the mike in scathing backwards-baseball-cap imitation of fred durst. he pretty much just played stuff from his new album (which i cannot afford to own), except for the encore, which consisted of three ben folds five songs and one ben folds song. during the old-school shit, you could hear the crowd singing along, and i wondered, what must it be like to have your band break up, to embark on a solo career and try to move past your old band, only to have to play old-band stuff to keep the crowd happy?
after the show, shaun and i raced around to the back of the building, where we joined the small crowd waiting for the band. the drummer and guitarist both came out and milled around signing autographs. we got the guitarist’s autograph, and made sure we got his url, since he’d mentioned it during the performance. we waited awhile for ben folds to come out, but shaun was silly drunk and i was tired and hungry, so instead we went for pizza at the bottom floor of my old dorm. austin and i have never had a great relationship, and it was quite surreal to walk down san antonio street past the building and see the elevators through the sliding glass doors, to sit outside the pizza place and listen to the kids talk about raves and fraternities and keggers and what what. sometimes i like austin, and sometimes it just makes me sad.
pizza and then there was
