We have lives outside of this one but you fail to realize that. 
You call us crying.  You call us enraged.  You want god, the CEO or both to help you, but since that can't and never will happen, you drone on to us.  It's our job at technical support to help you when you can't connect or blow the fuses out of your head because you didn't know what you were rolled and now you can't remember your password.  All fine.  But you're a pain in the ass and soon as that clock strikes quitting time I need a beer. 
80 mph over five valley freeways from Pasadena to N. Hollywood.  Unlock two deadbolts and the doorknob to get inside.  Get a kiss from the girlfriend and slip into some evening wear for the show.  I stand in front of a full length mirror adjusting cuff links and Kirsten rises up on tip toes to plant one on my cheek. 
"Almost ready," I say. 
"No rush." 
It's like old fashioned t.v. life before "All In the Family" came along.  'This is good,' I find myself thinking, 'a happy life in the post-suburban valley.'  There's no rush.  Just like Kirsten says, but I'm thirsty and ready to go in a minute. 
"I'll drive there if you want to drive home," she mentions just as I'm climbing into the passenger side of the Montero Sport.  It is a car for yuppies with spunk or moms with little cretinous athletes, but we are neither. 
"I don't expect to be in any condition to drive home," I caution. 
"But you're bigger than me.  I can't even drive after two drinks, and besides you're from Wisconsin.," she counters. 
"That makes sense," I say and agree to drive home after the show.  The show that starts at Ten.  It is now ten to ten.  We take the 101 to Hollywood where The Deep Eynde, some other bands and Babyland are all playing at the Coconut Teaser.  Forgive for not knowing the other band names but I was pissed and getting pisseder in more ways than one as the night progressed. 
The Coconut Teaser is located on the 8000 block of Sunset Blvd. which means we drove around amidst and weaving through a veritable side show of vacuous image mongers bent on the over priced privilege of being seen in the hippest of haunts.  My mood was sour.  "I'm here because some of my girlfriend's friends are playing tonight.  This is a huge fucking city!  What the fuck is all of yours' fucking problems.  Can't you go somewhere else!?" I'm screaming out from behind the silencing steel and glass of the SUV.  Parking is frustrating.  I hate Hollywood.  Kirsten hates me hating Hollywood because the higher my mercurial rage rises the more frustrated she gets trying to find a spot to park.  We take a wrong turn and end up on a road that goes straight up to the homes of some real assholes living behind huge iron gates.  This concert review is not the place to vent against those bastards, but ask yourself one question, "Who the hell do they think they are that they have to live behind steel and reinforced concrete, burrowed into the side of a hill like a tick sucking at the rim of a dog's asshole?"  And if the vague impressions sensed in the answer make you uncomfortable, then lob a flaming cocktail of the molotov variety over their walls and see how fast they are willing to live in the asshole like all us other ticks. 
We end up in a parking ramp.  We end up taking a wrong turn in the parking ramp.  Now, why any parking ramp would have a course that leads to a dead end I could never tell.  But the genius behind the one right at 8000 Sunset managed to design one into it.  The car in front of us that we follow into the dead end branch begins backing up.  We don't understand why at first but merely stop the car to watch what he was doing.  He is backing up at about five miles per hour and even though he is looking back over his shoulder, he smashes into a concrete support beam. 
"Come on, let's get out of here," I say.  We drive on as he begins to yell at the woman accompanying him and inspect the damage done to his car's rear.  I suspect he might take his anger out on his girl's rear later because his screaming at her would indicate his driving straight into a concrete beam is clearly his passenger's fault. 
It is now ten thirty as we pull into a vacant spot.  A post glam girl cum new wave goth and her rock-a-billy boy stroll past the car to get on the elevator.  The newest wanker trend is to grease your hair back and up into a "Johnny Suede" coiffure and wear a shirt that looks like a 1950's gas station attendants'.   "Why don't you go home and jerk-off to Social Distortion a little more before coming out in public," I grumble mostly to myself.  Kirsten laughs.  Her laugh cheers me up.  The stupid anger I felt welling up subsides.  I know we've missed The Deep Eynde now.  They were going on first.  I accept the fact that we've now missed the band I primarily came to see.  I've seen them plenty of times before so it isn't a terrible let down and I know I can check them out next week in Silver Lake so I take a deep breath, remember the laugh that soothed my nerves, remember how desperately I need a beer and proceed to the club. 
We are on the guestlist under my girlfriend's name and are still charged 6 bucks a piece to enter.  "Normally being on the guest list means you get in for free," she tells the Russian collecting money at the door. 
"Is discount," he says, "at the Coconut Teaser." 
This same guy later takes a beer away from me because it was smuggled in from outside.  They have to expect that when they charge $4.75 per beer.  I now despise this club.  Bands don't get a true guest list, drinks are over priced, parking is nowhere, and the stories about band's getting ripped off there are prolific.  But no matter how much I say I dislike the place, the fact remains intact that I gaily handed over 40 of my dollars to them. 
The club has a patio with heat lamps to keep people from whining about being forced to go outside and smoke in cruel inhuman temperatures as low as 40 degrees fahrenheit. Around my girlfriend is the air of a reunion.  People coming up and saying how long it has been.  How much her band meant to them.  How great it is to see her.  Reminiscing, camaraderie and drink buying swept across the patio.  I borrow a cigarette from Chris, The Deep Eynde's bassist because I don't smoke.  Fate Fatal, their vocalist, is dressed in heavy duty multi-colored plastic bags with yellow eye make up streaked back past his temples across the shaved sides of his head.  I tell him if he was a super hero his name would have to be "Golden Shower."  Everyone seems in good cheer and I am too.  I work at a smuggled in Modelo's beer listening to a friend recount her black out after leaving my place on New Year's Eve. 
"I had a really great time New year's Eve," she says, "don't think I didn't, but I think I left just on time.  I guess I sort of blacked out and by the time my girlfriend and I got home I have no memory.  But I woke up the next morning laying in the backyard covered in vomit and dogshit." 
"Aiiiigggghhhh!!!!!"  I scream twice. "Aaaiiiggghhh!!  How the hell did that happen?" 
"I don't really know but I guess... Just a minute I'll be right back," she says and I never see her again that night. 
The second band of the evening starts playing.  On the flyer I have here, it says they're called "Third Grade Teacher."  I remember they were wearing what looked like Catholic school uniforms.  Imagine a band full of Angus Youngs if you will.  Their fairly capable female vocalist hollered in semi-sarcasm, "I'm a rage-a-holic.  Slam me against the wall."  I'm an alcoholic.  Give me more goddamn beer. I went outside not too interested in the band.  That's when the Russian came out and took away my beer.  He yelled at me.  I said, "But I didn't bring it in.  I found it.  I've been picking up abandoned drinks all night.  It's cheaper drinking that way."  He didn't know what to say so he just repeated what he had said before.  Da, I geet et, okay? 
Babyland came on and the power went out.  The power to the stage anyway.  They blew a fuse.  I missed it.  I was outside smoking and drinking.  They came back on.  Lots of multi-layered percussion.  I liked it.  The singer screamed stuff like, "I'm all alone" and "Poor me" and "good lord, life just ain't what I want it to be."  There's some good power behind his thick vocal chords but I had been drinking a bit too much to put up with any whiny bullshit.  There were people outside who were getting on with heavy drinking, people who were just off heroin for three months and clinging stiffly to booze for the replacement high, people freely spending money they didn't have, and people who didn't care that Babyland blew the power supply for a second time.  The show was over.  Time to go to Ralph's and get a six pack for the after bar.  A six pack I didn't need.  The Deep Eynde's singer, Fate, and their guitarist Daniel invited people over.  Somehow neither of them had keys to their own place.  I drank beer outside.  Somebody broke in.  We were inside.  We were outside.  Some girl into astrology with flowers in her hair chattered of astrological phenomenon and hokum while I drank and listened. 
"That house is haunted," somebody said. "It's been empty for over ten years."  I looked at the house and pissed on it.  I walked around to the other side of the haunted house and puked on it.  Kirsten came around and found me.  Everyone was tired.  I was sick and tired.  She drove home.  I knew I'd be in no condition to drive.  I tilted the seat back far and sunk into it. 
"Did you have fun?"  I asked.  "I had fun."  She assured me that she too had had fun.   I had been driven to drink and was now being driven home from drink.  I want to bring this around full circle to that line in the beginning about how you don't know we have lives outside of our brief encounters with each other, but that would be completely pointless.  I think I'm angry because it's always the best people who have to wake up covered in dogshit and vomit.  Or something like that. 

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