The diffused grey light streaming in the tall windows on an overcast Monday is my best friend as I polish off a second double latte. My head has one of those soft throbs right now that comes from two or three too many cheap beers which are inevitably followed by a fitful night’s sleep. It’s not that split-your-head-open-with-an-axe kind of hangover or anything…I wasn’t even close to drunk—just one or two more than advisable while Chuck and I played air hockey and pool and foosball and Golden Tee and Big Game Hunter at the Walrus last night. And I’ll only mention the peanut fight to point out that I think bar owners should be tolerant of naturally occurring low-level projectile skirmishes when they practically encourage them by placing large barrels of in-the-shell salted nuts within arms reach of the bar. It’s not like we hit anyone but each other. But I digress. No, I’ve just got this velvet hammering that comes with the diminishment of the youthful resilience that used to absorb such things. It doesn’t help that the barista has been playing an endless succession of live Grateful Dead recordings either. It would be so relatively comfortable otherwise.
PAUSE.
Ahh. I just dialed up The Head on the Door on my iPod and that helps. I should mention I’m in my fourth hour at a downtown Boulder, Colorado coffee shop. Why I’m here is really an accident…or at least a mistake. I’m supposed to attend a meeting as proxy for the president of our division that he told me was today. It’s not…it’s tomorrow, so I’ve re-scheduled flights and hotels and have made this corner table my office for the day. I’m actually getting more done than I would in the office on a typical day, what without the phone and the drop-bys and such. I also feel I'm in a span of happy serendipity, which I hope continues.
Last night, before the beer and the flying peanuts and dead digital deer, we went to a nice dinner. As we entered the restaurant, some lyrics from a band I saw
last Tuesday in San Francisco, The Hold Steady, were running through my head:
How am I supposed to know that you're high if you wont let me touch you?
How am i supposed to know that you're high
if you wont even dance?
And then WHAM! Down the bar sits Craig Finn, lead singer of said band. In the flesh. On a bar stool. Looking like my coworker Phil’s older brother and all. I mean, how fucking weird is that?! Sure an Elvis or Curt Cobain or Elliott Smith sighting might have been stranger, but only because they’re alleged to be dead. I was literally humming this guy’s song in my head when I looked up to see him! I got inexplicably tingly with goose bumps and wondered if I were dead.
Anyway, I pointed him out to Chuck, then kind of felt my arms as if this would be some assurance that I wasn’t hallucinating after being hit by a car or meteor or something.
Trying to be nonchalant and un-superfanish, I walked up to Craig and thanked him for putting on a great show in San Francisco last week…he graciously said thanks in an almost bashful way. The woman he was chatting with gave off an incredulous laugh as if to say “wow, he really is a rock star.” We ate dinner, they ate dinner. We went to the Walrus and The Hold Steady played the Fox Theater…which I only found out afterward.
I’m feeling compelled to make the trip to Denver where they’re playing tonight, but I have a hob knob dinner in advance of the meeting I’m here for.
Damn responsibilities.
