Screw The Cure...it's Tuesdays I'm In Love...

Tomorrow, Tuesday will probably be the highlight day of my week for the second week in a row.

I know. I should be working on whipping out a homemade Prozac recipe (Ingridiants: vodka, Sprite, a dash of powdered lemonade. Serve with ice in 32oz. cup) but I'm not. Probably because last Tuesday kicked so much ass.

First, the upcoming. I won't totally jump to conclusions (this weekend, on paper, still holds more promise than last weekend) but tomorrow night, the one, the only, the guy who hopefully one day will produce the #1 on the Billboard chart, multiplatinum major-label debut Of Mirth and Matter album himself, Butch Walker, is coming back to Athens.

Confession: Walker's been through this town at least twice whilst I have been a resident and I've missed both chances prior to Tuesday. So any ladies reading this I bump into tomorrow evening, if I start trotting out a lame-ass line like "I may be the biggest Butch fan here...I saw him back when the Marvelous 3 was still called The Floyds" can A. say "really? I give not two shits" and B. point out the logical fallacy of my claim, what with missing multiple shows.

They can even bring up my previous non-trip to Atlanta.

But it'd mean they read this thing, which has to be a plus overall.

So but then anyway, the point is, Butch is going to kick ass, Legion Field's decidedly non-ideal acoustics nonwithstanding. It's glam-rock, not the London Symphony Orchestra performing Stravinsky. And it will kick. Ass.

Much like last Tuesday (see, it was all a set-up for that segue, the me-telling-you-my-current-Tuesday plans thing).

Last Tuesday was my multiple triumph over adversity night at Tate Center. Featuring Mr. Chuck Palahniuk. Chuck P (because that's easier to write, and echoes Public Enemy frontman Chuck D, who has also spoken at Tate) was doing a hybrid Q&A/Reading/booksigning thing. My thoughts prior to the event were: well, sure a lot of kids know Fight Club, but how many still think it's a movie, not a book first? I'll get there at 6:30, an hour before it starts, get a primo seat and have time to grab Little Italy before Wild Wing.

I was off a bit on my estimation.

6:34pm on a rainy, perfect-for-a-speaker-coming-from-the-upper-northwest evening. I find a nice parking spot, duck over to Tate, and then see the sign. "Sold Out."

I notice it doesn't specify what sold out, so I go upstairs to the ticket window, denial still strong. Ticket window: closed. Damn.

I then decide to wait, as I knew of two other possible attendees, and both might have an extra ticket. I wait for 15 minutes of this and then spot a guy with some seriously fresh-from-90210 sideburns asking the kiosk folks if they have tickets. I hear "there's a list" and dash over to be the next on the wait list faster than Reggie Bush running from NCAA investigations.

Then I wait.

Showtime is 7:30. At 7:34, Mr. Tommy Valentine walks out and announces he has some extra tickets. I buy one--for face value no less, so even more props to Tommy on top of the kick-ass show he put on at 40Watt that previous Saturday--and four rows from the back I'm in.

There's a story I won't reproduce here about a Brownie and a heating pad. No, not special brownies, but the analogous-to-Cub Scouts-are-to-Boy-Scouts-They-are-to-Girl-Scouts Brownies. He says he hears stories like that a lot after the Guts story.
We then get the Guts story.

After that (which only one person excused themselves during) we get a Q and A and talk of life on the road, plus a really great politcal metaphor about the two party system being like two divorced parents with the public as the only child that I will get into detail on how brilliant it is in another post.

Then there was the book signing.

I waited.

It was 9.

I waited some more.

It was 10pm, and I had moved three feet.

I waited some more...again.

I made calls, I hoped my kidneys would hold up. I waited.

At a quarter of 12, I was the last one in line (allowed, about 50 unhappy folks behind me are probably still pissed at the University Union, Mike Adams and the Tate Center.)

I got to get a signed copy of Choke, and I got to tell Chuck Alisan's terrible Tobasco Sauce story.

Plus, I came away from the whole thing with a new hope for not being single. Prior to that Tuesday, I was beginning to have serious doubts about dating. Is it pickyness? Sure, in a way. I prefer to say I know what interests me and what doesn't, and that it's unfair to both parties to try and continue on with anything beyond a friendship when the sparks won't fly. Girls who read--and I'm not talking about US Weekly--can get the sparks flying. Girls who read dark, funny, literate stuff like Palahniuk really can get the sparks flying (because then it's not just a shared love of reading, it's a shared love of reading similar stuff. I'm sure Candace Bushnell is good at what she does, but I have zero intentions of ever reading Four Blondes.)
And Tate was full of ladies who apparently dug Chuck. After a mini-anhedonic state where I had convinced myself that any girl I found really interesting would then say "oh, and have you met my boyfriend" I got overwhelmed. Were there some clearly non-single girls there? Sure. But they can't all be single right?