The night started out with great promise. I met Sarah at the Cha-Cha Lounge, a bar in Silverlake that has a photo booth and a vending machine filled with things like Big League Chew and Growing Pains trading cards. Our friend Mark was having a going away party because he’s moving to Seattle. Mark is one of those people who really makes you doubt the existence of karma. He’s among the nicest guys I know, but he finds himself in the middle of awful, completely unprovoked disasters on an almost daily basis. When his truck was stolen out of his driveway a few weeks ago, he decided it was time that his romance with L.A. come to an end. A week after the truck was stolen, he got a ticket in the mail from the state of California. Whoever stole the truck went through a toll booth without paying. No word yet on what Mark’s going to do about the ticket, but I’m sure it will come back to haunt him somehow.

For Mark’s going away party, he’d asked the bartender if he could play nothing but Chicago and the Doors. Chicago, because he’s from Chicago, and the Doors, because they are the musical equivalent of Los Angeles. The bartender said no at first because he was afraid the regulars would be turned off, but he changed his tune when Mark promised him $30. Mark had decided to add America to the mix as well, because we live in America. He told me that night that America is actually not from America, which I never knew. Actually, I just looked it up on Wikipedia, and they were sort of from America; they met at school in London, where their fathers were stationed in the Air Force. I just spent the last five minutes reading up on America on All Music Guide. You can really fall down a rabbit hole when you start clicking around on All Music Guide. Did you know they released an album in 2007 produced by Fountains of Wayne’s Adam Schlesinger and James Iha from the Smashing Pumpkins? And that it sounds kind of amazing?

Last week I went out to lunch with Mark and helped him run some errands that he couldn’t do on account of having a stolen truck. We stopped at the post office so Mark could mail a box of sticks to his new apartment in Seattle. I told Sarah about this later and she seemed concerned. “Why would anyone do that?” she asked, puzzled. “They have sticks in Seattle, you know. Is he okay?” We discovered the reason for his stick hoarding at the going-away party when he presented us with a bunch of sticks bundled together and speckled with paint, with a note attached that read, “This is the sharing stick. Don’t keep this stick. You must share it.”

“Neat,” said Sarah. “But it isn’t just one stick. It’s a bunch of sticks.”

“Yup,” Mark said, smiling.

“I bet you could charge $20 for one of these at an art gallery gift shop,” I offered.

“I guess,” Mark agreed.

“You should put up a website so that you can track the sticks,” I suggested.

“That’s not the point,” he said, annoyed.

We were feeling a little buzzed from our $1.50 PBR drafts, so Sarah and I walked around the corner to get hot dogs from a hot dog truck that was parked on the street. They sold 4 different types of hot dog that were all made from locally-farmed animal pieces. I got the beef dog. Sarah got the spicy pork. They were okay, but really expensive. $5 each. That’s a lot of money for a hot dog. Especially when you can’t turn around in L.A. without tripping over a bacon-wrapped hot dog vendor, which pretty much puts every other kind of hot dog to shame, no matter how much farther they have to truck the pig carcasses.

Shortly after our hot dog adventure, we said our good-byes and went home. It was not the last time we’d see Mark that week, but more on that later.

My friends picked me up for the show around 8:30. I had three tickets because I had originally planned to go with Sarah and Eric from the Sunset Rubdown show, but Eric bagged because I gave him the wrong date and Sarah didn’t really care one way or the other so I sold the tickets to a couple friend, valiantly taking the third wheel position on a night of my own making. A side note: when people use the phrase “third wheel,” what sort of vehicle are they referring to, exactly? The stability of any two-wheeled vehicle I can think of is enhanced by a third wheel. Why do you think they always make retarded kids ride three-wheeled bikes?

Due to unforeseeable circumstances, I ended the night up as a unicycle. When we got to the show, the opening band, Timber Timbre, had already taken the stage. Here’s what you have to know about Timber Timbre: they were slow. They were slower than any band I’ve ever heard before. Sometimes perpetually slow bands are referred to as slowcore. Timber Timbre were slower than slowcore. They were more like stagnantcore. They were exactly the sort of band that people would go to see in a David Lynch movie, only in a David Lynch movie, everyone would be dancing.

The show was at the Bootleg Theater. I’d been excited to go back to the Bootleg after seeing a play there last month. It’s a really cool venue. It’s a biggish warehouse with high ceilings and plywood on the walls that makes it look like it’s in the process of being built, even though the theater has been there for several years. They sell food from a bus called the Gastro-Bus, which they either park inside the warehouse or out back, depending on how many people they think they can cram into the main space.

My friends and I managed to get a table at the back of the Theater. We didn’t have any chairs; just a table. It was right at the height where you had to really stoop down to lean on it, but we were leaning on it anyway, because we would have felt stupid having a table during a leaning-type of band and not leaning.

The unfortunate thing about Timber Timbre is that, even though they were slow enough to make a heroin addict feel restless, the music was turned up really loud, so we were forced to pay attention. Also, the sound system was horrible, and every time the bass player hit a note (which was about once every 45 seconds), it crackled and sparked through the speakers like dirty machine gun fire.

I was leaning on the table next to the female half of the couple (I’ve omitted their names for reasons of privacy) when the female friend passed out. It was the strangest thing. She hadn’t had a thing to drink all night. The only thing we can figure is that she fainted because of the music, like an epileptic reaction to strobe lights. The weirdest part was that just before she passed out, I looked to my left and saw that I was standing next to the guy who played the nerd in Wet Hot American Summer, who coincidentally starred in a video I was in once, for a song by a band called the Knockout Drops. It was shot by my friend Chris Cassidy, and I wasn’t even really in the video … I was just dancing in the background of a club scene. The nerd guy would have had no idea who I was, but I’ve run into him a few times since in New York and L.A., and every time I do I think, “there’s that guy again.”

Luckily the boyfriend of the girlfriend was there to break her fall. “We should get her outside,” I said. He started to lift her up while I stood there stupidly, watching him struggle. “Will you help me, dude?” he shouted, understandably irritated. As I bent down to help pick her up, though, she suddenly snapped out of it. “Where am I?” she asked, which I thought was a cliche but turns out to be totally real.

We went outside and they sat on the ground while I stood above them and made myself useless. We all unanimously agreed that it was for the best that they go home, in case she was sick. He didn’t mind that much–he’d thought he was going to see Crystal Antlers, anyway. Totally different head.

I decided to stay and take a cab home. I had to borrow $20 from the girlfriend though, which, I don’t know. In retrospect, maybe it wasn’t the coolest thing to borrow $20 from someone who had just passed out so I could stay and have a good time. If it wasn’t My Week of Many Shows, I probably would have just gone home. In a way, I guess we could say it’s your fault.

Timber Timbre went on for about another 4 hours. By the time they left the stage, I was good and soused. I wandered around by myself and stopped ever so often to lean against and wall and pretend I was doing something important with my phone. But really I was just playing Boggle.

The Antlers from my perspective

Finally, at about 10:30, the Antlers took the stage. In spite of the technical limitations, they put on an excellent show. I was a little worried because I’d read that their album was recorded in a bedroom, basically. But they played live like seasoned professionals. Of all the bands I’d seen so far that week, they were probably the sloppiest. But in a good way, in a way that felt alive and rock n’ roll. I think I said this in my review of their album, but I would compare them to a lo-fi Arcade Fire. Which, it’s funny that Arcade Fire would be so big that one would be able to call another band a lo-fi version of them.

After the Regina Spektor review from the other day, one of my female friends got annoyed with me for speculating about her weight. She had a decent point … I would be much more likely to discuss a female performer’s appearance than that of a male performer, when it has nothing whatsoever to do with the quality of her performance or music. So I decided that maybe I could even things out by paying special attention to the Antlers’ weight. I’ll tell you, those are some average-weighted looking guys. I wonder how much they weighed underneath those flannel shirts? I bet their jeans were size 32, at least. I mean, they’re fine for indie-rockers, but I personally wished their outfits had been a little more revealing.

I stayed through the encore and then I called a cab. It was the first time I’ve ever taken a cab in Los Angeles. I’m glad it worked out that I didn’t need to drive, because I was in no shape to do so. I ended up paying with a credit card since I’d spent all the cash I took from the fainting girlfriend on beer. So technically, I didn’t even need to borrow the $20. It wasn’t one of my proudest nights, I would say, but probably exactly the sort of night that’s to be expected when you’ve stayed behind after your friend has passed out to see a band that records in their bedroom in a venue that looked like the contractors quit halfway through the job.

She’s fine, by the way.

Stats
Show length: 2.5 hours
Drinks consumed: 3 Stella Artois, 2 Bud Lights
Rock points: Timber Timbre – 5, simply for their ability to make someone pass out; The Antlers – 8