How Being a Jedi Got Me Into The Dead Weather, Part 2

Part 1, here.

You may notice some striking similarities between these blog posts and some of the ones we’ve had in the past here on St. Timmy Pro. In particular, I Write About You In My Diary, Did You Just Kiss Him? (I did), and All the Drugs… and Threats. I mean, for god’s sake, I even quoted that last one in Part 1! That’s how related they are!

However, the difference is twofold. For one, the “Days With Quinn” series was actually related to St. Timmy Productions. It documented the process Quinn and I went through to garner the ability to create beautiful images like these, on film:

Secondly, the Dead Weather series is being written more than two years from then, and I am arguably better at writing this sort of thing. In truth, it’s probably just as bad as those were. Who cares.

So we left off on the wrong side of the river, feeling stupid and resentful. The show started at 9:00 and it was now just about 8:00. We were beginning to worry about getting there in time to buy tickets. Meanwhile, my hands were still sticky with sugary goodness and we hadn’t come in contact with water in about two hours.

Sora was determined that we should jog there. I maintained the classic “look at me! I’ll die!” and said we should get back to the bus stop and just wait for the next bus. We decided to compromise and walk there.

So we head west, onto the Burnside Bridge, and walk walk walk walk walk. We are basically in silence all the way across the bridge. He threatens to push me off into the river a couple of times. I laugh. He’s not joking. Some kids on skateboards zoom past us. They are incredibly cool. You have no idea the level of coolness that emanated from them.

I thought back to our time on the bus. We were those kids, with our headphones and our radness. How did things get so bad?

A single tear rolls down my face. Can’t you see that our morose, resentful, silence is tearing us apart? In the dark recesses of my mind, I’m wishing we could go back to the young, wistful days of our erotic anaconda romance.

Why can’t we just go back to playing Seven Nation Army in my basement over and over and over again, driving my family insane? Why can’t we just play Portal again and again on least time? Why can’t we just play Halo 3 and then listen to Katie’s mom berating Sora? WHYYYY?!

We make it across the river and it’s, like, 8:20 or so. Thirteen blocks to go. We hit just about every little red hand telling us to stop at the intersections. I guess that means we hit every green light, which means the opposite when you’re walking as when you’re driving. Well, no, it doesn’t mean the opposite, it just implies the opposite. It’s bad.

So I go back on what I was saying before and we start to run. This was merely mathematics. I timed the distance between blocks and the time the lights seemed to change at the intersections, and realized that if we gained ten or so seconds for each block, then we wouldn’t have to stop at the intersections anymore. Screw it, it made sense at the time.

We get to 13th street or so and we’re like, “Well, fuck, this is 13th and Burnside, where’s the Crystal Ballroom?” So we ask somebody.

Which is when you zoom out the map and see our glaring mistake.

View Larger Map

We were standing right by it. We didn’t actually make a mistake.

The person we asked looks at us like we’re dumb and then points. We go, “Oh” and walk the rest of the way. And there, devastatingly, on the window of the ticket booth is a sign that looks like this:

Okay, so, I don’t have Photoshop on this computer. So sue me.

It was sold out! We just spent the last six hours on our way here, and it’s sold out. Completely ridiculous. We’re like, “Well now what do we do?”

There’s a guy who’s all, “Yo, anyone be needing tickets all up in here?”

Wait, was that racist? The guy was white. And he was a total sleazeball. And so we asked him how much, and he was like, “how much are you willing to pay?” And we tell him, and he just kind of goes “pfff” and turns away. Total asshole.

I have the absolutely brilliant idea to walk around the block and look for back doors to sneak in. Hey, look, I was desperate. It seemed like a good idea. We’d just… I dunno, pry open the side door and sneak back stage.

Yeah, there are no back doors to that place. Some asshole architect didn’t put back doors on the building, just to screw with me and Sora in the future. I swear.

So we get back onto the front side of the street and we’re basically just like, “Well, fuck.”

We run into another ticket scalper and we’re just like, “Whoaa, LATFH.” Complete with a fully unshaven face, and spandex pants. I swear to god he was wearing spandex pants. He’s wearing, like, pantex. Wait, are those tampons?

Okay, well, yeah, he was probably still wearing them.

Anyway, he’s all, “Hey, you guys need some tickets?”

And we’re like, “Yeah.”

And then he’s all “Follow me.” So we follow him. He takes us back to the first scalper and goes, “they need two.” The first scalper doesn’t recognize us and asks how much we’re willing to pay. We tell him and he goes, “PFFFFFFFFFF” and walks away. Seriously, huge-ass ass. Ass ass ass. Stupid.

We move away a little bit and hatch a scheme. No one is buying the scalped tickets, because no one wants to by scalped tickets for 200 bucks a pop. So we decide to wait. We hang out about ten feet away and look nonchalant. We’re in earshot, though, and we listen to the scalpers peddling their ticket wares. We figure that if we wait long enough, their prices will lower enough to be affordable by us. Even reasonable, perhaps.

So we wait.

I’ve learned that waiting is often the best option in situations like this. If the tortoise and the hare taught me anything, it’s that you should run as fast as possible as long as you can, and then just wait for your opponent to catch up. Just wait. Take a nap, maybe. It’ll all work out.

So weee wwaaaiiittttttt.

It’s fascinating, really, the fact that those guys make any money. Everyone should have done what we did. I mean, jeez, if everyone was just patient, then everyone would be able to get in for, like, 10 dollars a ticket and the scalping industry would be dead. Because they’re sleazeballs who don’t deserve the money. They buy tickets for the sole purpose of making a profit. If they hadn’t bought those tickets to begin with, then Sora and I could have gotten in. True story.

You may have noticed that the title of this series of blogs is “How Being a Jedi Got Me Into The Dead Weather”, and yet neither one of those two things has happened yet in my retelling of these events. The title remains unexplained. Here, let me reveal something previously shrouded in a haze of mystery.

This is the shirt I was wearing:

Okay, so, I don’t know why I don’t have a better picture of you in that shirt. I mean me in that shirt. I don’t know why I said you.

Oh, here’s one.

I was wearing that shirt. It says Jedi on it.

Part 3.

Filed under The Dignified Servants | Comments (2)