How Being a Jedi Got Me Into The Dead Weather Show, part 3

Part 1! Part 2!

Everyone knows the rule of three: there is a Sith lord, and he has an apprentice, and that’s it. But the Apprentice will always have a secret apprentice of their own. The rule of three is really more like the rule of powers of three, because there’s probably even more secret apprentices than we can count. That’s how the Sith roll.

Which, of course explains the title change. You have two of the same, and one different. And this makes it funny. Come on everybody and laugh it up at the hilarity that is in the new title (the word Show). Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Ha  ha ha ha. Ha ha.

You may notice the way that this story has been split up into three parts. You may think that this is due to my personal laziness, not wanting to write one particularly long blog post, instead splitting my workload into three manageable, bite-sized chunks. Not bite-sized, more like… couple-of-cookies-sized-but-not-quite-a-full-plate. You’d be wrong though. In fact, the only thing I’m writing after deciding to split it up are the preludes like this. The actual story is one long text file.

Then I have them set up to auto-post on various upcoming days at random times. Spreading them out like this is actually a clever scheme to increase traffic.

Let me break it down.

Every time I post something new, the traffic spikes a noticeable amount. This probably seems like an obvious fact, but quite on the contrary. Statistics might prove you wrong. No, rather, statistics would prove you right. Honestly, I’m not sure what I’m talking about anymore, I can’t be bothered to go back and read what I’ve written already.

So. We left off at Sora and me arriving at the Crystal Ballroom. Tickets were sold out and we were camping out by the scalpers hoping they would run out of water before us, or something. Sora is visibly pissed off at me, threatening still to carry me back to the river and throw me in. My hands are still irrevocably sticky from that damn popsicle thing.

Sora spawned the brilliant idea to take a walk. We figured that we had enough time to get to the river and back before the scalpers were whittled down. I was obviously very hesitant to oblige, due to recent threats involving me and the aforementioned river, but in the end I agreed.

So we walked the few blocks back down to the Mighty Willamette River. If that’s how you spell that. I don’t actually live here.

We joked that the band might be down on the rocks. And Alison Mosshart and Sora would be lighting up the night if you know what I’m saying. It’s a lightbulb pun, shut up. And me and Jack White would be engaging in insane corkscrew haymakers if you know what I’m saying.

They weren’t and we didn’t. Those two things I just said don’t actually mean anything. They really don’t.

We did however dunk my hands into that toxicity and destickify my hands. This was not much of an improvement. My hands instantly burnt off and I was left with two dull stumps.

Sora shook me awake. Whew, it was just a dream. Apparently I had fallen asleep against the Dead Weather’s bus.

“HEY, GET OFF OF THERE!” Someone was screaming. It was a man. He whacked me across the face with a guitar. Oh man, it was Dean Fertita. Crap, I pissed off Dean Fertita.

Suddenly I woke up again, still leaning against the… bike rack or whatever I was leaning against before. Oh man, it was one of those weird double nightmares that happen in movies and stuff. Except it was always a triple one. I knew something must be weird in this reality but what was it?!?!? And why were my hands so sticky, god dammit?

Sora and I were just standing there still. WHAT IS GOING ON?! I’m standing there trying to figure this crazy stuff out when a man comes over. He looks kind of like Duff from Ace of Cakes. Or, rather, as I remember it… he was Duff from Ace of Cakes. He probably looked nothing like him. But hey, it was some weird dream world, what does it matter? He goes, “Hey, nice shirt.”

What is your game, Dream-Duff? What are you trying to achieve by donging my mind like this? What are you doiiiiinngg.

“Thanks,” I say, skeptical of his cakely antics. He kind of motions toward his own shirt. It’s this.

Actually, I’m pretty certain that’s not what it was.  It was something cool and Star Wars and with a stormtrooper or stormtroopers on it. It is blue or something. But pretty cool. Wait, no, he doesn’t look like Duff, he looks like David.

Hahahaha, hilarious. David Tennant. From Doctor Who. Wearing a stormtrooper shirt. Like the guy! With the shirt! And the cakes! Ha ha ha ha ha.

HA HA HA HA HA. HE’S THE DOCTOR AND HE’S IN DOCTOR WHO AND HE’S IN HARRY POTTER! HAHAHAHAHAH. OH MAN. This is rich.

I DON’T REALLY KNOW WHAT MY ORIGINAL JOKE WAS!! HA HA HA HA, THIS IS INSANE MAN.

PART 4 SOOOOONNNN!!!

okay, not really, here’s part 4.

Duff from Ace of Cakes walks over and tells me he likes my shirt, my shirt that says “JEDI” on it that my sister made for me, because she’s pretty cool. He points out that he’s wearing a Star Wars shirt too. This is pretty cool.

Then he says, “So, you guys going to the show?”

“Well, hopefully,” Sora says.

“Oh you guys need tickets?” he asks.

“Yeah…”

“You guys need free tickets?”

We laugh. “Well, yeah, that would be preferable.”

“Come with me.”

Wait, what? Me and Sora exchange a look and then follow Duff to the ticket window. He says, “I’m on the list” or something, and shows them his ID. We get our hands stamped and in we go.

This, we decide. Is really freaking cool.

Dear Guy Who Probably Didn’t Actually Look Like Duff Goldman,

You are very cool! And I think we were kind of too awestruck to be able to thank you properly before we got lost in the crowd.

So. Thank you. Thank you so much, you did a very awesome thing, and we really, really, really appreciate it.

We honestly, I think, by that point were really not expecting to be able to get into that show, but then you swooped in with your cake and your awesomeness, and with a beautiful act of kindness, you not only gave us an opportunity to have a great night, but you also restored a large portion of our faith in humanity.

You are a beautiful human being.

Thank you so much. I’m sorry I keep calling you Duff.

Love,
Ben and Sora.

I’m putting a jump here. So, the rest of this story after the jummmppp! Or if you’ve been linked directly to it, then… just keep reading, I guess. Okay. Cool.

So there we were. We had ascended the stairs and emerged in the spring-loaded awesome room, lights emanating from the stage, the shadowy figures of the large crowd standing around floating in the air. My hands were sticky, but nobody cared. But I kind of did still, so I sneaked to the drinking fountain thing by the place they were selling food and wetted my hands. I WAS FREEEE.

We made our way into the crowd and towards the front. The opening act, Harlem were playing. And hey, while I’m on the subject, they’re a pretty good band! Check them out! Here is a picture of them playing.

I took that using a super high-powered zoom lens. We were actually really close to the stage, but even with my zoom lens they appeared to be far away. There’s actually a very simple explanation for that: the members of Harlem are tiny. Proportional to the sun, they are mercury. Here’s a picture of them sitting on top of a dollhouse.

Wait, no, that’s not right. Whatever.

We moved forward a little bit, and guess who we ran into? Just guess, I’m not going to tell you yet. Just think it over, we’ll come back to us. Try to figure out who we ran into. His name has six syllables in it. Or four. Or whatever.

Harlem finished their set (seriously guys, go listen to them, they are fantastic.) And we hung out while the men in black set up the Dead Weather’s stuff. I think that’s what these pictures are of:

So who did we run into? THIS GUY:::::

Also sometimes known as THIS GUY:

Johnny Hergert. And Dusty.

That was cool.

Then The Dead Weather came on.

They were absolutely fantastic! Wooooo. It was beautiful. The mosh pit was kind of crazy, and it was hella hot. Like, hella hot. Hella hot. It was kind of crazy. It was crazy how hella hot it was. And the mosh pit that we were in was kind of hot and hella crazy. The hella mosh pit was crazy, kind of.

We drank some water.

Okay, this is falling apart.

Jasmin Johnson took that picture. She was there too, but we didn’t run into her.

Sora and I made up. It was neither of our faults that everything happened, and also we got in anyway, and even alsoer we weren’t really all that angry at each other to begin with. So we pooled our money and bought the Sea of Cowards LP.

The show finished. They went off stage and then came back for the encore. That’s the way these things work. I’ve always kind of thought the idea of a planned encore is kind of lame, but I guess it’s kind of tradition anymore. Regardless, they played an awesome encore. Is that picture from Jasmin from that? I don’t know, I don’t know.

We came up with a game plan to meet the band. We would simply sneak back stage and– okay, that didn’t work. So we went outside and waited. Waiting got us everything else nice on this day, so it would get us this too.

We waited. We also had to wait for a bus, so we were killing two waiting birds with one waiting stone.

There was this girl there who was waiting too. I think the three of us had some sort of unspoken bond there with our silent waiting. Every once in awhile, one of us would switch positions, or say something, but mostly we just waited.

A homeless man came up to Sora and Me and started talking to us. He was really pretty cool. We talked to him about The Dead Weather and wanting to meet them. He said that the band may be leaving out a side door to avoid fans, but also that Jack White is a pretty cool guy, so who knows. He wished us good luck and he went on his way.

We continued our waiting party with the girl who really was just off a little ways on her own. At some point Sora leaned against their bus and one of the Men In Black that you can see in Under Great White Northern Lights told him to… not.

Eventually we saw our bus coming and resigned ourselves to having to leave. Sora took off, but I felt bad just leaving the girl without saying anything. So I waved goodbye, then ran.

We went back to his place bought some snacks and played a game. This happened. For about six hours straight.

Then my Mom took me out to eat and thought I was stoned because I was drinking a lot of water. This is my life.

So what is the moral of this story?

Good question. The moral of the story is one of friendship. One of perseverance and of  patience. One of walking and public transit. One of dehydration and Jack White. One of being in the room with people haven’t seen in a couple years. But most importantly one of fabrication and lies and exaggeration and Google Maps. And the most important, pictures of the Doctor being not amused.

THE END

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