A Girl Like Me - Part One

Friday, February 25, 2011, I became a woman.

I erroneously thought that I had become a full-fledged woman when I purchased my first pair of Isotoner gloves back in December 2008 (This was my first pair of new gloves since December 1999, so it was a big deal), but now I understand that I was still just a girl until I saw Pete Yorn in concert last Friday in Milwaukee.



Sweet mercy.  Remember those CD clubs where you'd get a dozen CDs for a penny or something?  I chose Pete Yorn's musicforthemorningafter as one of my CDs way back in 2001.  I'd heard Life on a Chain and For Nancy on the local college radio station and liked them.  I'd pull the CD out every few months and give it a listen.  I still remember hearing the hidden bonus track for the first time on my boombox in my old bedroom with the sky blue ceiling and the Incubus poster over my headboard.  In high school, I had a much bigger boner for Brandon Boyd than for Pete Yorn.  You're still on my "to do" list, Mr. Boyd, but my boner ratios have switched.  My Pete Yorn boner is only millimeters shorter than my Neil Diamond boner.

I would consider myself a pretty big PY fan.  Even back when I was 14, his voice (shit, his voice) made me swoon.  Probably most important to me ten years ago though, he had one of those long, lean physiques that is so rare in the Midwest.  Toned but not ripped.  That skater/surfer bod with the long arms and torso.  He is the kind of guy who wears the absolute fuck out of a t-shirt.  See also:  my Brandon Boyd boner.  As I got older and lived a little more, I actually paid more attention to his lyrics than his triceps.  Some of them are, well, not the greatest.  Seriously, listen to Burrito.  The lyrics are pretty weak, but if you can make it three or four lines into the song without wanting to sit on the face that voice comes out of, then I don't think we can be friends any longer.  But for every line about 7-11 burritos, there's a "stories and cigarettes ruined lives of lesser girls" and so forth.  Swoon.  Oh, swoon.  Even on the shittier songs, the music is good and the emotion is there.  Ah, fuck, and there's harmonica.  Goddamn.  When I do yoga, I try to center myself by imagining that I am Pete Yorn's harmonica.

So, I've been a crazy, obsessed stalker big fan for ten years and haven't been able to see Pete in concert.  I don't have any friends and I didn't want to go to Milwaukee by myself because I have no sense of direction and I almost literally go blind at nighttime and those traits combine to pretty much ensure that I would never get back home.  Tyler is not a huge PY fan.  He doesn't swoon like I do, but after three or four weeks of convincing ("But I'll need your help tying Pete Yorn's hands behind his back and putting him in the trunk of my Bonneville!"  "What if I'm not strong enough to restrain him by myself while I carefully remove all of his beautiful, effortless stubble with my inner thighs?!"  "Tyler, I'll probably need you to hold the flashlight so that we can find where Pete Yorn's wedding ring is stuck when I'm done with him!"), he caved and said he'd come with.  Seriously though, what a goddamn trooper.  Give that guy a Purple Heart or something.  He's pretty much only allowed to talk about Anna Friel like that.

The day FINALLY FUCKING ARRIVES and we left for Milwaukee after my classes.  We got to the Pabst Theater pretty easily.  Pete Yorn's candy apple-red tour bus was parked out front. We walked (we walked ALMOST A FUCKING MILE IN FEBRUARY IN WISCONSIN) to an Alterra Cafe.  I got some beans at the local grocery store around Christmas and it's my favorite coffee now.  It's kind of pricey, but it's local(ish) and so good and it's still cheaper that buying coffee on the way to class.  I wanted to make the pilgrimage, and I'm very stubborn, so we walked to the cafe.  I had a honey latte and I can't even describe how good it was.  If you're in Milwaukee, drink something at Alterra.

We stopped by the Milwaukee Public Market and milled around for a bit on our way back to the theater, and then we wound up at The Shops of Grand Avenue.  We've been there a few times before, but I only recently read that Jeffrey Dahmer used to pick people up there.  The Shops are dirty, poorly lit, and creepy anyhow, and this knowledge lent a sort of scary thrill (I was tired, caffeinated, and hungry too, so that's probably part of it) to the nastiness.  We don't play the Kevin Bacon game in Wisconsin.  We play the Jeffrey Dahmer or Ed Gein game.  Incidentally, I was good friends with a a guy in high school whose mother was a guard at the supermax prison where Christopher Scarver, the guy who killed Dahmer, was locked up.  I've always had a morbid fascination with criminology and forensics and wanted to know what he was like.  She would only say that Scarver had a really great sense of humor and that he was always cracking the guards up.  So I can get to Dahmer in four steps or less, and I can get to the Grunke/Radke thing in three steps or less in two totally different ways.  I'm two steps from Jeff Daniels, one of my favorite actors, but he's not a murderer and that's more of a Michigan game.  Alas, I digress.              

We had planned to go to Mader's for a big ol' Bavarian pretzel but we didn't think we'd have time to get there and back, so we decided to give Safe House a shot.  The entrance is actually on the side of the building off an alley.  We wouldn't have found it, but an employee spy was outside on a smoke break and pointed us to the door.  Having never been there before, neither Tyler nor I knew the password.  We had to prove to a "Ms. Moneypenny" with black and white dreadlocks at the door that we were spies worthy of entrance, so we had to hop around like frogs and try to catch "flies" that she drew in the air with her fingers.  We passed the test.  She pressed a button, and a bookcase moved aside to reveal a doorway.  Tyler was all, "I so knew that was a door!  This is fucking awesome!"  And it was.  Once we were inside, the couple in line ahead of us told us that we were great frogs and then we noticed that TVs were hanging up all over the restaurant showing what was going on in the entrance.  There was a two hour wait for a table.  We only had one hour, so we grabbed a table in the bar area and split some appetizers.  The waitresses all called us "spies" or "agents" and they referred to the bill as our "damage report."  Too fucking cute.  We both enjoyed the food and the atmosphere and would like to go back when we've got time for a full meal and lots of exploration of the building.

The theater was right across the street and it was about that time, so we grabbed our seats.  The Pabst is beautiful and stately.  The seats are all red velvet, and there's gilded ornamental woodwork all around the stage and balconies.  There's also a huge crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling.  Ben Kweller was the opening act.  We weren't familiar with his music, but I very confidently told Tyler that he was either the Australian Ben (nope, that's Ben Lee) or the black Ben (nope again, that's Ben Harper) so I was pretty surprised that he was the Ben with the hair (yep, *that's* the right Ben).  He came out wearing a big fluffy parka and carrying a cup of tea.  He said that he was really sick (Tyler suggested it was because his pants were so tight.  They were pretty snug.) and that he'd been puking all day and had actually thrown up right before coming on stage.  But, BUT, he had a garbage can on stage and was going to give it a try.  Between songs, he'd take his guitar off, bend at the waist a little, and circle the stage while saying, "Ah shit, you guys.  Shit" but he was kind of awesome.  At one point, he grabbed the garbage can to take it over to his keyboard and was pleasantly surprised to find that the roadies had already place a second can there for him.  He talked between a few songs, and he was quite funny.  I found out that we're like puke twins - we're both loud, violent pukers.  Also, his inner mentor voice is M.C. Hammer and mine, I discovered on a weird drive back from Madison the weekend before, is Aunt Jemima.  It was obvious that he loved performing and interacting with his fans, and he played for a good 45 minutes without getting sick before ending his set.  I later read that he left stage and puked right away.        

TO BE CONTINUED