It was rather like gorging on fancy cheese, good bread and a bottle of red wine, all by yourself, then donning a black pea coat and a fuzzy muffler, going for a walk in the cold and dark, seeing a beloved ex sitting in the window of a restaurant with his new flame. He wouldn�t see you, but you�d have a wee shock that would be sharper than you�d have expected, and it would fade slowly into dull ache of pensive nostalgia. You�d go rent some sad-sack movie, maybe High Fidelity, and walk home in a cold mist. Or maybe you�d go to a hole-in-the-wall bar and sit alone at a corner booth reading The White Hotel.
In short, it was like poking a large and tender bruise. Over and over.
When it was over and the house music came up, it proved to be Gillian Welch�s �Look at Miss Ohio.� Sigh.
I didn�t go see Allison Moorer Saturday evening. Instead I went with my mother to a high school marching band competition. It was nowhere near so delightful. The melancholy was more due to discomfort and dismay than any sort of dreamy indie rock.
The younger brother-in-law is a band director. We went to support his band. He just took the job midsummer, and the poor kids hadn�t done a marching show in several years, so he had precious little time to design a field show, teach them to march and teach them to play their music. All things considered, it wasn�t dreadful. There were some nice soloists, but with these small bands, it�s impossible for the bad players to hide. In fact, most bands had awful sounds coming out of their brass sections.
As his kids took the field, I was appalled to hear that their school mascot is a vandal. They were the Marching Vandals. Aside from questioning the intelligence of such a mascot selection for any high school, you should also know this�there�s a prison in their town.
I worry for these little towns. But hey, the Marching Hearts and the Marching Cornjerkers were already taken, so maybe the Vandals was the only mascot option left in the hat.
Watching awkward, gawky high school students makes me worry more. It hurts so.
Oh me oh my oh.
I wish someone delightful were playing in Chicago next week, when I�ll be up vacationing and in need of something good.