If Man is Five

Thanks to the universal appeal of gay super-heroes, the ISB is finally well on its way to my goal of Total Internet Domination. So along those lines, I've decided to squander whatever meager success I've gotten recently by breaking away from comics for tonight to let you know how my evening went, just in case there are some of you out there who decided not to blow off your boss's Christmas party in order to do battle with the double-headed rock monster that was Gerty! and So Hush Hush down at the Art Bar.

My evening really began a few hours before the show, when two ladies who I'd put at around thirty-five rolled up into the Wiz and asked if we had "explicit toys." I was almost positive they were thinking of the wrong word, but heck, we've got a bunch of Star Wars toys, and it's pretty hard to mistake Chewbacca for something else. So we asked for a little clarification, just to be sure.

"You know, explicit toys. Like for a bachelorette party."

It takes a special kind of person to wander into a comic book store and ask for dildos, but they're out there. Fortunately, the shop's actually near to not one but two purveyors of "adult novelties," and we were able to send them on their merry way. But who's going to give me that piece of my life back, huh?

(Oddly enough, we did actually have some porn star action figures a few years ago, complete with removeable clothes. They were wretched little things, and sat in a case near the dollar books until they were bought during a sale by some undoubtedly sketchy creeps.)

After work, though, it was time for the rock show. The opening act was a band out of Durham called Gerty!, and man, those cats could swing. They were a three-piece band whose stagewear consisted of black pants, black shirts with each other's faces on them, and wristbands that matched the backgrounds of the portraits. It was awesome, and they rocked out pretty hard. The drummer beat the drums like they'd done her wrong, and she was entertaining enough to watch by herself.

I was pretty sure they had me when the guitarist's crowd rap included jokes about Stevie Wonder, but when I went to buy a CD from them after their set, I heard the magic phrase that ensured my undying love: "This is our Christmas EP." Considering that I celebrate Christmas from the middle of November to some time around February, it was a beautiful thing. Also, I'm fairly sure that I'm in love with the lead singer, but as I have no dowry with which to woo her, I must continue to make my fortune by writing about how awesome Batman is.

Having just read that sentence again, I realize it's official: It's four in the morning and I have no business writing things down. But yoiks and away, a Sims goes a-blogging tonight!

The headliner was So Hush Hush, a Pixies tribute that I really enjoyed, despite the fact that what I know about the Pixies can be summed up with two points: Ben likes them a lot, and frontman Frank Black did a really good song on the Powerpuff Girls album that concerned my favorite character, Talking Dog.

Still, Ben's Best of the Pixies album gets a lot of play at work, so I wasn't too unfamiliar. I was, however, unprepared for the band's bass player, who was gorgeous. She was a friend of Tug's, so I'd seen her when she'd first gotten to the bar, but when she got onstage, it was like she'd used her magic earrings to communicate with Synergy or something--and that's as obscure a reference as I intend to make tonight, so you can all relax. Seriously, though, I generally prefer girls with glasses, a concept that all you MySpace hipsters out there undoubtedly understand, but when she took them off, she attained something akin to The Glow. She also managed to look bored and vaguely disinterested through the entire set. I wasn't sure if it was a reference to the bassist of the Pixies or what, but it just tended to add to her smoky hotness.

Her carefully-crafted façade of ennui did crack at one point, however, due to this one cat who was very enthused to be there. I'm telling you, this dude's a one-man whilrlwind in Wrangler jeans. Probably the best moment of the night was when this girl was dancing "all up ons," as the kids say, and he literally knocked her onto the floor with his ass. It was magical. Still, when he managed to simultaneously knock the mic stand into the ersatz Frank Black's teeth and knee me right in the junk, the whole crowd took two steps back. But there were no hard feelings. So Hush Hush are some nice folks.

After the show, it was off to the one bastion of the post-last-call cool-down for a late dinner with My Two Bens. I had to swing by the bank to get some cash, so I had the bad luck of missing an event which I'll probably never get the chance to see again: There was a dude there who was so drunk he was kicked out of the Waffle House.

Seriously, when you're so drunk that you're making lewd advances towards the graveyard shift scattered-smothered-and-covered crowd, then that's no way to get through life, son.