Just a Little Fall Out With a Boy
filed on Monday, June 11, 2007 at 5:50:58 PM CST

This past Saturday, G and I made a trip down to the Charter One Pavillion at Northerly Island to see Fall Out Boy, live, in concert, at what I think is what I'd call one of the best shows I've ever seen.  It was absolutely a blast!  Of course, jumping from beginning to end just isn't like me, so let me share with you the story:

The Trip Downtown

So I picked up G at her house, and avoided being a quick dinner for Isis (G's cute "little" "puppy" who was trying to eat the door so she could have a rib or two... of mine), and we started heading down to the show.  On the way there, our ears started filling with the ever-too-familiar chirping of the secadas which, while in some areas seem non-existant, in other areas were flying down the street and smacking themselves into windshields.  Thankfully I had air conditioning, as we were sort of laughing about how many car accidents might be caused by a stray secada flying in through an open window.

As we're travelling down I-290, the traffic backs up.  Now, this is the Chicago suburbs, and we're heading into downtown Chicago, so it's not like this is terribly unusual.  The problem, you see, isn't so much the traffic.  Rather, it's that you suddenly come to a screeching halt for no reason, and then ten miles later (which takes you half an hour to get through), all of a sudden there is no more traffic jam and you're cruising along like normal.  This "ghost jam" phenomena is quite strange.

Well, we get downtown, and find our way down to the area we're supposed to be in, and end up driving in a huge "circle" to find parking.  See, we didn't see the huge ass sign for the far away parking, and by the time we got to the "VIP" parking, the lot was filled, so they redirected us back around into our lovely little circle.  On the second pass, we got it right, and got into the Soldier Field parking lot where we discovered parking was covered in the price of the ticket.  Now that was a bonus!

And then the guy who was directing me where to go is waving me into my parking space, standing right next to my car, so I'm trying to park and avoid his fat ass, but the fucker's got the nerve to comment that, "A car that small, and you can't figure out how to park it?"  So as I walked away, I decided to risk, "Fuck you," carved into the side of my car and looked at G and loudy said, "Should I tell him I was trying to avoid his fat ass while I was parking?"

With a quick laugh, we found our way out of the parking garage (witnessing some teenagers banging on a small conga drum and trying to figure out where the elevator went), and started the long hike over to Northerly Isle.  Now, admittedly, we could have taken the free trolley over there, but we decided it was such a nice day, and there was no hurry to get over to the then current opening act who we could hear strangling cats and beating on dogs all the way from Soldier Field.

But eventually, we got there...

First Encounters

Since I had drunk an A&W float, a large Sierra Mist, and some of a bottle of water that G was kind enough to bring with, you'll never guess where my first stop was!  Hah, I bet you were thinking, "the bathroom!"  Wrong!!!  See, in order to get inside, I had to stop to have my ticket scanned.  The second stop was at the bathroom.  Silly people, always going out of order.

Once I had alleviated my bladder of a half-gallon or so of liquid (am I the only guy who stands at a urinal thinking, "You know, there's so many better things I could be doing right now than standing here taking a piss?"), I washed my hands, headed back outside, and found G.  We walked around the small sales area near the arena, and decided to get lunch.  After seeing how much lunch was going to cost, I thought about stopping over at Charter One's little booth and asking for a personal loan just so I could afford it.

Yes, that's right, ladies and gentleman... $4.00 for a 20 ounce bottle of Pepsi poured into a plastic cup.  That plastic cup should be gold plated for that price.  $6.00 for a cheeseburger that, while tasting pretty good, made McDonald's suddenly look like health food.  I'm almost sure that the lettuce and tomato were just globs of colored grease formed to look like condiments, because really, there was so much grease in the burger that my hands still smell like the cheeseburger two days later (and yes, I've washed).

We took our food, grabbed some grass (no, not the pot that was being smoked later that night... literally, we sat down on the small grass patch in the center of the place), and ate our food while looking around at the plethora of unique people that would be attending the show with us.  From Spikey-Haired Guy Who Really Needed More Hair to Spike to You've Got to Be Kidding Me, That Guy's Mohawk is Spotted Like a Leopard, and on to Jesus Christ, Woman, No One Wants to See Your Ass Crack, we certainly had a bunch of interesting folk to talk about.  Of course, there was G's favorite, otherwise known as That Guy Would Have Gotten His Ass Kicked for Wearing that Jacket in My School boy who was wearing this funky pink and green and something else multi-colored, patch-like sweatshirt that she thought was hideous, but since I've done goofy stuff like that before, I actually had some respect for.

Our food done, it was time to go check out the merchandise.  I found myself a cool necklace that looks like Pete Wentz's bat tattoo, and also got a cool gray zip-up hoodie with some skulls on it, and spent far more than I really should have, but hey, it was worthwhile.  Of course, I might not have gotten the necklace had G not spoken up and asked to see it, because I just sorta tried to see it hanging on the wall, and couldn't really make it out.  I'm definitely a guy... never ask for help, never ask for directions.  Okay, never's a strong word, but still... you get the point.

The First Opener We Saw

Merchandise in hand, we trudged our way into the main area, walked into "general admission," otherwise to be known as "the pit," and found it not yet crowded, which was good because it allowed us to stake out our spot very early on into the show, and get ourselves a very, very nice view.

Of a great many things.

So the first band up that we actually paid attention to is this cool, local group known as The Academy Is... who had an ever-so-cute lead singer with a fantastic voice.  Apparently plenty of the teeny-boppers there knew who they were, but this was the first time I'd heard of them.  The music was great though, and they had a couple of catchy tunes (including "The Neighbors"), and so it was an enjoyable act to start getting into the show.

I really should spend more time describing the band, but since I want to get this blog done in under twenty years, I'm going to tell you about the funny people standing near me.  Like, Wild Boy.  Now, I call him Wild Boy because his face was so animated, and he was so into every band, and just really, really excited to be there.  He'd yell, he'd scream, he'd wave his arms, he'd shout randomly at us... he was a very strange character indeed, but altogether not so bad.

The funniest person doing this set though had to be Look At Me Girl.  She was this blond "bombshell" that was trying every trick in the book to get my attention.  Now, I'm usually sort of oblivious to women flirting with me, but a blind gay man would have sensed this girl coming onto him.  First she starts by dancing in front of me, doing that sexy "wave my arms slowly" dance, undulating her body, looking back at me every now and then, and then bumping into me from time to time.  This is then followed by dancing with her female companion, bumping and grinding, and of course, looking back at me to see if I was paying any attention.  And then her hand swings and runs swiftly up my crotch, up to my shirt, and I'm just standing there with a smile on my face thinking, "So much effort wasted."  This is followed by her swing her arm and apparently trying to wipe my nose for me.  I'm not quite sure why that was supposed to be attractive, but you I just laughed.  She finally gave up, though she seemed disgusted that I wouldn't pay any attention to her.

The best moment of the set though was when Pete Wentz came out and sang a chorus with The Academy Is...  Apparently Wentz is a good friend of theirs, and has helped out their careers or some such thing, and so it was awefully cool of him to come out and sort of give his stamp of approval.  I mean, I know if I'd been up there, I'd have been absolutely ecstatic about it.  Of course, I'm not sure I could sing with Pete Wentz even if I could sing, but that's because it's Pete Wentz!  I'd be very, VERY distracted.

Well, the first set broke up, and a short time later, another opener, Plus 44, came out to play.  They weren't too bad, but they weren't exactly great.  G wasn't impressed at all.  I thought they had one really good song (which they brought out one of the singers from another opener to help out with), but the rest was just really sorta okay.

Thankfully that all seemed to go by pretty quickly, and that led to...

Fall Out Boy Takes the Stage

Okay, I said it before last year, and I'll say it again this year.  These guys put on one hell of a show!  Pyrotechnics, video screens, Pete Wentz doing spin-kicks with his guitar while someone else jumps over his head, sparklers, fireworks, and a spray of silver confetti at the end...  There is so much energy going on during the show, and that's just the added stuff.  The music, of course, rocks like no other!  And of course, I'm not sure I could tell you what much of the rest of the band looked like.  I know there was another guitarist, and of course Patrick Stump (I'll ask G what he looks like later... heh), and the drummer who looked like Jesus, but really, all of my attention was focused on fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine Pete Wentz!  I just wish he hadn't covered his head up with his hoodie, because seriously, his hair was working really well and he looked hot as hell!

Well, like any show where the music's going, and you're in an outdoor environment (oh, who'm I kidding... it happens indoors too), some pit action starts up.  Now, I'm not sure if I have some magnetic attraction to the edge of a pit or something, but they always seem to form up somewhere near where I'm standing.  So much like I did for Sue and Jill at Linkin Park, I took a forward position as a wall of the pit to get between G and the bunch of pit "dancers."

Now, Wild Boy's gotten involved, and there's added now into the mix Crazy Boy who just kept spinning around and around and around waving his hands in some sort of kung-fu ninja white-boy dance.  And let's not forget Crazy Bitch who was completely and totally out of her mind.  She couldn't have stood much more than five-foot-four, but wow, she was out there throwing herself into everyone.

There were many more people out there, running and bouncing and flying and falling and whatever else, and there I was playing wall.  Push this guy that way, that guy this way, give a shove to get 'em away, and standing there the whole time as a fairly immovable object.  Of course, when the two fuckers from behind decided to charge on through me, I wasn't quite braced for that direction and got a bit of a push.  Still, all in all, it was pretty fine with me.

I did manage to get raked across the chest and face by Crazy Boy, which was one of those, "Do that again, kid, and you're going to find out what death really looks like," moments.  And there was this father who put his kid into the fray.  "Son, it's time to be a man now," G commented after the show, to which I responded, "If you survive, you can come home, but otherwise, I'm just telling mom I lost you."

Sometime during Fall Out Boy's set, G remembered she'd brought a flashing mouth thingy for me, and so I popped it in, and it was hysterical, because Wild Boy thought it was the coolest thing, and kept telling people to look at my mouth.  Dorky Boy (Wild Boy's friend who looked like he was having a good time, but could hardly have been more uncomfortable) didn't quite understand what he was telling him to look at so he grabbed him by the face, pointed it to me, pointed at me, and said, "His mouth!  Do you get it yet?"  I sorta thought the thing would be uber dorky, but really, I think it was awefully cool, and mostly because others did too!

And then there was Tall Boy and Short Man who must have somehow known Crazy Bitch, because they kept instigating her into the crowd, and Tall Boy stood right in front of me, and then took a step back.  Now, remember, I'm still playing the role of immovable object, and this guy's not too bad looking, so I just stood there.  His back pressed quite nicely into my chest.  And his butt... well... you can guess where that might have been.  So I just stood there and enjoyed myself, and he didn't move for a good couple of minutes, then he'd move away for a moment, and then he was right back there.  I don't know if he too was coming onto me, or if he was just super drunk.  Really, what do I care anyway?

Then Crazy Bitch got upset with Toothpick Guy (tall guy who probably weighed less than 130 pounds) who had previously upset Curly Gal, and who apparently had upset Crazy Bitch too.  Except, Crazy Bitch really had gone crazy.  She's got her hand wrapped around his neck and squeezing, and he's backing away, so I reach out and grab her arm trying to get him off her, but her sweaty-ass arm slipped right out of my hand, so someone else had to break it up, because I wasn't leaving my spot in the wall.

Eventually Tall Boy went away, and during the last song, one of the guys -- might have been Crazy Boy but I'm not really sure -- spins, turns, and manages to lightly punch me in the jaw.  My face must have gone from "Dance Dance" to "You're about to die motherfucker!" in about .05 seconds, because the guy's face just suddenly goes all, "Oh shit, I'm about to die!" and he rushes over and leans in and gives me a hug and says "Sorry, man."  Okay.  He was cute.  We hugged.  All was forgiven.

And the whole time Fall Out Boy was on stage, I kept getting more and more into the music.  I don't know what, but something has certainly changed in me over the past year, year and a half, because while I've gotten into concerts before, wow, I was really moving to the music and getting into it.  To me, standing at the edge of the pit, dancing, pushing, shoving, dancing, watching out for flying arms, dancing, reaching out to keep a couple of people from falling or to slow some wild folk down a bit... there's little more fun than that!  It was an absolute blast!  I even got a thank you from one potential fall I saved.  She sort of got involved in the pit by accident and I moved some guy out of the way for her as I reached out to keep her from falling backward, and she just looked at me, smiled, and said, "Thanks!"

The show ended, and I really didn't want to leave, but it was an absolute blast.  G and I trudged our way back to the car, realizing how sore we were, and how very old that made us, and I picked up a CD of The Academy Is... and a Fall Out Boy tour t-shirt as we passed by the merchandise (as if I hadn't spent enough, right?), and we headed home.

Snickers and Twix

And since I'd kidnapped G for the night, we stopped at the 7-Eleven near her house to pick up some Snickers and Twix ice cream for Pablo, since he'd left a message asking me to tell her to stop and pick some up.

Thanks for coming along, G!!!  I had a blast, and I can't wait til they come back this fall!!!

Oh, and I Almost Forgot...

Yeah, yeah, leave it to me to leave out the hottest part of the evening.  They had a part where Pete Wentz and someone else (who was watching the other guy anyway?) stepped into this enclosure, and he took off his shirt, and had his hands right on his pants, ready to take down the zipper, and then the enclosure became opaque.  Nice upper body, made me wish I'd had my camera... but geez, did they have to make it opaque?