I Guess I'll Be Your Monkey Wrench
filed on Tuesday, July 01, 2003 at 5:37:23 PM CST

My friends, Sue and Jill, and I all went up to Milwaukee, Wisconsin last night to see the Foo Fighters in concert.  Heading out of Chicagoburbia a little after 6:00, we got to SummerFest about 7:30ish.  I've got a feeling Milwaukeeans aren't familiar with "Chicago driving," which is good, because I think we managed to live through the "You need to be in the right lane," "That lane?" "Yeah," cut in front of a bus, come sliding to a stop right at the stop-sign maneuver only because of that fact.  That or we're really damned lucky.  Either or.

At any rate, we found ourselves a nice place to park the wheels, and headed over to the humongous grounds where the show was hiding at somewhere within (who knew the Marcus Ampitheater was way down on the other end?).  Maybe it was irony, maybe it was just chance, but they were using numbered garbage cans sort of as those signs you see at huge malls that say, "1E," and so forth so you know where you parked your car.  Well, the two right by the exit toward SummerFest were 1 and 10.  We got a good chuckle out of it.

Take the tickets, get into line, head on in, and walk around, looking for a bathroom.  Have I ever mentioned I utterly dispise public restrooms?  No?  Well, I do.  Immensly.  So imagine my fear when we finally get to the bathrooms, and I walk in, and there's this whole line of urinals, and a whole line of guys all standing there making use of them.  I'm just like, "There's got to be a better place to pee than this!"  So I walk on beyond the line of urinals, toward the stalls, and low and behold, another line of urinals on the back side of the wall.  And no one there.  Fine, I'll use one.  (It's at this point in my writing this entry that I think I've probably shared too much about my bathroom habits with you!)  Go outside, wait a couple of moments for Jill and Sue, and off we trudge, looking for the place the Foo Fighters will be playing.

You'd think that would be easy, right?  Yeah, right.  So we're walking around, and they've probably got at least a half-dozen stages set up where either local bands or old bands or god only knows what were playing.  Someone was strangling a large tabby cat on one stage, I'm pretty sure, making me sort of wish that Bryan Adams was dead just so he could turn in his grave at the horrid rendition of Summer of '69 that was being "performed" (and I use that term only because Webster hasn't come up with a single word that means "making a complete fool out of one's self in public while trying a most feeble attempt of singing that would make even Rosanne Barr sound like an operatic star").

So we're walking, yes indeed, we're walking... Shop break.  Bracelet time!  Jill spies with her little eyes something made of beads, and so we head on in.  After much indecisiveness (who can blame her... they had TONS of awesome looking bracelets there), she settled on three, found two more, traded one, and somehow managed to walk away from the place without signing a promisary note on her firstborn child.  Seriously though, you should see 'em... they're cool looking.  She got one that's mostly green that went really well with the shirt and bug she was wearing (somehow that didn't sound quite right... I think it was a firefly, but it was cool... green body, and like tannish white wings... of course, that's only if I'm not completely color blind), and she also got one that was purple and blue that I think was really awesome.  And then a third one which I don't remember exactly what color it was, but it was Sue's favorite out of the ones she'd found.  Oh, and I tried to find a necklace to replace the cheap piece of shit I picked up from Walmart (teach me to buy cheap Walmart crap, won't it?), but couldn't really find anything... I sense a trip downtown coming on!

Then we start walking on again, having not a clue where we're going, but figuring forward is always a good direction to go (you get further than standing still, right?).  Finally, after fifteen, twenty years, and thousands of miles, we find the place (Jill asked for directions... I'm a man, I just kept looking around dumbfounded).  Beer time.  One for each hand and on to the Ampitheater we go.  A couple of schmucks stole our seats, but we kicked 'em out, and then sat down.  Somehow I managed to gulf my beers down (What's wrong with me?  I know they taste like crap!), and all before the Foo Fighters come out.

Concert starts, and I'm all kinds of into the music, singing and swaying, bopping and bouncing, and just all in all having a good time.  They were freaking awesome!  On our way home, Sue asked me which concert I think's been the best so far this summer, and the more I think I about it, the more I think it was probably this one.  Don't get me wrong, the Rejects were awesome, and in fact, everyone we've seen (well, okay, Zwan sucked, but we had a great time anyway, and O-Town the "manband" who couldn't even play an encore bit simply because of that) has been tons of fun, but this was just so freaking cool!  I mean, the music was great, lots of random musical interludes watching Grohl play guitar while Taylor Hawkins is just pounding away on the drums (that guy is an AWESOME drummer!!!), and just all in all, it was a great show.  I think I might have lost some of my voice just because of all the screaming and yelling and hollering and cheering I was doing, but man, I'm telling you, this show was awesome (no, I know of no other adjectives, I'm going to keep using the word "awesome")!

Unfortunately, you know what they say... All good things must be noted somewhere to keep an eye on Ticketmaster.com for tickets for their next show when they happen to come around again.  So we made our way back out of the Ampitheater, and through the grounds again, and got to see Sue ready to beat down some drunk frat jock who decided that he wanted to occupy the same space as she was (and then started to take off his shirt, causing a gag reflex at the very thought of it), and somehow, finally managed to find a way out of the place again.

Driving home, we stopped (partially to get another disc out of my demonically possessed glovebox that I'd forgotten to unlock, and partially to get drinks and snacks for the ride home) and picked up "dinner."  Sue's dinner consisted of Taco Corn-Nuts and some flavor of Combos, I think Jill had Combos too, and something else that I can't quite remember (hey, it was late), and I had Shoestring Potatoes and Ranch Corn-Nuts (and got a bag of Fruit & Cream Starburst -- Hugh, if you're reading this, imagine my finger flipping you off right now -- and a couple of orange Laffy Taffy's), and three drinks.

We dropped Jill off, I dropped Sue off, and that, my friends, was a night!  It was such an awesome, cool, fun night (and now the war begins... who gets the drummer?)!