It Ain't Over Till the Zombie Diva Sings

I can hardly begin to describe the last couple of days; I’ve had so much fun! This narrative is mostly for my own recollection, so feel free to skip whatever parts you don’t find interesting, or the whole thing entirely. I’ll never know. :-)

Friday morning, I dragged myself out of bed before 6:30am for my friend Rick to pick me up in time for our 9:10am flight. The flight was delayed about an hour because of the weather, but there’s no interesting story there.

Over the last week, I made plans with a few folks on the JC forums to connect in San Francisco. Once we arrived, Rick and I took the BART from the airport to our hotel, where we met up with Jade, Donovan, and Mark (in from Boston!) for lunch at an Indian restaurant near the Great American Music Hall. Lunch was good, but the conversation was better, ranging from JoCo to politics to Stephen R. Donaldson. :-) Then we got shooed out by the management. (Note: This will become a theme.) No, not because were being obnoxious fanboys and –girls. They were just closing between lunch and dinner.

After lunch, our intrepid guides, Jade and Donovan, led us on a short hike to the Embarcadero, where we saw tremendous wheels of artisan cheese, looked at pictures of smut (not what you think), and had some tasty gelato from Ciao Bella. I tried a flavor called Moroccan Spice. Yum! The gelato was served with these tiny, odd, flat, plastic spoons, which Rick christened “gelato spatulatas.” Standing on the wharf eating gelato made us chilly, so we trekked to City Lights Books (Angelenos, think Book Soup), enjoying more excellent talk along the way. While I wasn’t able to find sections on soft rock, hobos, or matters cryptozoological, I did find a cute children’s book, This Is San Francisco.

It was getting on towards evening at that point, so we schlepped back across town to GAMH. More forum folks and others joined us for the show. In no particular order, and maybe with questionable spelling, were Rex, Keith, Andy, Abby, John, Brian (who bought his plane ticket from Denver before his concert ticket!), Mara and Oded (who had come in from Israel for GDC and bought Ian’s unused ticket). Much geekery was had, including checking out the latest xkcd on Mara’s Blackberry (Blackberry-like device?). Rain was in the forecast, but thankfully, it didn’t rain on us, though we wouldn’t have cared if it had. The excitement started to build around 8:00, but soon after, we were told that the sound check was taking a little longer than expected. Finally the moment came, and we rushed in like toddlers at a Wiggles concert.

zorker

cdwfs

Paul and Storm opened with, of course, We Are the Opening Band. They are a couple of fun and talented people! Most memorable for me: Storm’s spot-on impression of James Taylor - on fire! “Though I’ve seen fire and rain, I could do with a little less fire.” Also, being an early music geek, I thoroughly enjoyed Nun Fight sung in organum. Perfect! Still laughing about “The Nundertaker.”

This next little bit is just going to be a rushed jumble of incomplete memories. Shop Vac with everyone doing the hand claps on the chorus. Zendrum Fancy Pants! (Pants.) Rick improvising awesome harmony on his favorite song, Mandelbrot Set. Grooving ponkeys during Skullcrusher Mountain. Enraptured silence during I Crush Everything and You Ruined Everything (even with a restart) – just the man and his guitar. It was amazing to watch as JC held the audience right in the palm of his hand during those two songs. To continue, singing along with I Feel Fantastic and really feeling fantastic! Kristen drawing out the end of the bridge to ridiculous lengths in Creepy Doll. Andy Bates’s show-stealing performance on Chiron Beta Prime. He was ostensibly brought up to speak “Message redacted” but ending up singing some of the instrumental solo and some harmony on the last chorus. Way to go Andy! Also, I hate you. Not really. ;-) The audience getting to sing a chorus by ourselves…of something…that I can’t remember (Skullcrusher Mountain?). [ETA: I just watched some of my video and it was SM.] Singing harmony with some random guy next to me…on some song…that I can’t remember. The crowd standing and ROARING after Re: Your Brains for several moments until JC came out for an encore. Watching the screen come down during the encore set, expecting Flickr, and getting STILL ALIVE ON ROCK BAND! ZOMG! My face hurting from laughing and smiling for hours on end. And, “I almost forgot to mention, there’s cake for everyone.”

There was CAKE! I think I have independent confirmation that I instigated the chant, “The cake is not a lie!” for several iterations after the cake was brought out. I had intended maybe to start the crowd singing Still Alive at the end of the show, thinking that “This was a triumph” was a perfect way to sum up the evening, but after having that song performed – not once, but twice – during the show, the chant just evolved spontaneously and served the purpose much better. And yes, the cake WAS delicious and moist, thank you very much. The piece I had was chocolate cake with lemon custard filling. Delish! Each cake had a different album cover on it. I overheard Paul telling someone that Storm ate JC’s face. :-)

Here is the set list from the evening, as I remember it, not really in order:

The Future Soon
Shop Vac – Paul & Storm
Mr. Fancy Pants – Zendrum
You Ruined Everything
I’m Your Moon
Creepy Doll – uke, Paul & Storm
Tom Cruise Crazy – uke, electric bass, Paul & Storm
Code Monkey – uke
Still Alive – uke
Chiron Beta Prime – Paul & Storm, Andy Bates
Baby Got Back – Paul & Storm
I Feel Fantastic – Paul & Storm?
Skullcrusher Mountain
I Crush Everything
Mandelbrot Set
Kenesaw Mountain Landis – Paul & Storm
Ikea
Re: Your Brains – finale
A Talk With George – encore
First of May – encore w/ Paul & Storm
Still Alive (Rock Band) – encore w/ Merlin Mann and some other folks 

After the show, I went to say howdy to Paul and Storm and get some remarks from them on tape. (I was taking video throughout the day and got a few bits from the concert as well.) When the line to see JC thinned out, a few of us went to say hello and get some autographs. I gave JC the book for his daughter, and he let me inscribe it to her. I think I managed to be less dorky this time than in times past, but I don’t trust myself to judge. (I have that on tape also, thanks to Rex, but I’m kind of afraid to watch it.) Then we got shooed out. (See? I told you that was coming back.)

We left the hall around 1:00am or so. Mark, Rex, Oded, Rick and I went back to Oded’s hotel to hang out in the bar and chat, but when we got there, it was closed. We sat in the lobby bar (also closed, but accessible) and talked about comic books, operating systems and music for a little while. Say it with me now, then we got shooed out. At this point it was after 2:00, so we decided to call it a night.

Wonderfully exhausted, Rick and I collapsed back at the hotel almost immediately. As I was crawling into my bed, I pulled down the covers and found two, uh, somethings in the middle of the sheets. I thought they looked live olive pits; Rick thought they looked like cat poop. Not having cats, I wouldn’t know. Since it was going on 3:00 in the morning, I just scooped the things into a cup, washed my hands, and slept between the top sheet and comforter. In the morning, I took the somethings down to the front desk to complain. The clerk seemed genuinely baffled, and Rick and I got free breakfast.

We had a lovely breakfast with Mark, who was staying at the same hotel. The hotel restaurant was up on the 49^th floor. I thought we had a nice table, situated as it was in the corner with a 180-degree view of the city and the bay. Rick, ever the cynic, noted that we were stuck in the corner near a service entrance. Whatever. ;-) Breakfast was tasty, and we talked about music and religion and probably some other things, but I was a little too sleepy to follow it all.

After breakfast, we took the BART back to the airport and waited for a while. Our flight was delayed about two hours because of weather. They weren’t kidding. It was a bumpy ride to LA. I’m back home this evening, and now I can’t talk. I sang along loudly and boisterously at the concert when I could get away with it, though I think what really did the damage was trying to talk over the noise. That and lack of sleep. So worth it. :-)

ETA: I neglected a very important thank you to freudinshade and jsadler for lending me their video camera so that I could document the whole thing for posterity. Thanks so much!