I went to the Madison Arts Barn on Saturday (which will undoubtedly be changed to "some Saturdays ago" by the time I upload this) in an attempt to watch/listen to some music people. I didn't really want to, and only went because my brother Colmondo is in one of the bands. I wouldn't tell him that, but I'll tell any number of weird internet people I'll never meet who found this page searching for chia pets in miami. I thought I should "show support," as the parents of the kids like to say, especially since he claims to be coming to see the performance of that play I mentioned I wrote once, which I suspect will be 400% the disaster of anything detailed herein. (Although I must give numerous credits to those not-me involved with the plaything, the fact remains that one of them is me, which will be the doom of it all.)
But back to the barn, despite ultimately not involving a hoedown, I still must admit that I'm scared of this type of thing. It's the sort of event people go to to get raped/arrested for raping people. I guess they just like that. But I don't think I would.


Even scarier, are the wristbands purchased to allow admission. Whoooooooooooooh! Ghohooooooooooooohsts! Just plain tickets wouldn't convey such schpookiness nearly so effectively, no sir. Especially not in April.

The group playing when we entered had a very "high school band practice" kind of look to them. There were two saxaphones, a trumpet and even a trombone, not to mention the people who played them, even though I just did. At least two of them could be described as bespectacled. The guitarist may have been trying to make up for this by not wearing a shirt, but it's just as likely he was merely hot, as the farmers who built the barn found it less economical to have two homes than to insulate their barns and live in one place the full year. Ehhh, I don't have any pictures of this band, because the camera did not come into my possession until later, but that's just as well, because the batteries were fatigued enough that if I had wasted digital film on these dwobos, I might not have been able to capture the following fabulous images:


There was an unused shoe towards the right side of the stage, and a box purported to contain the game "twister."


Later, the shoe has moved on, but Twister remains. Hey, I'm just telling you what happened.

Back to the Dwobos, which I shall call them until I find out what their actual name is, and still maybe even then, here's my impression of the song they were playing when I entered:

Words: ADOOP-ADOOP-ADOOP-ADOOP-ADOOP-AH DWAAAHHH?
Brass section: WOMMMMM WOMMMM WOMMMM
Words: ADOOP DWAH DWAH DWAH DWAH!
Brass section: WUM WUM WUM WUM WUM WOMMMMMM

I think there was something wrong with the place's sound system (it was a barn, after all), since every song played that evening ended up being just as loud and incoherent. Hopefully they will rectify this obvious error for future shows. It's not fair to the performers or the audience.

The second group knew how to count. I gathered this from the numerous rounds of "check... check 1 2" they performed before all their toys got plugged in.


This toy probably used batteries. For all the time that this person was visible, he was poking at some electronic device with a pen or something. One of those fancy new age multi-function business telephones that I am told important people do important things with. Because that's why you'd go to a show like this; to concentrate and get work done.

Owning a telephone must really be torture nowadays. They're continually coming equipped with more and more annoying features that would better be left to another device, but since the telephone is now capable of doing them the victims have no choice but to use it for those things. You can't say "oh I didn't have internet" because apparently there are telephones that can use internet. You can only see like five letters at a time, but they are internet letters and there's no excuse to not rape your eyes reading them. Anyway.


Oh, happy day.


I don't think one can get drunk off of tea (although I admit the most I've ever had at once is 11 kinds), so I may only assume that such cruel and unprovoked mental abuse of innocent chairs is normal over there.

I also saw some goths. I never get to see goths! For the longest period, I regarded the fabled "goths" as the l337 of the non-internet, in that just about everyone has a personal account of hating despite my never having had the briefest encounter with it. Well, now I've seen some goths. I can die now. Oh my, could it be that I've been a goth all along?


Here is the best picture I was able to get of Those Green Eyez, those who masterminded my trip to the barn. Professor Coldheart is the one that, depending on your monitor's brightness level and that of the room you're in may appear to be missing his upper half. I think the one nearest to me is Greg. Or maybe Greg is furthest from me. Or between there and here. I know one of them is named Greg. He used to call our answering machine quite regularly.
This is a terrible picture, but it's better than anyone of the ones I got when I went to see Jon Stewart (from the audience).


Ah, here's Jon now. Or... the sun. A mysterious voice announced "You know him from HBO and MTV..." but neglected to mention the center of the solar system. I don't think it was talking about Jon Stewart, because I definitely don't know him from those places. Moving on.


I suppose I should expect that sort of thing in section X

At last, a terrible picture I had nothing to do with. Perhaps you can't read it, but that shirt has printed on it, "This Blue Holiday" instead of "These Green Eyes." I can only assume Them Yella Cowards are responsible.
Colgo 13 plays a guitar as well, but not in the band. They have three guitar dopes already anyway, and this way he can twirl about and do backflips and such in order to foil my attempts to get a decent picture of the lot of them while on the stage. Also, there the guitar would be in the context of other loud electric guitars, and thus less likely to be the exclusive reason for the indefinite-length postponement of my nap.


Indeed, for a brief three day period prior to the recent goings on, again CAM-RA was beyond my grasp. This is another of the pictures stored on it when I received it again. Here are some people that aren't Colbrena. The distorted one in the front is naturally the one who isn't in any of the other pictures. Two of them are playing a video game of some sort. Not very well, naturally, since they aren't looking at it. Also, you may recognize the wood chairs and the table in the background from my house. Not that I was planning on using them, but I certainly recognize them, yes.


Do you notice anything wacky, nutty, or zany about this scene? I you said "the Windows 95 style right-click menu aisle descriptions," you are wrong.


I know a floating, disembodied, apparently not in pain Bert head (of floating, disembodied Ernie and Bert heads fame) when I see one!

There was another show the very next week, that I also should not have gone to, this time at the Webster Underground. I didn't know anything about that place, I don't suppose you do either, but I assumed that it couldn't help but be better. My reasoning was; Underground, you are safe from a bomb, but in a barn, arts regardless, you aren't even safe from a horse. I was not aware until after the point when the knowledge would have helped that Webster was in Hartford, and additionally that Hartford is an hour's worth of "slow down the state troopers are probably out because of the holiday" driving away. One hour later, I was fairly well aware. Although I could hear these songs any time I want quite for free without going anywhere, that wouldn't exhibit nearly as much naivete.


My pictures again. Here is blurry line of people. They extended quite out the doors at one point. There were even envoys from an apparently powerful radio station there. This is not the place we went to.


Here's where we went. I was disappointed. As you can see from this picture, it clearly is not underground. Outrage!


Just in case you forgot what it was called. I counted perhaps about twenty non-employees in attendance, maybe half of them also from Madison, (I had no idea Colonade knew so many playwriters) and another five or six were members of the next band. I was kind of getting towards a point here, but ruined it with the parenthetical aside. Please forgive me.
Upon entering, some person asked me, several times, "are you over twenty-one?" Not specified was twenty-one what, but I knew enough about these matters to ascertain that the currency which the man sought was age, in years. Here is my recollection of our breakthrough conversation:

Are you over twenty-one?
I'm at it.
What?
At it.
What?
I am at it, since a few weeks ago.
What?

Good times, good times. This is actually pretty much the standard outcome for every time I think I have a remotely clever response to anything. Eventually he wrote a big X on my right hand, quite without asking. This was to either induct me into his cult, or let the guy standing five feet away wearing a shirt that had the word "security" written on it know that I should not be granted entry into the sufficiently lit section of the room. I guess it makes more sense to keep half the place vacant than to just have the bartender not give me beer and only if I ask which I wouldn't anyway


As before, the way to get a maximumly decent picture was to make sure it was minimally interesting.


I stand corrected! Although I certainly don't recall seeing this, it looks as if plaid-shirt guy is merging the forms of the two people from the previous picture into a monster gelatinous blob by using his enchanted blue pizza slice and Final Fantasy 7 magic effects. Such a great camera!


Immediately after exiting, I and others saw a car being towed away. Fortunately, it was not my car. I never had a car. Unfortunately, it was the car I had planned to leave in. Typical of Whitey to pick on the predominantly black neighborhoods. I must say that it was nice of them to wait until we were within seeing distance to do it, though.

The plan then was to wait for another truck to come for the next car to ransom, and then brutally mug and rape the driver when he got out to make the attachments. There are quite a few to be made, it turns out. I have to imagine it would be more profitable and save time to just shout "AY! I'M TAKING YOUR CAR IF YOU DON'T GIVE ME THE MONEY I DEMAND RIGHT MEOW!" I don't have any attemptedly clever conclusion here, since it all confuses me too much. It can't be cheap to send a series of trucks back and forth between two places -and judging by the wait it was quite a distance- all night, every night. Even if it's actually a patrol of several places, then is this stupid truck pulling into every single parking lot on the route? How can anyone stand that? And aren't a lot of cars potentially not punished if they're further along, because the truck, only able to kidnap one vehicle at a time, has to go all the way back to where it came from if it finds one before that? How does anyone make any money off of this? (if you know, please tell me, as I'd love to not have this paragraph here) It just seems like an elaborate system set up by one fardle with too much money with the intent to make every single other person in the chain of command progressively more miserable. Speaking of miserable, you must have been, reading that.


I guess many cars are towed around here, as the locals were kind enough to provide furniture such as this for use while waiting. I think it's about time they had it replaced, though.
With my irk-clouded judgement, seeing a car that although parked legally ought to have been towed out of pity, i decided now would be a good time to "advertise..."


However, momentarily distracted by the thought of not only seeing a backwards S, but even worse that of me being personally responsible caused me to forget how to spell our bimshwel. Just remembering the event now instills in me a fear so deep that this page can go no further. So. Begone. Await your fate.