Dialogues With Myself

CHAOS! Flosstradamus/Cool Kids Show Review

Part 1: 

It’s 5:00 p.m. Grill time at the Lodge. Feenick’s cooking, giving us double servings of giant hot dogs and burgers. So much meat. Thank you, grillmaster. Midura is wearing Oakleys and tossing a football with TMac. Sunglasses: silver, blue and ill-advised all over. My good friend down the hall, we’ll call him “John”, is trying to bitch out of this killer show…something about a paper due yesterday, or whatever. “But Clams is coming….Clams is coming? Normally adventure-averse Clams is coming…you gotta come!” I tell him this, he shakes his head, drops me a can of Sparks out the window, and decides to pull the classic send-an-e-mail-but-forget-to-actually-attach-the-document-and-then-apologize-for-being-absentminded move, which I have abused early and often this quarter. One of many things.

Anyways, we load up with a bottle of “water”, a bottle of powerade and a bottle of lemonade. Loaded like a freight train and flying like an aeroplane, we head over to Noyes to meet Clams. There are these two gorgeous girls on the El. Could they possibly be going to the show? Keep reading.

We pick up ATL Sean and Bennett at Foster, and we’re on the Purple Express. Brilliant! The girls sit behind us, and also pick up a friend, who most clearly doesn’t go here (fake tan, fake boobs, not particularly bright, etc.). Not the type of girl I’ve ever had much interaction, much less luck, with. Breakdown? Chances seem slimmer for a potential post-show hookup. My suspicions are confirmed when Sean poses this query: “Are you going to Flosstradamus?” What follows is three sets of eyes boring down on him like some monstrous, three-headed sorortastic hydra, each filled with equal parts confusion and contempt. Although I don’t know what he expected. It’s an odd question for the uninitiated, i.e. everyone. Also, if you slayed one of them, would another grow in her place? Discuss.

They’re going to the Union. Typical. Feenick always gets the girls. SigEp Sean, too. But they stole mugs and went to Prost post-Union instead, so fuck it.

“John” chastises me for swearing in front of a little kid with a bowl cut, eating an egg salad sandwich. We conspicuously consume a large portion of the “water”.  So refreshing/hydrating. The electrolytes really have me woozy. We get off at Roosevelt after transferring from Red to Orange. We are downtown, on Wabash, in view of the building where Ebony and Jet are produced (magazine track geek-out!). The show’s at Columbia College, differing only from Northwestern in, well, every respect. A.) Everybody is cooler…hipsters abound, but they seem so self-assured, so unironic…I want to be them B.) These kids are actually from the citaaayyy…I realize that I have never met anybody from the inner citaaayyy…’cept for Lincoln Park, which is not the citaaayyy, really, just an affluent haven for kids and their absurdly rich parents C.) Very ethnic…we’re some of the only white kids there…but no one seems to mind, with the major exception of this un-ill dude who keeps pushing me forward into the crowd during Cool Kids and muttering something that sounded suspiciously like ‘honky’…

Sign on the windows, posted every 10 feet, reads: “You must have a Student ID. No Exceptions. Two guest allowed per student”. Shit…the site forgot to mention that. Bennett goes to talk to four girls up ahead, while Clams and I negotiate with two pretty ghetto dudes who barely acknowledge our presence. We’re flyin’ blind right now. After an hour-long El ride we’re standing on the wrong side of the giant glass walls, looking in. Will we make it through security? I’m just happy you made it this far.

We get in after some haggling. Turns out no one at Chaos Productions really gives a shit. Can’t imagine that happening at NU. Sample dialogue:

Me: But man, I just left my student ID back at home [slip him a twenty].

A & O pusher: Sir, what is that? Sir, are you trying to bribe me? That is completely inappropriate. Rules are rules, mister….We can’t have disorderly gentlemen like yourself making a ruckus and a fuss. Sir, sir, SIR! You can’t just run past the table! SIR! Security! Find that man! He’s al dente! 

Anyways, we get in and some shitty punk band is up on stage. Treaty of Paris. Real loud, bland and treacly. We sit at a table in the back and finish the agua. Some shitty punk band leaves the stage. We cheer.

Alright, so that’s part one. I’m tired. Part two soon to follow. I’m out.