Shows

What I should have said in my Adventures in Podiatry post is that I'm jealous that my 60+ year old friend whose shoes I photographed is in The Ramones and I'm not.

By which I mean that about four years ago mrguy south said something that has become a catch phrase in our home. We were walking a trail that starts about six houses down from our house. I was wearing Converse and slipping around on the hill and mrguy and mrguy south were wearing sensible walking shoes and having no problem with their stability. mrguy south turned to me and said "mrsguy, we're not in The Ramones any more." Like "get some sensible shoes!" I can't tell you how many times we reference this when talking about various aspects of getting older. But here we were, middle aged rockers at a show, and guys older than me were wearing their fashionable shoes, and I was eating fenugreek tablets, wearing WIDE SKETCHERS and orthotics and a silicone toe separator. I've got a whole rig going in my shoe just to walk these days.

But I heard that "Dad Shoes" are in right now, so maybe I'll ride that fashion wave. Thank you, Balenciaga!

So me and my dad shoes have been to several shows in the last few weeks, all featuring mrguy:

First the show at the club with the sparkly ceiling, where mrguy played bass with a friend from college. 

and then last Saturday our band played at a neighborhood chili cookoff. Near this adorable sign.

It was a first time for me with my new amp. So cool. I'm now self-contained. I drilled my Kanilea, and have separate controls for both mic and uke, and it is HEAVEN. The gig itself was a bit of a s**** show, with hordes of shrieking children riding scooters all around us. But then you never know where the bits of magic will happen. Of course it's a treat to play music with the 'ohana. And then... a guy came up to us in between songs and thanked us for our playing, telling us that he was a descendant of João Fernandes, one of the three men from Madeira who brought the ukulele to Hawaii. He disappeared into the crowd, and we didn't see him after that. Also magical: afterparty with pizza and beers. Later in the week we had our traditional post-gig pub trivia, where we came in first by one point. We're pretty sure that the one point came from the time that the ladies wanted him to write Rashida Jones, but mrguy heard us say Mindy Kaling and wrote that down instead.

Back to shows. After chili cookoff night was another mrguy show with his regular band. The show was fantastic. Everybody was there. Even some former friends. During the course of the evening, we achieved new milestones in the sport of ex-friendship, including proximity without speaking, full frontal proximity without acknowledging and spouse engagement. By the time the last thing happened and they came to pay respects to mrguy I a) went to use the restroom and b) had a long conversation with someone about his cancer battle. Super fascinating. Do you know that if there is a donor liver that is sort-of itself expiring they'll still put it in you? They start dialing around to see who is able to receive an organ when it is fresh, but if enough time passes and nobody at the top of the list is able to get to it in time (or it to them) they will give the liver, in somewhat of a compromised state, to someone local and farther down the list. He has to do some pretty awful stuff every month in order to be walking among us, but he's hanging in there with his funky liver.

And so ends the week and a half of shows. By this time next month, mrguy will have played shows with four different bands.