Fatale Abstraction

Whew! I feel so refreshed!

Sorry I dropped a stitch there - meant to post for Sunday, but was tied up with extended family bidness and finishing a scarf I've been crocheting for a couple weeks. I'm excited, because that's the first real usable crochet project I've finished in several years. Huzzah!

Anyhoo, about Saturday night:

I told little sister what I wanted from her for my birthday was for us to go to the Dallas Observer "Best of Dallas" awards Saturday at House of Blues. This was my first time in HOB, and I must say it's a marvelous venue. I'll look forward to seeing a band there. However, it was well evil to consider waiting in the interminable line to get a free drink, so I went to the paying bar where $10 (I know! Evil was everywhere) fetched a couple bottles of Stella Artois. I joined my sister in line for the buffet, and the food was great.

We ate and drank our beers and decided we were too cool for the room - much of the crowd seemed like a cookie-press gridwork of sorority/frat-lings, and rather unoriginal, at that. So we moseyed on over to Cafe Rembrandt, where they had Stella Artois on draught - even better. The space next door was where the venerated Starck Club was originally, a favorite haunt of mine 20+ years ago. Super cool.

Now the space is home to an 18 & up club owned by Dennis Rodman, and they have a dwarf doorman of foreign extraction. We sat side by side on the patio in front, marveling at the parade of 18-ish year old hoochie mamas streaming up to the place. Across the entry drive, always at least four and sometimes six police officers sat watching, waiting for trouble.

A person I know through work happened by and sat talking with us for a wee bit, and he said late at night, they toss scrappers out of that club bloodied and itching for more of a bust-up, apparently. Quite a step down from the oozing-cool urbanity of Starck Club. Ah, but nothing ever lasts, does it?

Anyway, we left downtown and headed back to her house where I was to spend the night. We decided to stop at a biker bar where sis used to crack the whip on the hellions as a barmaid. At least 3 M.C. clubs hang out at this joint, but it was a pretty low-key evening. Actually, one dividend of a slow night was that we only stank of smoke, rather than actually crossing over to reeking territory afterward.

We walked in and a giant doorman greeted Sis and she introduced him to me. She introduced me to a few other people and she chatted a bit. I noticed a woman with blonde hair being kind of rowdy with a pack of girlfriends at the bar, even though she didn't seem the barfly-type. She was holding a fold-out fan, and I thought this was so unusual that I instantly liked her. There was a band playing 80s hits, and we went to a table tucked discreetly back from the center of the room and did some people-watching.

Blocked from our view completely was an area populated entirely by the celebrants of a birthday gathering, but we got a good gander of them when they sashayed out onto the dancefloor. This whole group was very white, middle-class, too-recently-severely-groomed to have been bikers. The core group of four guys seemed to have been airlifted from the fratboy lot from House of Blues, except they were too old and too casually dressed. Anyway, there was this one really tall guy -- looked like a lawyer, actually -- who was sort of the ringleader rug-cutter of the lot. During the band's stirring rendition of Mony Mony à la Billy Idol, he did the most awkward, amazing "ride the pony" pantomime I've ever seen. I think he time-warped those moves from his Lone Ranger theater afternoons in the late 60s. I'm just guessing. Anyway, it was even more of a squeal-inducing delight than a midget doorman. Trust me on this one. He looked like a thirty-something man channeling a 4 year old with a stick horse - priceless.

I do wish I had photographs, though.

Anyway, during one song, the dancefloor was pretty clear, and the lady in black with the fan came out and danced with the husband of her friend. Sis told me she'd chatted with the lady in black briefly a few minutes earlier, and she'd said she hasn't been out in years, that her neighbors dragged her out. Anyway, she was having a good time and it was fun to watch her kick up her heels.

The great thing at the end of it all, actually, was realizing how much more pleasant it was to have a Dos Eqis at the biker place at half the price than to be in those other places which were sterile of smoke and of anything resembling cheerful conversation.

We came back to Sis' house still rather early, and sat on the porch talking for at least an hour. I went to bed and was awakened several times in the night by the 15-pound jelly eunuch of a cat who would go on head-butting me. I think he decided there was finally someone in the house lower on the foodchain than he was, as he's been trumped by dogs and kids and such. This morning, the real offender was the wiener dog, and she clearly thought I had no business being asleep. Bitch.

Anyway, so that was that-- my birthday come early. Thanks, Sis. I had a blast.