I blame my shoes.
I just went downstairs to buy a Diet Coke. Walked in, nobody in the whole snack bar except for someone way over by the wall with the high windows. I didn't really look to see who it was because, well, you know, sometimes you might just want to ignore someone.
Anyway, kept trying to feed my crisp dollar bill into the #@$^@^&%%@ machine, then moved over to the change machine when I heard a girl say, "Do you know how to tell who's playing at City Stages?"
Huhwha?
I turned around and it was the person who was sitting in the booth that I had ignored on the way in. Youngish girl woman, curly hair, and evidently a visitor since I don't recall ever seeing her in the building before.
Was she talking to me?
It's one of those things I mentioned the other day--with the near ubiquity of telephone headsets, I can never tell if the person is actually talking to me, to someone on the phone, or to disembodied spirits. "Uh, pardon me?"
She responded, so I figured she must HAVE been asking me something.
"Do you know which bands are going to play on which stages at City Stages?"
I could see that she had one of the two local indie papers spread on the table in front of her, but for the life of me I can't figure out why she would think some big goofy Gus she's never seen before might be of some help. But, hey, I'm a polite person, so I went over and looked at what she was pointing at.
Well, sure enough, it's just a one-page ad, meaning it would be nearly impossible to list the entire roster of 125 bands and 9 stages. "Hmm. Well, no it doesn't seem to have a listing. I suppose you could go online and find out--there's the address."
"Oh."
Okay.
Well.
Alrighty. "Ah, hmm, well, sorry I couldn't help you, miss."
"'kay."
What? Did she just want to make conversation? Did she think I might be one of those hot professional municipal employees who make the rounds of all the clubs? Was it my ID badge coyly stuffed into my shirt pocket? My charmingly mismatched shoes? Who knows!?
I went on back over to the vending machines and got my afternoon bracer, and she went back to reading.
It was all just very odd.
Oh, by the way, here's the lineup.
Posted by Terry Oglesby at June 1, 2005 03:38 PMThat's certainly interesting, a bad haircut, mismatched shoes and a Volvo and now young women want to talk to you. Whoda thought it?
Posted by: Larry Anderson at June 1, 2005 04:01 PM::sigh:: I suppose it's just one of those inevitabilities in life. Good thing I didn't have on my overalls.
Posted by: Terry Oglesby at June 1, 2005 04:05 PMNow that you went and found the band lineup, you really don't have an excuse not to run it back down to the snack bar to her, huh? (I don't guess she wasn't surfing on her PDA, was she?)
Posted by: BillW at June 1, 2005 04:18 PMI'm not quite sure WHAT she was surfing on, Bill...
Posted by: Terry Oglesby at June 1, 2005 04:33 PMNO WAY!
Johnny Barbato and the Lucky Dogs are gonna be there? Whoa.
Posted by: skinnydan at June 2, 2005 08:41 AMWay, dude!
Posted by: Terry Oglesby at June 2, 2005 08:49 AM