the day i broke the ban on fun

first: i’m currently supposed to be adhering to a self-imposed embargo on frivolous (i.e., “fun”) things – the idea being that i really need to focus more on writing fiction in my free time, instead of doing things like hanging out with friends, napping, meeting girls, or other unproductive things. last week was intended to be the start of the 2nd ban on fun (the 1st took place last year from labor day through mid-january). occasional, but decidedly infrequent, exceptions to this ban are permitted, but generally only for things that can be associated with reading and/or writing, such as seeing the dollar store, or a movie based on a book.

last friday, the plan was to attend the printer’s ball (featuring the dollar store) at the mca – knowing full well that lifting the ban less a week into it does not bode well for me. but then i got an even better, but somewhat less literature-focused, offer for that same night: a friend had an extra ticket for the ed vedder show at the auditorium, and asked me to go with her. i felt a little bad about blatantly flaunting the ban, especially so early on, but these inklings of guilt dissipated after the following things happened:

#1: my friend was unable to properly read the tickets that she herself had bought.
there was some delay getting inside the theater, as it required no less than three, and possibly four, security employees to use a single handheld barcode scanner for admitting patrons into the venue. how this is more efficient than the old process of one minimum wage-earning teenager tearing ticket stubs is unclear. once inside, my friend confided to me that she believed these seats weren’t as good as the ones she had the previous night when she sat in row W (yes, she’s a huge rock nerd and bought tickets to both chicago performances). i glanced at the ticket and immediately discovered her assessment to be factually inaccurate, as our seats were in row BBB – which is to say, in the orchestra pit. i shared this finding with my friend, who believed i was making it up. so i encouraged her to walk down the aisle of the main floor until an usher told her she couldn’t go any further. she nearly fainted when the final usher confirmed we were sitting up front – indeed, in the second row, about 6 or 7 seats right of center.

while my friend tried to compose herself, i checked my phone to find a text message from my sister, who actually had gone to the printer’s ball, and was now declaring it to be the worst performance art ever. “painful” was the precise word she used. also “pathetic” and “ignorant.” my sister’s a pretty smart cookie, and hipper than most librarians, so i believed her description to be an honest one.

#2: insanity ensues.
while waiting for ed to come out, someone pointed at one of the side boxes off to stage left, and said “hey, that guy kinda looks like sean penn.” i turned around, looked in that direction, and said, “holy f*ck, that guy is sean penn” – mostly because this was a true statement. sean penn was in chicago for the final night of ed’s tour. but we had better seats than sean penn. my friend got all excited again – though i’m not sure if it was because sean penn was about 75 feet away, or because she realized once again how f*cking ridiculously awesome our seats were.

i could appreciate how cool it was that sean penn was in the building, but having no distinct need to know what he does with every moment of his day, i turned back around. however, awareness of sean penn’s presence began to spread, and throughout the theater people started turning toward that box. i looked once more, and now sitting in the next box over from sean penn’s was john cusack. “hey, that’s john cusack sitting next to sean penn,” i shared with my friend. to which my friend replied, “hey, isn’t that the stanley cup?” and it was, in fact, the stanley cup. the stanley cup had, it seemed, come to take in the ed vedder show as john cusack’s date. in truth, though, the cup came with chris chelios, who was now in the box with john cusack. at this point, the entire auditorium was watching their box, and as cheli leaned out over the edge, hoisting the cup above his head, a spotlight shined on him, and the joint went nuts. this, i’ve decided, is part of what’s great about chicago. we can appreciate hollywood stars, but what we really get exited about is when our hometown hockey hero makes good – even if that hockey player had to leave our (and his) beloved team to do it.

#3 despite the audience obviously exceeding it’s quota of inebriated @ssholes for the evening, ed decided to rock our faces off anyway
the crowd was a bit of a rowdy one, right from the start of ed’s performance. i attribute this more to the long-held city tradition of getting f*cking plowed on friday nights than to ed performing, because, well, it was mostly just ed and a guitar. he did also have a crazy awesome contraption, ostensibly made of a small flat box and a mic, that boomed throughout the hall whenever ed stomped on it. but i don’t think that’s what pulled the crowd’s collective string. pretty sure that was the shite beer everyone was drinking. so there were some tense moments when big jerks shouted stupid things at the stage, and ed tried to ignore them, but sometimes couldn’t hold back and justly responded with a polite “f*ck off” or “f*ck off, please.”

ed ended up playing for over two hours, singing some great covers, some older (and perhaps somewhat surprisingly still germane) pearl jam tunes, as well as a lovely set of songs from his into the wild soundtrack. actually, he did all these*: (Sometimes, Trouble, Girl From The North Country, I Am Mine, Dead Man, Brain Damage/Masters Of War, Setting Forth, Guaranteed, No Ceiling, Far Behind, Rise, Soon Forget, I’m One, Driftin’, Hide Your Love Away, Small Town, I Can’t Explain, Porch, Growin’ Up, Blackbird, Throw Your Arms Around Me, Society, “Chicago Cubs Song,” Wishlist, Lukin, Let My Love Open The Door, Arc, Hard Sun). should a bootleg ever surface, i highly recommend that you acquire it. and then send me a copy.

at one point during the set, ed went off on a tangent about how for a while now he’d been wanting to rent a place in the city, and just spend a summer in chicago. and that got me thinking about the one time i was at the empty bottle, not there to see anybody in particular, and how, much to my surprise, eddie was there, milling about. seeing him there by himself, i offered to buy him a brew, and we ending up just chatting for a while, like any two dudes might before a show – talking about what a great city for music chicago was, about how i missed seeing tv on the radio in that very venue because of an ex-girlfriend who i still had feelings for, about how sad it was to see the who play without keith or john. it was one of those great moments when music connected people from disparate worlds – he of the rich&famous rock star one, i of the poorly paid non-profit worker bee one. it was an awesome exchange, and one that only happened in my head. but ed really did say he wanted to come to chicago for a summer.

#4 if only for a few moments, all was right with the world
the show ended as all shows should, and, i think, all great shows do: with a sing-along song. when done right, these sing-alongs can transcend cliche, even if i’m incapable of describing them in such a convincing fashion. i’ve found that the “acoustically perfect” auditorium theatre is particularly well-suited for this purpose, as wilco had managed to alter the course of human history with a live version of “california stars” there. well, maybe they didn’t “alter history,” but i think they could have – if the audience let them.

during those communal minutes at the closing of a great rock show, when thousands (or sometimes just dozens) of people are singing together, feeling that music can transform lives, allowing the ecstasy of mutual, joyous experience to wash over them, believing that, together, humans really are capable of beautiful things… that is one of those occasions when we are at our finest. over the last couple weeks i’ve noticed the olympics are like that, too – uniting us in our humanity. the artists (or athletes) who help us attain this feeling have done their part – it’s we as individuals who fail them when we don’t carry that exuberance forward, re-igniting it daily.

anyway – ed, with the help of his friends for this final song, delivered some 3,000 people just such an opportunity with his grand version of “hard sun.” it was raucous, it was ebullient, it was hand-clappy, and it had a beat you could dance to. so we did. thousands of us.

i should mention that one of the “friends” on stage singing back-up was sean penn. he now had better seats than us. so at the end of the night, balance did return to the universe.

*thanks to pearl jam online for the setlist. also, here is a review of the previous night’s performance, done by a professional.