Best Day for a Sulk

Yesterday was grey, cold, and with light frozen rain all day long. It was the perfect sort of day for sitting at home and not doing anything and maybe thinking to yourself, "Ho hum, it's such a dreary day. I could sit here forever with my books, thinking of memories."

But instead of doing that, I went and saw Belle and Sebastian play the Nokia Theater in Times Square.


Fact: If you say you don't care for Belle and Sebastian, you certainly haven't seen them live.
Fact: If you'd say you're, at best, a casual fan of Belle and Sebastian, you certainly haven't seen them live.
Fact: Remember the Belle and Sebastian cartoon from Nickelodeon? Remember how you'd have the choice between Robotech and Belle and Sebastian every day, and that's why you never watched much of that big white dog show, but were still amazed that the villains would do things like tie Sebastian up and leave him in a burning house?

Anyway, I first became aware of B&S in 1998 and paid them next to no mind until about 49 weeks ago, and then I became a casual listener . . . but last night I saw them for real and it was so good that, if I didn't already have different plans for today (and if it weren't, uhm, sunny and bright blue outside), I'd be tempted to spend today listening to their records and writing letters. Or watercoloring.

What songs did they play? Oh, you know. Lots of the ones that I recognized and lots of that ones that I didn't recognize. How long did they play? About two hours! Was it ever as crazy as, say, a Leeway show? Well, Stuart the Singer did sing a verse or two of a song lying on his back on top of the crowd. What was the absolute best part?

Get this:

5/6ths of the way through the set, Stuart starts complaining that he's been working so much and wasn't feeling happy enough (something like that) and that he wanted the Home of the Free to make him feel better (or something like that). So he says what he needs to be happier are some volunteers to come on stage (every hand in the audience goes up). BUT there are some qualifications to get on stage: You need to be a girl (half the hands go down). You need to be over 5'4" (all the teeny tiny hands that aren't held up very high in the audience go down). You need to be wearing a skirt (more hands down). From the remaining hands Stuart picks out 6 girls to join him on stage as dancers for a number. What percentage surprised was I to see Mitch Clark getting on stage to dance with the band? 0%. By what percentage did Mitch outdance every other girl on that stage? By about at least seven million percent. The five other girls were just like "Oh, I'm on stage with this band and they want me to dance, I'm a little shy right now, I'll just move back and forth a little" whereas Mitch, of course, only looked like she had been practicing every day just in case something like this happened. All I've got to say is the Boy Scouts were right, Be Prepared. Rack up those living room dancing hours because you'll never know when you'll need them.

Other Good Parts of the Night: Sure, seeing Michael Musto riding his bike through Times Square was neat, but I much preferred seeing my friend Demetri again and catching up a little.