The Jake Fire in Santa Clarita wasn't as bad as it looked. Fire crews had everything contained within a day, but when it broke out, the Santa Clarita Valley shut down and closed I-5 near my job. For me, that meant working from home and getting all my writing done by 3 p.m.—plenty of time to beat the traffic heading north and meet my friend/drummer Harry.
By sheer cunning and programming acumen, Harry found an error on a radio station's website after they announced a giveaway for RATT concert tickets. While other hopeful winners were stopped by 404 errors from a bad web address, Harry correctly guessed the URL and won the giveaway. After his wife said she couldn't go, the invitation passed on to me.
You know RATT—they did the song "Round and Round" (which you may have confused for Van Halen's "Panama"), back when music videos regularly included Waspy dinner settings like this. The band was fortunate enough to score some of the primo 80s publicity that came from face-melting guitar solos and onstage destruction.
But it's been nearly 40 years since RATT enjoyed mainstream success. Since that time, they lost their founding lead guitarist and a decade-long rhythm guitarist as a result of some strange legal troubles.
Our "breed of RATT" was undergoing a facelift that involved a North America tour and a Geico commercial.
Harry and I intercepted this arc in the rowdy community of Santa Clarita at The Canyon in the Westfield mall—a dinner theater with tables in front of the stage and standing room in the back, possibly calling back to their Waspy family dinner aesthetic.
Like any 20-something freeloader, I wasn't eager to spend hundreds on drinks at The Canyon, so I brought a box of wine to Harry's and pounded most of it in his garage. At 8:33 p.m., once we were good and sloshy, it was time to call the cab, leading to this mind-numbing exchange between Harry and our driver.
The October sun set as we swayed in line with a crowd full of once-rebellious koozbanes, the shells of whom dusted off leather jackets and tight jeans after work to complement an Ed Hardy shirt hitherto hidden under business casual attire. Some of them would sit before center stage as revolving waiters brought out fine wines and hors d'oeuvres, just the way their teenage brains envisioned seeing RATT.
Once we were inside, we went straight to the bar where Harry ordered us a couple beers.
"You need a wristband to order," the bartender said.
"Where do we get those?" Harry asked.
"You should've gotten one when they took your tickets."
Harry pulled the tickets from his pockets and showed them to a confused bartender, who instructed us to go back to the window and officially gain admission. Call it drunken genius, but we snuck into a RATT concert by accident.
Time now moved faster in a way that only alcohol can accelerate, and before we knew it, RATT had taken the stage.
We stood behind the dinner tables with the other gentiles while RATT played songs we didn't know with the lumbered energy of musicians whose careers were either waning (like Stephen Pearcy) or dawning (like lead guitarist Jordan Ziff).
Try as we might back in the garage, Harry and I hadn't familiarized ourselves with RATT's repertoire, and we could only sing along to the chorus of "Round and Round" when they finally played it. I'm sure we weren't the only ones.
I was entranced by Ziff's shredding. He's unreal, and I am nowhere near his level. Watching him play inspired me to learn Marty Friedman's solo from "Symphony of Destruction."
Meanwhile, Harry kept the beer coming, one after another. Once I couldn't see straight, we got brave enough to cross the socioeconomic line and stand smack in front of the stage, blocking the view of some seated diners. Stephen Pearcy gave Harry and I high fives, then Harry left to buy more beer just as a bouncer approached me and kicked me out.
In my blur of inebriation, all I wanted was to take a nap. I wandered out to the far reaches of the Westfield parking lot and found a short accessibility bus to lay down by. Only God knows how long I napped there, tossing and turning to find comfort on the asphalt, but eventually I decided this was no resting place.
I was better off inside the bus.
As a former bus driver myself, I know a thing or two about wheelchair lifts. While their doors close hydraulically, they aren't strong enough to stop a sleepy drunk from prying them open and tumbling through. To avoid criminal penalties, I will now speak only in possibilities.
It's possible that I climbed over the wheelchair lift and into the bus. It's possible that I then sat in the driver's seat with intent to start the bus and drive home. As the keys [thankfully] weren't in the bus, I possibly napped for a few minutes on the bus floor before awaking to the buzz of my phone.
"Dude, where'd you go?" Harry asked. I told him where I was, and he was rightfully upset that I ditched him. It was during his search for me that he came to, picking himself up off the ground in front of a laughing crowd—people who most likely saw him take a fall while exiting the venue, but we'll never know for sure.
Harry and I reunited on a grass
strip that surrounded the parking lot. The next thing I remember was a series
of cartwheel attempts as we waited for a cab.
Our night was at an end. As we rode back, hunger struck with fury. We wanted food, and there was a Jack in the Box near Harry's place.
"Could you take us through Jack in the Box drive-thru?" Harry asked.
"I can take you to Jack in the Box, but I can't wait for you in the drive-thru." That was fine with us. We would figure it out. Hunger can't wait.
The Jack in the Box drive-thru was busy, but we weren't afraid. We waited our turn before surprising the window guy by walking right up and asking to place an order. Thankfully, he obliged after completing a few more car orders. Judging by the carnage of wrappers on Harry's coffee table the next day, we must have ordered dozens of tacos.
We wanted a ride home. Sure, Harry's place was only a couple blocks from Jack in the Box, but I guess we were lazy, so we ordered another cab.
I don't remember taking another cab ride. We may have just walked instead. I don't know how long we stayed awake once we got to Harry's either. What I know is that aside from periodic sprints to the bathroom to puke, I wasn't well enough to leave the couch until noon the next day.
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