Almost Famous

This past week has been another one of those weeks where I encounter semi-famous people. Last Saturday, after attending the IU/Indiana State football "game," Jester, Holt, and I headed out to Nick's (the bar at IU, not Nolte's house), where we ran into the likes of Horoho, Gibson (not Dean, but Dan), and Tyler. I kid you not, we saw two guys even more famous than them: Bears defensive ends Adewale Ogunleye and Israel Idonije. Wale, of course, went to IU and is 5th on the Big Ten's all-time sack list (and would be first were it not for a torn ACL that sidelined him halfway through his senior year). Idonije, on the other hand, went to the University of Manitoba, whose game at Taylor Field in Regina was approximately 915 miles further from Chicago than Bloomington, which explains why he was in B-town.

As if that wasn't enough, Wednesday night when I was walking home from the L, who do I pass on Sheffield Avenue, but my English teacher from senior year of high school, Mr. Bald. I haven't seen that ironically hirsute sumbitch since he gave me and Ivaska an A on our post-AP test "final," which was a video called "Confused and Dazed," in which we reenacted scenes from Dazed and Confused and, at the end, had a heart-to-heart with the audience about the all-too-present dangers of peer pressure and conformity that young people face. Not a dry eye in the classroom. I didn't say hi because he had that "dude, I'm stoned and ain't a damn thing keeping me from a burrito" look on his face.

To top it off, Thursday night, Chandler, Australian Andrew, and I went to Beat Kitchen to see Louis XIV. First off, the show was f'n awesome. Beat Kitchen is a pretty small venue, so we were about 30 feet from the center of the stage. Louis XIV rocked the shithouse. They played all of the songs off The Best Little Secrets Are Kept (one of my favorite albums from the past few years, and one of my favorite album covers as well), as well as a few new songs off their upcoming EP (coming out next week digitally) and album (coming out in January). The new songs were just as good as the old ones. They're playing a bunch of smaller club dates until their album is released, and I highly recommend seeing them. Australian Andrew had never heard of them before yesterday, and he became an instant fan, which is a pretty big accomplishment because it's like pulling teeth to get him to listen to anything besides Crowded House.

Anywho, after the show, the band hung out at Beat Kitchen. I made small talk with lead singer Jason Hill, and we reminisced about how hot it was when they played Lollapalooza two years ago. Then, after Chandler and I left and were walking to Damen to catch a cab, we walked by the tour bus and the drummer, Mark Maigaard (who looks as Norse as his name implies), was having a smoke outside the bus, so I bummed a cigarette from him, and the three of us chatted for a few minutes. He seemed like a really good guy. He remembered both of our names, and I of course called him Matt. Nice work on my part. Anyway, they all seemed very down to earth. I can't wait for them to come through Chicago again.