Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Sleepless in Seattle, sleepy in Vancouver

I learned an important lesson at the Chris Isaak concert in Seattle on the weekend. Don’t mess with the groupies. I learned this after the drunken blonde girl standing behind me put her hands on my hips and pushed me out of the way.

You see, Chris Isaak has two very different types of fans -- those who love the music and those who love the man. My drunken blonde friend fell into the latter camp.

It wasn’t the way she was gyrating like a stripper and using her friend’s leg as a pole that gave her away. It wasn’t even the way she kept yelling at Chris Isaak to "take it off!" It was the terse explanation she gave me for pushing me out of the way: "He can’t see me if you’re standing in front of me."

I was too flustered to think of a clever comeback line. She went back to gyrating but kept lurching and crashing into the other groupies up near the front of the stage. It would have been impossible for Chris Isaak not to notice her. And not in a good way.

Aside from jockeying for position among the groupies, the concert itself was great. The band played for almost three hours and Chris was very charming. The fact that I got carded while ordering a drink was the icing on the cake.

My friend Leandro liked the concert too but his favourite part of the weekend was visiting the Abercrombie & Fitch store on Sunday.

Just like Walmart, Abercrombie & Fitch has greeters that welcome you when you walk in the door. Unlike Walmart, the Abercrombie greeter was a shirtless guy whose jeans hung so low it was almost obscene. It seems wardrobe malfunctions aren’t as much of an issue in Seattle as they are in the rest of the U.S.

Speaking of music (okay, I wasn’t really), I went to the Deep Dish concert with three girlfriends last night. The experience solidified my obsessive love of techno for the way it gets under your ribcage and compels you to move as it builds to crescendo after crescendo. If you ever get a chance to see Deep Dish, go.