Ahh. Mazing.
The drive out was uneventful, other than paying roughly $84.75 in road tolls and me screaming, "OMG, Kate Spade outlet! Shut Up!" somewhere outside Chicago. But otherwise, a boring seven hours.
We stayed at the City Suites Hotel since it was blocks away from the show. It was an average place - not nearly as nice as it looks in the photos but not scary enough to make me run screaming from the premises. They did have some amazingly beautiful charcoal gray velvet duvets that I was afraid to touch. I did give one a little pat and it was super soft. Probably covered in semen and staphylococcus, but yes, super soft.
After we got everything settled in we walked around the corner to The Chicago Diner. I read about it on Princess Lasertron's blog and then it turned out to be right there, so we checked it out. Matt had seitan enchiladas and I had sweet potato quesadillas. His was fantastic and mine tasted like someone put baby food in my lunch. I would definitely eat there again though. The beans, guacamole, and salsa were fantastic.
After eating we took a nap in our room, watched part of Cocktail (the worst movie ever made thank you very much 80s Tom Cruise), and got buzzed on a bottle of wine. Then the following series of events took place which resulted in my husband being the happiest man alive:
(Sorry, Jen. If you're reading this you'll have to deal with hearing this story one more time.)
We were planning on walking to Schuba's where the show was, but after talking to my dad and having him essentially convince me that I would be abducted and murdered if I walked anywhere in Chicago, we got a cab. So we took the 45 second cab ride to the bar and got there 15 minutes earlier than planned. We sat down in the last 2 seats at the end of the bar, ordered beers (Chicago loves its Stella), and as we were reaching into our pockets to pay for them... the power for the entire block went out. Brendan Benson had two shows that night, and the first show was in its encore when it was cut short. It was about 8:50, we weren't sure what was going on, it was chaotic... I turned around to look out the window behind me just as Brendan was walking behind us. I nudged Matt to turn around but he ducked into the back room through to a door next to us.
Then he stuck his head back out.
And then my husband yelled to him, "You're the shit! We drove here from Omaha to see you tonight."
And Brendan said, "Thanks man, that's awesome!"
And then my husband fell a little bit more in love with Brendan Benson and called all his friends in the dark to tell them the story I just told you.
It took about 40 minutes for the power to come back on, but if it hadn't gone out in the first place, Matt wouldn't have gotten to give a shout out to his idol. Everything starting with the phone call to my Dad to the power going out was one huge case of happenstance.
The show was super fucking fantastic. We were about four feet back from The Man as evidenced by this grainy camera phone picture:
Turns out I could have brought my entire camera set up into the bar and no one would have stopped me. But that's okay. I didn't really need photos. I stole the gig poster out of the bathroom and had it in my bag. :)
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