Live from Dreamland

I have a lot of weird dreams, which you would know if you had read this or this. Last night I dreamt that my wife and I won a chance to meet the members of the band Live. Live, in case you don't know, is best known for having the worst band name ever, even including The The, The Who, The Guess Who, The TBD, The Huh?, The Uhhhh, What, We Need a Name?, and Bread. Oh, Live is also known for having the only number 1 hit song containing the word placenta. The lyrics to Live songs are often so profound as to be virtually nonsensical, and sometimes they come out the other side to be almost profound again, such as in the case of a little ditty known as Insomnia and the Hole in the Universe:

Angel, don't you have some bagels in my oven?
Lady, don't you know a man when you see one?
Crazy lady with the shiny shoes, where are you?
Kick your feet and calm the space that makes you hollow

Little swami's got his bowl to eat
Little swami always walks his beat, sweet feet
Little swami's got his bowl to eat
And I sing the dirge song

Well, I don't have to tell you what that means. (So that will save some time, as Emo Philips would say.)

In point of fact, my wife and I have already met Ed Kowalczyk, the lead singer of Live, as documented by the undoctored photo above. How we came to meet him is a semi-interesting story in itself, which I will now tell because this post needs some filler.

A local radio station was giving away tickets to see Ed play a very small acoustic show in Modesto, just a few miles from where we live. My wife and I are huge fans, so we dialed and redialed on every phone we could lay our hands on every time we heard the "cue to call," but to no avail. We succeeded in being caller 8, caller 10, and just about every other caller except for the coveted caller 9. About 10 minutes after my last failed attempt, the same radio station announced that they were giving away a $25 gift certificate to Appleby's. After some thought, I decided that a free meal at Appleby's was probably worth hitting redial on my phone. And what do you know, I won! The conversation went like this:

DJ: You're caller nine! You won a $25 gift certificate to Appleby's!
Diesel: (Trying to contain my excitement at the prospect of having riblets for dinner. ) Oh, cool.
DJ: Hello?
Diesel: Hello.
DJ: Hello, are you there?
Diesel: I'm here. Hello?
DJ: Can they hear me? I don't hear anything.
Diesel: I'm here, I'm here!

Dial tone.

So there I sat, having failed even to win the riblet consolation prize, wondering if maybe I'd have a chance at the bucket of fish heads they would no doubt be giving away in another ten minutes. But rather than wallow in my riblet deprivation, I decided to make a stand. I called the radio station back and got ahold of the technologically impaired DJ. I told her that I was the rightful riblet winner, and she apologized profusely for the "technical difficulties." Sensing weakness, I pounced. "Well," I said, "You know how you could make it up to me...."

Which is how we got in to see Ed Kowalczyk with about 50 other people at a bar in Modesto. We were about 10 feet from the stage. Very cool.



Wow, maybe I didn't need that much filler. Anyway, back to my dream. Basically it was me and my wife hanging around in Ed Kowalczyk's basement with the rest of the band. They played a few songs, and then we sat around and talked. At one point Ed started talking about the commercialization of Christianity. And I told him (seriously, I dream in hyperlinks) that he really needed to check out Kinda Kitschy, and that he would probably also get a kick out of Crummy Church Signs as well. If you think I'm making that up, you obviously haven't been here long enough to know how screwed up my brain is.

Hey, at least it wasn't a commercial for a nonexistent sitcom.