Tonight was our first show since the holidays, and all went well. However, as I have developed
\\The Cough//
I was a bit anxious about making unseemly noises in the booth.
So after work, I zoomed home and took my medicine (Entex LA), threw on more layers, and headed off to the wilds of Santa Monica, where the weather tonight is 44 degrees. Not freezing, but it feels like it could be close. I also threw into my pocket, my little liqui-gel packet of Nyquil.
OK, so Nyquil makes me sleepy, and I knew I didn't want to be sleepy in the booth, but I also knew I didn't want to be coughing, and
\\The Cough//
doesn't care if I'm driving, in a meeting with my boss, or what. \\The Cough// lives to make me stop breathing. \\The Cough//'s only joy is to make me make the hacking sound - the oh, so lovely hacking sound that my co-workers recognize even if they cannot see me (yesterday, I was hiding out in the restroom, coughing \\The Cough//, sounding as if I'm about to expel a lung, and this very nice woman, two stalls down, said, "Is that Irene?" She identified me by my fucking \\The Cough//).
All day long people have been leaving me little gifts of cough drops on my desk, not knowing that the drops make \\The Cough// only stronger. \\The Cough//, it laughs at your "cough" drops.
\\The Cough// sucks.
So I took one of the Liqui-Gels (C), thinking one might just prevent me from hanging myself, put on my Dickensian gloves with the fingers cut out, and got into the booth to run the lights for a show I haven't seen in something like six weeks.
It could've been a disaster. But those performers are good, and they did an excellent job, and it was a great show.
Me, too, man, I did a good job.
Then, on the way home, I was feeling fine, but I started getting drowsy, and the discussion about the new Apple iPhone, on KPCC, was interesting, but not quite interesting enough - so I switched to KLOS (usually a fatal mistake), but Jim Ladd has a theme, and tonight's theme is apparently songs with the word "bad" in them. (Who sang that "She's a bad mamajama" song? Bet you won't be hearing that on KLOS tonight.) Anyway, the song playing when I switched over was by the Grateful Dead, and now, I understand.
Thanks to the pharmaceutical assistance provided by 1/2 dose of Nyquil, I now understand the Grateful Dead. I believe the song Jim was playing was "Two Miles of Bad Road," but I could be wrong. It was one of those songs that's really two songs (two, two songs!) in one, and I forgot the name of both of them.
All I know is, I felt that song. My hands on the wheel felt that song. My left foot, pressed up against the little foot rest thingy, felt that song. My eyes, focused on the back end of the car in front of me, felt that song. It was amazingly beautiful.
And then I thought, Oh, shit, am I having a psychotic episode from NYQUIL?
What a lightweight I am.
And the funny thing is, I saw the Grateful Dead, at Cal State Dominguez, with Adam, sometime in high school, and while I guess my lack of fun time can only be blamed on myself, it just wasn't my scene. Truthfully, I am not a hippie-chick. (However, there was this girl, Lisa Jackson, who I knew in the 9th grade. She was sort of scary-nice, and for about two weeks, she sort of took an interest in me. She was a senior, I think. Anyway, she tried to get me to go to a Dead show with her, way back then, but I knew my folks wouldn't go for it. For one thing, she had long dreadlocks and smelled like patchouli. They would've known something was up. But I've always wondered if going with her to that concert - or anywhere - would've changed my life at all. I doubt it.) So here I am, many years later, having a breakthrough moment on the freeway, not far, actually, from the site of that very concert, and finally, finally I got it.
I'm just happy that I got home safely, and in time to blog again. I'm sure we're all glad. Heh, heh.
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