As I type these words I’m on the very edge of a chorizo-stuffed-poblano-induced coma. This was one of those pain in the ass meals (stuffing many individual things is no fun) to make that didn’t seem like the reward would be worth the effort. However, I was wrong and it was totally worth it. My burning lips and running nose and near-coma-like state is a testament to how delicious those little pain in the asses were.

I came here not to brag about my delicious dinner or to bury it, I came to tell you that next week at this time I will be in Chicago awaiting the start of RiotFest which culminates in The Replacements’ show. It will be my very first time seeing the ‘Mats. They have yet to invent a word to describe the mix of electric excitement and sparkly euphoria this stirs in me. There simply are no words. There is a short interpretive dance that involves jazz hands, but you’d have to be here to see it.

With so much anticipation my brain spends a lot of time writing Mats-related fan fiction. Here are a few of the storylines. I was going to rank these in order from least-probable to most-probably, but what the hell kind of fun is that?

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• Joan Jett flies back from her gig in Baltimore to sing “Androgynous” with The Replacements. Tears of joy shoot straight from my eyes causing people around me to look for an asshole with a squirt gun.
• They play “If Only You Were Lonely.” More tears of joy and then I spend the rest of the night explaining how that was the very first MP3 I remember downloading from AOL way back in like 1997.
• Bob Mould joins them on stage for a rousing rendition of “Somethin’ to Du” the Minnesotans in the crowd have a simultaneous orgasm. The rest of the show is a little awkward.
• The Replacements are staying in the same hotel I am, we have waffles together on Sunday morning before the festival. Westerberg and I talk about how much Chuck Klosterman sucks.
• The Courtney Cox/Dancing in the Dark One: Of course. We all have this fantasy at every concert we go to, don’t we? In the fantasy we are completely comfortable in front of large crowds at the spur of the moment. Of course. This is fantasy is exacerbated by the fact that Westerberg sort of did this exact thing when I saw him at the Guthrie. Sort of. He invited someone up to play the tambourine on I Will Dare. Some dude did. I cried in my seat.
• The Courtney Cox One Part II: Upon seeing me on stage, John Cusack waits for me backstage and invites me out for a drink. He is totally charmed by my ability to quote very large chunks of “High Fidelity” and doesn’t mind at all that I’m a sweaty, dirty, festival-going mess. We begin an on-going long distance relationship, and he accompanies to the National Book Awards ceremony where I tell Jonathan Franzen to suck it in my acceptance speech.

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