I cannot deny that my Joan Jett experience was marred by the fuckers around me. First of all, she played on a stage that was penned in on both sides. On one side we had the beer tents lined with people waiting for beer and not about to budge, and a fence on the other side. This meant that a very large amount of people were all jockeying for position in a narrow space. Generally, I’m not the person that needs to be at the front of the stage. I’m fine taking my 6’5″ self to the back of the crowd and enjoying the view from there. In fact, I usually prefer that because I once had a panic attack in the middle of a Rufus Wainwright concert at First Ave and have enjoyed the edges of the crowd ever since.

However, this was Joan Jett. And while I didn’t need to be in the first row I did want to stake out a semi-decent spot. The nerve!

See, I was already super annoyed before her set even started. I found a pretty decent spot next to a tree. My logic was, “Hey, a tree is taller than me, people shouldn’t complain too much.” Remember this, it comes back to play in this story.

Since Max was off watching GWAR, I was standing next to the tree by myself eavesdropping on trio of hipster twenty somethings — two young women and a dude. The young dude was insufferable, lecturing the women on all things Joan Jett like he was some kind of professor of Joanology. He was both incredulous and condescending at the same time. You know that dude. And the worst part was, he was wrong about half the shit he said. If I were a bigger asshole, I would have been all, “Actually, jackass, ‘Cherry Bomb’ was not Joan’s. It was written by Joan Jett and Kim Fowley and was the track 1 side 1 on The Runaways’ debut album in 1976. She didn’t even sing it, Cherie Currie did.” (Thanks Queens of Noise: The Real Story of the Runaways!)

I didn’t have time for too much scorn, because suddenly there she was. Joan Jett on stage in front of me and, I had tears to shed and songs to sing. The crowd stuttering through “Cherry Bomb” was pretty rad, and at one point during “Do You Wanna Touch Me” after Joan had asked the crowd to sing along I leaned over to Professor Chatty O’Bullshit who was saying something about the crowd’s singing and cracked, “When Joan asks you to sing, you sing.”

It was right after that when some jackass behind me had enough of the injustice of being stuck behind someone so gifted with the height and decided to climb the tree next to me. Only the tree next to me wasn’t really that big of a tree and all of the branches were well over my head, making them a good seven feet off the ground. However, this did not stop entitled jackass from shimmying up that tree and kicking me in the head in the process. It hurt. A lot. Did he apologize? No. Did he come out of the fucking tree? No. Instead, he perched up in the tree and rained down small branches and leaves upon the crowd underneath him. I can’t remember the last time I wanted to cause bodily harm to a stranger. In my head I kept thinking, “just grab his foot and pull the fucker down. Just do it. You can reach him and pull him down. DO IT!”

I was so angry and annoyed and claustrophobic at that point that I took the time during a song I didn’t know to head to the back of the crowd.

As I was fighting upstream, Joan started the intro to the next song. She was talking about the song and blah, blah, blah and how she invited a friend who was playing on Sunday to play the next song with her. I very nearly pooped my pants. My brain immediately went to her friend Paul Westerberg who was playing Sunday. You’d be amazed how much fan ficton you can write in the space between words. I wrote the War & Peace of fan fiction in the time it took her to introduce Laura Jane Grace from Against Me!

My disappointment was fleeting though, because by the time I made it to a safe space at the back of the crowd, in view of the jumbotron, she started ripping through a trifecta featuring “I Love Rock & Roll,” “Crimson & Clover,” and “I Hate Myself for Loving You.” And if there’s anything that can make you forget a possible head trauma and other minor annoyances, it’s those three songs played by Ms. Joan Jett herself.

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Where do I even begin?

So I saw The Replacements, my very favorite band on Earth, and I didn’t die. At least not for very long. During “Androgynous” when Paul Westerberg asked “Hey did you see Joan Jett the other night?” My heart stopped. My soul shot from my body and exploded over the muddy field in Chicago, and if a doctor had been nearby I’m sure I would have been declared clinically dead. Cause of death: Joy.

But I came back to life, and I’m pretty happy about that because they played my song right after “Androgynous” and if I had died before seeing The Replacements do ” I Will Dare” some sort of plagues would have been visited upon the Earth.

If you want an actual review, go read Andrea Swensson’s at The Current (and if you want to see for yourself I put all the videos from Sunday in setlist order over at Paul Westerberg.net). I don’t think I’m capable of putting any sort of coherent words around the concert. It was fun. It was amazing. It was better than I expected and exactly what I wanted. They sounded good, like they were having fun and not like they were there to collect a check (which was my unvoiced fear).

About three songs in, it hit me that I was seeing The Replacements and I bawled my fucking head off. It was a moment I didn’t think would ever happen, and when it finally did I was so overcome with emotion that it had to pour out of my eyes. I mean what else can you do when you finally see the band whose music is woven into your very being, the music and the words of their songs as much a part of you as your marrow and DNA?

There’s nothing you can do. It’s like the holy spirit of rock & roll takes you over and you’re dancing and singing and smiling and crying all at the same time and it doesn’t even feel like anything because you have ceased to exist and instead have become one with the music and the people and the mud and dark Chicago sky and the glory of it all.

My state of euphoric bliss was pretty apparent. I know this because a woman who grew up in Chaska and celebrated her 46th birthday on Sunday tapped me on the arm after “I Will Dare” and shouted up to me,”You look so happy!” I smiled down at her, “I AM!” I’m pretty sure my giant, sweaty, smiling potato head was glowing like a beacon.

Now you know why I can’t play poker.

It feels as though I’ve gone through some sort of religious experience, like I’ve witnessed something so grand and epic that mere words cannot convey what it was like. Perhaps the people who saw Moses part the Red Sea felt kind of like this. (That’s the only sort of religious thing I could think of, didn’t most of those burning bush type things happen to dudes when nobody else was around?)

My friend Malmsy called me today since we didn’t have a chance to see each other on Sunday and most of the conversation went like this:
“Wow.”
“Yeah.”
“It was so good.”
“I know!”
“Yeah.”
“Wow.”

And if you were privy to the phone call you would have heard the smiles in our voices.

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When I was in college my friends and I were convinced that if there were a weirdo in a 10-foot radius, he would come hit on me. Way, way, way after college (a few years ago) my friend Wan said weirdos talk to us (it happens to her too) because we smile a lot, even when we don’t mean to smile. Some people have a bitchy rest face. I just fucking smile my fool head off.

However, it was not my smile that attracted Rose Penis. I’m not entirely sure what it was that brought him to me, and I knew he was a’coming because I watched him not-so-surreptitiously make his way through the crowd. Every time I looked up from my phone, he was watching me. This was during the short break between The Smoking Popes and Bad Religion. Finally, I looked up once and he had pulled up some grass next to me.

“You lost,” he asked?
“Nope,” I said and had to fight every single instinct that I have not to make a comment about the velvet rose he had sticking out of his zipper. I know this is RiotFest and all, but who does that? The only reason to stick a long-stemmed, red rose made of velvet out of on zipper is to call attention to your penis-area right?

Like, I just can’t quite puzzle out the logic and what he was hoping would happen. Was he hoping that I (or someone like me) would have been all “Nice rose, can I suck your dick?”

Also, dude could not take a hint. Even once we stood up and I was a full foot taller than he was, he tried to yack my ear off during Bad Religion. Finally, I just skedaddled.

Before that I got to see Dessa sing Warsaw and if she didn’t have to compete with Joan Jett, that might have been my favorite part, but then there was Joan. . .

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Twelve hours after leaving my house, I collapsed into our temporary hotel room in Chicago. Apparently it’s temporary because the blinds are broken and they can’t move us until tomorrow. I don’t care about the blinds. However, if they want to give me a few free breakfasts and coffees for the trouble, I will take them. Traveling is expensive.

My traveling companion is fourteen-years-old. He is the child of my second sister. It’s Maxwell. I would show you pictures of him here in Chicago but he refuses to allow his soul to be stolen by the lens of an iPhone. Teenagers.

Maxwell and I make pretty good companions so far. He’s laid back and I’m laid back. We both roll with the punches (train delays & gross lunch options), got sick of the train at the exact same time (1.5 hours before we finally arrived in Chicago), and best of all we cherish silence. Neither of us has a problem with the other person in the room not talking.

As I type he’s seated behind the loft-y little hotel desk listening to some music. He doesn’t seem to care for my Chicago-based playlist which mostly just features me playing Ryan Adams’ “Dear Chicago” over and over again. That song guts me in all the good ways.

Before he slid into his earbuds, as I was teetering on the edge of a pizza-induced cheese coma, Maxwell said, quietly, “This is so fun.” And my heart burst with joy. Not just because he I want him to have fun, but because so far all we’ve done is take a too-long train-ride, a too-long cab-ride, and waited too long for some ridiculously delicious pizza. If that’s fun, he’s gonna blow a gasket tomorrow.

I can’t take too much credit for the fun. I think that goes to our chatty Cabbie who hauled us from Union Station to our hotel here in the swanky Miracle Mile. He kept a running commentary going about everyone and everything: the weather, his fellow cabbie who works too much, and the doofus on the corner trying to take a picture of the Sears Tower.

And when he found out we were in town for a three-day music festival, he cackled with joy. “Really? A three-day concert?” he asked. “That’s like Christmas to me. I’m going to spend all weekend in Humboldt park.”

Now, I have plans of snuggling into this too-short bed (the perils of the freakishly-tall are neverending) with Linda Rondstadt’s memoir and passing out within two pages.

Tomorrow is Joan Jett and I’m going to need all my sleep to hold my shit together for her show.

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10:58 a.m.
Mornings get off to a bumpy start when I wake up (at 9 a.m. lately, I’ve been rocking the 12:30-1 a.m. bedtime since Labor day) all itchy-nosed and swollen-eyed. Allergies are a motherfucker and I wash down my favorite generic-brand meth-grade allergy pill before my eyes are fully open. If I were smart, I’d set an alarm at like 6 a.m., take the pill, and then go back to sleep. I am, however, not smart.

Before the pill, when I first blink my eyes open, I reach for Ziggy to see what time it is and see on the screen a “Happy Replacements’ Day” email from my pal, Vodo. My eyes, in their allergy/morning puffiness open to about half-mast with alarm. For a second I think that perhaps I forgot to go to Chicago. Because that could totally happen. Because Maxwell, my travel companion, wouldn’t have said something. Or my sisters. Or Wolfdogg. Or everyone on Twitter.

My ‘Mats excitement has been converted to full-on ‘Mats anxiety. What if I fall down the stairs and break my leg this week? What if I get hit by a bus this week? What if I die this week? What if I die and I NEVER GET TO SEE THE REPLACEMENTS? Do you know how much that would suck? Do you?

It would suck a bunch.

I’m also having a bit of Chicago-related logistical anxiety. Usually when I travel, I go with a gaggle of other adults who worry about the logistical details for the trip. I’m not a logistics person. I am a “we’ll see when we get there” person and when you travel with logistics-people they’re all “oh no, we will know before we get there” and so I just let them figure it out and follow along.

Now, for some reason, I feel like I have to have a plan. How we’ll get from there to there and back and where we’ll eat and all that. Only instead of doing any actual figuring, I just worry about it and say “fuck it, we’ll just take a cab everywhere.” I’m sure Max won’t care.

1:08 p.m.
“The Love Boat” is on MeTV. Sadly, it’s on at the very same time as “Gidget,” which puts me on the horns of a lazy-Sunday dilemma. To Love Boat or not to Love Boat? As I type Mrs. Keaton aka Meredith Baxter Birney is asking Julie your Cruise Director if there is a newsstand and if it sells Kitten magazine, because she’s dating a Congressman and she has been in naked pictures. Apparently, she’s Miss June.

UPDATE: Apparently she posed for the pictures when she was in law school because tuition was so expensive.

10:40 p.m.
There was napping and some reading of The Runaways biography and family dinner (and if I’m honest, entirely more time playing Plants vs. Zombies 2 than I am willing to admit). We had BLTs, which we’ve been having a lot lately because of the ridiculous bounty of tomatoes from the CSA. Over dinner Nolan asked if I’d bring him home a souvenir from Chicago either a Replacements’ record or a Replacements’ t-shirt. I’m not sure if he’s just ass-kissing or if he really does love them (“I Will Dare” has been one of his favorite songs all summer). Regardless, I’m a sucker for it.

We spent some time talking about the Infuriating Corporate Password Fiasco, which is an on-going series of events I can’t really discuss with too much detail because I like to pay my mortgage. But boy, if I could discuss it with any detail you’d see me let loose with a string of swears and curses and obscene hand gestures.

Then we talked a bunch about going to Chicago and the pros and cons of taking a bag to RiotFest and if they’d have water refill stations and public transportation vs. taking a cab. Like I said, the logistics are causing me some anxiety and I’ve vowed to just not worry about it until I get to Chicago.

SEVEN MORE DAYS! Practically six now, because today is almost over.

Just think, next week’s I’m Sunday & It’s Boring will be all about how I saw my most favorite band of all time a mere two days after seeing the first woman singer to ever capture my heart.

There will be tears. And ecstasy — the emotion, not the drug. And, as you can see, my brand-new rock & roll hair.

The “It’s (Insert Day of Week) and I’m Boring” is a series that Christa and I do to pay homage to the beauty of old-school blogging. (I totally copied this nice explanation from Christa).

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