Surreal Evening

Last night, J & I got a babysitter for M and went out on a week night.

Why?

Well, Roy Zimmerman (warning, the link goes to You-Tube and the volume is on) was in town and J wanted to see him live.

Roy Zimmerman is best described as being a liberal satirical song writer/singer. He was playing at J. Gilligans last night and it was great fun, if not a little strange.

We listened and laughed. During intermission, I went up and spoke to him. While I was talking to Roy, a big bald guy came up to him from behind, grabbed him by the elbow while muttering "F*ck you, man. Just f*ck you." Roy was really great at brushing it off, but I could see that he was a little shaken up. He mentioned that the guy was in the back of the room during his set flipping him off while he sang.

He started up singing again & I noticed the time - it was 9:30 - we needed to leave in order to get our baby sitter back by 10 pm, which is what I had committed to the babysitters mom. While trying to get the bartender's attention, an angry old guy (I'll call him AOG from now on) was behind the bar and started yelling at Roy. He then stormed around the bar and ran up to the stage. I was at the bar and the bartender started telling a buddy of his, "Hey, man, watch this, watch this, watch what he's gonna do."

Well, AOG pulled the plug from Roy's guitar. J, being the defender of the small, saw what was going on and followed AOG up onto the stage and proceeded to move AOG away from Roy by shear virtue of his size. Two more guys got up and did the same thing on the other sides of AOG and they backed him into a corner - no fists swinging, just a simple bumping AOG into the wall. The bartender then got into gear when more people started getting up on stage and basically told everyone that there weren't going to be any fights that evening.

Roy, like a true professional, mentioned that his songs were meant to be funny jokes and no harm was meant.

As we were leaving, Roy called out to J, "Why are you leaving? You're a big guy - I need you here, man!"

J hated leaving early, but said that we had to get back to the babysitter.

It was fun. Roy's abstinence song made my stomach muscles hurt from laughing so hard.