Bounced!

I had tickets to a concert with The Roots, Talib Kweli and Pharcyde on Thursday night. For those of you who don't know who they are, my hint is that with their type of music, the end of one line usually rhymes with the end of the next line.

But I couldn't get in because of this damn losing the wallet fiasco, since I didn't have a valid ID. All I had (and of course my replacement driver's license showed up Friday morning in the mail) was my International Student Identification Card, which by lucky chance was taken out of my wallet with a paw's full of other stuff just before it went missing. The good man checking the line for underage wannabe MCs was not amused, since it looks, I admit, like I bought it at a store, which in fact he accused me of. (His actual words: "That's not a real ID. You bought that at a store. Terry, we got ID trouble here.") Shamefaced, and out the $20, I thought about joining a bunch of protesters across the street, just for fun and to have something to do until the show ended and I could get a ride home. They were upset because Kool Cigarettes was sponsoring the show -- I don't know if Kool actually made a cut of the profits; probably -- and had I known that, I may have even decided not to go, so I thought it was a worthy cause, and it's been a while since I raised any real hell. But they were packing up their operation since the line was almost all inside at that point, and although there was some exciting talk of a "Midnight Madness" or something that was happening at a Marriott somewhere, I decided to get a cab home.

The first cabbie to appear was a Venezuelan gentleman named Roger. He had a German last name that I won't repeat for privacy reasons, but there you have it. He spent a few moments complimenting all the girls getting into the club, which I thought was actually kind of endearing and all-American of him, and then we were off to the races. And the funny thing was, we told each other ghost stories all the way back to my place, which was not close by. One of his true ones, about a friend renting an apartment and the basement having a creepy feeling, and then hearing footsteps on the stairway when there was no one there, and then finding out someone had hung himself down there. . . Well, you kind of had to be there to hear the sincerity in his voice. I don't care what anyone says, I believe at least half the ghost stories out there. The people who roll their eyes and say "Come on" every single time are the ones who aren't paying attention to reality.

So, to wind up, I came home and had a Samuel Smith's Oatmeal Stout, not only to calm my haunted nerves but to savor the fine oatmeal finish, and watched a Red Sox game my roommate was already engrossed in. It went 11 innings and I apparently fell asleep on the couch. I woke up around 5 a.m. Friday morning and didn't get back to sleep before work, so that was a pip. It did have the unexpected bonus of giving me time to cook a big breakfast with my groceries for once. It was delicious.