Skip to main content

The Misfits -- Writer's Poke #198

A few years ago, Megadeth was playing at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago, and I asked Patrick if he wanted to go. Somewhat to my surprise, he eagerly agreed. Truth be told, though, he probably would have gone anywhere or done anything that I might have suggested. At the time, he was living three hours away from anyone he knew outside of work, and so going to listen to Megadeth probably never sounded so sweet.

The night of the concert I drove up to his apartment, which was maybe 100 miles from the venue. Forgetting that inbound Chicago traffic might be rough on a Friday night, we found ourselves caught in bumper-to-bumper traffic. At one point, I resigned myself to the fact that we might miss the entire concert. But we finally arrived, only seventy-five minutes late.

The Misfits were the opening act, and we had missed their entire set. Handing our tickets to the checker at the door, all we saw were goths dressed in black from head to toe everywhere we looked. They were in the lobby, the hallways, on the stairs, and every other nook and cranny of the facility.

Patrick is a posterboy for Country Club Monthly, and while I've never been "preppy," never had I felt so out of place. Moving past the shadows, we entered the main autorium, and once Dave Mustaine and the boys hit the stage, all of the goths had disappeared. It seemed that we weren't the only ones to arrive late, as the goths were replaced with heavy metal faithful; not surprisingly, though, Patrick and I didn't blend in any better among the Megadeth fans who took the shadow's place.

When have you felt like a misfit? Did it bother you, or did you relish being different?

"Even among Misfits your misfits." -- Yukon Cornelius

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Jesus and the Inconvenience of His Word to American Christians

I'm not a preacher, but if you follow the teachings of Jesus, it was he who said: Do to others as you would have them do to you. That's from Luke 6:31 , and reading all of Luke 6 isn't a bad way to spend five minutes of your time.  https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke%206&version=NIV I guess a lot of Christians understand the Golden Rule and practice it in their daily lives. Others, however, especially political Christians (and specifically those promoting Christian Nationalism) seem to ignore the Golden Rule. They don't care about humanitarian issues. They claim they either don't exist, aren't the problem of the United States, or are the fault of the victims. They counter with distractions like, "Why do you care so much about THEM when you should be caring about the REAL people who matter?" Sorry, but I don't recall Jesus ever dividing people into those who matter more and those who matter less. Of course, Jesus also said not to j...

Microblogging? The Future of Writing with ADHD

Bill Bennett is a very common name. Right now, I'm reading a book by the Australian film maker Bill Bennett. He hiked the Camino in 2013 and then wrote a book (and made an Australian movie, not available in the U.S.) about it.  Seems he kept a blog about that hike, too. I went to look for his Camino blog, and found he started one years after the hike, but he didn't post regularly... His last post from 2022 announced his had Parkinson's and had kept the diagnosis secret for 4 years.  Now that almost three years have passed from that post, I wonder what's happened to him.  Blogs are weird. They just sit there. Anyone can stumble upon them, and read them. So I decided to keep looking for his Camino blog.  https://billbennett.blog/home/ *** And I found another Bill Bennett, this one from New Zealand, who keeps a microblog. It's current and updated. "What's a microblog?" My wife asked. Well, I said, it's a small blog. Just a sentence or two for a post. ...