I love me some Cake

Last Friday I headed down to Baltimore to meet up with my sis to try our luck at getting last minute tix to the Cake concert at the outdoor Pier Six Pavilion at Inner Harbor. After my fortuitous experience with snagging a ticket at the eleventh hour for Ben Gibbard's solo act (see previous post; also, catch his DC concert on npr.org), I felt my trip to Maryland would not be wasted. My sis dropped me off at the pier and I headed to the box office where I encountered a security guard who informed the concert was sold out. Unthwarted, I scanned the area for another benevolent soul who might be parting with their unused tickets (Disclaimer: I do not make it a practice to support scalpers and would never pay and have never paid anything over face value for a ticket I've purchased outside of the box office.) After 10 minutes, I knew this was a losing battle, so I decided to scout out the venue. Pier Six Pavilion sits on, well, a pier, and juts out into the harbor. Along one side of the pier, there was a narrow canal about 100 ft wide, and across the way is a hotel and pedestrian boulevard with benches lining the canal. I crossed the bridge to access the other side with the hotel to find that there's a great view of the stage;a vantage point that's even better, I think, than that for those paying patrons with lawn seats. I sat myself on the side of the canal, legs dangled over the water, and called my sister with instructions to get us some dinner & and told her we were going to picnic whilst enjoying the tunes of Cake. We dined on seafood fettuccine and tiramisu while having a grand old time singing along with the band. Quite literally, we had our Cake, and ate it too.

Resurrecting the ramblefest

It took a while, but she's back. After an especially intense bout of self-diagnosed seasonal affective disorder this winter during which I spent an inordinate amount of time slumbering 'neath the duvet covers, I have decided that it's high time to spew more of my senseless prattle into the netosphere. The real inspiration for the comeback is that I wanted to ooze multitudes of love and affection for Ben Gibbard and his stellar solo act that I caught last night at the TLA. Ben is the dreamy lead singer of "Death Cab for Cutie" and the (thus far) one-time ensemble "Postal Service." I do believe I love the man. (Yes, there are one or two of us 30-somethings that are still prone to schoolgirl crushes.) He's grounded, funny, and has voice clearer than a bottle of Evian. I loved the quirky way he constantly adjusted his glasses while playing the piano for "Soul Meets Body," and how he wrote a cheat sheet of lyrics for his acoustic version of Michael Jackson's "Thriller."

I was fated to experience Ben's musical genius last night. I have known about the concert for a couple months, but as usual, didn't think to get tickets until they were sold out. Even though I was tired as hell, I decided that I would just head over and hope someone was getting rid of their tickets because they couldn't go. So there's little old me standing in a crowd of mostly college age hippy type kids looking for someone with tickets. I stand in line, ticketless, pondering just how the hell I'm going to get in when a guy asks me if I need one. I nod yes and was about to ask how much when he tells me, "It's free." Fate, I tell you.

Well, hopefully I'll have more gushing about cute singers, belly-button gazing, and wtf? moments to post into the ether as we move through spring into summer. Ta ta!