photo by Stephanie Asher via Flickr

This month's “First Friday” found us standing in a lengthy line at the Natural History Museum, having parked at some shady, empty lot behind the stadium (because the major parking entrance was backed up with cars down the street), wondering both if my car would be towed and if we still had a chance to see Autolux and Deerhoof - especially since we’d had the audacity to skip the lecture and film that kicked off the night.

We stood in the longest line, assuming the 2 shorter lines were for people who already had tickets, until my intrepid friend ambled over to the shortest line and asked. It turned out no one had tickets and they were all the same, so we jumped lines, wondering at that natural cattle instinct of ours…. Only to be told moments later that the hall where the bands were playing had reached capacity, and we were now only paying to become part of a line inside, which would curve around the big center room with its great dinosaur skeleton, a la the Jurassic Park climax scene (you know, when the kids are hanging from the bones wired to the ceiling). And there we would be stuck until the early birds decided to wander out of the hall for a drink or to go to the bathroom.

photo by Stephanie Asher via Flickr

Needless to say, we almost skipped it. But at $9 for two adults, what was really the harm? At least we could hear the bands and buy drinks in the center room, and check out the old-school style exhibits, which included eerie dioramas and an hypnotic “Gem and Mineral Hall”. It was quite like taking a school field trip and standing it on its end, what with the beer, bistro booth, distorted strains of shoegaze, and laughing, stylishly dressed folks standing next to Coelacanth in gel.

But when Autolux wrapped it up and Deerhoof started soundchecking, we hurried over to the hall entrance once more, just to see if anything had changed (and because they were the real draw for me, unlike the majority of folks there). Then we discovered the line had started to move. After a few moments, we were hurried inside, only to face a wall of backs and no view of the band at all, just the top half of the diorama behind them, as if a caveman exhibit had come to life, and were gifted with ear-splitting, art rock capabilities. The sound was painfully bad, the drums louder than anything, and when they hadn’t played anything I knew after the first few songs, we gave up and went back to exploring the museum. It just ain’t the same if you can’t see Satomi.

In the end, I left feeling like maybe it was all just a lure to get us a bit more educated. I now have Carnotaurus wallpaper on my camera phone, complete with useless forearms.

my chic new phone wallpaper