Whodathunk? A pleasant surprise...

So I expected last night to be dead, terribly boring, and never-ending. Rudy had to cancel on DJing earlier in the day. The Assassins were playing and a bunch of our friends were going to that to celebrate another friend’s birthday¹.Chicago just seems a bit tired out from all this baseball fever. Last weekend there was a full moon and that always seems to indicate that the following days will be quieter than usual. All in all I just expected it to be a tortuously long evening. The one upside was that I could test run dPOD and see how she ran throughout the course of the evening and, as an added bonus, I’d get to watch my new copy of Batman Begins.

Funny how things don’t turn out like you’d think, huh?

When I got to the bar there was a decent crowd watching a hockey game. Not exactly my dream audience but hey, a crowd’s a crowd. Then throughout the evening people just kept showing up and for the most part they were complete strangers and that was pretty cool. Since I was in such a mellow and non-expectant mood to begin with my musical selections were more entertaining than challenging and everyone seemed to be digging the tunes. Then our old Ten56 bartender – and my good friend – Dave² showed up. At first he seemed annoyed that no one invited him to see the Assassins even though the birthday girl was dating his roommate, but he quickly settled down into a jovial mood and we chatted about everything from our recovering friend Dan Ryan (who is going through physical therapy due to a motorcycle accident a few months ago) to Dave’s favorite topic of all time…Thin Lizzy.

And the people kept coming. And coming. And I kept playing fun music. I even played a “lover’s set” for the last twenty minutes or so since there was an unusually large number of couples in the bar. The songs actually seemed to do the trick since I noticed arms going around shoulder, chairs inching closer together a pair of lips here and there meeting up for a quick how-do-you-do. Usually I’d play something snarky like Liz Phair’s “Fuck And Run” or The Dead Kennedy’s “Too Drunk To Fuck” at a moment like that but, hell, everyone seemed like such nice people I decided to just let the mood ride.

Oddly enough, one thing I think that had a large effect on the general mood was the fact that innjoy has a new interior paint job, has reupholstered all their booths in this mellow beige, has mostly bare walls and has new furniture that just gives the room a more cooled down loungey vibe. It was rather nice. The only thing that would have made the evening perfect would have been attendance by Photogal, Betty the Beagle or Lucy the Dog but hey, I can’t have everything can I?

Now, on a completely unrelated note, if you haven't seen this tralier for the feel-good movie of this season, you're really missing out.

¹Though Tom deserves big props for at least stopping by to say hi on his way to the show. Go Tom!

²Note to self: You have to call Dave’s brother and get your snare drum and ride cymbal back so you can start making some noise in the basement. Do it this weekend Tankboy!