This is the line that many bouncers feed me upon seeing my lack of a driver's license. Note that I'm not complaining here, since these are the nice bouncers, and not the powertripping fuckophants that decide it's time to go on a power trip and boot me out, despite the fact that I'm pretty sure I look older than 19. At any rate, I was treated to it once more on Friday night, just prior to witnessing my first-ever decent live show. Yes, somehow I've managed to go 21 years without seeing any live music acts worth noting, aside from DJs, who I will not deign to include in this category (excepting Underworld, so I guess that's 2).

Speaking of good tangents, there's one. I saw Underworld live a few months ago. Man, they're sick in person. The recorded versions of their songs just don't do them justice. That particular evening started out cold and blustery, and ended in a ridiculously overheated club. Said club also had the benefit of an extremely irritating Asian girl directly to my right, a drugged-out flailazoid behind me, and my friends to the right. To top this delightful crunchage up, the floor was wet cuz some idiot went and spilled beer... Before Underworld even came onstage.

Things like these are why it's important to like whatever music you're going to listen to, because they can pretty much wreck up an evening goodcore if you don't have something to take your mind off them. Fortunately, hearing all the songs I've grooved to drunk so many many times in ear-splitting goodness was more than enough to make up for it.

Returning to a slightly less digressive tangent, the evening concluded with my conversion to Polish sausage from hot dogs. Mmmm... spicy. The subsequent cab ride was funny, though, since the cabby decided he'd hit on my friend's girlfriend by saying "Do people ever tell you you're beautiful?" This well-turned compliment quickly went sour after she thanked him, however, when he for whatever reason chose to say "I didn't say you were, you know." After a pregnant pause and an awkward silence and a frosty chill all rolled into one uniquely sausage-spice-laden moment, he mumbled a half-apology/saving throw vs stupid bonehead comments and proceeded to drive in silence the rest of the way (although he did attempt to restart the conversation by saying exactly the same thing a second time. We didn't bite.) So yeah. The moral of the story? Well, anyone with half a brain knows you don't call a girl beautiful and then ugly in the same breath, so let's just skip on morals for now.

Skip to the point, that is! Oh, had you wandering there, didn't I? Well, probably not, but let's move along to Friday, since I'm sure everyone is hanging on my words and what exactly makes this worth writing about. Well, first I saw my dad there, which was kind of funny, cuz I had been thinking of telling him to tell my sister this band was playing in case she didn't know, which was pretty silly given that it's a band she likes (and as an added bonus, her boyfriend's band was opening for). Second, my cousin was there, which was kind of cool since I hadn't seen him since the previous week when...

I was at my uncle's annual tortiere party. These little shindigs basically consist of my uncle looking fairly uncomfortable while trying to circulate among the guests he actually likes, while his girlfriend's wonderfully brassy government friends (she writes speeches for government! Yes, this woman once got mad at my sister when she was eight for having a sore throat during a showing of the Nutcracker she dragged her to against her will, and then proceeded to cram Hallses down her throat while stormily threatening grand violence if silence did not occur) did fun things like hacking up lungs and losing their purses and then stumbling about cackling to their purses in the hopes that the sheer noise would attract the handbag from sheer terror.

Anyhow, enough about that. I'll never get finished here if I keep distracting myself so marvellously. End result: cousin there, yay. My sister's boyfriend's band, incidentally called The Mark Inside, opened off with a good set, but then came Oklahoma somethingsomething, a band whose primary goal appeared to be to call unwholesome parallels with the Barenaked Ladies to mind, while simultaneously playing music more suited for soothing the drug-smashed brains of hippies on an extended marijuana bender. Needless to say, I fell asleep.

Well, not actually. I just moaned and bitched a bit, while my friend hit on the Green Shirt Girl, who is not to be mistaken for the shorter, uglier, pudgier Green Shirt Girl II: First Blood. Finally, the title act arrived on stage, minus their bass player, who had somehow managed to collapse in a quasi-epileptic fit caused by a malfunctioning strobe light and bonked his head. Anyway, just before this, the Anecdotal portion of our evening's entertainment came up, wherein my cousin and I Went to Get Money But Ran into A Surly Fuckhead in the Convenience Store.

Random capitalization aside, I wanted to go to the CIBC machine, but my cousin, probably motivated by a desire to buy cigarettes, went into the convenience store instead. Alas, the dickhead behind the counter switched off the lights a few seconds after we walked in. Then he made various vague and poorly translated attempts to get us to leave, extolling the virtues of his shitty ATM, which incidentally charged a bonus fee of $1.25 per transaction, something he probably didn't make too much mention of normally. I think he was probably freaked out cuz my cousin made a lame joke involving a gay porno magazine sitting up on the top rack. If you're gonna stock that sort of material, you think you'd expect that kind of thing, but oh well. My cousin eventually got his money, bought some cigarettes, and told the guy to fuck himself. I was already outside at this point, but I did notice he turned on the lights after that. Of course, this was probably because other, less evilicious looking people walked in, but who knows. Maybe he wanted a well-lit environment in which to take my cousin's advice to heart.

Long story short: I like stories.

The Raptors finally won after 12 straight losses, and convincingly! On the downside, this has resulted in an inevitable bout of losing for the Leafs, who have somehow managed to get outshot in 12 of their last 13 games. Coincidence? I think not. Losing to the Rangers in particular was a galling defeat, since the Rangers are the Baltimore Orioles of the NHL, without the quaint stadium. Well, I guess MSG is quaint as far as it goes, but really, what's the advantage to a place that's got the same initials as a food additive everyone tries to avoid? Also, they frigging stole a bunch of free agents from under the Leafs' noses, so the team deserves undying hatred.

So what do these sandwich machine mishaps entail? I need a way to eliminate my babyesque enemies, as my intrepid minister can attest to.

Yes... Yes, of course...

Pfaugh! Why do I employ youuuu?