Lynn Twiss

I’ve been begging Woofie and Mike to come see me in Portland for a few months now. I have a big project I need their help with but they just seemed to busy to take the one and a half hour drive over.

Yesterday they finally showed up! It was great.

We first headed to Old Town Pizza, just up the street from me and while drinking a pitcher of beer we talked about old times. Considering the project I am working on is related to our old Dungeons & Dragons campaign we played in high school, the table talk was pretty verbose in high jinks and geek speak.

The Plan was for us to drink a few drinks and then end up at The Backspace playing some X-Box. The Plan never came together. Instead, we walked up to Ringler’s Pub and had more beer and French fries. Talked more but this time the subject was sex and Woofie’s new favorite body part (well, not NEW). [sniggle] I ran and grabbed a Mercury to root for something to do. Mike is like me, more open to dancing and socializing, while Woofie is quiet and likes hard rock. So, I was trying to find a balance for all of us, but then I noticed that The Mercury I was using wasn’t good until the next day. I though maybe The Fez, but Woofie might not enjoy it. When I was putting The Mercury back I noticed a huge truck with all these big men hauling equipement out of it, then it struck me! That Redhead Girl (Audra) had mentioned a head-banging rock concert and it was just up stairs from us. I threw the idea out to see if they wanted to do that. It was go.

We bought tickets and headed up to the Crystal Ballroom. Opeth was just hitting the stage, and Mike leaned over to me and said, “I feel a bit out of place”. He was wearing a bright orange outdoor jacket, while everyone else in the venue were wearing black. I giggled at that, and we moved over to the 21+ crowd and started drinking more. I walked over to an attendant and asked if I could take pictures and they were unsure, but didn’t see a problem. So I pulled out the 20D and started snapping pictures. In about 5 minutes a big tall security guard came over to me demanded I stop taking photos, because no professional photography was allowed. I retorted that I wasn’t professional, but just an amateur and he said: if it has a lense, it’s professional. Oh well, I managed to snag a few good shots before the smack down.

Woof loved it. He was bobbing his head in no time and I was happy to be there with them and the drummer for Opeth can kick some skin. I enjoyed how conversational the lead singer was, he engaged the audience between almost every song. One funny comment was “I’m going to play 13 Minutes of the same beat at differing variations.”

After Opeth finished up, Mike was antsy and wanted to hit another place, so we ducked out and grabbed a taxi to The Devil’s Point. Mikey had mentioned it when we stopped in to say hi while he was working at Spartacus. If I’d have known it was as far out as it was, I’d probably have just had the taxi take us to Acropolis. Oh well, it was fun! I drank more and had a lapdance from Stormy. I was pretty buzzed at this point and ended up just talking her ear off in the private dancer room instead of ogling her body, and when I came out both Mike and Woofie said to me, “Did we hear you giggling in there?!” While I was at the stage, Mike and Woofie pulled out my camera, took pictures, and quickly got into some trouble. I later apologized to the bartender and DJ who both were really cool, and just wanted to see some photos on the camera. I showed them the shots from the Cruxshadow show and when the bartender heard what kind of music I liked, he handed me a flyer for some of his events. Yay for future funness!

We then took a taxi over to what was once Doc’s, but is now The Safari Club. Woofie, all night, had been sheepishly sitting in the back and didn’t seem to be really having that much fun after we left the Opeth show. Here he got right up in front and the dancer loved him! So much so that the bouncer came up and told HER to quit dancing on him, she pouted a bit and then whispered into Woof’s ear a question. “Do you mind getting a little wet?” Who’s Woof to stop a naked woman? She poured his drink in his crotch via her leg – like Salma Hayek in From Dusk ‘Til Dawn. [sniggle]

From there we headed home and were generally dorks taking embarrassing photos of ourselves until 4AM.

It was a lot of fun to see them, but next time we need to just go play video games, my head hurts and so does Mike’s wallet!