13 March 2007

The Shins’ Afterparty at L’Enfant Plaza.

Alright, so I anticipated the Shin’s concert being off the chizzzz-ain. But who would have thought the metro ride home would have been the most entertaining part of the evening?

To back it up a bit, I went to see the Shins play D.A.R. Constitution Hall last night with Jess, Robbie, Rachel, Todd, Laura, Evan, and Evan’s lady-friend, Anna. The show was great- the Shins played a well-rounded mix, representative of all their albums and a fairly long set at that. They pretty much played everything I wanted to hear except for Split Needles, which both Robbie and I were shocked wasn’t on the playlist.

Anyway, after the show, most of us headed back to the metro. As I had mentioned in a previous post, the stop nearest D.A.R. is Farragut West, the orange line (and “also Blue, but FUCK BLUE”—ring any bells?). Long story short, we had to get on blue or wait five minutes. I don’t hate blue enough to wait that long.

It was at our L’Enfant Plaza transfer to the green line where things got interesting. Me, Todd, Evan and Anna were just kind of chatting when our attention turned to the group next to us. Something awesome was going on, but I couldn’t quite figure out what they were saying. All I could make out was that one of the guys was trying to get the other to punch him in the face. Except they were clearly friends. It’s not like they were in a fist fight. The guy trying to get the kid to punch him was pretty normal looking and might have been sober. The kid doing the punching was a bigger, drunk kid, with poofy red hair, a bright red face, and he seemed to move in slow motion.

Normal kid made no secret of the fact that he positioned his face directly in front of one of the metal metro towers that has the stops listed on it and the metro line color dots. Apparently I had missed what had happened beforehand, but this was indeed the 2nd time in a matter of minutes that this scenario had played out. After intently watching this for about two minutes- the normal guy trying to talk poofy red-head-guy into doing “something” with a totally straight face, poofy hair guy finally exclaims “NO! You’re going to trick me again!” The normal guy swears that this is not the case.

What happened next was the most slow-motion “duck” I had ever seen with the red-headed kid’s hand pummeling the metal metro tower. The kid's reaction was in slow motion too. He just looked so defeated and his hand turned bright red, to match his face and hair. And he tried to shake it off. You don’t just “shake off” a fist to a metal pole. On top of that, this was like the second time in 4 minutes he was “tricked” into punching a metal surface. And its not like it was a big secret either time: EVERYONE ELSE SAW IT COMING. Meanwhile, normal kid is just chillin' like nothing happened and I am laughing so heard I am crying.

At that point, that crew gets on the yellow line and we waited it out for the green line (it should be noted that I gave serious thought to leaving Todd, Evan, & Anna behind to get on the Yellow line with those guys. Because I KNOW the story did not end there). As the green line was pulling into the station shortly thereafter, I saw someone pretty awesome on the train who was getting ready to disembark, so clearly I went to the doors he was standing at to get a closer look. This tall lanky guy was wearing a hat with a feather in it (not just like, a pigeon feather. Like 10-inch monster-bird feather) and a full length judges robe/cloak as a jacket. In addition, apparently there was some wrestling match letting out at the Verizon Center. So I just want you to picture the culture clash of a crowd that had just gone to see the Shins and a crowd leaving a WWE event. Showtime. I wish I could paint a picture of the events between 11pm and midnight last night. It was really better than words can describe.

8 comments:

Rachel said...

I'm pretty sure feather guy went to GW. Really how many guys fit that discription. One time he had to duck into one of my classes b/c he had forgotten his feather hat...who forgets that? seriously! but yeah he wears it all the time, and as with hard tomorrows guy, and the slutskys I always see feather guy around dc at the most random places.

our direction metro wasnt quite as crazy, but we did have the wrestling/shins culture clash as well.

Anonymous said...

the train back to greenbelt was full of people who had been at the WWE thing or whatever, and honestly, I have no idea what rock some of these people crawled out from under. BTW that feather was most certainly awesome.

Anonymous said...

see what awesomeness can happen when you take the blue line? you would have missed the whole thing!

Anonymous said...

accoridng tot he setlist on the dcist, I was correct, and they did not play Fighting In a Sack. Maybe you should go down the blue line for that LG and Jessica Mann

J said...

Well EG you are right. I was thinking of Mine's not a high horse. However LG is wrong on another issue, because it is Spilt Needles Not Split. Its like needles are all over the floor not ripped in half.

LG said...

Oh I don't think I got what you were saying on the phone cause I wasn't focusing. But that is total dyslexia on my part and if you had never pointed it out, I would have never been the wiser.

HOWEVER, if you want a true showcase of my stupidity, stay tuned for my next blog entry. There's NO EXCUSE for it. SERIOUS SHOWTIME. I'll post it whenever i'm done jury duty cause it's in a text file on my work desktop. In other words, stay tuned.

thestark said...

Don't forget when Big Red was apparently being dared to leap off the balcony to the platform below, and you could actually see him carefully weighing his options.

If anyone wants to hit up Largo sometime, let me know. I'm Blue Line 4 Life now.

Charlotte : ) said...

Since I didn't experience all the fun times and I forgot to post this on the blue line post, here's a gem:

When I worked at the Chop House people would exclusively refer to guests as "lines." At the begining of the night, at least three people would come up to me and say, "I got bills, Char. Seriously, blue and red lines ONLY. God help you if you give me someone who got off the green line."