Monday, February 11, 2008

Guessing Games

Sunday evenings at Nightclub Echo Echo are so good you almost don't mind Mondays. It starts with Mack and Case; Friendly Fire really knows how to put on a show. It's fun to watch the evolution of fans new to their shows; they start off talking in whispers so as not to disturb other listeners and seem quite perplexed by the hooting and hollering going on around them. Pretty soon they seem to understand that it is acceptable at a Friendly Fire show, and with the penultimate song they are a hooting and a hollering with the best of them.

The last song in any Friendly Fire show is accompanied by a constant, throat-numbing scream from all of the audience. The way Case and Mack bring such enthusiasm out in people simply amazes me. They remind me of the lyrics of Boston's Rock And Roll Band;
"But when we got up on stage and got ready to play
People came alive."

DJ Jocelyn and The Tracy have the unenviable task of following Friendly Fire, luckily for us they are well up to the task. They took the stage for Sunday Night's Mayhem and Madness with a theme of "Buddy can you spare a dime?" Joce and Tracy wore barrels, supposedly to be in-theme; Tracy said she lost it all in the stock market, but I think she just likes wearing a barrel. I had gone to the store shortly before the show and bought one of those specially-dirtied and ripped t-shirts to try and be in-theme also, turns out Hy had gone to the same place!


DJ Jocelyn played music with a money theme; fantastic as usual. I had made a couple of new poofers the day before, one for Joce that poofs one of her DJ ads, and one for Tracy that poofs my favorite picture of her in the Glamshack. I consulted with Isobela on the timing of setting them off so she saw them; Case saw and thought it was awesome and Hy asked me to do the Tracy one for him again; but it didn't seem like anyone else noticed. I set them off in the corner of the club, maybe I need to do them center stage, I shall try again.

It could have been that others noticed and I just missed their comments; Isobela had been playing a guessing game with me ever since the Friendly Fire show was over. She is so good at guessing games that it took me a while to even figure out that a guessing game was in progress! I would ask questions which she would refuse to answer, then she would give me other hints. After a while I reviewed what I knew: it was a gift for me, it was something that I had asked for, it was finished, it was still being worked on, it was not near water, she wasn't sure if it was on the mainland, it has a 5-letter name that does not begin with 'H', and it offers no protection.

As you can see, hints 3 and 4 are mutually exclusive. Because of this I was forced to add a reliability factor to each of her other hints, causing an exponential increase in the complexity of the problem space. Towards the end of the show she ran out of hints, and decided that we should go for a walk rather than watch me flail about for an answer. We said our goodbyes and she led me to, of all places, the Glamshack!

Each day first thing I almost always do a tour of my friend's business places to check things out for them. My last two stops, due to geography, are Mack's Gestures and then a quick trip over a large canal to the Glamshack. A few days ago in these pages I had teased her about my stool in the Glamshack not being properly marked, and this morning on my rounds I took another look; nope, still wasn't marked.

This evening when we walked through the doors I immediately looked up to where my stool was and saw it was covered in gift-wrap! I raced up and took a closer look and it was all pink and red and white with hearts on it and a tag saying For: Tycho! Woot! Isobela helped me unwrap it and there it was, my very own stool!

Words of warning hover over it, Reserved for: Tycho! If anyone else tries to sit on it they gut dumped right off! Case and Mack have their own stools to the right of mine. I sat on mine to start getting it broken in and Isobela sat to my left and listened while I explained what I thought of her and my stool.

Fantabulous! Stupendous! Awesome! Exhilarating! Stunning! Astonishing! Wonderful! Terrific! Marvelous! Fantastic! Mind-blowing! Mind-boggling! Staggering! Splendid! Awe-inspiring! Overwhelming! Breath-taking! Tremendous! Magnificent! Sensational! Superb! Brilliant! And most of all, Groovy!


As Iso said, "life is good in the Metaverse"!