and your little penis cake, too

Had I my camera, you would be reading a big long photo essay about my friend Kat's bachelorette party last Saturday night. You aren't reading that post because I left my camera at our hostesses' apartment, along with my shirt, my dignity and half of a vegan non-dairy gluten-free vanilla cake with "Penis Cake" written on it in red icing (proving that when a bride says "don't you dare get me a penis cake" it is possible to obey the spirit and yet not the letter of the law).

There are plenty of other people's photos from the rest of the night, but a story really best sums it up. There were a lot of great moments early in the night-- for example, did you know that the Eastern Market CVS doesn't sell Swiffer pads but does sell vibrating cock rings? Now you do!-- but my favorite memory is from around 2 am at "The Club," the decidedly sketchy second floor of Hawk and Dove (aka, "The Dirty Pigeon"). We spent a lot of time at the Pidge in college, as it was the only place where we could reliably get served as freshmen. Sure enough, by our stroll-down-memory-lane stop there at the end of the night, we were by far the oldest people on the dance floor. We felt like chaperones at the prom as we watched the crowds of teenagers bump and grind to Chingy and Petey Pablo. That was about when a group of extremely animated and grabby guys started dancing up on our bride, who by this point could not have focused her eyes if you'd put a gun to her head or worse, threatened to steal her centerpieces.

Apparently we were not terribly subtle with our annoyance with these little boys, because the most flamboyant one of them suddenly whipped out his Sidekick and began to frantically type a message into it, which he then held aloft for us to read:

"We're gay and we're sorry if we're too much for you!"

Yup. We were sharing our dance floor space with a bunch of gay deaf freshman boys from Gallaudet.

Needless to say, we had a fucking awesome night.

I also had a great night last night, as Candy Sandwich and I went to St. Ex for drinks and then caught Peter Bjorn & John at 9:30. I went into the show feeling a little sorry for the band, having read that they played to a tiny audience at Coachella because they were in the same time slot as the Red Hot Chili Peppers. What's the point of playing a giant festival like Coachella if you're playing to a couple hundred people in a cavernous space? That's got to be tough for a band, even one with as much buzz behind them as this one.

They put on a good show last night, though a lot of the set was good in a "I know Pitchfork says they're good and well, yeah" kind of way. Whether this was because of the band or the crowd was hard to tell. Even though it was a sold-out house for an on-the-rise indie band, not a lot of people acted terribly excited to be there. During one acoustic number, there was so much chatter from the house that it felt uncomfortably like that scene in Annie Hall where Diane Keaton sings "It Had To Be You" to an unenthralled cabaret audience. CS and I also had the misfortune to be standing in front of some very obnoxious girls who spent the entire set alternately bitching about how tall I was (well, yes, that sucks for you, but you're not watching the show. And I'm standing right behind the tallest guy in the place, anyways) (hi Brokekid! happy birthday, sir) and drunkenly laughing so hard they were cackling. Like, Wicked Witch of the West, "and your little dog, too!" full-on cackling.

The cacklers left before the last song of the main set, and it was like someone flipped a switch. The band went from "hey, this is nice music" to balls-out rocking the house in no time flat. CS, BrokeKid and I all looked at each other in confused excitement as if to say "where has this been all night?!" All of a sudden these gently quirky Swedish boys had the crowd whipped into a frenzy. They brought it back down with the beginning of the encore, and then raised it back up again with the final two songs of the night. Those last four songs made me even more excited about going to Lollapalooza, which I didn't think was possible.

People don't cackle in Chicago, right? Right??