Famous People #9: boy band at Baby's All Right
Kaitlyn: All day long, Lizzie and I were cracking ourselves up. Our boss's wife is having a baby and he said "What should we name it?" Everyone said their own names, okay, very funny. Lizzie and I said "Sam Biddle!" "Leah Finnegan!" We lost it. "Brian Feldman!" No one laughed with us, but we laughed so hard we almost smushed the servings of Momofuku-cake-and-paper-towel in our hands into wet little balls of sugar. This naming convention is an amazing strategy if you want to prevent your child from becoming a blogger, we argued. Cut their blogging dreams off in the womb. Save them from a life of Twitter and finding out how much money their friends make.
Lizzie: I have to say, reading this joke over in the harsh glow of a Google Doc and the cold fear of a Monday morning, it’s kind of lost its charm. First of all, it’s only sort of funny if you pay attention to bloggers and the idiotic fights they get into online, and second of all, if you do pay attention to idiotic bloggers, this joke forces you to remember that you do, thereby making you question how you got yourself into this mess in the first place, when you probably could’ve been doing like, corporate financial merchandising instead.
Kaitlyn: Hard disagree. I still love it. The last time Lizzie and I went to Baby's All Right I made a small joke that was just "Baby's Alt Right." I’ll admit there wasn't enough to it. This time we were already a little bit drunk because we'd just eaten macaroni and cheese, "mixed greens," and several elaborate cocktails each. When we got there, Ashley was waiting for us by the bar, sipping water, awaiting the arrival of her gorgeous and kind boyfriend.
Lizzie: I like to think she was also waiting for us. Even if she wasn’t, she didn’t really have a choice but to act like she was, since Chris didn’t buy a ticket in advance and the show sold out, so he was stuck standing in the front of the bar, listening to the music through a wall. What he really missed out on was the vibe of boys yelling “James!” at James while he was on stage.
Kaitlyn: James and Sam's band, which is called Golf Lexapro, which is an acknowledgment of their bougie backgrounds I believe, played first — there are two other people in it but neither has ever spent 25 minutes doing my Tinder swiping for me, so I don't care — and they were amazing. They would get through 30 perfect seconds of on-stage banter before one of the boys I don't know or feel anything about would be like "rock and ROLL!" and everyone would die a quiet death. They sang beautiful songs and it hurt me that some of them were new, not recorded in the windowless bedroom in the Bed-Stuy apartment from three years ago. Lizzie danced the most and I danced the second most. Everyone else danced the least. About three times per minute, Lizzie would throw her little body into the person next to her, saying it would help. I wouldn't say it helped but I wouldn't say it hurt either.
Lizzie: It’s usually not surprising when you go to a Baby’s All Right show and everyone in the crowd is standing perfectly still while glaring at the band on stage, like they thought they had signed up for something completely different when they paid all those Ticketfly fees. But it was kind of surprising during this set, since there seemed to be at least a handful of diehard Golf Lexapro fans in the crowd, as evidenced by the “James” shouters. If you go to your friends’ shows, you should dance. That’s some Famous People advice for ya.
Kaitlyn: I agree, and I wish I remembered the details better. But at the same time I'm sort of glad to be able to say that the whole night had the feel of a gallon of sherbet submerged in a bathtub of gin. You know? Special treat, too much, peach and pink, fizzy, filmy, green around the edges. It was the sort of thing where as long as you brought your physical presence — if not your charm, your skill, or your wits — you could say that you contributed appropriately to a friend's major life event.
Lizzie: I spent a chunk of time talking to Ashley and Chris, quarantined in the no-music area, but I have no idea what we talked about. I remember Ashley complimenting my yellow eyeshadow and my yellow bag, which I did not match intentionally. I’m sure it says a lot about me that all I can remember is someone else’s vague appreciation for my belongings.
Kaitlyn: James and Sam sold t-shirts with squiggly lines on them, at a small merch table in the dining area where they were also attempting to sell cassette tapes. Putting the fabric up to my skin kind of felt like rolling around in a pile of pumice stones, except if the pumice stones were like, a minor financial component to two of my most beloved friends' plans to follow their dreams.
Lizzie: I took a car home early, like before 11pm. I didn’t care that I had technically paid to see two more bands, because, as Michele would say, it’s a sunk cost.
Kaitlyn: Walking around Greenpoint the next day, I looked at Sam’s Instagram story: “Brunch Lexapro.” Ha. I watched it again. Ha ha. The boy I was with pointed into the street and asked, "Do you want a pigeon?" I said, "My pigeon, Max Read." I cracked myself up.
PARTY SCORE:
Kaitlyn: Perfect. Like 30 seconds of on-stage banter where, at the end, a nice song starts in a not-embarrassing way.
Lizzie: 9 out of 10 Stephen Malkmuses.
PARTY REVIEW METRICS:
Did anyone bring a dog?
Kaitlyn: No, but James had to be at Port Authority by 11 PM to take an overnight bus to Ithaca for his girlfriend's veterinary school graduation. He told us this at 9:45 PM, holding a new beer.
Lizzie: I hope he made it! Port Authority is not a forgiving place.
Did anyone get engaged?
Kaitlyn: How would I know? I was very focused on watching my friends sing about Catholic guilt, marijuana, and bad group texts!
Lizzie: I got engaged to the bartender who charged me $14 for a Miller High Life and a shot of Aperol. I plan to ruin his life.
Did we hear any good secrets?
Kaitlyn: Lizzie literally told everyone at the table about the time she stole two Band-Aids for me from a CVS in Park Slope because we were having a park party and I was wearing a linen crop top with no bra.
Lizzie: Pretty sure I was just expanding on a story that you had already started. You can’t crucify me for wanting to provide narrative context!
Did anyone get famous?
Kaitlyn: Well, not yet, but I bought a shirt.