On Sunday, Tristan sent me a message, inviting me to see Ratatat; he and his roommate were not going out to dinner beforehand, but v1c1ous was going to House of Hong with some friends and I was welcome to join them.

I’m really glad I did; Sean’s friends were delightful dinner company, and together we ordered a family dinner. A family dinner that nearly killed us…with deliciousness. We started off strong, all of us digging in enthusiastically. By the fourth course, we’d all started to slow down. By the 9th, we were all groaning and about ready to die. At one point, we had six different courses on the table, and each one was the most delicious thing in the world. HOW DOES THAT EVEN HAPPEN? Toward the end, we started commenting on lobster battles and making fun of neighboring tables and anything that would delay us from standing up because we lacked the proper bloodflow to handle walking; we also were unable to form coherent sentences. Tristan called at one point to find out where we were, I think, but none of us really knew what he was talking about, or cared, or could comprehend spoken language.

There is a soup on the menu at House of Hong that costs $350 and is intended for 10 people. At some point, a group will have to be gathered for the express purpose of consuming this soup.

We eventually made our way over to the venue, which was packed with squealing pre-teens. Hurrah for the bar area! Before the opening bands started playing, Tristan offered earplugs around. Oh no, we were all much too cool to protect our hearing. After the first band started playing, Tristan pulled out the earplug package and waggled it, and this time, all of us but one grabbed a set. It’s one thing to lose hearing from rock concerts. It’s another to lose hearing to an awful, awful, awful band. No, I don’t know what their name was. Yes, I could look it up. No, I don’t care to do so. It was fronted by a guy who looked exactly like the Chocolate Rain dude, the whole band jerked around onstage like rhythmless chickens, and they were singing songs about: positivity, jesus, and…running away from home at 16 after being punished for kissing a boy. I was not their target audience.

The second act was even worse. It was a whiteboy rapper, of the ‘look how hard I am trying to be thug’ variety. I am tempted to write a letter to Eminem and ask him to apologize for paving the road for this dude. LOOK WHAT YOU HAVE WROUGHT, MARSHALL. Half-finished, unpracticed songs with titles like “The Chicken Featha Licka” and “Son of a Gun of a Bitch”, and this guy is almost ready to roll with Herbert Kornfeld in the Nite Rida. Shit, maybe this guy is Baby Prince H Tha Stone Col’ Dopest Biz-ook-kizeepin’ Muthafukkin’ Badass Supastar Kornfeld Tha Second!

I am curious as to whether Ratatat purposefully picked wretched openers to make them appear even better by comparison, but they really don’t need to resort to such trickeries, as they’re awesome. AWESOME. Not only did I get to hear some killer music, but I got to enjoy another one of my favorite activities: watching people dance like jackasses. Bless you, Ratatat, for making that happen for me. Bless you.