The hero (sandwich) you want, not the gyro you need

One weekend: a rib fest, a Sonny Landreth concert, an Irish fest.
This past weekend: bar night, Batman, a work party, the Pitchfork Music Festival.
 
Suddenly, work seems a relaxing respite from the weekend. Busy is my middle name. I am a social butterfly or maybe a human shark who must keep swimming in an ocean of beer and barbecue. I should have my own Web site, a suburban socialite thing, like a Perez Hilton, but with slabs of meat instead of celebrities. 
Yeah, right. But as long as I learn things from my carousing, it’s all good, right?
 
For instance, I learned this weekend that The Dark Knight, though well-made is probably a movie you shouldn’t take your 4-year-old to see. But people do, because the kid likes the cartoon.  But hey, if the kid can figure out what that movie is trying to say, he’s way smarter than me.
 
It ended in at least three places, which is like the last Lord of the Rings. That just didn’t know when to say when. I mean, the hobbits wanted to kiss, but no, instead it’s 45 minutes more of foreplay before they get on the ferry.
 
In Batman, the girlfriend dies, the Joker is captured and recaptured and left hanging, and Harvey Dent goes ape shit, and then Batman decides for all of humanity that he must become thought of as the bad guy because Harvey gave into his evil side and it is better for people to have a hero than to know the truth.
 
Now, if they are setting up a deconstruct of that sentiment for the next epic, fine. But otherwise, as the kids’ text, WTF? As we have learned from the last 8 years, lies in the name of the greater good always work out so well.
 
Actually, his muddled, comic book philosophy aside, I was in a Batman mood at the rock fest Sunday – inspired by legions of young dumb asses who felt it is their divine right to stand as close to the stage as possible, physics be damned.
 
They packed in tight for rapper Ghostface Killah, pale white kids from Naperville finally getting the chance to be “street” in a park as close to the hood as their parent would let them get.
 
I left this area before the crowd reached sardine can proportions to catch M Ward sing Chinese Translation. Sample lyric:What do you do with the pieces of a broken heart/ and how can a man like me remain in the light/and if life is really as short as they say/then why is the night so long

Sure it breaks out no East Coast beats, but who can't relate. Besides Ghostface's beats mashed up nicely with Ward's wispy folk.
 
I had been near the "hard" stage to hear the Occidental Brothers Dance Band International play West African pop, including a cover of New Order’s Bizarre Love Triangle.

Sample lyric:Every time I see you falling/ I get down on my knees and pray/I'm waiting for that final moment/You'll say the words that I can't say

Been there, done that. In the 80s. When I had hair.

Even for this bright dance show, there were the ADHD types who just couldn’t hold a spot and had to step on my feet to get up close. Apparently nothing is more fun for some on a hot, humid afternoon then sweating really close to a stranger.
 
Still, I was entertained by the crowd that included: a guy who looked like skinny, white Jesus, but wearing tiny blue gym shorts, dancing with his Mary Magdalene who wore a dress the same hue of blue; a 50-something guy with his shirt off, but otherwise dressed like he came from safari, waving a red, yellow and green dish cloth. And a shaved head dude in a floor length brown denim skirt – which reminded me, there is another Mummy movie coming out.
 
That’s not to mention earler in the day, Les Savy Fav, fronted by Tim Harrington, a bearish bald dude with mountain man beard, who wore but wrestling pants with a long leg and a short, ball-tugging one. Hot. In the sense he was sweating profusely. And he got in a garbage can and had fans tote him about like Oscar the Grouch. Polite at heart, Harrington worried that fans would get crushed when they put him back on the ground.
 
Believe it or not, those weren’t the oddest people I saw this past weekend. On the way home from the bar Friday night, dropping my buddy off at his house we passed the local park. The dialogue went something like this.
 
ME: “Did I really drink that much or are there two fat dudes in gym shorts kneeling on all fours by that brick post?”
 
BUDDY: “Nah, you’re right. They are there. Maybe they’re fucking.”
 
ME: “It looks more like yoga.”
 
So I dropped my friend off, and passed the park again. The panda sized guys were still in the park. This is around 12:30 a.m. or so and not the time you usually exercise, unless you are a buff vampire, I think. So I circle back, and now they are crossing the street, and the one has got his hands on the other one’s chest, either like there were going to wrestle or kiss.
 
I go get gas and White Castle – or gas at White Castle – and decide if they are still there it will either be wrestling or sex and I can upload it on my phone and post it on YouTube and they can get famous, like Obama Girl.
 
But they had disappeared back into the night, like XXXL Batmen. Were they the heroes we want or the heroes we need? Now I will never know.