A Night At "Le Bateau Ivre".

Hey guys. There will be no pics to this post...sry. Thanks for the comments. Ian, once again gets honors with the D.A.R.Y.L. comment....what a shitty movie. Evan, the house is beautiful and I will pass him your message, Karly, the cake was wonderful!!! But not as good as my 21st Bday cake...Tiff, I still laugh at your deer post on myspace, Alex, I love you and tried to call you the other day...hopefully I will catch you soon, Mom and Dad, love ya.

Well, this post is completely dedicated to my Thursday night. It was a good one.

After softball practice, I went to Jean-Luc's house for dinner. We had put sausages and kabobs on the grill. They were excelent. I then get a call from Charles,

"Hey, Tony, meet me downtown after you get done at my father's house."
"Ok...where?"
"Okalligan's."
"K."

I atleast knew how to get to this bar so it wasn't a problem. So after a couple of glasses of Kier (Champagne with Cherry Syrup) I started walking downtown. Thank god Rouen has a couple of huge cathedrals in the town. They are my guides and I judge where things are in relation to cathedrals. Okalligan's sits right next to the cathedral that I took those pictures of from the park/flowers. So I met up with Charles and met some of his friends. This group of his friends were the more punkish type. They were really nice and we communicated the best we could. My french is coming along a little better and it is getting easier to bullshit. So after a couple hours at this bar, Charles asked if I wanted to go to "Le Bateau Ivre".

"Sure, what's there?"
"Well, it's a pretty chill bar with an open acoustic set that we can play on stage."

I of course agreed but didn't really think that I was going to get on stage and play. I will tell you that I had stage lights in my face about 20 minutes later.

So our group made our way to the bar. The direct translation of "Le Bateau Ivre" is "The Drunken Ship." It was a really cool little spot. A kinda hole in the wall bar with a 'Cheers' feeling. I liked it as soon as I walked in. There were three guys already on stage. One on piano, one on bongos, and the other on vocals/guitar. They were alright and we sat around with beers in our hands listening to them. I was just happy with listening to music and really didn't have the desire to get on stage. I mean honestly, I am getting good at guitar but not anywhere close to performing...

"Tony, grab the guitar."

Shit.

The three performers got off stage and Charles started to grab the bongos. Another guy, named Pierre...there are a lot of Pierre's, sat on piano.

So there I was...tuning this guitar infront of a small crowd but a crowd nonetheless.

Pierre started first. I mean this guy might as well have been Billy Joel. He was incredible.

....How the fuck can I follow this guy?

Charles found the beat and started beatin' away. I was just about to hand the guitar to someone else but I found a correct chord. So I started strummin. I put three chords together and before I knew it...we had a beat. It was incredible. So HA, my first live show. After the piano man stopped his brilliance, Charles asked me to play anything that I wanted to and they would follow me. So I played the best thing in my repetoire with an upbeat. It is a funny thing for beginning guitarists...the only thing you really learn at first are sadder songs because they are easy to play. So I was frantically flipping through pages in my head...
K...got one.

I played the 5 chords that belong to Green Day's "Time of your Life", but added more zing to it. Before I knew it...my "band" came in right after the first verse. It was surreal at first to hear myself playing in front of people. Shit...I have played so much by myself that I don't know how it feels to have lights partially blinding my sight but still making out the faces watching my fingers work on the guitar. I was laughing pretty much the whole time because it was so much fun. I was pretty tipsy and I might not have sounded good at all....but to me, I sounded great! hahahaha. So after about 3 songs we handed the instruments to the next group of amateurs and we headed for the bar. We all laughed and shared drinks.

A night I will never forget.

Today, Saturday, I went to Les Andely with the Softball team and we destroyed them 28-10. I made a pasta dinner with creamed mussels. I am gettin pretty salty in the kitchen my friends. We have Cergy tomorrow, an absolute dogshit team. We are going to pound them and I don't want to hear..."Ohhh, be careful Tony." or "Central wins one every once awhile." or "The sun shines on a dog's ass every once in awhile." No...we are going to win and that is that. Shutup. I love you guys and will talk to you soon. Au revoir.