MMJ at MSG on NYE

So, yeah. First New Years Eve in New York. I gotta start by saying I don’t love New Years Eve to begin with. Luckily, Crissy shares this sentiment with me. I always feel so pressured to have the TIME OF MY LIFE, but it always ends up being the night when every cousin Eddie and the hilarious guy from work dress up in rented bright orange and powder blue tuxedos, wear sunglasses in the dark, and do shots of Jaeger for 6 solid hours to prove who’s more party animal. It’s one of those holidays that falls under the category of Things That Seem Less Appealing the Older You Get. St Patty’s Day reigns supreme in this category.

So, we’ve discovered over the years that the best way to combat all of the annoyingness of New Years is to go to a concert. It’s perfect; it feels like a big event, we get entertained for roughly three hours, we all celebrate at midnight, and we have a guaranteed seat for when our knees start to creak. Then we go home.

This year we decided to go to My Morning Jacket, who were playing their first big arena show at Madison Square Garden. If you're not listening to this band yet, start paying attention. You have to respect anyone who’s exactly as good live as they are on their albums, regardless of your musical taste. Plus the lead singer is super talented yet unattractive, and since rock n roll was pretty much invented for dudes like that to get laid, you gotta support the cause.

The show started at 10, so we had plenty of time for Crissy to test out a delicious recipe for shrimp scampi for our New Years feast. It also gave us plenty of time to make preparations, which basically consisted of getting cash from the ATM, and buying booze to sneak into the show. Crissy and I thought it might be good to chill the booze in the freezer for a couple hours to make it go down more smoothly. When I stuffed it in my pants to sneak it into the concert, my genitals recoiled in horror for the 15 minutes it took to figure out the right gate to enter. My junk felt like an ice sculpture that was slowly being carved by a chainsaw. Lesson learned.

The first thing I noticed when we got to the venue were a lot of pale, round-faced, pudgy white dudes with scraggly, reddish Amish beards, kinda like Jim James. For the same reason you might find a lot of close-cropped, bleach blond white dudes in white t-shirts at an Eminem concert. Or a lot of douche bags at a Nickelback concert.

We’d gotten our tickets through a loose ad connection of Crissy’s, who seemed to have a friend who’s sister’s best friend’s cousin works at Madison Square Garden, and got us pretty much the best seats in the house. They were just left of the stage, first row above the floor, putting us right around eye level of the band. Unfortunately, they also put us right in front of the security guard catwalk, and we managed to attract the attention of one overly chatty guard named Johnny D, and a none-too-friendly, overly zealous female security guard who spent three hours giving us the stinkeye.

The band itself was fantastic, starting with a cover of Curtis Mayfield’s Move on Up. As the night went on, we were pretty happy to have snuck in the booze (at the expense of my ability to procreate), considering that A. we didn’t want to leave our seats and miss a second of the spectacular show, and B. beers were nine freakin bucks.

Around three quarters of the way through the encore, we decided to avoid the crowds and bail. We zipped out the door, jumped on the subway, hopped into bed, dipped our dentures into glasses of water, and thanked our lucky stars to have been as fortunate as we were in 2008.

Happy late New Year, everyone.