Roger, the cat suit, and the Rock Bottom Remainders
By Missy Hardigan
Halloween is probably my favorite holiday of the year. No, I'm not a witch or a Satan worshiper but it is, without a doubt, the most angst-free holiday going. There are none of the familial nightmares I always associate with Thanksgiving and Christmas -- including the 'so when do we meet your new boyfriend' spiel from my mother -- none of the New Years Eve 'gotta-find-a-date-please-God' worries and, unlike the 4th of July, no all night explosions to scare the cats. Added to that, of course, is the fact that I have been a horror fan for as long as I can remember -- my favorite teddy bear was named Fives after the Abominable Doctor Vincent Price played in the movies (and yes, I know his name was Phibes but come on, I was only eight, so cut me some slack). Give me a holiday that lets you put in plastic vampire teeth, drench your face and neck in red food coloring and dress in a black cat suit without everybody thinking you're a slut and I'm a happy girl!
Halloween 2001 was a rough one, of course, due to 911, and its aftermath. Not only had I -- along with every other American -- spent the last six weeks watching the events of that tragic day replayed 24/7 on every cable TV station imaginable, but it was right around then that we started having to worry about smallpox finding its way into the water supply and anthrax being delivered along with the late fee on my MasterCard bill. Still, somewhere deep down inside me I suspected that it was akin to a patriotic duty that I have fun that year. After all, if I couldn't dress up and act stupid on Halloween of all nights, then maybe the terrorists really had won.
I was dating a guy named Roger that year -- and he was the perfect escort for that particular holiday since he had the sense of humor of a corpse and a personality that would have played quite well in the crypt. His saving graces were that he looked good and didn't drool, but looks and the ability to chew with your mouth closed only get you so far in this world. We'd been dating for just over two months and the five dates had each consisted of dinner, movie, home by midnight -- and I was pretty sure that he wouldn't last very far into November. But I figured, okay, Halloween works -- get a free meal, home by eleven, into the costume and then off to any one of the parties friends were having -- without Roger. I figured the living dead would be adequately represented at each festive event without him.
You can, perhaps, imagine my surprise when a couple of days before Halloween, Roger called and said: "I have tickets to the ... uh ..." there was a pause here "...the ...uh... Rock Bottom Reminders."
"Remainders?" I suggested, hopefully. "The Rock Bottom Remainders? Stephen King, Amy Tan, Stephen King, Scott Turow, Stephen King, Ridley Pearson, Stephen King, Dave Barry ..."
"Yes, that's them. They're playing Halloween night at the ...."
"Yeeeeeeees!" I shouted, in a way I suspected Roger, at least, would never hear again.
As a long standing horror fan, this was the kind of thing I had been dreaming of. Scott Turow is a fine writer, of course, as are the rest of the band members -- and I'd heard a rumor that Amy Tan did a mean version of These Boots are Made for Walkin -- but I didn't give a rat's behind about the music. He was going to be there -- the dude, the guy, the man I'd gone to bed with more nights than all my ex's put together. Stephen King himself -- live, on stage, breathing the same air as me on hallow-friggin'-ween! I started to think that maybe Roger would make it to Boxing Day after all.
"Oh," he added, almost as an after thought, "it says to come in costume if you like..."
He didn't have to tell me twice.
Choice of costume consumed almost every minute of the next two days as I tried to decide which of his characters to go as. A werewolf from Silver Bullet (the bear from The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon was a definite pass)? One of the aliens from The Tommyknockers? The rotting corpse of Sara from Bag of Bones? I briefly considered going as Pennywise the Clown from It -- but discarded that idea pretty quickly: Pennywise simply wasn't going to play in the cat suit. I finally settled on a sexy little vampire from Salem's Lot. Okay, the vampires in that novel weren't really sexy, so sue me. Chalk it up to artistic license.
The concert was at Park West, on Armitage Street in Chicago -- a venue that held about 1000 people -- and was scheduled to start at 8:00. Roger picked me up at 7:00 (dressed in navy blue cords and beige pullover sweater -- a costume I had no trouble figuring out at all: Roger had decided to go as a Geek) and after finding a parking space roughly on the Illinois-Wisconsin border, we queued up at the end of the line at about quarter of eight. We made it inside just as the lights were dimming, and for the next couple of hours I was in garage band heaven.
Scott Turow is quoted somewhere as saying something like: "The Remainders play rock and roll as well as Metallica writes novels." Honest to God, they weren't half bad. Of course, the evening was aided by Turow himself appearing on stage in a huge fright wig, and Amy Tan prancing back and forth in a leather quasi-dominatrix outfit that put my little vamp-cat suit to shame, and of The Big Man himself (King, not Clarence Clemmens) bopping back and forth and wailing outrageously away on his rhythm guitar. The music wasn't great, but it sure was fun, and a good time was had by all.
All, of course, except Roger. "It didn't seem like it was worth $75 a ticket to me," he grumbled.
"Well, I said, "it was for charity."
Roger's face brightened considerably. "You mean, its deductible?"
I found myself unavailable the next couple of times Roger called, and soon he was deleted to the geek file in the recycle bin of my dating career. The cat suit and plastic vampire teeth were washed and packed away for another year. The Remainders haven't played Chicago since then (their next scheduled performance is 11/8/03 at the Texas Book Festival in Austin Texas -- which I won't be attending unless the kind folks from ReadersRoom decide to send me there as a correspondent hint-hint), but the next time they come to The Windy City, you can bet your Rock Bottom dollar that I'll be there.
And if it doesn't happen to be Halloween -- well, I might just wear the cat suit anyway!
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