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alpacinoshair · 6 years

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The Decemberists @ The Agora, Cleveland, Ohio 4/24/2018

My fifth time seeing these musical wizards and probably one of the best times. I was randomly selected again to ask them a question during the Q&A and after stating I was shy, nervous and unprepared Colin complimented my Replacements shirt which had me soaring. He did get me in to them all those years ago (and I told him).

For the two song set they did “I Was Meant For The Stage” and “On the Bus Mall”. They’re always so funny, personable and nice. I waited outside the venue for two hours because I didn’t feel like ubering anywhere else. Met two very lovely ladies who were kind and I guess I went to high school with one.

I was one of the first people let back into the venue, and quickly took my spot near the center of the rail. The show started promptly with a killer set by the opener Tennis. aesthetically, they’re awesome, musically just as awesome! Fun, upbeat and those clothes!? Hot damn.

The D’s came on to the booming sounds of “In The Hall of The Mountain King” which is both fitting for the dramatics and energy it brings. They kicked off the set with “Everything is Awful” with Colin poking fun at the current White House administration, how he as a straight white dude shouldn’t be the one complaining, and how the environment is dying but it all ended with a burst of confetti, which got the crowd cheering.

The rest of the set, simply, rocked. Many tracks from “I’ll Be Your Girl” perfectly peppered with older hits. Colin, who I know gets a lot of praise, deservingly, because he is one hell of a frontman. He got into the crowd to rile them up during “O Valencia”, and came down and handed me, of all people, a shiny red cowbell to help with “We All Die Young”. It was an honor and a privilege I will never forget.

I couldn’t be happier with a performance, the band playing for nearly two hours (if not over. I lost track of time because I was having a fucking blast) - but all I can say overall is this band is really something special. I mean actual masters of musicianship! Jenny, John, Nate, Chris: you are all musical deities in my eyes, and shall be forever.

The set ended with two encores, the finale being “Mariners Revenge” including the giant inflatable whale being guided through the audience. It’s always a fun tune, the band falling about the stage, banging on drums and laughing with each other. I recall seeing the Decemberists for the very time back at this very venue in 2006 and what a blast it was. It happened right after the Crane Wife came out and I recall Chris coming out into the crowd with a giant drum. They’re still just as interactive with the crowd, which is surprisingly not tiring at all with them.

I hung around afterwards because I was feeling selfish and really wanted to finally “meet them”. I walked around the block and back into the back lot of the venue by the busses. I was told to leave a few times but then ran into some older people who were very drunk and swore they knew Jenny. The one women kept kissing me on the cheek, which I wasn’t a fan of and they thought i hated them. I didn’t. They were funny but a bit too tipsy for my taste at the time. It was cold and I was nervous. Colin came out with a sheepish grin. Apparently he wasn’t too pleased some asshat threw a beer can on stage at one point (this isn’t a punk show doofus. That wasn’t cool).

The two ladies bombard him and he seems puzzled (and probably upset) on why the cops are there with them (which was a buzzkill). He even asks and I shake my head, keeping a safe distance. They just put on hours of brilliant entertainment, who am I to ask for more? I think Colin notices me, but gets on the bus to get away from the women. I don’t blame him. He was gratuitous and kind, as always and one day I’ll be able to tell him how he’s saved my life, countless times.

Chris then exists sporting his favorite Chicago Cubs beanie. He is just as kind to the women, his eyebrows going wacky with enthusiasm as they tell him who they are. And alas, he does indeed remember the one woman, who used to live in Portland. He goes back on to the bus to retrieve his pipe and tobacco, and he huffs away while the woman brings on more memories. Feeling all too awkward just standing a few feet away with my hands in my pockets, I shrug and approach him.

I shake his hand and just tell him I really wanted to meet them. I make some sloppy attempt and tell him to tell Colin he’s saved my life, not that it matters but I wanted him to know (it’s been a tough year). Chris nods and says “he’ll appreciate that. And he’ll remember you because of the Replacements T-shirt” I thank him and apologize for keeping him, so I go on my merry way and allow the rest of them to continue to talk.

I regret not telling him I think he is the most underrated musician I currently know. That he blows me away with everything he does and he is such a vital human being in this music that brings me such happiness. Of course I think that 20 seconds later. Ah well, maybe next time.

The Cleveland weather is unforgiving, cold rainy and dour. But I’m elated one of my favorite bands rolled through this town yet again and brought me so much joy, maybe I’ll be able to make it through another year.

#the decemberists #colin meloy #chris funk #concert review #personal

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anzacanary · 7 years

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So I’ve been listening to The Adventure Zone, and I just got through the Eleventh Hour arc, and then I made some rash suggestions about needing fic where Merle leverages his party-god-of-the-forests connections and gets Magnus baked to make him talk about his feelings, and, uh, anyway, have some The Adventure Zone fic, I guess. (I’ve barely started on The Suffering Game and have been spoiled for maybe one-and-a-half plot twists, don’t tell me anything that happens please)

Truthfully, Taako had been a little worried about selling this, but he had maybe underrated how boring guard duty was, because Avi just said "Hey, thanks, dude. These are really fancy!" and took a brownie without a hint of suspicion.

"It's just a caramel-and-ganache drizzle," Taako said, watching intently. Avi had swallowed the first bite, was working on the second, and showed no signs of collapsing or asphyxiating or any other exciting stuff like that. "Feeling okay? Not noticing any poisoning symptoms?"

That did make Avi pause. "Should I be?"

"Nope!" Taako gave Avi his most reassuring finger-guns. "Absolutely no reason to think that anything I cook might be poisonous at all, my man- what do you think? Where do they rank on a scale from one to delicious?"

"Pretty ridiculously tasty. Are they just plain chocolate?"

"Nah, there's caramel and raspberry sauce in there, and also just a minute dash of cayenne pepper, which oh hey Angus where did you come from I'm putting a fucking bell on you do NOT take a brownie. Not for Anguses!" Angi? Better get that sorted out before they had to fight an army of Angus clones.

Angus, deprived of the brownie Taako had smacked from his grasp, looked as wounded as ten kicked puppies smushed together. "But Avi got a brownie!"

"Yeah, well, Avi... Avi earned a brownie. Because he's been working so hard. Guarding our stuff. Good job, Avi."

"Oh." Angus was instantly downcast. "Okay. I guess. If you don't feel like I've earned a brownie-" Dammit, that disappointed lip-wibble was powerful.

"Although I have been working very hard, sir-"

Oh, fine. "Actually, Angus-" Instant perk up. "You can't have a brownie-" Perk down again. "-because these are for everyone else, and I'm making you your own batch of brownies later. Special Boy Detective brownies. Cubbies? Like... brownies, but cub scouts...? I'm still working on the name. The point is, I can't allow you to ruin your appetite now."

Angus was already back to his natural state of perkiness. "That's so kind of you, sir!"

"Yeah, well, I'm really nice like that. Hey, Avi, still feeling alive?"

"Huh? Oh yeah, for sure." Avi had been looking dreamily at the lantern on the opposite wall, and it took him a moment to focus on Taako again. "I'm feeling great, actually. It's just a really good day to be alive, you know? Hey, can I get another one of those brownies?"

"Nope," Taako said, and bolted. "Well, that's... fancy," Merle said, squinting at the brownie pan.

"If you wanted boring brownies, you should have said so," Taako said, throwing himself onto the couch to make his disdain extra clear. "Or no, you should have taken your bootleg Pan-oregano to a different chef. You ask Taako for brownies, you get fancy brownies. Guaranteed non-poisonous brownies too, I fed one to Avi and he didn't keel over at all, you're welcome, by the way."

"There's nothing bootleg about this shit! You don't go to Pan camp every summer of your teenagerhood without making some connections, I'll have you know." Merle was cutting the brownies into squares methodically with somebody's jeweled dagger that had been lying around. Taako hoped it was a clean one, but couldn't be bothered to check.

"You planning to eat all those yourself?"

"I am planning to eat none of these myself, my friend, these are intended for Magnus."

"Magnus?" Taako squinted up at him. "Does Magnus know these are for Magnus?"

"He does not so much know that, no. It's what you might call a charitable gesture. You were there for the chalice thing, weren't you? You saw how he was afterwards. Whatever he was tempted with, he took it a lot harder than you and me." Undeniably true. "And now, if you try to bring it up to him, he just looks sad and brave and lip-wibbly and starts talking about holding it together for the sake of the team." Also true. Taako had been lip-wibbled at far too often lately. "So in my semi-professional opinion, it's time to bring out the big guns. And if that means we have to get Magnus stoned out of his gourd to talk about his feelings, well, we're just gonna have to suck it up. For our teammate's sake."

"I hear what you're saying," Taako said, chewing on his lip, "but have you considered how you're gonna convince him to eat one in the first place? He's a pretty canny guy-" and was interrupted by the dorm door opening and Magnus edging through, arms full of mysterious carpentry equipment.

"Yo, Magnus, brownie!" Merle lobbed a brownie square at him underhand. Magnus looked startled, twisted, and in an impressively dextrous move, caught the brownie on the flat of a saw blade. He looked pleased with himself and jammed the entire thing into his mouth.

"Zatsreal- mmf. That's really nice of you, Taako, I appreciate you sharing with us. This is fantastic, what's in it?"

"Well, chocolate, obviously, and caramel and raspberry sauce, and a tiny little bit of cayenne pepper," Taako said, pushing himself off the couch and moving to intercept Magnus, who was eying the brownie pan. "That's very kind, Magnus, and I also appreciate the way you always keep our furniture in, uh, furniture-condition?" He broke a brownie in half and handed the smaller piece to Magnus, who took it obediently, then figured what the hell and bit into the larger one himself.

Damn, these were good. He ought to set up some kind of brownie dojo, where lesser bakers could come and learn the art of brownie-making, ideally without ever quite surpassing his skill. In the background Magnus was saying something about liking to be useful which Taako tuned out to think about flavor combinations. Maybe mint next time?

"-another, or are you saving them?" Magnus was already reaching for the brownie pan. Taako sighed and gave up.

"Look, maybe... maybe just wait a little while and see how you feel first?"

Magnus looked at him, and then at Merle, and then at the brownies. Back at Merle. Back at the brownies. He dropped his mystery tools on the counter with a clatter, stepped back, and spread his arms.

"You *shitheads*, I had things to do tonight."

"Looking mopy while sanding joints doesn't count as things to do," Merle said firmly, taking him by the arm. "You know what does? Because I'll tell you what does: lying out baked on the empty quad at midnight to stargaze and talk about your feelings. And look what's conveniently available-" There were actually some people trying to play Night Frisbee on the quad, but they fled when Merle glared at them. Magnus followed him slowly, looking like he was concentrating on his footsteps. "Do you guys ever feel uneasy out here? With all that open sky, and it's not like moon gravity is as strong as earth gravity, it's always made me kind of edgy."

"You're worried about... falling off the moon?"

"Maybe not falling off, but what if you jumped too high? Or just walked really hard? We can't expect the moon to do all the work for us. If you move wrong you might slip right off." Magnus stood stock-still in the middle of the green, looking at the sky tensely.

"Like the dogs? Sit down, you'll feel better when you're touching more of the ground." Taako patted the grass beside him. Magnus went to sit down, critically missed, and fell over on him.

"Okay, that works too. There, see, if you start to drift off I'll catch you. Your hair is way softer than it looks, you know that?"

Merle's eyes were narrowed at him. "Exactly how much of that stuff did you sample while you were baking?"

"You don't taste raw batter, dude, gross. Unless you're some kind of salmonella fetishist? I think half a brownie may have had a strong effect because of my natural elven attunement to the rhythms of, uh, trees and shit. Our constitutional resistance to this kinda thing is just naturally lower than average." Taako really was feeling pretty good. Better than normal, honestly, not that he wasn't super fucking chill all the time, but... this was nice, was all. The quad was cool and peaceful and looked pretty in the dim light- with the lanterns and the black sky, it looked like the Night scene set in a magic picture show. Magnus was lying half in his lap and wasn't objecting to having his hair petted.

"Exactly like the dogs," Magnus said well behind the conversation. "But we could just be careful to keep the dog on a leash when it's outside, right? Or build a little dog jetpack for it? We could totally get a dog."

"We're away a lot, though. I mean, do we take the dog adventuring or what?"

Magnus made a distressed sound. "I wouldn't feel right exposing it to that kind of danger. I'm sure somebody here would feed it. Killian has a tear-away calendar where every day is a different adorable puppy, I bet she'd feed it for us. Are there any more of those brownies?"

"Absolutely not."

"They were really good."

"I know! Totally not poisonous, either. I tested them on Avi first cause I'd be kind of sad if you guys died, plus I need you for backup."

"What?" Magnus shifted to glare at him but didn't bother moving further. "Dude, you can't kill Avi, Avi's great."

"Um, obviously I didn't kill Avi? If I'd killed Avi then I wouldn't have given you the brownies, would I? 'Oh look, the brownies are deadly after all, glad I found that out, now I guess I'll go feed them to my team-'"

"I worry about Avi," Magnus went on thoughtfully. "He seems like a great guy, I just don't know if he has any friends? I mean, there's us, but we're terrible. How much opportunity for a social life do you get on the moon?"

"He's on Moon Grindr," Taako volunteered and instantly regretted. Merle was doing the eyebrow-raise thing at him.

"And you know this how exactly?"

"I got lost looking for beignet recipes, how the fuck do you think?!" Taako huffed out a breath and let himself fall backward. "Moon Grindr sucks anyway," he told the black sky. "There are four guys on it, and I'm not making a humorous understatement there, I mean I actually counted. And that includes me. And you think, hey, you could hook up with that guy and if it's weird you'd never have to see him again except for how you would, every day, because we live on the fucking moon, what're you gonna do, hop on a caravan to another fucking moonbase? It was not a good use of my data plan."

"This isn't making me feel any better about Avi's love life," Magnus mumbled into Taako's thigh. "We should keep an eye out when we're on the planet, for someone who might like him. Someone who wouldn't mind living on a moonbase."

"It's a tough sell," Merle said. "There you are at the first-date bar, eating your first-date tapas, you ask 'So, what do you do for a living?' and they open their mouth and what comes out is nothing but maraca noises. Off-putting."

"Yeah, it wouldn't be a great place to invite people back to. The moon thing sounds romantic, but then they get here and it's all screaming eyes in the sky and people wanting them to drink aquarium waste, and not even any dogs."

"You're really stuck on this dog thing, aren't you?"

"I like dogs." Magnus reached out and dragged Taako's hand back into his hair, which was still ridiculously soft. How did that even work? There was no way Magnus knew what conditioner was. "Julia and I were gonna get a dog. Or six or eight, maybe. Really cute dogs. Dress 'em in stupid outfits and laugh at them, that kind of thing." He sounded drowsy but clear. "I thought we were gonna have a chance to bring them up in a city at peace. Watch them grow up, send them to school-"

"This is still dogs we're talking about?"

Magnus shrugged. He had picked a moon dandelion and was carefully stripping it of fluffy bits one by one. "She did like dogs, though. I brought in this puppy one time, it had been hit by a cart in the road, she made a little prosthetic paw for it from wood and leather. She was good at that kind of stuff, fixing little helpful things. Before we- she used to repair my stuff, even before I noticed it was wearing out, she'd yank it away and give it back all tuned up. Later she told me she had just wanted to impress me. Which, she didn't need to work hard at that, but she liked to do it." He dropped a piece of dandelion fluff and watched it tumble in the air. "She should have had more time to do it in. I was figuring we could live to ninety-five or so together, she had decades to spend fixing things, and picking flowers, and petting dogs, and all those years were stolen from her."

"That's rough," said Merle, who was apparently taking point on this, thank all of the gods individually, Taako just wasn't great at this kind of thing. "And hard on you, to have to live with."

"Harder on Julia." More dandelion fluff. "I've been wondering if I should have accepted it," he went on in the same conversational tone of voice. "If she hated me, and she would hate me if I let scores of people die and fucked over the world for this, she'd still be alive to do it. She'd have all those years back. Even if I never saw her again, she'd be alive."

The silence went on for so long that Taako felt really awkward about breaking it just to say "Well, no. She'd be pink tourmaline."

Magnus exhaled sharply with a sound that might have been laughter-related. "Hah. Yeah, okay. But you can't be sure the Bureau wouldn't have found someone else."

"I can be pretty damn certain! It's been going on for how long? And we're the most competent people it's ever managed to recruit. *Us*. You know as well as I do, if it had been anyone else they sent in there, this moonbase would now be orbiting a rather attractive semiprecious gemstone of astronomical size."

"He's got a point," Merle said sagely. "Very dramatic effect, not so great for sustaining life."

Magnus threw his arm over his face and said "Yeah, all right," which came out muffled. "You know," he went on, indignant like this had just occurred to him, "for a guy who wants me to talk about my feelings, Merle, you were pretty unconcerned about me falling off the moon."

"Oh yeah, I almost forgot you were stoned out of your mind." Merle scooted closer and planted one broad hand firmly in the middle of Magnus's chest. "There, that should keep you. Better?"

"Mhm." Magnus hummed a contented little tune. "I'm really glad I met you guys, you know? Even if I did think about erasing it with a magical time goblet. It would be sad if we were never a team."

"Yeah, well, you're a giant fuckin' sap."

Merle threw a handful of grass at him. "I think what Taako is trying to say, Magnus, is 'you're our teammate and we care about you and you can talk to us if you need to'."

"Come on, I don't wanna lay all my problems on you guys."

"I'm not offering free therapy indefinitely, okay? Just talk about it, a little, if you think it'll help. Tell me about Julia. How'd you meet her?"

"That's kind of a cute story, actually," Magnus said, and told it. Taako drifted off a little. You got a great view of the stars from a dimly-lit moonbase, but they were a little askew from how they looked from the ground, and it was disorienting. None of the constellations looked quite right. Were those the Dioscuri, or were they some other starry fuckers pretending to be the Dioscuri? Hard to tell. Somewhere Magnus was still talking, but Taako wasn't quite awake enough to listen. This was nice, even if he wasn't going to admit it out loud. It wasn't like he needed physical contact or anything- he'd been alone most of his life, hadn't he, and that had been fine, hadn't it?- but there was something kind of comforting about falling asleep next to other people. People he could almost certainly trust to have his back unless something really distracting was happening. At some point Magnus cried for a while, not very loudly, and Merle made soothing noises at him. Merle was great at that kind of thing. Damn, they were a well-oiled team. They should also, Taako thought vaguely, probably not all fall asleep in the middle of the quad. He'd point that out to everyone, in a minute.

He awoke, not for the first time, being prodded delicately in the ribs by the toe of somebody's buttoned boot. "Dare I ask what precisely took place here?"

This was probably the time for his most charismatic excuses, but in the moment of clarity of awakening Taako had had a terrible revelation. "Oh, shit," he muttered into the grass, "I missed the most obvious Boy Detective baked goods pun ever, Angus will never respect me again, fuck."

"Now, I'm sure there's no need to be so harsh with yourself," the Director said. "Angus is a kind-hearted boy, and with time and effort on your part he may perhaps regain a portion of his former esteem for you. Try to think positive thoughts. Ideally, think them in a different location. Good Lord, boys, we didn't build the dorms as background set dressing, you know." She looked them over. "Are you going to need help dragging Magnus inside?"

"Oh, yeah, probably, why don't I just go and find some people to help with that," Taako said, and ran for it. An hour later he tracked down Angus, yanked the book out of his hands, replaced it with a plate, stared him down and said flatly, "*Encyclopedia Brownies*."

"That's *brilliant*, sir," Angus said, wide-eyed.

"Yeah, I'm pretty smart like that," Taako said, and took a brownie. But he let Angus keep the corner pieces. What the hell, he could be a good teammate once in a while.

#did i have a fic tag i've already forgotten #canary writes a thing #it doesn't have a plot or anything it's basically just stoned dudes cuddling

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