Moments in Irkdom: Making Tragic Realizations about Your Own Life in Public

This morning, while at work I was thinking about the word subsides, which triggered the song "Sometimes When We Touch" as I recalled the lyrics to that song, a memory was trigger about an experience I had in High school.

For some strange reason my school decided to treat us all to a "rock concert" in the auditorium. For the remote possibility someone has ever heard of this band or that the band is still together, I will refer to them by the code name Palace. Well Palace took the stage and they did not have the cool appearance of a traditional rock band they wore neat jeans with lumberjack shirts which may have been tucked in. They started to play and after about a song and a half it was evident to nearly everyone in the room that this band was not going to be very good. Students began to boo a bit and some of the administrators tried to quell the disruptors to no avail. Then as if they come to the realization that the band deserved no defense or maybe they just knew their cause was lost they stopped chiding the hecklers. Then came overwhelming boos and hissing.

The crowd was pissed. We had been duped. We though we were going to get a quality school concert instead we got Palace, an incoherent, under talented, unenthusiastic excuse for music. Well... after a while the crowds disapproval was painfully obvious, something had to be done. The lead singer intervened and began to give the "hey this is cool but its not cool speech." You know, Hey guys I'm cool I know that your upset and you should be able to say what you feel because that's cool. The only problem is your disrespecting me and my life's work and that's not cool. NOT COOL MAN! then half way through it, he just stopped then went back to his place in the band and halfheartedly sang one more song then they, slumped shoulders, slowly walked off the stage.

I feel like that was the first time Palace considered the idea that they weren't very good. Tragic.


This is a tale about the lack of honest introspection within a whole group of people. They were not young they were not previously successful. They were not talented. Why were they still trying to pull it off? They should have been honest with themselves even if all of their friends and family told them they were great. Since they were not it got messy and it got messy in public. You want me to feel sorry for them but I just can't. You feel me?