Victory Lap

Last week I watched Jay Leno interview Jerry Seinfeld. Other than it proving to me that you should never interview one of your friends, it showed me why I’m so fascinated with Seinfeld post-TV show (of which I only saw the series finale first run).

Seinfeld did about two minutes of stand-up before he sat down with Leno. It was moderately funny and got firm applause. It reminded me of the time I was at the bar in the Four Seasons in Austin, Texas during SxSW and Billy Gibbons, just there having a drink, was coaxed into joining the house band for a song. Gibbons stood up, took a guitar and played a three-lick solo before sitting back down. He got a standing ovation.

The interview with Jay was more of a chat. Seinfeld was there to promote something he’d directed starring Colin Quinn for HBO, but it was only mentioned in passing. Seinfeld really doesn’t have to plug anything. He doesn’t have to do anything. His job is done. All he has to do is wave as he rounds the track.

Rush on the Lake

I hadn’t been up to Lake George since I was a kid. Over the summer, I drove the folks up there to visit a few relatives with houses in the backwoods of the Adirondacks and for a much-needed weekend vacation.

After dinner with the aunts and uncles and dropping the parents off at the hotel, I took the Northway back to the Village of Lake George, a place that held such special memories for me when I was a child. Amusement parks, the steamboat Minnehaha, all those trees and mountains—it still looked more or less like the watercolor painting my memory had fashioned it into. Still, it’s strange to visit a place you haven’t been to since you were a child. Your childhood memories didn’t have bars, but as I found out this summer, the picturesque Village of Lake George is littered with places to get drunk.

It was Labor Day weekend, but I still managed to find a place to park. I followed the sound of a live band to a bar on the lake with a large outdoor patio. The band was a goofy bunch of dudes who stuck to covers—Sublime and other things you’d hear in a dorm room. But there were a few surprises: James’ “Laid,” though a popular tune, was an odd choice and perhaps a bit out of context considering the crowd.

Women danced on the floor. Creepy men (yeah, me too) watched around the perimeter. The band announced that they’d play one more song before taking a break, and then busted into the biggest surprise of all, a Rush cover.

There’s no faster way to kill a party than playing Rush. The long instrument intro barely reached its full prog-y magnificence before the dancing women dispersed to the patio. I found myself getting closer to the stage, and with two whiskeys sloshing securely in my belly, began swaying to the indecipherable time signatures. In my reverie, I hardly noticed that the floor was now empty, except for myself and three other of the bar’s most nerdy male inhabitants.

It wasn’t a total loss. On my walk back to the car, after a stroll alone around the dark lake, a car full of women shouted “Hey! Sexy!” at me as they sped past. I don’t care if they were sarcastic or not. I gave them a thumbs up and felt like a boss.