A favorite story of mine about getting all jammed up features my friend Dave. He goes to see a bill up in Boston that he understands to be a reunion of sorts of a once-famous punk band. He has a half dozen or so beers beforehand, as one does, then gets to the show only for it to be a ‘we’re over the hill now, playing acoustic’ type reunion punk shows. To make an anticlimactic evening worse, some insufferable Beantown yuppies have the nerve to shush him and his buddy Jim while they try to salvage a boring, stuffy night. Shushed at a punk show. The End.

We’re all in a van in Mexico City on an escape from New England winter when I get to hear my favorite story again. As this story winds down we usually fall into lamenting a once fierce city gone soft. But to my shock our friend we haven’t seen in a few years pipes up, “Yeah that was me! I shushed you, you asshole!” Wez delivers the goods, “It was a Jonathan Richman show. Everyone in the crowd is on a date, holding hands trying to have a nice romantic evening and you and your buddy wouldn’t shut the fuck up. People thanked me for shushing you. And you know the worst part of it? It wasn’t your obnoxious slurring it was the loud farting. The two of you were ripping the most violent, cloud forming IPA farts so that Jonathan was up on stage wincing as he’s trying to get through ‘Dancing In The Lesbian Bar.’”

Sure a lot more happened in our five days in CDMX. By the time I was buckled into my seat to return home my nerves were so shot that I wasn’t sure we were on the right plane. Just then a pasty baby boomer looks up from his New Yorker magazine and over his glasses to argue with the flight attendant for no damn reason at all. It was the flight to Boston alright.

Thank You to Nito and Blunt for a great many things, but especially for keeping us out of the clink. Beers on us for an eternity or two.