An honorary Sketch Factor award
goes to the bar where my husband's band played on New Year's Eve. It was a combination of a Kent State student/ townie bar, and since the students were on break, it was mostly townies. Not any townies, mind you. Kent borders on a very rural, shotgun-totin', Confederate flag hangin' area. The crowd was mostly comprised of those kinda folks.

Tickets were $12 and featured the music of three bands. Owen's band was #2 for the evening. A "buffet dinner" was also included. Now when I think buffet, I am thinking, sneeze guard, serving dishes, line up nicely with your plates, wait your turn, etc. Nah. Not here. The buffet consisted of several crock pots lined up on a table. Plus another table with a veggie tray and a third table of chips, pretzels and nachos.

The crock pots really skeeved me out, but faced with the prospect of it being 8:00 and not eating until 2004, I threw caution to the wind.

The food actually ended up being really, really good. There were these fried chicken legs that were to die for. The meat was so tender, it was falling off the bone. And they were cooked in a crock pot -- which was a novel way to cook them, at least I thought. Then there were these meatballs, which provided the major humor for the night. As my friend Amy and I were helping ourselves to the crock pot buffet, we noticed that this guy, who himself resembled a meatball, was piling the meatballs onto his plate and nothing else. We both looked at each other with a "what the hell" expression, but thought nothing of it. I got a couple of the meatballs out, and when we got back to our table, I sampled them and they were outstanding. "What was with that dude with all the meatballs?" she said. "I don't know, but they sure are good," I said. And that was that.

Maybe 20 minutes later, we decided to go up for seconds. I went to the meatballs immediately and joked that "I better get some before they're gone!" Then I move on to the other crock pots o' goodness. No sooner did I leave the meatball area then here he is again, Meatball Guy, filling his plate with MORE meatballs! I swear, he must have taken 20. So I nudge Amy and both of us bust out laughing uncontrollably. It was one of those situations that I immediately felt bad about because I'm pretty sure he knew we were laughing at him. But it was just too funny. Dude sure loved his meatballs.

And it was even funnier when we saw him get up to make a THIRD trip to get more meatballs and come back with even more!

Then after that, he disappeared. I surmised he was probably on the toilet. Amy guessed that he probably died of a heart attack. So no one knows what became of Meatball Guy. And no one else thought it was that funny, except for us.

Now, the bands. As I said, Owen's band played second. The first band, whose name escapes me, but it was something hippyish, was a complete train wreck. Individually they had some talent. The bass player was pretty decent, the drummer was good... the "singer" was... interesting. Together, as a band, though, total disaster. It was obvious that they had all been involved in some passing of either a joint or a bong prior to going onstage because the singer rarely, if ever, sounded like he was actually singing. It was more of a rap/talk/grunt thing that he had going on. And his lyrics were comprised of every hippie cliche that you can think of: peace, love, and understanding; forget the hate and love each other; legalize marijuana; sunshine, flowers, mushrooms, etc. People (and when I say "people," I mean "people who haven't showered in quite some time") came up to the dance floor area and did the equivalent of the Peanuts dance where you stand in one place and nod your head from side to side. And then, Crazy Dancing Old Guy, who has shown up at one of Owen's gigs before, would occasionally rush to the side of the stage and turn on the fog machine, and then rush out to the dance floor and do his own special interpretive-style gyrations.

Owen's band seemed like an anomaly, then, because the headlining band for the evening was also of the hippie persuasion. Although, they were really good. I would almost want to see them again. Almost. Crazy Dancing Old Guy dressed up in either a Father Time costume, or the wizard dude from Lord of the Rings (sorry, I'm not up on his name), and introduced the headlining band while standing on a chair on the stage. It was all very random. But entertaining nonetheless.

The evening also featured a random smashing of a pinata in the form of the Scariest Clown Ever. Already having a severe dislike for clowns and mimes of all kinds, particularly but not limited to Ronald McDonald, this pinata could be smashed fast enough, as far as I was concerned. They gave a cute blonde girl first whack, as it were, but she did little damage. Suddenly, this dude who could be James Gandolfini's body double strides up to the pinata, is blindfolded, and proceeds to whack the shit out of it. Why would you give a guy who probably kills people for a living a blindfold and a big stick in the middle of a crowded bar on New Year's Eve? Anyhow, the head breaks off the clown, candy flies everywhere, and then everyone kind of walks away. So the headless clown came to live at our table. And provided me with about 55 Starbursts, which probably weren't such a good idea after all the crock pottage.

At 12:01, I was climbing the walls ready to leave. Not that I didn't enjoy myself -- I did. But that was about all we could stand of the place, the smell (of bad incense), the people, the weirdness. But it will be a New Year that I will remember for many years to come, that's for sure.