As you can tell by reading, I'm a uncontrollable rock n' roll wild man. Therefore it will come as no surprise to you that I did something as footloose and fancy-free as go to Hooters recently -- twice!

I was driving past the local Hooters and saw a tent up. It wasn't one in my shorts, it was one in the parking lot of the restaurant. I thought maybe a band was playing so I stopped in, but it was the division swimsuit contest. Even better!

There were 24 ladies competing, two of whom had no business being up there, 19 of whom were really nice looking, two who were devastating, and one who pretty much won the competition the second she walked on the stage.

The audience was very much like the audience at the Mastodon show I described in a previous post: portly white guys in black T-shirts, including me. Let me tell you, there's nothing as perplexing as seeing a 35-year-old man with a Amon Amarth T-shirt draped across his man teats.

Having enjoyed myself at the swimsuit contest -- which was free of charge, by the way -- I decided maybe I'd stop in a Hooters again before the Mastodon show as a compliment to my evening of anarchic, young-man-style rock n' roll. I hadn't been to a Hooters in about eight years, and probably another eight or nine years before that. I wondered if this latest experience would be anything like the past ones.

When you walk through the doors, five or six girls congregate in front of you and say, "Welcome to Hooters!" I was kinda confused if any particular one was up to be my hostess/waitress, or if I was supposed to choose. It reminded me of what you see in whorehouses (on TV and movies!) where the guy picks from a lineup. I wound up following a pretty black girl to a table; nice face, kinda lanky. The girls used to wear metallic orange pantyhose that totally detracted from their attractiveness, but those weren't to be seen this time around, thank God.

While your food is being cooked the waitress comes back and talks to you, which I'm sure is a direction from management. This is part of why I'm glad I'm not a girl working at Hooters. How they muster that kind of cheer and ability to fake interest in the pudgy middle-aged men who come to stare at their hooters is beyond me. I told her I was going to the Mastodon show, which fascinated her to no end -- not! But she managed to pretend to be interested. Yeah, I'm a pessimist by nature, but...I already knew I cut a pathetic figure in my glasses and pot belly, there alone, so this "step outside your little world/talk to a pretty girl" thing made me feel even lamer.

There, I've rained on that part of the experience! Now the food: the waitress was really nice, but the food hasn't gotten any better in 20 years. You can get a better hamburger and fries at Burger King and pay half as much as you will at Hooters. (And I'm sure Hooters has someone patrolling the Internet for customer complaints who may contact me with a coupon offer; hold the coupon, an evening with Natasha from the swimsuit contest will do).

So the waitress was nice, several of the waitresses were genuinely pretty, but the food wasn't quite Burger King standard. I mainly left realizing how much more the Lisa Loeb type of girl appeals to me over the Pam Anderson type. Fun and different experience, though. Maybe interesting reading, too.

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More Mastodon

Yesterday I bought their 2006 DVD The Workhorse Chronicles that documents their early years. The show I saw at The EARL is on there! You don't see me, though, because it's taped from my side of the stage, which is weird because I didn't remember a camera being there.

But then you hear the guy with the camera say, "Don't ever offer to tape your friend's damn band!"

Some guy says, "Huh?"

"Don't ever offer to tape your friend's damn band! I'm working harder than they are!"

And I realized the guy saying "Huh?" was me! It was eight years ago, but after I heard that it came back to me. I thought maybe the guy wanted me to scoot over or something. So run out and buy this so you can hear the best part, me saying, "Huh?"