So I'm sitting in a dive college kids' bar in State College, PA (in every sense one of the most distant places from Washington, DC that you can drive to in under 4 hours) with the ole lady, listening to a bizarre country punk band ( Angry Johnny and the Killbillies, coming to the Velvet Lounge in late September and possibly worth a listen if you're into that sort of thing), and I notice there's a guy wandering around in an Andrew WK tee shirt. Now, you don't see that many Andrew WK tee shirts in State College, especially at country music events (although, as the wearer later pointed out to me, there is a certain shared white-trash aesthetic there with Andrew and Johnny).
Anyway, we're getting ready to leave after the first set (an hour-long extravaganza of blood, heartache, misanthropy, and smokin' electric mandolin) because the ole lady forgot her medically-required earplugs and has absorbed more than her limit of 110 decibel music when Mr. Andrew WK sidles up and says "Hey, didn't you used to be the TourVote guy?"
It's freakin' Markie! We go through the obligatory simultaneous "WTF are U doing here?" routine and it turns out Markie's in town for a major (if not well-publicized–so that's what all those guys with grotesquely overdeveloped legs on expensive mountain bikes were doing all over town) bicycle racing event. Myself, I live in State College part time because the ole lady is a prof at Penn State, and I never, ever run into people I know from DC there unless we specifically invite them to visit. Much less one of the handful of boardies I've ever even met in Greater DC. Unfortunately, we had to get going on account of that noise overload problem since Angry Johnny, fueled by the 4 Black Jacks and 3 PBRs he sucked down during the first set, was due to reappear any time and he probably wasn't going to be any quieter. So we didn't have much opportunity to talk further (a shame, since Markie is one of the more entertaining and amiable chaps you'd care to meet, in Godforsaken State College or anywhere else).
So, um, would any of you government statisticians who surf the web all day on my tax dollars be able to tell me the probability of such an occurrence?
Anyway, we're getting ready to leave after the first set (an hour-long extravaganza of blood, heartache, misanthropy, and smokin' electric mandolin) because the ole lady forgot her medically-required earplugs and has absorbed more than her limit of 110 decibel music when Mr. Andrew WK sidles up and says "Hey, didn't you used to be the TourVote guy?"
It's freakin' Markie! We go through the obligatory simultaneous "WTF are U doing here?" routine and it turns out Markie's in town for a major (if not well-publicized–so that's what all those guys with grotesquely overdeveloped legs on expensive mountain bikes were doing all over town) bicycle racing event. Myself, I live in State College part time because the ole lady is a prof at Penn State, and I never, ever run into people I know from DC there unless we specifically invite them to visit. Much less one of the handful of boardies I've ever even met in Greater DC. Unfortunately, we had to get going on account of that noise overload problem since Angry Johnny, fueled by the 4 Black Jacks and 3 PBRs he sucked down during the first set, was due to reappear any time and he probably wasn't going to be any quieter. So we didn't have much opportunity to talk further (a shame, since Markie is one of the more entertaining and amiable chaps you'd care to meet, in Godforsaken State College or anywhere else).
So, um, would any of you government statisticians who surf the web all day on my tax dollars be able to tell me the probability of such an occurrence?