Chris Isaak

My three nights out last week culminated in a brush with a total collapse of my nervous system. Getting up at 6 a.m. with a baby is not the end of the world, generally, but. By Thursday my sanity, liver, and common sense had all gone on strike. I looked like a heroin addict.

Anyway. Most notable was the night out at the Chris Isaak concert, where shortly after arriving a crew member with loads of arm tattoos and a backwards baseball hat asked me if I wanted to dance with Chris Isaak.

"Potentially," I said. "Under what circumstances?" I pictured Chris and I swing-dancing in front of a glittering orchestra.
"It's something we do during one of the songs of the set," he said. They needed three girls (why three? Still don't know) and I agreed because in return I got a pass that said "VIP, After-Party". The friend that brought me is a big, big fan of Chris Isaak so I reckoned that the after-party was a good reason to do it - maybe we could meet Mr. Isaak and he'd be delighted.

So, at said friend's suggestion I "milled into the wine" and trouped onto stage at the agreed time and did in fact dance. It was fun. The other girls were really nervous for some reason. Chris turned and looked at us briefly, then picked a mad-looking woman from the audience, who was about the size of an eight year old girl but with peroxide hair, lotsa makeup and really tight pants. "You look like a professional dancer," he said to her. "Why not show us your stuff?" or something like that. He implied heavily that she was a pole dancer and got her to basically do a pole-dancing type demonstration on stage. It occurred to me that maybe one of us three stage dancers was supposed to come up trumps on the pole dancing cue. Obviously my laughing and grimacing at Chris' mirror suit (yep, he wore a suit made of mirrors) plus my lack of coordination were a dead giveaway that I was not in fact an exotic dancer. Hmmph. That does beg the question why did they pick me then.

But let's not go down that path today. I was a bit indignant that there was no after party at the end - despite the onstage chat about how they were staying up all night, there was no such thing whatsoever. I still have the VIP sticker though. Maybe I can sell that on EBay.