Nerd Herd

My friend James made a comment on my last kvetch, saying he went to a Belle & Sebastian concert where they didn't play an encore. Coincidentally enough, I was invited to go see Belle & Sebastian last night, again at the Hollywood Palladium.

With all due respect to James, this was by far the biggest collection of nerds I have ever seen. I thought I was at Comic-Con. It was like an army of black horn-rimmed glasses. The guys either had massive Jew-fros or their hair was plastered down to the sides of their heads in an awkward Justin Bieber imitation. The girls all looked like Peggy from Mad Men. The guy standing next to me was reading a book while waiting for the band to come on.

That's right. Reading a book. At a rock concert.

At one point during the show, I tried communicating with a nerdette standing next to me. I don't know anything about the band, so I pointed to the singer and asked, "Is that Sebastian?"

She looked at me like I was from another planet. "Uhhhhhhhhh...NO."

"Which one is Sebastian?" I asked.

"There is no Sebastian," she said, seemingly offended.

"There's no Sebastian? What about Belle?"

"No."

"No one in this band is named Belle or Sebastian?"

"No."

"Why are they called that then?" I thought it was a fair question.

"I don't know. That's just their name."

That was clearly the end of what was obviously a very fruitful conversation. Clearly, I wasn't fitting in here. It's not often that I think of myself as a "cool guy," but it was pretty hard not to relative to that bunch.

And oh by the way - they did play an encore, but at least they got it right. They left the stage, waited for the audience to start chanting for them, came back and played one final song, then took a collective bow. Kudos, whatever your names are.