18 February 2015: Metalachi at Stubb’s

“One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.”~ Bob Marley

After The Tequila Rock Revolution left the stage, I was both sad and yet thrilled to the bone. One half of this was over. But the other half, I knew was going to be just as amazing and entertaining.

Metalachi. Los Vatos Locos were back in town for the first time in six months.  And this was more than likely why the venue was so packed with people that I had to remove my foot rests from the wheelchair to make frickin’ room for my legs before they were crushed against the side of the stage at the knees.

Stage set up took a bit of time, but it was all well worth it. As long as those flashing lights didn’t burn out my eyes like they almost did at The Belmont the last time. Thankfully, there was nothing to worry about it THIS time.

Then their MC came on to the stage and I knew who he was. He had “de chair of luv” with him and he put it away elsewhere on the stage. I laughed to myself, wondering who would be the unlucky/lucky lady to sit in that chair when the time came.

Suddenly the show came alive. Their MC hyped the band so much that the roof nearly caught on fire! If audience screams and yells were flammable… we’d all be goners. Because it stayed loud by way of the reaction of the audience the rest of the night.

I want that MC’s job. I bet I could do that. Warren…. I’m comin’ for ya!

The band got settled on stage and after everything and everyone was set…. the stage exploded. The crowded exploded. Stubb’s BBQ exploded. And there was no pyro necessary! I’ve not seen that since I snuck into a Metallica show back in the 1990’s.

I think though from what I witnessed in the crowd, that Metalachi should re-consider calling this the “Flying Chichis Tour.” To my left there were breasts exposed. To my right there were breasts. Directly behind me even more breasts. Boob Fest 2015.

Metalachi’s set was so much fun. They played their greatest and latest hits. All the way from “Epic” by Faith No More to “Crazy Train” by Ozzy Osbourne and everything in between. Even “Raining Blood” from Slayer.

I had heard that they played “Cemetary Gates” by Pantera for sound check that afternoon. I would have loved to have heard that. But no luck.

Soon enough, El Cucuy was in his rare form again, cracking up the audience with his totally messed up stories about La Llorona and teachers and even child support. Orale!

Metalachi meets Amanda in De Chair of Luv

The inevitable struck. De Chair of Luv.

My one of a kind, awesome, angel-fallen-to-the-earth, absolutely-frickin-gorgeous friend of mine brought with her a friend who had never seen Metalachi play live before and she shouted to lead singer Vega De La Rockha that there was “fresh meat” in the crowd. A first-timer. Metlachi did not hesitate.

They sat her down and ….. well …….. did what they had to do.

Probably the funniest thing was that someone shouted into a microphone “Go to your happy place!” over and over again. I don’t remember if that was El Cucuy or Vega De La Rockha or their MC. But it was pretty funny.

It was all in fun.

The MC returned a little while later and introduced the band members. Of which I recall hasn’t changed. At least not since I saw them play the last time. So the big surprise was not so much the big surprise. But the introductions are funny.

And the show kept going and going and going. It was kind of a surprise for me that the show lasted as long as it did. Not that I dare complain, it is just that the show is so much fun, especially if you know all the songs that they are covering and playing in a mariachi style.

My night was really over the moon when I heard Maximilian Sanchez started the pizzicato of his violin. There was no other song that would begin like that that they would play other than what probably is becoming my most favorite of them, next to “Raining Blood”……. their mariachi version of “Sweet Child O’Mine.” 

I frickin’ lost it!! Vega De La Rockha was standing directly in front of me. Heard me. And smiled big.

I didn’t get to hear them play it live at The Belmont. But they played it at Stubb’s. And I am forever grateful. I will say that Metalachi’s version of the song is far better than the original. You can go ahead and disagree with me on that, but that’s what I think, cabrones.

Needless the rest of the night was gravy. Or so I thought. It wasn’t over!

Metalachi is rather kind enough to be the type of band that stays afterwards for photographs, autographs, and general conversation. They meet with their fans still. They aren’t like most “A-List celebs” that perform then disappear. I spoke to each member of the band, with the exception of Nacho Picante, who was swarmed by the ladies every time I looked around. It was funny that when I spoke to Maximilian Sanchez, it was short, sweet, and in Spanish. PERFECT Spanish I might add.

At last I was getting brave enough to just shout at the entire band to gather so I could take a group photograph. And it happened, minus one. There’s ALWAYS minus one!

And then I heard the band tell the one of a kind, awesome, angel-fallen-to-the-earth, absolutely-frickin-gorgeous friend of mine to come sit on my lap and take a photograph with me. She hesitated, but after being badgered a little by the band.. she succumbed. But I showed her that my lap isn’t her enemy but her ally. A photograph was taken and the guys laughed and laughed.

Soon I backed away from Metalachi because I knew that other people were wanting their chance to meet with them. So this ends the tale of Metalachi of the night, but it did not end MY night.

I realized that I hadn’t really spent any time or attention towards members of The Tequila Rock Revolution. I mean, they did come all the way from San Antonio! So I made my way over.

And from that, was absolute fun conversations to the point that I finally looked up after a while and realized …. there was nobody else there but staff, bands, and I.

Whoa.

There I am talking with The Tequila Rock Revolution members, and other members of Metalachi who came in and out after ridding themselves of their stage garb. But I’m not telling. To find myself there in that space and time… kind of gave me a sense and feeling of VIP. Not even the staff members of Stubb’s bothered me to tell me to leave or whatever.

As I was talking with Mariachi Doll, guitarist Stacey Mazuca came by and I suggest that she should sing for me, because I have been so supportive. Before I knew it, they were assuming that I was talking about my birthday that had passed weeks before.

Mariachi Doll and Stacey Mazuca began to sing a Spanish birthday song. And I noticed that both of them were looking right at me. It was difficult to figure out which one to look back at since they were in different spots and not necessarily standing next to each other. They sang this song A Capella and there was harmony and melody. A few lines into it was the icing on the cake for the entire night for me.

Haydn Vitera joined the two girls in singing with his own part of harmony.

Everything in my body and soul began to shiver and tingle. My spine was just shaking and tingling to my brain from the glorious music that was being performed before me in such an angelic and pure form. It wasn’t a quick tune as our “Happy Birthday To You” is. It was a full song. And by the end of it, my body was shaking from within and I had tears in my eyes. And I kept hoping that they never saw that. Even though in writing, I am admitting it.

I wished I knew the name of the song though. It just really touched my heart and soul. That every time I think about it, I get the shivers. And especially that very night when I thought about it, tears would form in my eyes. And I softly would cry to sleep that night.

I know that Mariachi Las Coronelas plays a lot in San Antonio. I just don’t have the transportation to reach them. I’ll have to wait for them to return here again, I guess. I’m still trying to figure out the local transportation to be able to see VITERA. If I can ever fix the problem, I’ll never miss another local show again.

Metalachi, I will always make room for. When I first hear news that they are going to be here… tickets will be bought and the calendar fricking cleared.

Metalachi is heading west now back towards California on tour. They are done burning Texas to the ground and leaving no prisoners. However, on Facebook, they posted that they had a bit of a traffic accident with their trailer somewhere inside the Texas panhandle on the way to their next show in Albuquerque. (Yes, I spelled that right. No, I didn’t look it up first.) The fans are hoping and praying that everything is okay. The band is reporting to be all in good health. Its just their equipment trailer that bit the dust.

If Metalachi is going to be in your area. Or even your state, it would behoove you to get your chichis up and going and getting to the show. It will be worth the money, time, and effort. And you will reap such rewards. JUST GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As for me, I cannot wait for any of these bands to be playing again. I’m feeling the twitch already and its only been a few days ago.

VATOS LOCOS FOREVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My Facebook Was Hacked

This afternoon I received a telephone call from my sister. She said she was nearby and wanted to stop by to visit, bringing the 2 year old (my niece) with her. I certainly didn’t mind that so I told her to come on by. She stopped and grabbed a bite to eat before she finally had arrived.

I happened to be going through Facebook around the time she showed up.

A few minutes later, I moved away from the computer. It allowed my sister to move in place and be in front of my computer. I certainly didn’t mind. But I would find out rather quickly that I probably should have.

What she did, caused about a half an hour of a laugh riot shared between her and I. Even though I ran the risk of pissing off a few people that could have led to them to the action of  “unfriending” me.

Instead of my sister moving on to do something else like, check her e-mail, look up something on the Internet, check her bank account, or even log me off and log into her own account, she began to wonder what she could do to sabotage me and see what the result would do.

Luckily for me, my sister was thinking far too hard to come up with something so outlandish to write on my Facebook profile and by the time I was finished doing what I was doing,  I was back inside and watching her.

She was attempting to make me sound either ignorant, offensive, or as a homosexual.

She tagged other people’s names in the posts that she was able to come up with. And for her, the reaction was not coming in fast enough. Up until the point where I had received a text message with the question of “What’s going on?”.

At first, I didn’t respond. I wanted to see just how far my sister would go with her practical joke. Deep down believing that NOBODY would believe that it was me behind the keyboard typing these silly Facebook statuses. Eventually, I would confess that my sister was behind the keyboard and just having a little fun.

Such as the following:

“Sled hockey is for wimps.”

“I like princesses and rainbows.”

“Majic Mike is the best porno ever!”

And so on. Then the others came when she tagged people whom she could remember that were mutual friends between her and I. And it just grew from there.

Some people saw it, and well… I honestly don’t know what they were thinking. My cell phone began to grow with activity from a flurry of text messages and then there were others who were writing messages in the inbox on Facebook, asking what in the heck was going on.

The reality of the situation, I was monitoring and supervising what she had written on my Facebook wall. She would come up with an idea, and then I would tell her that NOBODY would believe that it was me. She obviously was looking for that level of “assumed sincerity”, trying to sound like it was me. But it just didn’t work for her. Nothing she put on my Facebook wall was something that I did not approve of.

I left everything up for several hours. Some people even clicked “LIKE” on a few of them. Others offered comments. So when my sister finally left, I wrote that my sister had a little fun at my expense. I had began to delete some of the things she had written.

But ultimately everything she wrote, was all deleted. Including my admission that it was my sister having some fun.

Really, it wasn’t “hacked”. But it was monitored. And it provided a bit of entertainment for a while. Once people started to realize what was going on (that they had figured out on their own), the fun quickly died down.

At any rate, the things we do to entertain often must come at the expenses of ourselves rather than others.

Mobbed By Doubt

“In case of doubt, do a little more than you have to.”~ Warren Mitchell

Last night I watched a television show called, “Mobbed”. I saw an episode just last night of a 37 year old man who had never met his father. And he begged the show to help find his father and help him meet him for the first time.

There are other episodes that I have yet to see. And I’m not 100% sure that I will ever see them. But one came to mind that I had seen back in January when it was premiered. Although I did catch it towards the end. So I admit that I had to go to YouTube and find the full episode to see what happened and how things led up to the ending. And that is the episode in which Steve meets Dana and asks her to “take their relationship to the next level” and start dating.

Steve is in a band from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His band did a show in California where Dana lives. Longer story short, they started communicating with one another by text messages and telephone conversations and had done so for five very long years. Steve wanted the show to help him send his message to Dana.

The host of the show, Howie Mandel, comes in and thinks that this is a long shot and that the experience lays in the hands of the underdog. But since Howie says that he’s a fan of the underdog and loves to see them victorious, he helped Steve on his mission to send his message to Dana.

Some of the people who run the show behind the scenes were very skeptical, including the host of the show. They kept throwing around the question “What if she says ‘no’?” over and over again. Knowing that it was a possibility and that they were taking a huge risk, they did it anyways.

So then, big production… big crowd of people with interpretive dance and singing surrounding Dana as she has NO CLUE as to what is going on. And in the end, Steve and Dana are being interviewed together and they’re holding hands.

Where in the world do I start on this?

First of all, I think that if it was that easy to just send in a video message to some television show to ensure that I would be able to surprise a few people and make my point with them, their mailbox would be so full. And to those of you that know me on a personal level but have never met, and have discussed the mutual desire to do so… prepare for “shock & awe”!!

But the episode is so forced. When the host believes that from the beginning that this could be a potential disaster, he appeared to be hell bent on making it work.

They set up a fake meeting with Dana saying that she was being cast for a dating show. They went and asked personal questions about what she felt her ideal mate would be. And her answers had nothing relatable with poor ole Steve.

This wildly attractive young woman when she walks in, mentions the ” bad boy” fascinates her. So when they set up the phony dating, they hired an actor (who would turn out to be one of the flash mob dancers) and made that “bad boy” persona look like the devil to her and ultimately not a good idea. Hoping to crush her dreams of the “bad boy” experience and let her re-think about her dream guy, and about what it could be like to be with a nice boy such as our hero Steve.

Everyone jumped on board to do whatever they literally could to sabotage the surroundings of Dana and lead her into Steve’s path. And it was obvious that people were coached into saying and doing certain things.

Even though Dana may not have had any certain “idea” what was going on, she was led by people to go where she needed to go in order to make the episode successful and tug at the heart strings of the viewing audience.

Most certainly, everyone involved had to sign some sort of waiver. Steve and Dana included. So there had to be SOME clue by everyone as to what was going on. 

The part where Steve tells her that he’s packed everything that he owns in a moving truck and if she said no, he’s going to turn around and go back home. But if she said yes, he’d want to start a new life in California with her.

Nice touch, Hollywood! Way to go for the flare!! (I still hate you!)

Ladies of the world, let me ask you a question and feel free to leave your responses in the comments below.

If a man went to the lengths of organizing a flash mob with hundreds of people and lights and music and cameras everywhere and then he professed his feelings for you… would YOU then in front of everyone and all of the cameras turn around and say no???

This show made it very clear to me that they did everything in their power to ensure that Dana would not deny Steve. And what kind of episode would that be HAD she said no?

It’s almost the same idea of when I watch episodes of Antiques Roadshow… do these people who sit there and appraise the worth of something, while they are handling it– do they ever drop something and break it into a thousand pieces? And if they just estimated a value on something that was worth $50,000 and then either accidentally damage or destroy it- do they pay them $50,000 for their loss?

Nobody ever sees that kind of thing on television. Nor is it shown “behind the scenes” on any blooper real or outtakes. So then why in the world would they air a program where in this situation, the girl says NO at the end?? This is why I believe its forced.

Of course, the viewers have no idea what kind of a relationship Steve and Dana has had in those five years that they say that they have been talking to one another. They both admitted on camera that they are one another’s best friend. But as a guy, I noticed that neither Steve or Dana said “I love her/him” or “I’m in love with her/him”. Still though, we don’t know how their relationship has been up to that point. Perhaps there was no need for it, and he just wanted to hang out with her a lot more and see where it goes.

And of course that leads to all kinds of people searching for answers about their relationship after the episode was originally aired.

Let’s remember something. Steve is in a band. And the band’s EP was soon to be released around the same time that the episode was to be aired. And it sold very, very well on iTunes. COINCIDENCE???

All I can say is that for myself, I HOPE that Steve and Dana are sincere with one another. Even though neither of them were sincere throughout the entire episode. During the phony speed dating that they put Dana through, she tells her date that she’s in the music business. Then she back peddles a lot and said that she works “at a venue”. At the beginning of the show, its told that she tends bar. That makes you part of the music business? If so, I’ve got something to tell to the beautiful Candace,  who works tending bar at BFE Rock Club in Houston. I’m sure she’ll be thrilled!

And whether or not Steve and Dana are still dating or got married or whatever the case may be, that’s honestly their private business and not the business of the world. But it still is a curious thought to find out whether or not their relationship thrived. A mystery that will probably go on unsolved forever. I do however, wish them well!

 

CAT FIGHT!!!!

“No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.”~ Abraham Lincoln

 

So I’ve held on to this story for a while now, a couple of weeks. I’m not too entirely sure why as I know that some might find the tale rather interesting.

 

Other times when I have thought about writing it, I was always interrupted. So I locked the door, unplugged the telephone, and have tossed the cell phone into the toilet.

 

Never in my lifetime to this point did I think that I would actually be an eyewitness to an actual “cat fight”. But it did happen, and within the walls of my own home.

 

I had a nurse coming by to check on me that day. That still is full swing, although sadly the physical therapy is not.

 

But I had also set up services with a second home agency. And that second agency was to be responsible for hiring an attendant to help me with those personal needs that I am unable to take care of myself in my home. And not so much the medical side of things which require attention.

 

Because of the fact that the second agency had nobody to hire right away, they were insisting on sending people to my home to help get a start on things. And boy, did I need that!!

 

My only problem was that one day…. I was not told that anyone was coming. With the nurse already in place, it set the stage for the entertainment purposes of this blog post.

 

The nurse from the first agency has actually stood in my home and called the other agency to find out what was going on, building on the desperate “need” that I had to get someone to even come out. Weeks prior she had begun to get frustrated with this second agency that nobody was coming out to help at all.

 

The surprise visit of this “specialist” coming to help clean and do laundry and what not during the same time of this “go-get-em” nurse was rather explosive.

 

The nurse began to jump down the throat of this particular volunteer. She said that she had been here about a week before, but they had sent so many people in and out that I couldn’t remember them all.

 

The nurse got on to her and started talking about how poor this second agency has become. She focused on the fact that the agency and its workers failed at communicating with themselves and their clients. She went deeper to even explain it that nobody within the agency knows how to pick up a telephone to tell the clients which day they will and will not be there. On and on and on.

 

The woman just sat there stunned. Each and every time the nurse would speak she would point the finger directly at this woman. But when the woman would respond, she would look at me and not the accusing nurse.

 

I would have to say that I fully agreed with what the nurse was saying. I was surprised that the nurse didn’t start yelling and screaming and carrying on. The accused sat there frozen on my couch.

 

Then one word was uttered by the woman who sat so still: “Bitch.”

 

Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd in this corner…. DING! DING! DING! DING!!

 

They both moved at each other at the same time, grabbing and swinging and everything a person could imagine. I had two professionals from two separate agencies at each other’s throat. ALL professionalisms were out the window.

 

It went on for several minutes before I actually had to somehow get in between them and break it up. Dangerous. I’m not sure how I am surviving today to be honest.

 

Men: NEVER attempt to break up a cat fight. You’ll get sucked into the whirlwind of it all.

 

The only reason why this was broken up so “easily” was at this altitude in a wheelchair, when I reached up to grab an arm and pull it away… I had misfired and instead grabbed a breast. Although by now I don’t remember which one. And I don’t want to, to be honest.

 

Once I got them separated, I told the “specialist” that I honestly had NOTHING for her to do that day and the nurse was SUPPOSED to be there so with those weighing factors, including the fact that she had started the confrontation, she had to leave.

 

The nurse gathered her things and prepared to do what she had to do and I walked the other one to the front door. I made sure to lock it behind her so there was no threat of her coming back for more. But I never did think to walk the nurse to her car, “just in case”.  Oh well. Lesson learned right there.

 

So there was no baby oil, chocolate pudding, or even mud. But the cat fight happened anyway. I knew that there would be someone who would just happen to walk by and then they would call the police and then EVERYONE would be in trouble and I did what I could to prevent it.

 

Never seen a cat fight until then. Hopefully I never will again. Unless I’m kidnapped by my friends and they make me pay a $20 cover charge to get into somewhere. And then… just maybe then…. there will be baby oil, chocolate pudding, or mud.