Jillian's Blog

This woman HAD HER SON TAKEN AWAY FROM HER AT ATL BY THE TSA

I’d be in fucking jail by now, because I would have leapt over the lines and GRABBED my baby back.

Nic’s story almost made me cry. Seriously, unless you’ve travelled with a small child, on your own, you can’t understand how hard it is – and how horrible and stressful her situation is.

I took my tiny family up to Seattle last weekend for a quick weekend visit. I thought a mini-break was in order for all of us. Plus, I had a Virgin America discount code that made flights way cheaper, so why not take my boys away for the weekend?

We used the little known 24-hour upgrade discount window to get bumped up to Main Cabin Select, which actually made the flight up a lot easier with Ben. Regardless of what the original price differences were between fare classes, you can upgrade for $50 within 24 hours of your flight. The $50 pretty much backs out, when you figure that it includes the cost of checking a bag, free food and drinks and entertainment, and the extra legroom that really helps when you have a toddler to set down. Hooray for Virgin America.

Upon arrival in Seattle, we picked up our rented car ($108, thank you Hotwire), and drove into the city. Ben, by this time, had realized that he had somehow escaped his bedtime, and he was DELIGHTED about it. He was toddling around the rent-a-car counters, grinning and exploring, and then looking out the windows of the car until he finally fell asleep. Arriving at the hotel though, with a sleeping baby and and his exhausted parents, was a bit rough. We managed to scrape Ben out of his seat and into his stroller, and then from there eventually into his crib, without any major drama, and counted ourselves lucky.

Ben woke up the next morning and was further delighted that he was somewhere new, with both parents. Ben is always delighted when he realizes that BOTH of us are hanging out with him. We rounded ourselves up, and wandered down to Market to search for coffee and breakfast. We ended up eating croissants and drinking coffee at Victor Steinbrueck Park, at the north end of Pike Place Market. Ben chased pigeons, and was then made an honorary Seattle Parks Ranger by the two grown-up Parks Rangers who were policing there that morning. If only he was a little older, that sticker badge would be perfect for show and tell.

The next highlight of the trip was my reunion with my old friend Andy. I’ve known Andy pretty much forever, but I haven’t actually seen him since 2006, when I was last in Seattle with my mother. And in Auust of 2006, there was also twice as much of Andy as there was when I saw him last weekend. Andy embarked on a life-changing weight loss program that brought him down to being a fit, well-muscled, guy, after years of being obese. It’s the sort of drastic change that usually only exists in movies or books or TV, as opposed to real life, because it takes the sort of dedication and work that few people can put in. I’ve kept in touch with Andy through IM and Facebook over the past few years, and I’d seen photos, so I wasn’t totally unprepared. But it still took a while to really make the connection between my old friend, and this new guy I saw sitting across from me. Not only is Andy completely different physically, but his weight loss also made him much more optimistic, giving him a more cheerful and outgoing demeanor. I’m ridiculously impressed by how much he’s changed his life for the positive.

Paul, being a supportive husband, also stayed in the hotel room with Ben while I went out for dinner with Andy at Brasa in Belltown. Over dinner, we got to talking about what’s changed in the Seattle area in the last six years or so. “You wouldn’t believe the Eastside,” Andy told me. “Bellevue’s so upscale now.”

“It was upscale before,” I said.

“No, it’s REALLY upscale now,” he said. So we had to go look at the Eastside to see what had changed. And it’s kind of weird, coming out of L.A., to see it. Downtown Bellevue is now like Santa Monica or Pasadena: high-end malls and stores, chain restaurants, and corporate buildings. The old buildings are being torn down, taking out all the 70s strip malls and local chains to make way for the prestige stores. And there’s twice as many skyscrapers as there were five years ago, with three of them being Microsoft offices. “Yeah,” I said, looking at the change. “It’s ridiculous.” We went to look at Microsoft too. “I don’t remember Microsoft being on this side of the 520,” I remarked, as we drove through. Microsoft has snapped up all the office buildings surrounding it, and is now building new on-ramps for itself. There’s a freaking mall on campus now, complete with the largest underground parking garage on the West Coast. I’d thought Seattle had money flowing into it, to have cleaned up as much as it had in the last five years, but the Eastside has way too much money. It must be what Santa Monica or Pasadena or Century City was like thirty years ago. (Actually, now that I think about it, Bellevue is more like Century City crossed with Pasadena. There. A translation)

I got home to the hotel that night to find my husband struggling with a baby who wouldn’t stay asleep. Ben kept waking up, either on purpose, or from the cough he’s had for a month. And because we only had one room, he knew we were right there and wouldn’t go to sleep. He wanted to hang out! He wanted to play! Finally, around 1:30, I gave up, put shoes over his pajamas, and took him downstairs to the lobby. We played with the touchscreen tabletop computers that Sheraton has in their lobbies, ran around the lobby for a half hour, and watched some Thomas the Tank Engine clips on the Interwebs. Then, Ben was ready to go to sleep.

The two other big activities we had while in town had to do with my old summer job from seven years ago: deckhand on the Argosy boats. I LOVED working on those boats. The job was a combination of deckhanding, tour guiding, and bartending. I learned how to parallel park a 100-ton class vessel, narrated tours through Seattle waterways, and served a lot of drinks. And I stayed in touch with a few of the people I worked with. We were able to meet up with Captain Kat and her fiance Kevin and my old friend (now Captain) James for brunch at Portage Bay Cafe in Ballard. Ben sat in a high chair and ate his organic free-range scrambled eggs, while the rest of us plowed through our huge plates of equally ethical and responsible food. (PBC’s motto is, “Eat like you give a damn.”) We then went for a quick walk down on the beach in Ballard with James before heading home for naptime.

In the afternoon, we actually went on one of the Argosy tours – the Locks tour, which goes from Elliott Bay, past downtown and Queen Anne, and into the Ballard Locks to get to the Lake Washington Ship Canal. Ben is in love with transportation right now – anything bigger than an SUV gets a wave and a “hi” or a “bye bye,” and he enjoys boats. So we took him on the Argosy ship, thinking he would love it. I think the high point for him was actually when we were waiting to go through the locks and he got to see trains going by on the bridge above us. This caused much grinning and pointing and train noises. Ben can’t say “Thomas,” yet, so instead, he makes the Thomas “toot toot” noise:

ME: “Look, Ben, a train!”
BEN: “Toot toot! Hiiii!”

I loved being able to share the boat ride with my tiny boy though. One of the best things about being a parent is sharing the wonderful things in the world with Benjamin, and seeing the expression on his little face – delight, curiosity, fascination, or all three.

Also, it was great to be back in in Seattle for the weekend. It was comforting. I like seeing all the signs that say British Columbia is just up the road – the next major city up I-5 is Vancouver, and the Victoria Clipper leaves from downtown Seattle. I also like being someplace where proper priority is given to good coffee and good seafood. We went to Seattle Coffee Works and one of the coffee guys was telling rapt listeners about how the drip coffee was French pressed, and how the espresso was drawn and served with the exact timing to release the most flavor. And I like being told every detail on the fish I’m eating – I expect to know if I’m eating a wild, line caught Coho salmon from British Columbia, or a wild, trawler caught pink salmon fillet from the Yukon River in Alaska. I like being in a city that’s still small enough to have a collective memory. Los Angeles is seven cities in one, but Seattle is just….Seattle.

Oh, and also, it’s a lot less expensive to eat really well in Seattle. Over my weekend, I consumed:

- A perfect butter lettuce salad (with hazelnuts and blue cheese) and a plate of really fat Puget Sound mussels at Brasa
- Buckwheat pancakes with Northwest berries at Portage Bay Cafe
- A 75 cent cup of red chowder from Ivar’s, with a grilled fish taco from the Steamer’s on Pier 55.
- Pagliacci Pizza, which is still the best pizza I’ve ever had
- A bonus Ivar’s meal while at Sea-Tac: grilled salmon on rice pilaf with a cup of salmon chowder

Right now, I’m actually drinking my coffee from the Seattle Coffee Works, because it’s early, and I wanted the extra-tasty coffee. Which I carefully ground and then brewed in my French press. Some things about the Northwest will always be near and dear to my heart, and coffee is among them.

I am, at heart, a packrat. I will collect random crap – magazines, craft supplies, kitchen equipment – in the belief that it will come in handy someday. I also refuse to let go of things that have sentiment, so I end up with T-shirts I never wear (usually ones that say “Arts County Fair” on them), birthday cards, mix CD’s, tchotchkes that friends gave as gag gifts, and any other random detritus you can imagine. Add to this my general bad habit of letting papers pile up on my desk, and it’s easy to imagine me sliding into the sort of living conditions you only see on TLC.

But I know and understand this weakness. This is why I fight so hard to stay organized. This is why I keep paperwork in drawers with neatly labeled folders, and why I keep instruction manuals in a portable file, sorted by manufacturer’s name, alphabetically (Need to know how my Cuisinart ice-cream maker works? I can pull the manual in ten seconds). It’s why I throw out junk mail the moment it hits the door, and why I stopped buying cheap secondhand books and just get them out of the library instead. If I can reduce the flow of things coming in, I can keep the clutter at bay.

But still, it piles up. I had a mass of random stuff at the bottom of the closet, a pile of papers and scraps on my desk. I still had a box of office materials I brought home when I went on maternity leave on the shelf by my desk. And then, as I started organizing it, I realized I needed to stop thinking, “what if I can use this?” and start thinking, “what if I had to pack up and move this?”

And suddenly, I was able to let go of a whole bunch of random crap. If it isn’t worth the effort to pack it up & move, when we eventually leave this apartment, then I don’t need to keep it now. Random craft supplies? Gone. Magazines I haven’t read, and probably never will? Gone. It’s liberated me to even throw out boxes and bags of stuff I cleaned out from other places, like the stuff I brought home from my office when I went on maternity, or the bag of random stuff I cleaned out of my old car before I sold it. The “would I take it if I moved?” question has suddenly helped me answer whether or not I need to keep dozens of tiny things that, all together, add up to piles of clutter.

I applied the same philosophy to my desk at work today as well. What will happen when I go on another maternity leave? What materials did I have on my desk that would actually be relevant to someone taking over my role, and which were just archives that no one else would find valuable? Suddenly, the stack of old day planners, with to-do lists and meeting notes, could be tossed, because any meeting notes in them should have long since been typed up and acted on. The files of old IO’s from campaigns past could go into storage. The dozens of vendor media kits that I keep….OK, I can only handle so much in one day. But I threw out the half-used notepads, filed the stacks of receipts from business trips, made a pile of notes that I needed to review and transcribe and threw the rest in an archive in a hanging folder. And suddenly, my desk – which is tiny – was neat and tidy and clear. Immediately, I felt like I could think better.

Looking at objects from a different perspective, forcing myself to assess their value, is helping me to work through all those random things that take up space. Belts and shoes I’m never going to wear again, cheap purses that look childish now, makeup that’s past its expiry date, old Hallowe’en costumes, stockings that are never going to fit, dried flowers (even those from a meaningful occasion), it isn’t that any of it might be useful, it’s that none of it would be worth the effort of packing it up & moving it. And even those things I do want to keep, like my maternity clothes, or my back issues of Gothic Beauty and BUST magazines, have to find a way to be stored efficiently in the meantime so they’re not in my way.

I’m still working on it, looking around the house, looking at each item as if I had to pack it up. I need to actually organize and pack up my nursing pump, for example – it’s been sitting out on a dresser since I weaned Ben months ago. But for the most part, I have been able to de-clutter more this weekend than I have in a while, and that makes me feel better. Every scrap of paper I deem irrelevant, every cardboard box I empty and recycle, every clothing item I take to the Salvation Army or Goodwill, is another step I take away from the trap of just being a packrat. At the end of the day, my home really is my haven, and having a clear, open space gives me a clear, open mind to function with.

For those of you who may not have seen the photos on Facebook, or who have not seen the latest additions, here are photos of two separate trips to Disneyland with Ben in September. Ben actually REALLY LIKES Disneyland. His favorite things there are:

1) Princess Dot’s Puddle Park (“a bug’s land” in California Adventure)
2) The dwarf goats in the petting zoo (Big Thunder Ranch in Frontierland)
3) Watching the train go by in Critter Country
4) The “Celebrate: A Street Party” parade
5) Riding the “Mark Twain”

He is still too wee to understand the rides, but he does enjoy the activities where he understands what’s going on. And yes, we could take him to a sprinkler park or a petting zoo WITHOUT paying Disney annual pass prices, or schlepping to Anaheim, but the ones at Disneyland are “imagineered”

For those of you who may not have seen the photos on Facebook, or who have not seen the latest additions, here are photos of two separate trips to Disneyland with Ben in September. Ben actually REALLY LIKES Disneyland. His favorite things there are:

1) Princess Dot’s Puddle Park (“a bug’s land” in California Adventure)
2) The dwarf goats in the petting zoo (Big Thunder Ranch in Frontierland)
3) Watching the train go by in Critter Country
4) The “Celebrate: A Street Party” parade
5) Riding the “Mark Twain”

He is still too wee to understand the rides, but he does enjoy the activities where he understands what’s going on. And yes, we could take him to a sprinkler park or a petting zoo WITHOUT paying Disney annual pass prices, or schlepping to Anaheim, but the ones at Disneyland are “imagineered”

I was running errands today, with Ben. We were giving Paul a break, while getting in some Mama-Ben time. I put us in our Acute Invasion T-shirts and off we went to visit Mid-City

Somewhat outdated photo of Ben & I in our Threadless T-shirts. He is much bigger now, and I am slightly smaller

We went to Whole Foods first, where I purchased many fine meats. I do all our animal protein shopping at Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods, because they contain the least amounts of unnecessary crap. Also, perhaps it is the quality of the feed, or the quality of the animal’s life, but we also find the food in question – especially the chicken – to be genuinely more delicious. But because it is called “Whole Paycheck” for a reason, I wait for the “Butcher Buys”, buy extra, and freeze it. I actually have a Reynolds Handi-Vac for exactly this kind of purpose. And yes, I will do things like buy a half-salmon to get it for $7.99 a pound, have it chopped into salmon steaks identical to the ones selling for $9.99 a pound, and then freeze them against a day when I need fish for dinner. I also plan my menus weekly, clip coupons, and shop at Costco. I am resurrecting the art of Kitchen Economics.

Anyways. Point is, we went to Whole Foods, and we bought meat – but that took a while because I had to wait for an actual butcher to cut and wrap it up. By the time we were done, I knew I was running out of Ben’s Patience Minutes, but I was hoping I could buy more with the animal crackers I was feeding him. Then we went to Target, because we had coupons for Huggies. Which were also on sale. But by the time we got to the cashier, Ben was tired of shopping. He did not want to be in his stroller ONE MORE MINUTE, and dammit, he wanted UP. (I had steadily been ignoring his requests for “Up?” for five minutes already) So I released him from his stroller, and then proceeded to check out, while talking both to the cashier and Ben. It sounded like this:

“Ben, stay close to Mama. You can only stay down if you stay close to Mama. Oh, I have a reusable bag – can I use this and not the plastic ones? Here, Ben, have an animal cracker. Yes, sir, that is my shampoo, as well as the diapers. Benjamin, no, do not eat the cracker off the floor. Here’s a fresh one. Wait, I have coupons! Benjamin, stay close to Mama! Here’s my Visa card. Benjamin, hold my hand please. No, I’ll take those, the diapers can go in the stroller. Benjamin, you must hold my hand! Thank you.”

The girl behind me in line was there with her boyfriend, and she had this look of smug pity on her face. Pity because I was clearly trying to balance paying for diapers with my toddler, and it was a juggling act. But she was smug because she wasn’t a harried mother trying to run errands with a baby. She hadn’t let herself turn into that yet, and she probably thought that, if she did turn into a toddler’s mommy, she’d be a less messy stereotype than I am.

I wanted to tell her, I am your future. Two years ago, I thought I was all sassy, too. I thought shopping at Target was a sort of slumming it – a rare visit to a chain associated with the suburbs, a trip to a store that belongs in middle America. I, of course, was not the sort of person who would normally shop at Target, because I was a alt-type twentysomething living in Hipsterville, Los Angeles. Now, I shop at Target on a regular basis, because that is where I can get the things I need in the one stop that I have time for.

I wanted to say, it happened to me. It will happen to you. Someday you will be trying to check out of a store with your toddler, whom you have let out of his stroller, and you can only hope that your child is as well behaved as mine.

(Actually, Ben did me proud today – he DID stay close to Mama, he DID hold my hand as we walked out, and continued to hold it all the way back to the car. He was like a real tiny boy, not just a toddler. I’m SO proud.)

To all the girls out there who have yet to get married and have babies, to all the girls who think, “I’m never going to be THAT mom,” who think that they won’t drive a minivan or shop at Costco or seek out grocery bargains, or try to negotiate with a toddler while shopping for his supplies…IT IS COMING FOR YOU TOO. It may all be cliched, and it may all be horribly suburban sounding (and I don’t even have a house in the suburbs to show for it), but IT IS COMING FOR YOU. You, too, will find your second job to be The Domestic Sphere.

But in that process, I’ve been extremely lucky to stay, well, me. My minivan is a microvan, my Costco trips include Woolite Dark because I am still a goth, my grocery bargains are in line with my ethical eating standards, and my toddler is learning how to be a Tiny Boy, and not a baby, and negotiating with him is part of his independence. I took all the things I do as a wife and mother, and layered in my own identity. I hung on to that. At times, it may seem like I lost myself in the shuffle, and there are a lot of days where I feel like my identity did get lost in the day to day tasks. But then, I realize, it’s still there, just in different ways. It helps a lot that my husband handles his share of the day to day, and then some, in housework, in childcare, in general Family Tasks. But I’m still hanging on to who I am, despite the addition of Wife and Mother to the roles I fill.

I have been fortunate enough to see not one, but two of the Nine Inch Nails “Wave Goodbye” shows. I saw the Palladium show, and the Fonda show, both of which were amazing for different reasons. The Palladium show had a complete playing of the downward spiral, which may well be my favorite album ever. The Fonda show was three hours long and included about four cover songs I never thought I’d hear live (“I’m Afraid Of Americans”, Joy Division’s “Atmosphere” and “Dead Souls” and “Get Down, Make Love”), plus a half-dozen guest musicians that brought an added layer of vitality to the performance. The Palladium show had the initial surprise of Gary Numan showing up to play “Metal” and “Cars”, but the Fonda show had him playing “Down in the Park”. Actually, what it comes down to is that the Palladium show had the album that worked best as an album; the Fonda show had level after level of energy built on singles. Having had both shows, I think I can now say goodbye to Nine Inch Nails.

This isn’t easy for me. There are few musicians I love the way I love NIN. I may have been on-again, off-again over the years (I never could get into The Fragile), but when asked my favorite bands, it’s always, always, been Nine Inch Nails and Depeche Mode. Finding out that Trent Reznor is actually ending the band is heartbreaking. Yes, it has been twenty years. Yes, it’s been a great run. Yes, I have seen Nine Inch Nails at least seven times now – counting the tiny show at the Morongo Casino in 2006. But, unlike other bands, I don’t expect Nine Inch Nails to re-form. The mere thought of being as inconsistent as Billy Corgan and Smashing Pumpkins is probably enough to keep Trent Reznor from bringing it back.

My husband was teasing me last night as I put on my eye makeup to go out. “Look at your mommy,” he said to Ben. “She’s primping for her date with your Uncle Ray. Only we all know she’s really primping for Trent.” Really, my husband finds a few old 90s SPIN and Rolling Stone magazines with Trent Reznor on the covers in a storage box in my teenage bedroom, and I will never hear the end of it. I turned around, eyeliner in hand, and informed him (with some indignation) that he should be happy that, at a very impressionable age, I found pale, slender, goth males attractive. If it hadn’t been for that, Paul might well be still be all alone, eating leftovers from Lucky Boy in his bachelor pad in Pasadena, instead of having home cooked meals with his wife and son in his Los Angeles apartment. My husband should be glad that I was so transfixed by the 1997 version of Trent Reznor in the Perfect Drug video, with the romantic long coat and the goatee and the long hair and the absinthe and general Victoriana. Because aside from my teenage crush on Trent Reznor, Nine Inch Nails brought me into the goth subculture, and there is no question that my marriage is directly related to my love of all things dark. NIN are what I call “gateway goth” – one of the more mainstream bands that can lead to goth culture, and that’s exactly how (combined with the Sandman comics, Depeche Mode, and a love of dress up) I got started.

Now, I know that Trent Reznor now disavows anything to do with the Perfect Drug video, which was far more Romantigoth than anything he would have done on his own. And Trent, much like Andrew Elritch of Sisters of Mercy, doesn’t associate himself with goth culture. But I was still reminded of NIN’s goth roots this week at the two shows I saw. First of all, as Paul puts it, “Gary Numan is just a one-hit New Wave wonder to most of the world – but to goths, he’s a god.” And Numan is credited by Trent Reznor as a major influence. Second, “Dead Souls is the gothiest track ever recorded. Seriously, it’s Nine Inch Nails covering JOY DIVISION and it was on the soundtrack to The Crow. And finally, the shows had more goths than I’ve ever seen before at a NIN show. Most of the previous shows have had a handful, but it’s really been more rock types (especially on the 2005 tour dates with Queens of the Stone Age) This one, it was the old-school fans – people my age and older, married couples, many of them wearing outfits influenced by dark subculture.

So yes, it is time to wave goodbye. And after these shows, I think I can let go of Nine Inch Nails. But no other musical artist – not even Depeche Mode – has meant as much to me. I have never felt again the shock of recognition, tinged with musical admiration, that I have when I listened to the first three NIN albums for the first time. Beyond the emotional meaning, I think The Downward Spiral is simply a brilliant musical work in sheer creativity and craftsmanship. And hearing it performed start to finish last week was amazing. Seeing the three hour set and singing along as the energy levels rose and rose at the Fonda was amazing. I’m immensely grateful that there was a Nine Inch Nails to adore for twenty years. It’s time to wave goodbye.

I’m in Manhattan again tonight, in the Theater District, near our NYC office. I flew here Monday morning from Savannah, where we were for my cousin Capri’s wedding. We had a lovely family reunion, and I was sad to return to the working, real, world.

Tonight, I went for sushi in the Village with a co-worker, and then we walked for a couple blocks along Jane Street and Greenwich Ave. I am, of course, enchanted with the Village and its curving, cobblestone streets. I love the fact that it was once a suburb of New York. Imagine the day when New York City was so small that Greenwich Village was a suburb…and everything north was undeveloped.

Also, I took the subway down, out of curiosity – and yep, there’s rats in there. Enormous rats. I have taken mass transit in London and Paris, in San Francisco and Los Angeles and even in Washington, DC…and that is the first time I have seen that kind of filth at the bottom of a subway. But it gets from points A to B efficiently and is an amazing system, so who am I to point out an ENORMOUS FREAKING RAT.

Then I returned to “home”, the Sheraton that backs onto Broadway, and went on a brief excursion for dessert. Artificial ice cream loses its structural integrity in the summer weather its best suited to – my cone last night disintegrated in a most undignified fashion, so I got a cup tonight, which promptly melted into liquid by the time I returned to the hotel. But I got my ultra low-calorie frozen dairy product fix in the brief time allotted. Pinkberry may not come in as many flavors, but it does hold up a LITTLE better.

AND I noticed that, in this neighborhood, there is both a Tim Hortons AND a TD bank. As a Canadian, I feel right at home!

I’m exhausted and need what little sleep I’m entitled to before heading down to Philadelphia in the morning. I actually *heart* Philadelphia, but won’t get to see the city at all this trip – client visit is to the suburbs. In NYC, I’m lost as to what I would even visit; in PHL, I drift through the old parts of the city and happily recall snippets of American history. I doubt much of historic America will be visible from the New Jersey Turnpike or the roads into the suburbs of Pennsylvania tomorrow though. Perhaps I will just sleep more in the car.

Last night, for my birthday, we went out to Bar Sinister. By pure coincidence, The Last Dance were playing. I happen to really like The Last Dance, who have best known locally for being (a) the Bar Sinister house band and (b) being on “The Search for the Next Elvira and (c) being on any goth compilation that also features the Cruxshadows or ThouShaltNot – they’re a goth rock band.

It turns out that Abney Park were also playing at the Knitting Factory the same night. I also happen to really like Abney Park. I saw them at the The Nightmare Before Bats Day three years ago. They’re a steampunk group from Seattle, who have been pushing the theme band envelope a lot harder lately (“Abney Park is from an era that never was…”). I went with Bar Sinister because it’s more party friendly, a $5 cover and lots of space, as opposed to the cost of a ticket and a band not everyone will be into. (I thought about doing the Saturday at Ruin, since that was also happening, but everyone knows Bar Sinister better). But I still was disappointed – this is the third time I’ve missed Abney Park in the last year, including the show The Last Dance opened for in March that I actually had tickets to (I was working).

Anyways, it turns out I didn’t have to completely miss Abney Park. The band walked in to Bar Sinister, did a bit of yelling back and forth with The Last Dance, and then the electric violinist bounced up on stage to play “Nightmares” (link goes to the song on last.fm). Which is one of my favorite songs anyways, because I love the layer of real (not synth) violin in it. I pulled out my phone to video it – although I am realizing the quality of video on the G1 is somewhat lacking: