Why Rock-stars Wear Pants

Have you ever noticed that 99% of all rock-stars wear pants?  It could be 150 degrees onstage and they are still wearing the jeans.  I guess it’s a tough-guy image thing.  There are a few notable exceptions of course…easygoing guys who just don’t care.  Like, Bob Weir from the Grateful Dead…Frankie the drummer for the Radiators…or Conrad Lozano, the bass player for Los Lobos.  They always wear shorts whenever they can.

So anyways, last night I was backstage at the Los Lobos concert at the Minnesota Zoo.  Lobos just finished their set and I was standing there talking with my buddy Mitch Marshall when all of a sudden he jabbed me in the ribs and said:  “Holy sh*t look at that!” while motioning over ‘there’.  Coming out of the port-a-potty was an insanely hot chick…long dark hair, stylish, regal, exotic…hot.  “Oh yeah.”  I said, “She was one of the chicks dancing on stage.”  Los Lobos has a tradition that during their encore song they always play some rousing dance number and invite any chicks from the audience that want to come up onstage and dance while they jam.  So last night the encore was ‘La Bamba’ and a bunch of girls ran up and the stage was covered with hot chicks.  None of them hotter than the girl who had just exited the port-a-potty and was walking right towards us though.

She was not coming to talk to us of course, but to her friends who were standing about 10 feet behind us.  As she walked by though I leaned over and said:  “Hey, nice job onstage.”  Big smile, she stopped…and she started talking to me.  Turns out she was not only hot, but extremely nice, very cool, and a singer in a band.  While Mitch just stood there and silently stared at her hottness, she and I chatted for a couple minutes about her band and Los Lobos and the Zoo and stuff.  Before she walked on she asked me my name, she gave me her name (Savanna D’amico), and then she told me to look her up on Facebook if I wanted to see when/where her band was playing.

“Savanna D’amico…Savanna D’amico.”  I muttered it a couple of times to myself as she walked off, at first so I wouldn't forget the name, but then just enjoying the way it rolled out of my mouth.  Mitch, who is normally never at a loss for words, was strangely silent this whole time…just standing there gawking at her.  I turned to him and said:  “Savanna D’amico…that’s so perfect…a beautiful name for a beautiful woman.”  Then I took a huge swig of my beer.

Mitch, still staring at her while she was talking to her friends, immediately leaned over and solemnly said:  “Dude, you had me at ‘Sss’.”

I am not sure why, but that struck me as so freaking funny and I knew I was going to lose my mouthful of beer.  In order to avoid spraying him with the entire load of beer in my mouth I did a 180, wheeling around as fast as I could while bending down holding my gut.  Swooooosh!!  The entire mouthful of Summit Ale came flying out at turbo-speed…all over the back of Conrad Lozano’s bare legs.

Then Mitch lost it and he stumbled away doubled over trying not to laugh too loudly at the dismayed Conrad, who had had the misfortune of standing right behind me while talking to some fans.  He spun around and asked if I was alright.  He thought I was puking.  I regained my composure somewhat and through the tears and beer coming out of all of my orifices I tried to explain that I was not puking, just having an unfortunate reaction to something funny my friend said…who was now 20 feet away in an obvious attempt to distance himself from me.  Conrad is one of the happiest, nicest guys I have ever met, but he was somewhat grim as he walked away to go find a towel to mop up the warm beer all over his legs.  Maybe that’ll teach him not to wear shorts.