Commixta Grandine

CWs: alcohol, food, work mention

Interea magno misceri murmure caelum
incipit, insequitur commixta grandine nimbus
- Vergil, Aeneid 4.160-61

Meanwhile, the heavens began to be mixed up
With a great murmuring, and followed
A cloud with hail mixed in…

That passage from the Aeneid has stuck with me for a long time. Whenever I think of hail, I often think of that passage, which is from the 4th book, where the Trojans, particularly Aeneas and Dido, get stuck in a raging storm. I am thinking of hail because we drove through a hailstorm this weekend. It was an intense one. Probably the thickest rainstorm we’ve been in with the new car. My spouse was worried it would crack the windshield, and I was just hoping for the best, honestly.

To back up a bit: we had a busy weekend. Busier than I would have liked, but oh well, it was fine. Lots of errands Saturday. And on Sunday, a treat. A couple of weeks ago, we were listening to the radio in the car, and they mentioned that the band Beach Bunny would be playing in Denver soon. I told my spouse to immediately get tickets for that show, since Beach Bunny is one of my favorite bands these days. They do indie rock (pop?), very earnest and heartfelt, reminds me of early ’00s emo music. In the best possible way. I got into Beach Bunny upon the recommendation of someone on Mastodon, and I’ve been following their career ever since. As far as I know, I have all the albums. And Beach Bunny just had a new album come out at the end of April, so totally makes sense that they’re touring! The show was Sunday evening. Not ideal on a “school night,” so to speak, but some shows are worth it, y’know? So we got tickets.

I had lots of Latin to work on, per usual for the week, so I made sure to get just about all of it done on Saturday. Sunday I had a little more to finish up, but that was fine. The show was doors at 7, starting at 8, so we had plenty of time to kill before that. We planned on getting dinner in Denver before the show, so we drove down at probably 3 or 4pm. I don’t like driving in Denver, so we usually do a park & ride and take a bus or light rail into the city proper. We were intending on going to a park & ride we’d never used before. As we started out, the sky looked angry, and got darker and darker as we drove south, and eventually the skies opened up and buckets of rain started pouring. I had the wipers on high at one point, and then hail started shooting out of the sky as well. It was a little scary. I was going to pull over under a bridge briefly, but there were already too many cars there, and no relief. So, as they say, “the only way out is through.” We just kept going. Low visibility but I did my best. The car performed admirably, I gotta say, and eventually we made it through the worst of it, and the rain yielded to blue skies. The roads were so wet and slick that they looked like a mirror, but it was OK. We eventually made it to the park & ride, and I was glad we picked that one, since it had covered parking.

We got dinner at Wynkoop Brewing. We’ve gotten plenty of beers there over the years, it is generally very good, so it was a good option, and close to the venue (a place called The Summit). My spouse got their pizza, which apparently was not great. I got fried fish tacos and they were delicious. Their elote dip was also delicious as an app. We ended up only getting one beer there, then moving on. Since it was Sunday evening, not a ton was open, unfortunately. We stumbled upon a winery not too far from the venue, though, and had a glass of wine there.

Eventually we’d spent enough time that it passed 7pm, and we thought we’d get in line for the venue. The line wrapped around the block from the venue, so there were a ton of people there! I was honestly kinda floored at how many people showed up! We got in line, and it actually moved pretty quickly. There were some enterprising people selling hotdogs on the sidewalk, which looked super shady and not quite sanitary, but they probably made some good money from folks there. Once we got in, it was kind of a madhouse. This was a GA show, so “standing room only,” no seats. We found out, too late, that they had some seats on the balcony upstairs for an extra $20. We would’ve paid for that, but by the time they put out the call in line that it was a possibility, they’d already sold out. Oh well. We found a spot to stand in off to the right side (stage left?) which worked fine.

The opener was just OK. They were on for about an hour. Eventually around 9pm, Beach Bunny came on! The lead, Lili Trifilio, was basically wearing a cheerleader skirt (very much in line with the “prom queen” aesthetic mentioned in many songs), and a soft pink, sparkly electric guitar. They started playing a lot of the songs from the newest album, which I confess I don’t know super well just yet (I have only listened once). But it’s very good. Earlier in the week, I recommended my spouse check out some of their music, and they did so and enjoyed it, mostly listening to the new album. I know the older stuff way better, so I was happy when they played those songs, but I liked all of it. The show was a little claustrophobic and tons of people around, but really great. There was a family near us that had some little kids with them, and the little girl held out a little “hand” finger puppet thing and asked if I wanted it. I said sure, and held onto it for a bit. It was very sweet of her. I kept it with me and I think I’ll put it on my bookshelf at home in my office.

I didn’t expect there to be a mosh pit, but there was, and plenty of people were crowdsurfing. The security were grabbing people at the front of the stage and safely putting them down. What a thankless job!

The show went until almost 10:30 that night. They came out for an encore and Lili played “6 Weeks” solo, with just her guitar, and it was really lovely. I had just played that song for my spouse the day before, and it was very fresh in my mind. I think it’s the first Beach Bunny song that came out, and I love it. Really lovely.

Overall we had a really fun time, but I think in our 40s, I am feeling way too creaky for GA shows, and especially ones on Sunday nights. That was rough. I almost called out the next day. We headed back to the bus terminal after that and got a bus back to the park & ride. We didn’t get home until almost 1am and were exhausted. But it was totally worth it, and probably a once-in-a-lifetime experience, so I am glad we did it. I took some pictures and I would love to post them but I don’t have a good way of doing so on here. I’ll have to figure out a way of doing that eventually. Maybe this would work for that, I dunno. My spouse took some good pictures too. I’ve been sending them to friends and such and saying what a blast we had!

As a result I need a calmer weekend coming up. We have Memorial Day off, so I’m looking forward to an extra day off. I would like a little break. And my parents are coming to visit in a month, which I’m looking forward to. I’m just feeling a little burnt out and need to recharge, so the long weekend will be lovely. Although I need to make it through a phone day tomorrow, after a very busy one today, but that’s OK. We’ll make it through.

Thanks for reading, friends, y’all are the best <3