Spike and the City

So yesterday morning Aberdeen and I were supposed to meet up at the Original Pancake House, have breakfast, and zoom off to Santa Monica to go see James Marsters (who is a very fine actor currently co-starring on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where he plays Spike, a 120ish year old vampire) perform at 14 Below, a club down there.

This failed miserably. I went to the wrong Original Pancake House, ended up walking home however many miles it is from there to here, was headachy, hungry and generally not very happy. I fried some eggs and (dear god, Peter Wingfield is sexy. ahem. sorry. watching Queen of Swords, which isn't that great, but it's got Peter in it, and *whimper*) had some toast and logged onto the net to see if Aberdeen was there. After a bit she showed up online, and got directions to my place, and headachy grumpy Catie went off to Santa Monica.

The headachy grumpy bit lasted about two minutes, really. :) By, I don't know, half an hour into the drive, we'd gotten ourselves a mantra: We had to do this, that, or the other thing, we couldn't drive the annoying person off the road or rear-end them, because, "We have to go to a concert!" This reduced us to helpless giggles every time, and we said it a _lot_. Up to and including at the club, when we got there.

Which we did in record time. Hauling plenty of ass, we were. We left around 1pm and got in at 6:15. Not bad for a 351 mile drive. :) We Buffy geeked and laughed and had a hell of a good time on the way down, and I'm surprised we had any voices left at all from all the shouts of laughter and giggling and gibbering.

We drove to the club just like we knew what we were doing -- mapquest is our friend -- and parked and wandered into 14 Below to ask if there was anywhere to eat around there. There was: the club has a restaurant attached. Since we hadn't actually eaten on the ride down -- a bag of M&Ms (me) and an Almond Joy (Deen) do not a meal make -- we went into the restaurant and ordered a dinner which we were too adreneline-hyped to eat. (The end result of this was that over the entire weekend, we ate less than your average person would eat in a day. Oops.)

So there we are, /hours/ early for the show, and also wearing jeans and t-shirts, not the sorts of things you want to go clubbing in. So back to the car to get our stuff, and then we went into the Very Tiny bathroom in the club and changed clothes; coming out, we got admiring looks. Very satisfying.

We met a girl named Marysia (ma-REE-sha) while in the bathroom; she's blonde and Scottish and rather fey, and was dressed as a water faerie. Well, that's what she looked like to me, anyway. She was wearing a green dress and little green wings and loooong neon green eyelashes. Looks like a water faerie to me. So we talked with her a bit and then wandered into the stage area and staked out a space. While in this space, we observed Amber Bensen, who plays Tara on Buffy, and Joss Whedon, who is the man behind the madness. Er. The genius. They were with a tall woman whom we couldn't identify; Deen hypothesized it was another of the writers, but we didn't know.

And then for a very long time nothing happened. Well, that's not true. Ellen, Aberdeen's friend from GarouMUSH, showed up. That was something!

And _then_ for a long time nothing happened. :) We listened to the canned music, and we sometimes half-listened to Joss and Amber and the other lady, and I talked some more to Marysia, who was there with her boss, who is in the music industry -- she made him take her, 'cuz she wanted to go and she doesn't drive -- and she said she thought she'd seen Amber Bensen in the loo. I said, yeah, she's standing right beside us, and she went oh! So that was kinda funny. :)

I had a nice talk with some gay guy who was there for Spike just as much as the other hundred of us were. He'd recognized Joss, tried to talk to him, and gotten his name wrong, so he was feeling kind of foolish. Oops.

After a while we decided that it had all been a big tease and no one was ever actually going to come out and play and that they were just trying to see how long a hundred people would stand around on the dance floor waiting.

It turned out we'd wait for about an hour and ten minutes, or so. And then FINALLY James came out, to a roar of approval --

-- and then, half a breath later, /another/ roar of approval, because he was in GAME FACE.

"What's the matter?" he demanded, "Haven't you ever seen a VAMPIRE before?!"

And we screamed our approval, and laughed, and Mr. Marsters rocked us.

Actually, Mr. Marsters lifted his hands to shade his eyes so he could see the audience, and said, "Oh my God, look at all of you. Is anybody out there wearing a costume? Oh good. Yeah. You and you and yeah, oh good." I think the boy was genuinely relieved he wasn't the only guy who'd shown up in costume. *grin*

He started out with a Nirvana song, which I believe he introduced by saying, "Kurt, you aren't here anymore, so I'm gonna have to sing this fucking song for you," which of course got more shrieks of approval, and I'll be damned if he can't sing. He sang a lot of songs that were real throat-voice songs, not getting into his head voice or even necessarily his chest voice, but he could carry a tune and sound pretty decent, and when he did get into his real voice, he actually had a /very/ pretty voice.

He did some Nirvana, and some Springsteen -- ok, this is maybe not news to anybody who knows anything about Marsters, but he clearly wants to grow up to be Bruce -- and some Tom Wa . . . Tom something-that-starts-with-a-W. The first song of Tom Something-That-Starts-With-A-W was 'Chocolate Jesus', which I'll look up on Napster as soon as I have a net connection so I'll know who did it. It was sooooo funny. :)

(Tom Waits! That's it.)

He periodically would grin very big and stick his tongue way out and shout, "Yeah! Nirvana!" or, "Yeah! Springsteen!" when people would roar their approval for a song he announced, and he kept saying things like, "My God, look at all of you. I can't believe you all came out for me. This is great. I don't have to practice or anything and you come to see me just because I'm on tv."

This could have sounded like a completely asshole thing to say, but it didn't. He sounded genuinely astonished, which was pretty great.

Dear God. The man was in _game_ _face_, for God's sake, and he was still knee-meltingly sexy. I mean, Spike-as-vamp is okay, but James is to die for. And then there's this vampire boy up on the stage twelve feet away from me, giving the audience sultry looks (and my GOD they were sultry) through his PROMINENT BROW RIDGE and somehow I was going PLEASE GOD LOOK AT ME THAT WAY. He was /appallingly/ sexy. And oh, he did the accent for us once, and we shrieked. *swoon*!

He had a bottle of water, which surprised me -- I don't think I've ever seen anybody play a club and drink anything but beer -- and when he opened it up and took a drink a bunch of people screamed, and he held up the bottle and yelled, "Yeah! Water!", which I thought was funny as hell. *laugh*

And oh dear _God_ there was a moment somewhere in there that he was posing, not deliberately, but from the angle I was standing at, it was a perfect, gorgeous pose: he was braced with his weight on his back leg, body curved in a little so he could look down at his guitar, and his vest was open and his t-shirt was tight enough to hug the line of his body and he has these phenomenal _arms_ and it was honest-to-god beautiful. Just wow. Wow.

About halfway through the set he did a second Nirvana song -- I don't know the band well enough to remember the song -- but beforehand, he announced, "This is scary. I haven't done this one before. Should I . . . ?" And there were screams, and so he kind of gulped and did the song.

Which he did perfectly well, but the _second_ he was done he said, "WOW that was scary. Halfway through I was like, 'Okay, I'm outta here! Time to bail!'"

I _cannot_ remember the song he did -- I think it was another Tom W. song -- which was some bitter harsh sort of thing, and afterwards he said, "Right, that was all about my ex. _Fuck_ you, Liz!" Then he tried to decide what to do next and says, "No, that's too depressing," which got a laugh, and then he did another Springsteen (oh, no, Tom Petty, apparently, if I'm right about what song it was) song, um. Oh, I'll remember it in a minute. Oh, "Don't come around here no more." I think. I'll ask Deen. (The same one that Gary was singing, in fact, I think), which wasn't _exactly_ what I'd call full of light and happiness. More like, equally full of angst and bitterness and anger. Therapeutic, it was. I'd love to know the story about Liz, whomever she is. Hee. :)

Somewhere there towards the end of the set -- maybe right after he did the second Nirvana song -- he's like, "Okay, I'm dying up here. Anybody out there play bass?"

I assure you, there were a hundred people in the audience who suddenly desperately wished they played bass. *grin*

So this whole time, while James has been playing, Amber and Joss and the tall woman were standing in front of me, and by all appearances Amber, just like the other seventy-eight women in the club, has a god-awful crush on James. She's swooning and laughing and giggling and doing weak-knee things just like the rest of us. It was great. *grin* (Can you *blame* her?) So James is nearing the end of his set, and Amber and the tall woman put their heads together and scream, "TAKE IT OFF, JAMES!" Which made us laugh, and James barely blinked, so I had to lean forward and ask Amber if he knew they were there. She said no, which I figured -- I thought he'd have reacted if he recognized their voices. Not that bellowing over the sound of a crowd and music is exactly the best way to have your voice recognized, but anyway. :) A couple minutes later, he went into his last song, and just barely into it, he was looking out at the audience and he saw Joss, and his face lit up into this brilliant grin.

So I was really glad I'd asked Amber if he'd known they were there, because since I knew he didn't, I knew what that smile was about. That was neat.

He finished the set, and, having seen Joss, said, "And I want to give a special thanks to Joss, who made all this happen." Aberdeen thought he meant the makeup; I thought he meant just getting cast as Spike, so he could get up on stage (without, as he kept saying, practicing) and people would come listen to him sing. And then he told us to hang around because there were _real_ bands coming up, and we cheered him off the stage and then the entire dance floor cleared out like it was infected with ebola.

A couple of conversations I overheard: the gay guy asked Amber, during one of the quieter songs, if James ever played on the set. She said she'd heard him a few times, and anything else she might have said was lost in the general noise.

The other fun bit was, while we were listening, a trio of men came in and Joss and Amber and the tall women all exchanged delighted excited hugs and started talking. Aberdeen deduced later that they were probably the makeup guys, which seems very likely. Anyway, Amber sent Joss to go get some beers, and when he came back he stopped to talk to the makeup guys, and they were talking about Spike's game face. I heard Joss say, "It could have come off as really pretentious, or it could have really worked, and it really worked."

And he was _so_ right. Both in that it could have been really pretentious _and_ that it _really_ worked. Deen and I are both theatre geeks, and afterwards we both found out that the other was studying James very carefully while he was up on stage, trying to see the makeup seams, which is just _so_ geeky. But the kick-ass thing is that you COULDN'T SEE THEM. The makeup was SO GOOD. It looked /fabulous/. Like I said, sexier in real life than on TV. My God. :)

So unlike the most of the other hundred people in the bar, we hung around to hear the next band, only then the next band didn't show up. They put on one of their live CDs instead, and I overheard somebody say, "Their lead singer is out pimping on Sunset Boulevard." Hee. :) Wherever he was, it wasn't there, apparently, so we were hanging out talking with Warren the music guy and Marysia, and after a while we moved out into the main area instead of the dance floor, because it was way too damned loud to be heard in the dance room.

And then after another while we decided to at least go outside so that we could decide on a plan of action, because it was _still_ too loud in the main bar to talk. So all of us -- Warren, Marysia, me, Deen, and Ellen -- headed out --

-- and discovered that James was out in the parking lot signing autographs and biting people on the neck for photo ops (oh god I wished I'd had my camera at that point) and generally, by all appearances, having the time of his (un?)life.

The clever bit was that we'd been inside nearly half an hour, so most of the crowd had already disappeared. We worked our way up, and then Warren, who wanted James to open for some bands of his, marched up to him, introduced himself, gave him his card, introduced Marysia, and "her friends from San Francisco."

And James is shaking hands all around, after being flabbergasted (swear to god, he was) that Warren wanted him to open for somebody (Warren had said earlier he wanted somebody who would bring bodies in, and very clearly, James Marsters would bring bodies in), and oh he has a nice handshake. Nice and firm without doing the crush your fingers thing. Then it was like his brain caught up to his body -- "Nice to meet you, (beat), did you REALLY come all the way down from San Francisco?! I'm from Modesto! I wish I were still there!"

And then somehow very magically, _we_ were talking with him. Just us, having a conversation with Spike. James. Spike. BOTH of them. Hee! So we said yeah, we'd really come down from San Francisco, that we'd driven, and he said, "You must be _wasted_. Did you take the 101?"

No, no no, we took I5, and he said, "Oh, good, that's worth going out of your way. You _really_ came down here from San Francisco to see me?"

We really did. And I swear, he was as excited that we'd come down from SF to see him as we were to be talking to him, which was really, _really_ cool. Aberdeen said, "Yeah, and it really was worth the drive, we've been having a great time."

James said, "You gotta come down next time. I've got to _practice_ if you're going to be coming down from San Francisco!"

So we promised we'd come down next time, and told him how fantastic the makeup was, and he _laughed_ and said, "Man, I'm glad. I wanted to do something, you know, and I figured this was either going to be _really_ cheesy or really cool," and we said, "It was cool!" and I said, "It /is/ Halloween, after all," and he said, "Yeah, but EVERY day is Halloween for me. This is like my life!"

And I laughed and I said, "Well, yeah, I guess so. She," indicating Aberdeen, "only got me watching the show a couple of weeks ago," and James said, "Oh, man, have you got a lot to catch up on. I tried explaining it to somebody once and there's just too _much_."

So now I'm under executive orders to catch up, or something. *laugh* So then we told him again how much fun we'd had, and how glad we were we'd come, and he promised again to practice, and I said we'd hold him to that, and then *poof*, our Spike moment was over.

And we staggered away giggling and happy and delighted and I turned to look back at him and he'd turned around to talk to somebody and there was a tear in the ass of his jeans, and I very cleverly said, "That man isn't wearing any underwear."

'cuz he wasn't. That was _definite_ Spikebutt there. Spikebutt in nice. Tight. Jeans. *Hrrrrrr*.

Hell of a note to end an evening on. Spikebutt. *laugh* Oh, and then there were Spikesmoochies. Not, sadly, with us, but with his tall (very tall) girlfriend. It was rather disgustingly cute and we were happily watching. Gameface boy kisses model. All sweet and holding her face in his hands and stuff. It was awfully cute.

And finally we went back to Ellen's house, rehashing our conversation with James the WHOLE WAY, and being *tremendously* excited because know what? He's gonna remember us next time, because we came _all the way down from San Francisco_ to see him. And believe you me, there will BE a next time! Oh *yeah*. *laugh*

10.31.00 followup

Ok, so there is stuff I've remembered since writing this, and stuff people have told me, and comments to make, so I'm adding a little follow-up to the original post. :)

First: Marysia says the second Nirvana song James did was 'Polly', so there, we know that now. :)

Second: Amusing little discussion with Deen; Amber Benson was standing right in front of us during the concert, so I leaned over to Deen and whispered, "She's taller than I thought," and Deen whispered back, "She's *shorter* than *I* thought!" So we figured she was just the right height, probably. :)

Third: I don't think the afore-mentioned Liz did come in while James was playing, though I coulda missed that; he did, though, say that the Springsteen song he did was safer (and less depressing) than whatever one he was thinking of. :)

Fourth: Just personal observation; I couldn't tell how much of James cursing Liz was genuine and how much was hammed up for the audience. I kind of thought there was some of both in there, but I'd hate to badmouth him or suggest he was being a wretch. :)

Fifth: I'm pretty sure Marysia doesn't have mad cow disease. :) I've just trained myself to pick up lots of details (useful for writing, you see) and I tend to remember things well enough that people ask me later if I had a tape recorder running. No, I'm just very bizarre. *grin*

Sixth: I don't know _who_ James was talking to, 'cuz I couldn't see her (I assume it was a her), but at some point during the concert he got into this conversation with a girl in the front. I couldn't hear her half of the conversation, but his went along the lines of: "Oh yeah? Oh, no, c'mon, if you're going to spread rumours, make up some _good_ ones! I want to hear all _kinds_ of good stuff about me!" I wish I'd heard what she was suggesting. :)

Seventh: I completely failed to rave enough about the makeup. Like I said, Deen and I are both theatre geeks. What I failed to say is that when we talked to him after the show, we were /completely/ blown away by how /good/ the makeup was. I mean, I'm standing there inspecting James' head, which is really kind of weird when you think about it, studying the mask and the seams. Which were, even from three feet away, barely visible. Also nifty: I couldn't see them when he was onstage, but up close and personal you could see that there were forehead veins in the makeup, nice and dark blue and kind of horrifyingly real. It was /brilliant/ makeup. ("Excuse me, James, can you hold still while I hold your chin and turn your head this way and that and study your hairline?") (No, I DIDN'T do that! Didn't think of it 'til later. *grin*)

Eighth: (Did I spell eighth right? I guess so, but that looks very funky.) There was a very tall pretty nurse in white latex and a very blonde bobbed wig who was wearing a blinking red button on her left breast. I missed what happened, but caught the followup while she was getting a hug from James: "I'm sorry, I wouldn't normally do that, but you're blinking." Then she asked if it was okay if she got a picture with him, and he said words to the effect, "Okay? I'd get a picture with you any time!" and grabbed her and snuggled up -- the picture will be disgustingly cute -- and then then as she left he held her hand until distance made them break apart. Pretty charming. Pretty sweet guy, is Spike. (We'll overlook her total babe factor and assume he was just sweet, shall we? *grin*)

Ninth: There is no ninth. This is all I can think of right now. :)

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