Musicians keep this town fun. Case in point, last Saturday night. After a couple of entertaining but relatively mundane stops on the party train, one at the Shamrock Pub on West Seventh Street and another at Finn MacCool’s on 8th, I took a solo trip to what may, nay, should become an annual Halloween throwdown at the house of a Confusatron guy (whose name is being withheld for legal, OK, personal reasons).
My costume: anemic-looking hack journalist. (No one recognized me!)
I got there around midnight and was greeted by a witch who directed me somewhat telepathically to the keg. There were 10 or 15 people, who all either directly or in passing assured (warned?) me that the party would pick up at any minute.
A few plastic cups of beer and inhalations of magic smoke later (accidentally, Ma, I swear!), and, damn, if it didn’t. Now, Halloween house parties aren’t anything new. In fact, they’re the standard, much to the chagrin, no doubt, of bar owners everywhere. But a Halloween after-party? Two words: Everybody’s happy!
Revelers, already boozed up from earlier parties and dressed in all manner of festive spooky garb, packed the place seemingly en masse. (One of the best/worst costumes was a guy who wore a pair of mannequin legs around his head.) A five-piece bluegrass band sprang up in the backyard out of nowhere and played for hours and was still going strong when I headed out about 3:30 in the morn, when the party population had quadrupled.
Granted, I’m pretty famous and I run only with the Fort’s coolest, but I saw pretty much every Wreck Room-ish muso I know. I didn’t recognize some of them at first but not because of what they were wearing. Rather, they looked so different without a stage underfoot. Once I saw them with booze in their hands, though, it all came back to me. – Eric Griffey
Cow-blahs
Good luck trying to find a sports bar ’round here on Sundays that’s not showing the frickin’ Cowboys games. Everyone loves a winner, sure, and we all know that if the Cowboys weren’t as successful as they are now, half the folks packing the bars – and togging official (read: expensive) Cowboys gear – would be sleeping, watching PBS, or brunching with Muffy and Biff at “the club” (short for “the country club”) as usual.
But the Cowboys have made believers out of a lot of locals, and we applaud fans’ newfound or rediscovered fervor. Still, Fort Worth is lousy with out-of-towners (not to say lousy because of out-of-towners), and local sports bar owners should realize that with Cowboys success comes Cowboys hatred. And with every Cowboys victory, that hatred only compounds itself.
For fellow transplants, especially ones like me, who don’t have cable television, here’s a simple yet effective recommendation: Just go to a bar where you know the owner or one of the bartenders and request that he or she tune one of the dozen TVs on the walls to the non-Cowboys game of your choice. The best part: If and when your team starts losing, as the Cowboys will this weekend, you don’t have to hide your head.
– Anthony Mariani
Contact Last Call at lastcall@fwweekly.com.
