Austin360 blogs > Out & About > Archives > 2009 > February > 20 > Entry
IT’S WAR!
The sovereign state of Out & About declares total and permanent war on the outlaw tribe of music-club babblers, bags of wind, bigmouths, blowhards, chatterboxes, gabbers, gasbags, gossipmongers, jabberers, loudmouths, motor-mouths, windbags and yappers.
(Yes, that’s a synonymal selection from thesaurus.com.)
From now on, I vow to confront them with more than freezing looks and discreet remonstrations. They are the canker sores on Austin’s smooth-featured music scene.
And yes, I know Austin columnists far more brainy and influential than I have battled this biblically proportioned plague with little apparent success, but for me, it’s once more into the breach.
I sat on the “music side” of bar, aware from previous visits that the north section was more chatty, bleeding into the pressure-valve pool hall and always-occupied smoking perches outside.
In between sets, a couple of sandal-clad young men were hitting on two expertly groomed young women (“The Sandia Mountains are off the charts, man!”) to my left, while a clutch of co-workers mourned the end of a colleague’s relationship (“I want to fall in love with a woman — for a week.”)
All well and good. They were stationed just far enough away that, once the Hyland launched into his first plaintive song, I could ignore them. But just before his arrival, two ladies squeezed into the tiny zone between my bartsool and the one occupied by one of the well-groomed young women.
“We’re taking over this space, OK?”
Animated does not begin to describe their conversation (“I knew when I moved to Austin, I’d get a divorce!’). They chattered vigorously, then invited various unattached men to join their party, even as Hyland slowly cranked up his vocals in response.
At one point, an Earth-goddess of a woman — bless her — came over, smiled, hugged the women, then begged them to move to the other side of the bar. “We’re listening to the music,” she rather obviously explained.
They declined. No amount of head-craning or stool-scootching from my end helped. There was no place to sit otherwise, and I needed to sit at the end of a long social day.
Later, one of the chatterers disappeared, leaving her high-volume friend in conversational despair. So she turned to me — of all people! — to complain that some tall man was now blocking her view. What could I say?
I boiled. I fumed. Now I declare open hostilities. This outrage must end.
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