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2004-11-04 - 2:19 a.m.
Big Bank Hank
Three weeks ago (wow, this journal is on a serious time lag on reporting things I did lately) I went to see Henry Rollins speak at the Lyric Opera House here in Baltimore, which was an odd venue to see him in, to say the least. It was some kind of benefit for one of the area college's law school, which was a good cause to cough up cash I'd gladly pay anyway to see Hank speak. I've never been much of a fan of his music but as a person and a persona I think he's great and always enjoy his speaking performances. And since a few of my friends feel the same way, we went as a group to see him, me and Mat and Emily and Mike. Since Mike lives here in Cockeysville less than 5 minutes away from me, we decided to carpool, and I got to ride in his new BMW "rockstar car" that I'd heard so much about. It was early October and a little chilly but he was still enjoying having the top down. Once we got to the Lyric, we had to hunt around for parking. I'd just been down there a week earlier for the High Zero Festival, which was a couple blocks away at the Theater Project, so I knew there was free parking around there up for grabs at night when the meters weren't being checked. But we circled the area a few times and it was starting to get late so we surrendered and paid for a parking garage spot. We met up with Mat and Emily inside and they had no problem finding free parking. Oh well. It's funny going to the Lyric for a weird counter culture performer with a bunch of other casually dressed twentysomethings, the only other time I've been there was for a symphony and we got all dressed up. It really is a swanky place. The funniest part about the whole set up was that they had this big forest backdrop with a log cabin onstage, presumably for some play that was going to or was just held at the Lyric that they decided not to take down for Henry's performance. So he came out and did his usual talking gig in front of this bizarre background, and made absolutely no mention of it for about an hour, and then offhandedly said "do you like my set? I travel with this on tour," and climbed up on the big wooden steps and sat there for a moment. As usual, Hank told some great stories, some I'd heard bits of before, but mostly new ones, a lot about the time he spent with Johnny Ramone in his final days a couple months ago, and recording with William Shatner. It's really amazing, the life he leads, the people he gets to meet and the things he gets to do. To me he's kind of a folk hero. And such a great storyteller. For the first straight hour or so, before he got serious for a bit, I don't think a minute passed that I didn't have a good belly laugh. Our original plan was to meet for dinner before the show, but that ended up getting nixed, so we didn't all get to hang out much before and after the Rollins, but it was good to see all of them. Afterwards, we chatted for a few outside the Lyric, and Mat made fun of my wrinkled shirt, which he felt bad about later although I was kind of bemused, and then we went our seperate ways home. -al
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