Last night, Annie and I got to go see the Ataris in concert. My cousin Deni is married to Kris, the lead singer, so she got us in free. The show was at the Roseland, so we watched it from the balcony because of Annie’s foot. I’d never watched a show from the balcony before, but I’m glad I did this time. Ataris fans are, on average, 15 years old, appearently. We pretty much spent the whole night just being startled by how young everyone there was.

One of the highlights of the evening was definitely watching this enormous fat dude in the mosh pit. He must have been three times the size of anyone else in there, and he was INDESTRUCTABLE. It was like watching a tank. Everyone else was jumping around and slamming into one another. This guy just waded through everyone else, and he never budged. There were 14-year olds bouncing off him right and left. It was truly an awe-inspiring sight. Kind of like watching animal planet.

The Ataris put on a good show. They really keep the crowd’s energy high, and you can tell they were having fun. After the last song, Kris lit his guitar on fire, and smashed it on stage. Or rather, he tried to smash it on stage. After about five blows, it kind of bent, but it never broke. I asked him about it, and he explained that some guitars have a metal rod in the neck, but he assumed this one wouldn’t, since it was really cheap. Then he showed me where the strings had cut up his hand.

All in all, it was a pretty cool show, but Annie pointed something out that made the whole thing seem kind of surreal. After one of the songs, she leaned over and said “Your grandmother knows the lead singer of this punk band.”

After realizing something like that, it’s pretty hard to take the show seriously.