You know when in the movies the guy realizes he's about to lose the girl and runs through a field of snow to get to the airport before she gets on a plane to the big city? The music in the background is the kind Winter Starlight plays. A smorgasbord of three bands, all permutations of one another, and a couple of solo acts—notably Jacob Smigel—rolled into one, they're music lovers with a high-level actual skill that they must've logged several hours in a practice space to achieve. And it was not at all my thing.
This was so nice it gave me the willies. I felt like I would've been more comfortable rolling joints with the shady folk down the street.
I had to escape and go do something gnarly to shake this wholesome vibe. So off to Gilley's it was for porn star and stripper mud wrestling, where a white-haired woman dripping in pawn-shop jewelry using a cane to prop her on a stool kept pushing mounds of empty beer bottles into my lap. She slapped the edge of the ring, getting angry for no apparent reason, yelling, "Come on!" like it was a horse race. When some scantily clad ladies came around with bags full of porn DVDs, the woman grabbed as much as she could. All around men were shouting, "Kiss her!" at the slippery little piggies in the ring. And finally, I could relax.