No matter how much we try, it appears that Father Time insists on pestering us. Witness a recent date night with The Blonde Accountant.
We enjoy the talents of several musicians in the local Philadelphia scene, one of which is singer-songwriter Chris Kasper (www.myspace.com/chriskasper). On a kid-free Friday night last week, we discovered Kasper would be appearing at the Blinkin Lincoln, presented by Holy Smoke restaurant, in Roxborough. It was a new restaurant and new venue for us and we occasionally like to take chances on discovering potentially new hangouts. With Kasper as the headliner, all the stars were aligned.
And we got off to a rousing start. The atmosphere at Holy Smoke is clean and pleasant, and the house specialty is ribs, which I very much am in favor of when falling off the diet wagon. So I had the Fred Flintstone-sized plate of ribs and The Blonde Accountant had a chicken sandwich. Everything was, in technical terms, quite yummy.
We had secured what we thought was a nice table with a spot-on sight-line to the stage giving us a nice view of Chris when he appeared.
Our dinner reservations were for 8 p.m., and opener Lisa Bianco, whose music we had not yet experienced, was slated to take the stage at 9 p.m., followed by Chris at 10 p.m.
Unfortunately, through a series of unanticipated delays, Ms. Bianco did not take the stage until 10 p.m. Chris didn’t start his set until a little after 11 p.m.
Bedtime for me and The Blonde Accountant is around 11 p.m. Thus, it would have been no stretch of the imagination to have walked into the Blinkin Lincoln in Roxborough Friday night and see The Blonde Accountant and I face down on the table snoring to beat the band.
But we soldiered on the best we could because Chris is just that good. We enjoy his lyrics and his sound (we liked Ms. Bianco, too), and it appeared the rest of the crowd did as well. I could tell because nearly everybody in the place decided to stand right in front of our table to get a better look at the performers, while we got a better look at their backsides.
And in another example of how old I am getting, the table of women next to us was “chatting” so vigorously during the performance that their voices were louder than the music. The Blonde Accountant suggested they must have been teachers, who oftentimes have to talk loudly to get the attention of the students. Given the decibel level of their voices, I think a more plausible explanation was that their day jobs were as drill sergeants.
I felt so old that I briefly considered yelling at the women, “Hey! You kids get off my lawn!” in an effort to get them to shut up and listen to the music.
Nevertheless, we lasted as long as we could, but Chris was still playing when we left. We got home at 1 a.m., which is pretty late for us, and promptly fell asleep, which is not the way I would have written the final act of the script of a kid-free Friday night date night.
We tried to make it through the whole show Chris, we really did. But getting old is sometimes not much fun.

Labels: Blinkin Lincoln, Chris Kasper, Holy Smoke, Mike Morsch, Montgomery Newspapers, Outta Leftfield