Dude, I met the man.

This tale of obsession, rebellion, and headbanging starts when I was a pimply fourteen year old with a horrible fashion sense and even worse taste in music.  I was an awkward chick, to say the least, with not a lot of friends and a seemingly incurable hunger for better music than what I had been listening to (Motley Crue, Poison, Tim Noah).  A friend of mine introduced me to TOOL.  It was just the hard pounding super bass blasting melodic (is that a word) super music that I was looking for.  I didn't care that the only way I could understand most of the messages was to listen, pause, grab dictionary, listen, pause, look up word, pause, listen, look up word again, then headbang.  Yeah, TOOL's vocabulary is...what's the word...a bazillion times more advanced than mine.  On the SATs, TOOL would have scored a perfect 800 on the English section.  I think I scored almost a 600.  Which isn't bad, but still can't hold a candle to TOOL's vernacular.
I digress...
TOOL's front man, Maynard James Keenan, can only be descibed as super-human-pseudo-operatic-uber-genius-he-man.  He is the brains behind TOOL, A Perfect Circle, and Puscifer.  Okay, perhaps I'm jumping the gun here...but I'm sure you're starving for a point to all this madness.
Needless to say, as a Fourteen year old mega nerdolla, I became quite infatuated with Maynard.  Not on a weird obsessed level - I never had a poster of him over my bed or day-dreamed about the day when I had his babies.  But I often did day-dream about the day that I would meet him.  That dream came true on Wednesday November 11th, 2009. 
My husband and I have been following Maynard's work for years and should be no surprise to anyone that we fell in love with Maynard's new persona, Puscifer.  It's WAY different than TOOL.  It's more about the show and new technologies than mind-blowing music.  Which, isn't a bad thing, just different. 
When we heard Puscifer was coming to Seattle, we jumped on the opportunity to go to the show.  Did I mention they were also selling "meet and greet" tickets?  When we found out, we both crapped our pants simultaneously.  It was messy but wonderful, all at the same time.  Thank god for mops and washing machines.

Okay Brooke, get to the point already.  We met Maynard.  It was weird.  Totally weird.  They escort each patron holding a golden ticket to a dark room where Maynard is standing.  Some security guard flashed a light in my face and told me to step forward.  For some reason I felt like I was being interrogated.  I stepped up to Maynard and he handed me a signed CD.  I said, and I quote, "Hi!  I think I'm having a heart attack, but its still nice to meet you. Thank you."  The security guard laughed, Maynard said "ohhh" and laughed, and I was shown the door.  It was at that point that I slapped my forehead in disgust with myself and walked out of the room.  Stupid, stupid, stupid.  So now my favorite musician thinks I'm a nut job.  Which actually couldn't be more accurate - I suppose.
On to the concert.  It rocked.  Opening band, Sweethead, pulled my husband up on stage to help disrobe the lead singer.  No joke.  Did I mention we had front row tickets?  Yeah, we did.  We're VIPs baby.  Anywho...he helped disrobe the lead singer out of her coat (it was stuck in her hair - can you say wardrobe malfunction?).  I was completely okay with the situation - all I could think about was how could DyLon woo the lead singer, then sneak me back stage to let Maynard know that 1) I wasn't having a heart attack and 2) I didn't want to have his babes or anything, but I think he's super uber genius he-man.  Anyway, it never happened.  But the Puscifer show was killer.  Electronica mixed with gospel and rock.  So weird but intriguing and cool.  I could go into details, but I think I've bored you enough.  Just leave here knowing that Brooke is one happy cat.  Even though I pulled an Urkel and geeked myself to Maynard, I still got to meet him and be myself to him.  What more could I want?