Scary guy-guy!

This morning Sarah and I took our nephew up to NJ to see Bubboon's Tunes. We took his sister Erin to see them perform in DE in 2006, when she was 5. We hadn't heard of them at the time, but it was a really great show. Erin and I got to go onstage for a spelling competition, and Erin won their CD, Songs To Blather By. I am friends with Bubboon on Facebook, and I saw the show mentioned in his status, and I thought that the kids might like to go, since they still listen to the CD. It was an hour and a half drive, but the show would be free and they don't really play too many gigs, plus it was my day off, so it was perfect! But Erin didn't want to go, she's too old for that stuff now, she listens to Gogol Bordello (I'm not kidding, she does a pretty good Eugene Hutz impression).

So we took Ian, and he was excited to go. It was raining pretty hard during the drive, but there weren't many people on the road, so it was fine. We made a wrong turn once we got into NJ, but we still made it with 15 minutes to spare. The three of us went inside (it was held in a county government office building, how odd) and sat in the front row. Everything was fine until Bubboon came out of the back in all his finery (see picture) to check the microphones. Ian totally lost it. His face crumpled up and he started crying loudly, and he said he wanted to go home. Sarah got up to bring him outside for a bit, and Bubboon came over and waved to him and said hi, and even pushed up his frown into a smile (on his own face, not Ian's), but I think that made it worse. Sarah told me to wait until she got him calmed down, which I did. But there was no calming him down, so I went out into the lobby with him, where we could still hear and see the show. We kept inching him closer to the door, but he really wanted to leave, so we did, after about 3 songs. Oh well, I guess when he's older it won't be as scary.

The day wasn't a total wash, we found a very interesting thrift shop near the building, where I got an Atari 2600 game that I didn't already have for just a dollar (that probably doesn't mean anything to you, but I have around 350 unique Atari 2600 games, and to find one in the wild like that for that price is very rare indeed!). We also found an excellent restaurant, Antoinette's at Masso's. It smelled really good when we got out of the car, and the food was excellent (the mozzarella sticks were exquisite). I think the restaurant part is a recent addition, it looks like the Masso's own an entire block of shops that is dedicated to weddings. Banquet rooms, catering, and formal wear are all located right next to each other. It was weird, but like I said, the food was excellent, definitely worth your while if you are in the area. Which is Clayton NJ, by the way.