all i ever get for christmas is blue

If you go to a little college in the middle of an Indiana cornfield named Taylor University, it's practically a rule that you have to have a favorite milkshake at Ivanhoe's, you have to be willing to trample other people for a good seat at Airband, and you have to listen to Over the Rhine.

My friend Heather inducted me into the OTR cult fall of freshman year. I remember riding in her SUV and listening to the first line of Latter Days - "What a beatiful piece of heartache this has all turned out to be, Lord knows we've learned the hard way all about healthy apathy" - and falling in love a little.

I haven't seen them play in a long time, but it seems fitting that when Cubby, Brie, and I went to their show at the Troubadour last night, I saw at least three people from Taylor.

One was a guy who was known as Phubbbbs at Taylor. (I'm not sure I have the number of b's right.) I remember that he drove me an hour to the airport in Indianapolis only to find that I had only brought my student ID and not my license with me. Even in those pre-orange-alert days, a student ID didn't fly (haha) and he drove me all the way back to Taylor to get my license and then all the way back to the airport. And we barely knew each other. That is a nice person.

Another was Brie's and my friend Matt. We saw a couple with a baby standing in the coveted side bench seats above us and thought, "That couple has a baby with them. In a nightclub." And then we realized it was Matt. Karin dedicated a song to them. The baby seemed to enjoy it.

Another was my friend Neville, who I didn't even know at Taylor, but met at Sundance last year. This is apropos of nothing, but Neville made it pretty far on Chinese Idol, which is awesome.

The show was great, although I am old and my back hurt after standing up the whole time.

This clip is not from last night, but this was my favorite song they did, and she's wearing the same dress, so it's practically the same thing. The video quality's pretty poor but you can see the fun cookie-sheet-weird-mallet percussion thing she was doing. If I could have one stupid, selfish wish, it might be to sing like this: