My list of neurotic tendencies is crowded and well-documented, like crying while watching a Dove commercial. And I just discovered another one to add to it. Hostess syndrome. There’s always some behind-the-scenes hiccup that makes it hideously impossible for me to enjoy the party. It’s kind of like having a zit spring up between your eyes and feeling like a unicorn horn is growing out of your skull. Even if nobody else can see it, the bump creeps into your foreground and eclipses all reason.

Last year, it was the conspicuously long bathroom lines and so this year we tweaked it and voila… we had two blue plastic poopers on hand. And last night it was the complete lack of amplification for the gypsie band we booked. Shiri from the Sour Mash Hug Band said they didn’t normally plug into amps and so, being the niggardly and shortsighted guy that I am, I didn’t press the matter and rent cords and mics, stands and a sound tech. This was okay when they were playing inside the tasting room as their sound carried…

…But not so much outside. When Zack cut the turn tables so that the band could have their promised 30-minute outdoor jam, it felt like we had all been thrown into a sensory deprivation chamber. A vacuum seized the space and instantly sucked all the air out of the meteor showered sky. You could practically hear the whistle of the party’s last breath. Without amps, you couldn’t hear the acoustic band and the silence was so severe and thorough that all I could hear was… da-dumb, da-dumb… the fight-or-flight beating of my heart. And all I could see was people reaching for their car keys.

It was like that moment when the adorable young tap dancing duo that you’ve been photographing and filming for ten minutes as they tip tap smack for tips finally passes around the fedora and you suddenly glaze over with instant amnesia and pretend like you weren’t paying any attention to them before wandering away. Know the feeling?

A song or two later - roughly ten minutes into the band’s thirty minute set - one DJ made the troubling, but game saving announcement - “Let’s hear it for the band!” He cranked on the sound system and the beats ripped through the valley once again. The gypsies in the band were visibly stunned that they’d been cut off so swiftly.

Sure, the party was saved and the starry danceland was teeming once again, but to be quite honest, given the circumstances it was a little tough to enjoy this revival.
I know that these kinds of things happen, that sometimes the cookie crumbles all over your nice white shirt or you burn the toast, but until the Sour Mash Huggers send me a smoke signal, a text message, or something, anything to let me know that they understand, I think I’ll need to hit up my doc for some Ambien.