#TBT Merry Pranksters in Milwaukee

From left to right: Ann Marie, Me, Pat McCurdy, Phil, Kenny

To this day, this was one of the funnest experiences in my whole entire life, and maybe THE most because it was a once in a lifetime thing, never to be repeated. This picture is from when we – me, Ann Marie, Phil, and Kenny – fast friends – performed on the main stage at Milwaukee Summer Fest with Pat McCurdy. (You may remember him from our recent-ish convo here about Elvis.) He hired us for four consecutive shows, so we barreled up to Milwaukee from Chicago in a caravan of hilarity. Pat put us up in a motel. He wrote helpfully on his instructions: “Give names. Check in.” As though we would have walked into the motel and all been like, “WHAT ARE WE SUPPOSED TO DO NOW??.” We busted Pat mercilessly for this later.

Pat is a legend in the Chicago/Milwaukee/Madison/St. Paul and etc. area. And we all became friends during his weekly gigs in Chicago (where occasionally we would all clamber into the photo booth together), so he asked us to come perform with him. We went hogwild. We choreographed dances – a jitterbug, a country line dance – it was so ridiculous (none of us are dancers). Pat had me sing the song I sang with him every week, called “We Made Love” (ahem) – which always got the crowds going in Chicago – he had Kenny come on and do his spot-on almost frighteningly spot-on imitation of Mick Jagger – it was a PARTY on the mainstage at Summer Fest. Pat is so famous he packs them in. We were on the main stage. So that means for four nights in a row, we performed for 3,000 wasted hilarious partying people, all chanting Pat’s name like he was a cult leader. And because I am just reporting the facts, the crowd chanted MY name, after I sang “We Made Love” – wearing a bustier, biker shorts, combat boots, and a black bowler (the Madonna “Blonde Ambition” tour was my inspiration: this costume in particular):

It was a banner moment in my life, to this day, because I can’t imagine another circumstance where I would hear 3,000 people chanting, “SheeeeLA SheeeeLA SheeeeeLA….”

Since I still have Eminem on the brain:

That’s why we seize the moment, try to freeze it and own it, squeeze it and hold it
Cause we consider these minutes golden.

Our Summer Fest experience was made up of golden minutes. Hold onto them. Squeeze it, freeze it, hold it. Golden minutes like that can strengthen you during hard times. I mean, Joan Jett was a headliner at the same festival. We could HEAR her through the air.

Other memories from our four days wreaking havoc in Milwaukee:

— Ann, Phil, Kenny and I made an entire backstage video – where we acted out fictional scenes – as though it was an episode of MTV Behind the Music. We filmed a scene where we “came across” Kenny shooting up heroin behind the stage. We did “confessionals” where we spoke to the camera. (The Real World had just aired.) We filmed a scene where we had a fake four-way fight in the motel room. I still have this “movie.” On VHS tape, mind you. It is fucking hysterical.

— There was some intense fooling around that went on. Sorry for the passive tense. Fooling around went down. So to speak. I don’t kiss and tell. Even though I’m clearly telling. I’m just saying what happened. Which, tbh, I can see in my expression in the photo. I look like the cat that got the cream.

— Standing in the cavernous backstage area before the show, we all huddled together in a circle, and said a prayer, basically busting on the Madonna documentary, where she and her dancers held hands in a circle before every show and prayed. That documentary was clearly fresh in our minds. But we were all so excited – not Pat so much, but the four of us – that our prayers did get a little bit earnest. We went around the circle, saying thank you for this, for that. I was holding hands with Pat. I was wearing my bustier/biker shorts/derby, just remember. But I am very earnest and very thankful for this fun experience. Here is how it went:

Me: “God, thank you so much for this experience. Thank you for these dear friends, and thank you for–”
Pat: “Sheila, you are stacked.”

I am laughing out loud as I type this. He wasn’t even listening to my prayer. He was just overwhelmed by what was happening with my outfit.

— Then there’s this. The craziest photo ever taken of me. Backstage. The fact that it’s blurry is a bummer but it’s also perfect because … that’s what life was like then. My entire life was in that photo. I clearly am goofing off but this is also a true representation of everything that was going on. Crazy summer. With long-long-long lasting consequences … none of which were apparent when this pic was snapped. (Passive tense.) So I see all of that too when I look at it now: the future, what was going to happen next, what was yet to come. And it’s not a very pretty picture. That’s a fake tattoo of the Rolling Stones tongue logo on my stomach.

— The amount of laughter that happened on this weekend left us helpless. The four of us (again, not Pat, he was calmer than us, because he had played Summer Fest many many many times) kept looking at each other like “This is the craziest experience.” Kenny said at one point, “You guys, let’s make a promise. Let’s enjoy every single second of this. Like, let’s really be IN this experience, okay?”

— The photo of us here was taken at the Celebrity Club, a bar/performance venue, where we went after the final Summer Fest show, and Pat played a set for an absolutely maniacal crowd, and we all were treated like celebrities. We are wearing our “I’M WITH PAT” shirts – which Ann Marie had made for us (the nerdiness knows no bounds – I still have mine somewhere). Our gleeful group hilarity is so apparent. I was still wearing my bowler hat, a staple in my Lena-Olin-in-Unbearable-Lightness-of-Being-inspired wardrobe at that time. My wardrobe was a mixture of Lena Olin in the bowler and babydoll-nightie-combat-boots riot grrrl.

— There was a drunken sloppy scene on the sidewalk outside of Celebrity Club. Hey, check out my passive (passive-aggressive) tense. Sorry. I haven’t told any of these stories, really, but it was a time of intense emotions! The drunken scene happened on the same night this photo was taken, although 3 hours later or whatever. I was living life in the fast lane, that’s for sure. I haven’t been involved in too many drunken sloppy scenes but this one was epic. Fooling around led to drunken scene – it was like all one experience, interrupted by a show where 3,000 people chanted our names. Is this even real? It was totally real. It wasn’t a NEGATIVE drunken scene, it was more like a drunken mutual declaration of “oh fuck it I love you madly” but with anger in there too, because …. it’s complicated. We may have been drunk but we were not lying. We knew what we were saying. People came over to us, unaware of what was happening, and as soon as they got a whiff of the CONTENT of our conversation, they veered off in another direction. I’m not sure how we resolved all this. I remember gesturing wildly in his face, saying loudly, “Yeah well I LOVE YOU ya dope.” So tender. So eloquent. I did eventually get back to the motel somehow. Remember: drunk. I think I was doing Jaeger shots. Jesus, Sheila.

— That same weekend Pat and I went to a recording studio in downtown Milwaukee to record a duet – which he wrote specifically for us. It’s on one of his albums – not on iTunes, sadly. But I do have a link to the duet. We were in the booth together, so this is a live take. Hearing that … knowing the surrounding context of these four days – the hilarity, the thousands of people chanting our names, the backstage shenanigans, the long-overdue fooling around (did I mention that? It was the first time fooling around. Hence: drunken scene later), the bowler hat, the backstage prayer, the tornado watch, Give Names Check In … it was a whirlwind, and I can’t help but think of all of it when I listen to that duet. Also, my scream/moan was my idea.

Like I said: to this day it is the most fun I’ve ever had. And because there were no cell phones, there are almost no pictures of it. I love that I came up in a time where this was still true. This is one of the pictures. Evidence, more like. It happened. I was changed by the experience, although I’m not sure I can express how. Wait, what am I saying. Of course I can express how. I already did.