I just got home from the most amazing concert I have ever been to in my life.

Mars Volta. If you don't know who they are, please listen to their album. It is wonderful.

The evening started off with me picking up Blaise. Blaise is a good friend of mine who currently lives in Southern California for college. I always seem to have a good time when I'm with him, so I decided I would invite him to go to the concert, since he's one of the few people who enjoy Mar's music. So I picked him up, and we ended up being kind of quiet in the car until we got to the San Francisco.

After we parked in the parking garage (Thank god it wasn't full) we stood in line for about fifteen minutes. After we discovered it wasn't a line, and that people were just standing around for no reason, we went inside. My favorite part is getting searched by the pretty skinny girl with black hair before they let you in. I got the old lady, however. It was nice though, because Blaise knew who she was. Blaise knows who everyone is.

The band that opened for Mars was pretty awful. We decided that they were so awful, that we would go upstairs and have a couple of cokes. I ended up buying a coke that cost $2.75, while Blaise bought nothing. He rarely has any spending money. I bought the ticket for him, actually. Anyway, so we were sitting upstairs, and we ended up talking about all these different bands that have played at the Fillmore before. We were in a room filled with artsy posters from previous shows. It was nice.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, Mars started to play. The second they picked up their instruments, I knew that the concert was going to be simply amazing. Mars Volta has the best stage presence and energy out of any band I have ever seen in my life. Just amazing. The second Cedric (the lead singer of the band) started singing, he just started dancing and twirling his microphone stand around, and the crowd loved it. Never throughout the entire set did he lose one ounce of energy. Omar (the guitarist, and probably one of the most talented guitarists in the world) also had an amazing stage presence. Never have I seen anyone mimic Jimi Hendrix's style so much. His guitar, his style, and his rhythm were all just terrific.

Aside from Cedric and Omar, the band didn't really have a set line of members. They recorded with different musicians, and they tour with different musicians. However, the entire set of musicians that played was incredible. From the keyboardist to the drummer, everyone had the same level of intensity and energy that Cedric and Omar had. I was just stuck in a trance throughout the whole set. Blaise and I just stood there with our mouths open and how awesome the entire thing was. They even started to improvise their songs, and ended up creating a whole new song entirely out of nowhere. I just remember closing my eyes and dancing throughout the entire set, just drifting through paradise, not caring that time was slipping through my fingers.

The encore was superb. Unlike many other bands, the band just left, with the exception of the bassist. The bassist had this ten minute solo, which was amazing. After seeing that the crowd hadn't left in appreciation for them, the band came back and did a half an hour encore. Intensity is too light of a word to describe it. The music, the rhythm, the style, the stage presence, the unity of the crowd - it was all wonderful.

When we were leaving, they were handing out posters which was very cool. Blaise made a comment about how horrible the poster looked compared to the other posters hanging around that room, but we both agreed that we didn't care. It was just cool, that only the people that went to the show got this poster, because it had the date and the location on it. I wish every concert gave out posters.

While we were standing in line to pay for the parking garage ticket, Blaise came up with this idea to smoke in the garage even though there was a "No Smoking" sign on the wall. I thought it was pretty clever. I only bring this up because I like smoking with Blaise, and it reminds me of how much I hate smoking alone. I'm going to stop smoking by myself. It's just too depressing.

On the way home, we just had a wonderful time. We were blasting ridiculously loud disco music with the windows down all the way back. It brought back some old memories of how we used to do that in the summer. In the middle of all this, Blaise turned down the music and said, "George, you know what? I think we're the coolest people we know," and turned up the music. We just started laughing.

When we were nearing home, we got this craving for food, so we figured we'd go to Nation's. Nation's is this burger place that usually opens really late, but since it was a weekday, they closed at midnight. When we were standing at the counter, this man named Harold started talking to us. Blaise told him, "We really love this establishment, Harold, we really do," and Harold replied out of nowhere, "Most people don't. You end up becoming a fat fuck after ten years!" We all just laughed, because it was funny that this man that worked at Nation's said "fuck". Ha. We ended up getting two slices of pie, which were really ridiculously large. About two slices equaled half a pie. No kidding. Lemon Meringue and Apple Pie. I humoured Blaise by eating some of the Lemon Meringue since he liked it so much, but I was only really trying to eat the Apple. Then while we were sitting on the curb eating our pie, we got this other crazy idea to go to Denny's for some Spicy Buffalo chicken strips. So we did. I ended up not having much money, and I needed gas money to send Blaise home and then get myself home, so we scrounged up all the money we had to put gas in my tank. It totaled about $3.74 in gas money. The funny thing was that when we got back in the car, I reached in my pocket and found three more dollars. We just looked at each other and laughed, knowing that we could have saved so much effort.

The most unsettling part of the entire night is when people were smoking pot during the concert. Right when the music started playing, you could smell all of this marijuana smoke in the air. It kind of smelled nice. That and the fact that you could tell Cedric and Omar were on Heroin.