I kinda wanted this year (as well as 2014), to be "the year of shows." And I called it that because me and my good friend Eddie are heavily into the underground scene of hip hop and we both hit 21 last year, which opens up a lot of 21+ venues for us to go to. In a lot of ways, he's a more hardcore underground hip hop fan than I am. This is the same friend that got me on to dA in the first place, and besides a friend from Southern Illinois that I saw for the first time in five years in November and Kyle, a good friend of both of ours, he's one of the friends I've known the longest. The last time I saw him though, he was losing his hair. Going bald. But it was no biggie. We were still making plans to go to the Hail Mary Mallon show in Chicago on February 6th.
Now? It looks like I'm going by myself (I had already got my tickets before I heard the news). Apparently, he's had some longstanding symptoms which in late December, took a turn for the worse and as he describes it, "really fucking suck" and he's not doing so well. When we were in middle school, he had a problem with hernias. Those went away by the time we were in high school. He was never a sickly kid, but he never was the healthiest guy. Currently, he has a "bump" on the side of his neck that's never been there before. He's having a lot of blood tests being done, and thankfully, he says he knows it's not cancer, but unfortunately he does not know what is going on.
I'm trying to keep in touch as best as I can. He refuses to use skype, so our conversations are limited to steam, which doesn't log chats, at least in my experience it hasn't.
He's a huge fan of both Sadistik and Aesop Rock, one of whom we saw last spring-summer, and a month or so before Eddie's 21st birthday I saw Sadistik. The venue was 21 and over, and we couldn't think of a workaround, so I went and saw Sadistik myself that night, and it was subsequently the first time I got buzzed. It's looking like I'll be making my way to the Hail Mary Mallon show by myself too, sadly. Here's a song I think he would like.
The man himself (and his beard reaching critical levels):
