Silver Thistle Pipes and Drums’ Burns Supper

Luv Doc Writings, The Luv Doc Recommends

SAT., JAN. 21, 2006

When was the last time you stared into the dark, gaping maw of your own mortality? Maybe it was that time you had a few too many rum drinks at Louie’s Backyard in South Padre and nearly lost your drunken brawl with the undertow? How about that pocket of wicked turbulence over the Rockies on the redeye back from Vegas? Both browned your knickers quite nicely, no doubt, but the face of death you can’t shake belonged to the leathery skinned, blue haired lounge lizard giving you the skunk eye from across the $3 blackjack table at Binion’s Horseshoe: Liver spots, smoker’s cough, wheezing, watery-eyed cackle, vintage 1970s polyester leisure suit offering up a pungent olfactory memoir of every soaked-up scent of the last 30 years. While you were out doing the dew he was already dewing the done. In your mind you see him willfully plunging into the abyss with roughly 40 years of belay rope strung between you. Eventually that slack will play out and you’ll be yanked down with him. Scary ain’t it? Old folks are so scary and they don’t even know it. They dig old timey music like the Stones, the Beatles, and the Eagles, wear black leather jackets and Hawaiian shirts, and drive PT Cruisers and Harleys. They’re also really hard drinkers and relentless raconteurs: fun to hang out with as long as you’re not doing anything aerobic. This Saturday at the Senior Activity Center on Shoal Crest (that’s not a typo), you can chill with the Q-tips at the Silver Thistle Pipes and Drums’ Burns Supper. The STPD is a Scottish bagpipe and drum band with kilts and caps and even those little Braveheart fanny packs – dope plaid pimpin’. Not surprisingly, the Burns Supper honors Robert Burns, the national bard of Scotland and not Montgomery Burns, diabolical geezer from the Simpsons. It involves Scottish food, drink, dancing, singing, poetry, and plenty of bagpiping. If you’re into haggis, Ed Miller, and pipers in kilts, it’s suppertime. Don’t let the blue hair scare you.