I am pretty sure Snow Patrol has things in common with Milli Vanilli.

I just got back from a trip to NYC. I went down for a concert -- Snow Patrol, OK Go and Silversun Pickups. We missed Silversun Pickups waiting in line for drinks. That sucked. They had Ketel One, so that did not suck. OK Go were great. They looked like they were having a blast, and I love seeing that.

Snow Patrol looked and sounded good too -- a little *too* good, truth be told. For instance, the background vocals sounded like a full chorus at all times. I could make out at least two distinct women's voices, and there was nary a woman on stage or off. At one point the bass player was playing something completely different than what we were hearing. It looked like he wasn't even plugged in. It didn't seem to matter to the teenagers in attendance, however. Damn, I felt old. But fuck it, we had fun anyway. A side note: The open cellphone camera is the new lighter. It looks pretty weird to see all these kids holding up their little screens.

Before the show, we went to dinner to sort of celebrate my friend's engagement. He made the reservations since he knows NYC. He's marrying a lovely woman from Australia, who happens to be a vegetarian. He has since become one himself. Needless to say, since he is now too physically weak to lift a fork and steak knife, he picked a vegetarian restaurant for our group dinner. That way we all got to eat with two very light bamboo sticks.

First, though, let's clear something up. I am not a vegetarian. I like to eat animals. In fact, I'll go a step further, and say we're supposed to eat them. That's why they taste so damn good. Granted, they're probably not too pleased with this arrangement, but the way I look at it is like this -- the animals had a good run. For thousands of years predators of all types hunted and killed humans for food and sport. Then our opposable thumbs allowed us to make the .308 and it was all over. So I feel no qualms about eating meat. Especially chickens. Those little bastards were ruthless right up until the early 1600's.

It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be -- however, I think a lot my willingness to eat stuff-I-know-not-what had to do with how much wine I consumed before dinner. Everything I ate tasted like an egg roll dipped in soy sauce. Or slime.

That being said, you know you're in trouble when "Protein" is an actual menu item. Also, the reviews of this place boasted "The best approximation of meat anywhere!" I wanted to order that, if only to actually utter the sentence, "Yes. I'll have the approximation of meat, please." but it wasn't on the menu. They weren't lying, though. This stuff tasted exactly like meat, if meat was actually flavorless and rubbery in texture. Unfortunately, my mother's famous pork chops aside, it's not. This was nothing at all like meat. Of any kind. This was coagulated soy milk through and through. I will say this, however. I am willing to bet that you could take a dog turd and deep fry it in their batter and then soak it in sweet and sour sauce and you wouldn't be able to stop at one.

There was something on the menu called "Autumn Rolls" and so we ordered them. We were curious as to whether they'd be full of brightly colored leaves. They weren't. I'm not sure what was in there, but big surprise -- it was deep fried. I'm not sure why, but I was continually caught off-guard by the appetizer plate. Mostly because I didn't know what was going to be hot or cold when I put it into my mouth. When you're expecting a nice warm egg roll sort of thing, and instead you get a mouthful of cold wheat gluten, it's tough to follow through.

Also, don't eat too much of this soy crap. From what I've read, it isn't the perfect food most vegetarians would have you believe it is.

Regardless, we had a great night in NYC. Drunk chicks, rock n' roll, vodka, you name it. I managed to get out of there without a tattoo on my ass, so there's that. Wait...goddammit.