This one has nothing to do with the actual Comic-Con, but it was as surreal a moment as I've experienced on the road.  We stayed in a hotel that was a fifteen minute trolley ride away from the convention center.  On Saturday, the longest day for us at Comic-Con, I arrived back at the hotel late, around 11pm.  I decided to wind down with a beer at the hotel bar, which is curiously named the Tickled Trout.  Spectacular name, right?

Anyway, the Tickled Trout is the home of some raucous karaoke on Saturday nights, and I posted up on the far side of the rectangular island bar.  I ordered my beer, listened to some mediocre karaoke - it was fine.  Then, something bizarre happened.  A clearly drunk man in his mid-forties took the mic (the bar was mostly filled with young-ish conventioneers) and dedicated the song to his wife/girlfriend.  The man had crooked teeth and the air of an alcoholic. 

The song he began singing was “Wicked Game” by Chris Isaak.  You remember the video, I'm sure – it's that heavily sensual ballad, in which model Helena Christensen and Isaak cavort in a scantily clad manner on a vacant beach.  This drunk man begins singing and he is beyond terrible, but his wife/significant other is eating it up.  She's on the verge of tears – this song is significant to this couple, apparently.  Then across the bar, right in my view, two middle-aged gay men are touched by the song as well, and start making out, hard.  Then, the drunk's wife/significant other begins slow-dancing/grinding with her beau during the song.  This went on for the entire run of the song, while I and the other bar patrons watched on in horror/curious delight.


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