My first night out of the house in a month: Phoenix at the Aragon.

Finally.

As many of you know, surgery has kept me grounded for a month.  My immobility has led me to counting bathroom tiles and practicing Scientology...

Haha, ok, so NOT Scientology.  But you get the point - it's tough sitting around for a month... and doing it multiple times in the past half-year hasn't helped either.

But luckily, my pain has subsided.  I'm transitioning into the "special boot" phase, so going out in public, although strikingly unfashionable, has become possible.  Check it:

Notice the Powder Grey High School Yearbook Photo background.  Classy.

Either way, I'm back on my feet.  Along with this good fortune, my music-savvy friend Meg invited me to box seats at the Aragon to go see Phoenix, which, as of the last couple months, has been my go-to band.

(and yes, to all of you asking me if I knew about them before Wolfgang Amadeus and their recent overplaying on XRT.  Pfft.  You people make me sick.)

So right about here is where I could go on and on about how great the seats were and how amazing the band was and how they could potentially be the next Pink Floyd and yadda yadda, but there was one specific moment during the show which really got my inner-giddy-Catholic-school-girl going:

It happened during "Love Like a Sunset, Part I."  As you Phoenixers (dibs if that term gets big) may already know, "Love Like a Sunset, Part I" is an instrumental song.  It's incredibly slow, but doesn't drag on.  It has this insanely intense power that makes you think "Wow, Phoenix gets it.  They really know how to play."  Which, depending on who you ask, can be a rarity these days.

But what really caught my attention was what the lead singer was doing.  Once again, for clarity, I'm talking about an instrumental song.  The lead singer's name is Thomas Mars.  While the band was playing "LLaS Pt. I," Thomas was laying down on the stage, taking it all in.  For even more clarity, I've painted the scene with an extremely tech-savvy program called Microsoft Paint.  You probably wouldn't know about it. 

The red arrow points to Mr. Mars:

How cool is that?  Every other instrumental song I've ever watched goes like this... egotistical lead singer dances around stage, among other stupid shit, and takes away from the rest of his band's awesomeness and instrumental power.  And here is Thomas Mars, realizing that he would be nothing without his badass bandmates, dropping to his back and watching his guys rock out from the best seat in the house.  It does not get any cooler than that.

Lead singers get all the praise.  They get all the face time.  Thomas knows this, and last night he made sure to give his band credit that they truly deserve.

Cheers to you Phoenix.  You're showing everyone in the entertainment world that you don't have to be a complete ass once you make it big.  Keep it up.