They're Ba-aaaack: Reprise of Feverish Pitch and the Useless Dominican Infield

My brother and his bandmates look both weirder and less androgynous than do these people.

I'm sitting at a table in a club with, at last count, eleven friends. We're watching and listening to my brother's band. I thought we might have seen the last of Feverish Pitch and the Useless Dominican Infield, but I thought wrong. For the record, I told my brother way back in the day that his band's name was stupid and that he needed a more concise name, something like MouseRAt, though he couldn't use that exact name because it was already taken. He didn't listen to me. Years later, they're toiling away in obscurity. The band is calling this their final performance, but they called a performance two years ago the same thing, as well as one a year before that, and one eighteen months before that. Then there was their Farewell Tour eleven months earlier, which consisted of three separate performances. I'm beginning to believe we may never see the last of these people.

I've reached a conclusion that I had more or less believed before, but not to the degree I presently believe it, which is that Matthew does not belong on a stage with the other people in his band. He has legitimate musical talent. No one else in the group does. My cellist friend I know from several years of summer music festival who is here with me tonight agrees with me on this, and he's unbiased. It's not so much a matter of Matthew oozing talent from every pore as of the rest of the band having no talent whatsoever. Still, Matthew can at least sing as well as play guitar [masterfully] and even play keyboards proficiently on a few cover songs. (Cover songs are the only ones in the band's repertoire that are not atrocious. The band's original songs are hideous beyond imagination.) If 

Matthew were willing to live with at least one roommate for the rest of his life, to shop for food only at grocery outlet stores,  to clip coupons religiously, and maybe to learn to cut his own hair, he could conceivably make a living on his skill as a musician. I never thought I would say even that. 

Nonetheless, it's just as well that Matthew is preparing himself to hold down a substantial day job. He otherwise would probably have to collect cans and bottles for recycling in order to have a prayer of paying for health insurance  -- either that or to find a sugar mama, and those sorts of accessories come with all sorts of strings attached. We're all better off preparing to support ourselves. If we end up with significant others who are capable of supporting us or at least themselves, that's all the better, but it seems imprudent to count on it. I know people who don't have to work, but they managed to obtain educations and, because they had the capability of being self-supporting, did not have to settle for anything.  No one should leave himself or herself in a position of having to settle for anything.