Authority Song - John Cougar Mellencamp - Uh-Huh - 1983

The last bar actually skirted the rules a little bit and let us stay until 215. I guess this is as close as Boston gets to "after hours". Once we were finally given the boot from whatever random sports bar this was, we headed back to the hotel.

However, being who we are, we decided to walk the five miles back...at 230 in the morning. All in all it was an enjoyable time. We jumped in a sprinkler that was watering the lawn of some Boston College building (Well, at least Anand and I did, Skip looked at us like we were idiots). We took some pictures along Commonwealth Ave and enjoyed the sort of freedom that comes with walking through a city that is otherwise completely asleep.

When we got back to the hotel, Skip called it a night. His intestinal unpleasantness had subsided, but it left him a little lagging in the energy department. Anand and I decided to wander around taking some pictures of the city at night...which lead to one of our bigger disappointments of the trip. We walked all the way down up from the prudential building to city hall. We figured it's golden dome would be an awesome site all lit up and glowing in the night. We'd have no tourists in our way to obscure the picture and we'd have the commons between us to keep us entertained on the way there and back.

Upon arrival, we realized one flaw with this plan...they don't light the goddamn thing up at night. Like so many other things about this city, it was a let down. Boston could be so much cooler than it is...

Speaking of which...I'm definitely letting my white trash roots show here. There is almost no criticism one could level at "The Coug" that I wouldn't 100% agree with. Is he cheesy? Is he faux-earnest? Is he derivative? Does he need to wear those ridiculous tight jeans and add "cougar" to his name? To all of those, the answer is No, No, No and one million times NO! But then, you didn't grow up in Indiana, where the man was already considered a state treasure a few albums into his career. You've never actually driven by the Tasti-Freeze in Spencer Indiana (probably...I mean, I don't know you...maybe you have). I'd love to hate The Coug for all of the things mentioned above, for his glamorization of a small town America that never really existed, and for his really bad mullet...but at the end of the day, I'm a Hoosier, and I was born in a small town...and I fought the Authority and the Authority always wins.