MON., JULY 24, 2006

All singles events are suspect. Any person/business/organization with a hard-on for playing Yentl probably has an ulterior motive. Know it. Own it. That way, if you should find yourself holding up the wallpaper at the Red Lion Inn cocktail lounge on a Saturday night with 20 or 30 other anxious looking people sporting business casual attire and name tags done up in red sharpie, you can’t claim ignorance. Take a look around you. Is this what it’s come to? Sometimes in your desperation to get laid you only end up fucking yourself. You know better than that. You don’t have to squint to read the signs that say you’re on the road to Squaresville. They’re usually written in bold print: “Singles Night!” And if you find yourself at Cool River, sharing an awkward lunch hour across the table from a cologne-soaked salesman in a Hawaiian print shirt, pleated khaki shorts and sockless loafers, just know that the chirpy ex-stewardess who you paid to set you up with Mr. Cell-phone-on-a-belt-clip maybe doesn’t have your long-term happiness on the top of her to-do list. Maybe the whole premise is jacked. The interesting thing about you isn’t the fact that you’re single and looking to hook up. Your availability is not your defining feature as a human being. If it is, maybe you shouldn’t breed at all. The interesting thing about you is that thing you’re really interested in. It doesn’t need to be much … you don’t have to be curing cancer or saving displaced war orphans. Maybe you do needlepoint, salsa dance, or fix up old cars, or maybe you’re just really fucking nuts about live music. If it’s the latter, then you are in a healthy mental state to attend this Friday’s Smokin’ Singles Night at La Zona Rosa. Yes, Smokin’ Singles Night. Kiss of death? Maybe not. This singles night has a really kickass cover band, the K-Tel Hit Machine that features A-List performers: Trish and Darin Murphy, Johnnie Goudy, Paul English, Mike Belile, Kyle Crusham, and Benjamin Hotchkiss as well as a sensational opening act, Billy Harvey. If you’re the kind of person who can free your inner dork and totally rock out to pop and rock classics from the Seventies and Eighties, this is your show, regardless of your singularity. Plus, it’s sponsored by Lovers Lane. We may be suspect, but we’d never intentionally steer you wrong.