I'm Tagging With the Band: Dinner and the Critics
It had only been half an hour, but to Amy it felt like days.
"Well it isn't everyday that you fall face-first into a rabbit hole Amy." A bemused voice whispered in the corner of her mind.
After being formally introduced to the guys of Mystik Spiral, Amy now found herself sitting in a rather grim looking room that Daria quietly told her served as an all-purpose meeting room for the band.
"So it's a conference room." Amy had replied back as even as the doors opened and a catering cart rolled in, pushed by a chef and flanked by a guard.
Daria shrugged, "Yeah, but it's currently being used as a dinning room for the band and us."
The food quickly proved to be pretty damn good, much better than Amy had ever expected to find in a rundown place like this.
"Then again," Amy thought to herself, "Would you expect a world famous group like Mystik Spiral to be recording an album in a beat-up place like this?"
"So Amy," Curtis Stalano said from a couple chairs away as he picked away at his tuna fish, "What'd you think of the new material?"
Amy began to respond before she was cut off by Tommy Sherman saying, "Dude, she didn't get a chance to hear much of it. Remember?"
"Oh..."
Trent did his infamous laugh-cough before adding, "Well once the Critics are done hearing everything we can let Amy get a sneak-listen. It'll help her with, you know... uh..."
"Promoting the album." Kyle Armalin supplied without looking up from his root beer.
"Yeah, that." Trent responded with a small grin.
"Yeah." Jesse Moreno chimed in before finishing a beer and holding out his hand and being served another one by the chef.
Amy tilted her head and saw where Jesse had chucked it and couldn't help but be impressed with the pile he had accumulated so quickly.
She then asked who the 'Critics' were.
Daria and Jane both winced while every single male in the room laughed.
With a very evil grin Tom took it upon himself to explain, and he grabbed a remote and pointed it at a flat screen hanging from a nearby wall.
The screen flashed static and Tom typed in a long string of numbers and the channel changed from sports to what looked like a security room feed.
Amy noted that the room being shown looked like someone's living room, if the room in question was rundown and never taken care of.
It consisted of debris, a tattered couch, an old TV, and two bizzare looking teenage boys rocking out to whatever was playing.
"Those two mutants are the Critics." Tom spoke up, "Dumber than hell and seemingly indestructible even in the face of certain death. We don't know their real names."
"If they had any to start with." Jane chimed in.
Tom nodded, "But everyone calls them Beavis and Butt-head."
"Beavis and Butt-head?" Amy replied incredulously, wondering how in the hell anyone with half a brain would tolerate being known as either one of those names.
"They don't have even half a brain between them," Kyle said with a knowing look in Amy's direction, "Much less a brain cell."
"How did...?"
She was cut off by Tom continuing with, "But the one thing that they can do, is judge if a song is awesome or not."
"So when we found them in Texas we brought them here and set up a room that would be familiar to them and they've served us ever since." Curtis butted in.
Amy began to think of the obvious questions, like how the band found them, or if Beavis and Butt-head were willing participants or being held prisoner, when Tommy Sherman spoke up.
"When we did a show in Austin those two attached themselves to a group of roadie drifters that follow us on tour. One day when Tommy Sherman was looking for a cute redhead he thought he saw, he found those two listening to a copy of a recording that shouldn't have left the tour bus."
Tommy then cracked his knuckles and added, "Tommy Sherman was about to beat the hell out of them for stealing when he heard them comment on the song, saying that it needed another guitar rift and should be longer and Tommy Sherman realized that they were right, man."
Daria silently shook her head and muttered something about a snowballs chance in hell, Amy then suspected that those two were the 'two weird boys' she had told her about during the last time they spoke.
Before Daria had run away, before she herself had been hired as a publicist.
"Hey," Jesse drawled, "What track are they on? Cus they are clearly digging it."
Kyle Armalin checked an app on his phone and said, "Track 12."
Tommy Sherman pulled out a small spiral bound notebook and flipped it open and quickly jotted something down with a pen.
Daria then looked around and asked, "Hey, where's Max?"
Then the sound of a flushing toilet could be heard and a door on the far end opened to reveal Max Tyler stepping out of a small restroom that Amy hadn't known was there.
"Good," Amy thought to herself with relief, "I'll need to use the little girls room in a minute."
"Max," Kyle Armalin intoned dangerously (and with a hint of weariness), "Did you wash your hands?"
"Yes..." Max replied hesitantly, looking down at his shuffling feet like a little kid.
"Max..." Kyle drawled with a hint of annoyance.
Max just squeaked and rushed back into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him, the sound of a faucet being turned and water came about a couple seconds later.
Amy looked over at Kyle and whispered, "Are you their manager or their Dad?"
Kyle Armalin shrugged, "It's kind of the same thing."
Amy began hoping that she wasn't going to have to become the Mom.
Her gaze then fell on Daria, who was clearly teasing Tom under the table from the way he was squirming and added an addendum.
"Ok, maybe I'll mother Daria and her... companions." Amy thought to herself, wondering what to call her niece's boyfriend and girlfriend, "But I'm going to draw the line at playing nursemaid for Mystik Spiral."
For some reason she couldn't shake the instinct that was telling her that it was a promise she wouldn't be able to keep.