We stand in the crowded bar, drinking our Red Stripe, all the while just trying to keep from crashing too early.

The momentum for this evening has zig-zagged wildly, hitting its peak earlier this week when we emailed the Blubox Intern with an idea for Going Out On Thursday and she responded with a cute email saying she liked our Plan.

Sending the email was easy. Now we both had to fulfill our obligations to the Plan. Going out sounded fun and we needed to go out, but there was one catch -- we actually HAD to go. Finish up at work, grab dinner, get in a cab, meet her inside... must respond, can't crash.

We’re thirty (twenty-nine, same thing) and we’ve done what needs to be done in this city and if there’s something that we haven’t done that we should be doing we’re sure people with friends know about it; once again we have failed to get the mass email.

What can we say? We didn’t eat dinner beforehand down the block at El Sombrero with people who we were trying to impress with jaded wit and cool band IQ.

Our dinner beforehand, wrapped-in-aluminum, was consumed in Blubox, on a tray so we wouldn’t spill crumbs on the floor, trying to put the crap from work out of our heads with the tranquil visions that come everyday at 7:30 PM.

Just as we reach Pianos' packed front bar to order our second Red Stripe, Blubox Intern asks us: “Do you want to stay?”

We answer, “Yeah." T-Rex can be heard wafting above the multitude of conversations and chic rock-and-roll haircuts. "Do you?”

She answers, “Yeah.”

In other words we both want to leave. Or at the very least, we both could go home anytime – guest DJs from new wave/pop/punk bands we dug for a moment three years ago isn’t keeping us from going, neither is the crowd of hipsters or scenesters or jeepsters or whoever gives a fuck.

Why were we here in the first place? Oh, yeah. The all-female Depeche Mode cover band. We knew that the Blubox Intern was a hardcore Depeche Mode fan back in the day – this estrogen-fueled homage felt like a must-see.

Done up in fishnets, mini-skirts, and thigh-high leather boots, the band’s outfits far outshined their version of Strange Love, but girls who can play the guitar while striking disaffected poses in killer knee-high socks are worth the trouble of getting stamp marks off our hand the next morning. And God has a place just for female drummers in heaven.

The band concludes their set and we decide to go upstairs, where there's another, ostensibly chiller bar, one in which the Blubox Intern once straddled us.

Passing the new wave doofus in the white leisure suit on the stairs incites irritation. We want to knock off his silly glasses.

Maybe if that all-girl rendition of People Are People was a little better, we would have been more tolerant and understanding.

We’re not sure why we should get along so awfully – we’re sure all these whiter-than-white post-punk posers are really wonderful once you get to know them.

It's time to blow: we’re yawning and we can’t afford to get tipsy considering that guy who fills in for us at work when we're too hungover to come in never returned from his long weekend in Costa Rica.

Maybe next time will transcend all our narrow-minded biases and it will be us who straddles all of Ludlow Street with our love.