Check out more photos from the night in our slideshow.
The weirdest moment at last night's Hard Rock Cafe grand opening party? Take your pick, but I'll say it was right at the end, when it turned out the winner of the night's big raffle was with the band.
After a night full of ridiculous universe-colliding types of moments, Old 97's tour manager Mike Dalke took the stage, waving his ticket around to prove hadn't gamed the raffle. Beside him, the Old 97's cheer him on like crazy -- with big, plastered-on grins like the Dude in The Big Lebowski's "Gutterballs" sequence -- because their tour manager, a guy who's spent years managing acts, just won a trip to see Kenny Chesney in New York City.
Realize too that only three of the four 97's are onstage, because guitarist Ken Bethea is off vomiting somewhere, and onstage with the band instead is Brian Cuban, brother of Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, holding a giant novelty check for charity. (The $18,000 donation from Hard Rock was just a slice of the cash raised Thursday night for the Fallen Heroes Fund.)
The grand opening party for Dallas's newest Hard Rock Cafe was a night-long theater of the absurd, with oddball moments like this playing out beside a sprawling buffet line against a canvas of the baseline VIP-only gala douchery. It was a great time. Check out our slideshow from the night for more of the night, including moments like:
- Mayor Tom Leppert plugging Michael Irvin's number into his iPhone.
- Hard Rock waitresses proving there's no song that can't occasion a conga line.
- Rhett Miller, Mike Modano, dignitaries from the Florida Seminole Tribe, Jason Terry and Michael Irvin breaking guitars on cinder blocks in unison.
- Irvin telling reporters about his new partner on Dancing With the Stars: "She's teaching me to use muscles I didn't even know existed."
