Often when a band gets back together for a reunion tour, the fans wince, cover their eyes, and proceed with their day. The magic is gone. The time has passed. The desiccated shells of formerly great musicians propped up with new stage effects will not bring back the glory days. But sometimes... majic happens.

You know that band, that everyone KNOWS is never going to have a reunion tour, but they keep wishing that it might happen, just so we could see them one last time? That band? For me, it was The Napoleonic Power-Mongers. I'd been born too late to see them live, of course, but it didn't stop me from wishing.

And wishing.

And wishing.

So when I found that lamp in the thrift store last week, I knew what my one wish would be.

I drafted a few versions of the wish: I wasn't taking any chances with this. Reading "The Monkey's Paw" was finally going to be good for something.

I wish that The Napoleonic Power-Mongers (alive, not possessed, and in good health until after the show, at which point they return to their graves) would stage a show on July 18th, 2012 in my hometown, for one night, and I will be sitting in the front row.

It worked. The djinn gave me a little bit of a hard time about my sentence construction, but when I pointed out that zombie band members would be a bad plan, he sniffed, and admitted that it was a sound thought.

Magic is a strange thing. None of the photographs I took show anything other than a blur of light, and the sound recordings are simply static. But on the way out of the concert, I saw a table with tee-shirts on it. And I bought one for 35$ (concert merch. is so expensive, but when was I going to be able to buy it ever again?), and it was still here this morning.

Here it is, in all its glory:


Epilogue:

So, I invented a dead band to bring back to life to buy a shirt from.

Why?

Well, my friend was sick. And she gets very, very, very grumpy when she is sick. So, while I was gently reminding her that she need needed to keep hydrated, and get some sleep, she accused me of being a "Napoleonic Power-Monger". Which is actually a quote from Stargate 1, but I didn't know that at the time.

I was fascinated by the idea of being part of Napoleon's conquests... and before you know it, I had the idea of the Napoleonic Power Mongers as a band. Who's tour dates just happen to correspond with Napoleon's various invasions, successful and otherwise.

Then I found this task, and I knew what had to be done.

I designed the shirt in Publisher, and printed it out on the iron on tee-shirt transfer paper I've used in my player photo and naked mail. The construction itself was not hard: what was the most work was researching Napoleon's invasions! You will note that several of dates listed are cancelled: that was what I decided to do with unsuccessful invasions.

I gifted the shirt to my friend, who by this point was feeling better. She was quite surprised that I had taken her off-hand comment to such lengths!