Forget Comfy. Try Something New.

It was sort of bittersweet; tonight was the last Silent Music Revival put on by my friend Jameson, the genius behind the event.

He and his beloved leave for the West Coast soon and don't expect to be back before fall, so the shows will be managed by other capable hands, although not his.

In a nod to it being his last, he had made an unusual film choice, 1922's Haxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages, a documentary about how superstition and a lack of understanding of mental illness once led to witch hunts.

To further add to the final night mystique, tonight's band, Homemade Knives, had been allowed to not only view but score the film.

This is notable because with every other SMR, the bands had improvised a score to a film they had never laid eyes on.

We didn't see the entire film, only a half hour segment of narrative about a woman being accused of being a witch.

The dramatized sequence had the woman being accused of making a dying man sick and the torture and questioning she faced as a result.

Homemade Knives' score was superb; it followed the narrative perfectly and added a dramatic element to it.

What was unsettling was how the audience laughed at the most inappropriate times, like when a bloody baby was about to be boiled, for instance.

Macabre moments seemed to make people giggle; it was very strange. Several other people noticed and made comments to me, so I wasn't the only one disturbed by it.

I lingered after the show to mingle, talk about the film and music and spend time with friends. Several people asked me what my next stop was and I told them I had nothing further planned.

But I began to feel like I would be a disappointment if I headed home at 9:30 and I wasn't ready to end my evening anyway, so I punted.

I couldn't think of any of my regular hangouts that were calling to me tonight, so I opted for something different, namely Patrick Henry Pub on Church Hill.

The bar only had a couple of empty stools when I arrived, but I snagged one on the corner and settled in to see what might turn up.

Within moments, I was delighted to hear the guys next to me start talking food, servers and Christian warriors (want some Jesus with that ice cream?).

Bingo! I had my conversational partners.

They turned out to be delightful, too.

One manages a Carytown restaurant and the other clerks for a judge and both were foodies with opinions to spare. We got right down to it.

Aside from an hour or more discussing the strengths and weaknesses of various restaurants, we got into a spirited discussion of who doesn't eat what.

It turned out that one eschews oysters because (and this was my favorite line of the evening), "Oysters are like licking the ass crack of the ocean." Come on, that's brilliant.

And, no, I didn't agree with him, but I laughed long and hard at how well he had expressed his feeling.

The other had yet to try foie gras for some vaguely ethical reasons.

I think our gushing descriptions of its taste may have persuaded him to give it a try very soon, perhaps even this week.

One had recently done a stint in DC, so he wanted to talk restaurants there. Like me, he loves Zatinya and Oyamel, although, unlike me, he hadn't tried the grasshopper or tongue tacos at the latter.

Next to my two new friends was a recent come-back to RVA, a guy who had grown up here and just returned after 25 years and living in Chicago, California, and Barcelona in the interim. He was saying what a tough time he was having finding out where to eat here now that he was back.

He was feeling his ignorance particularly keenly because his ex-girlfriend had been a food writer and he'd been the happy sidekick to all her eating adventures.

Now he felt like he was settling for the old and familiar, like a pair of comfortable pajamas (where have I heard that analogy before, hmm?).

Once he overheard our discussion, he joined in, asking me for recommendations on where to find raw oysters and my blog; I accommodated him on both counts.

I was surprised to learn that the disarming duo had not yet eaten at The Empress, despite knowing Carly and Melissa, so we made plans to have a threesome there in the near future and correct that.

The music was loud and varied (The Darkness, Erika Badu, The Cure) and our discussion deviated from food long enough to cover music (the one was amazed that I knew Mumford and Sons) and the Girl Talk show the other had attended last night ("A bunch of amateurs stumbling around by 9:00").

When I looked up and realized the time, I started wrapping things up with my new friends.

They thanked me profusely for my company and I did the same.

None of us had expected to stumble onto so much of shared interest with strangers and we all felt fortunate for having done so on a random Sunday night.

Sometimes punting is the way to go, never more so than when it leads to the potential for scoring.