Reminds me a bit of when I saw Metallica, first US date after founding bassist Cliff Burton had been killed in a bus crash and the band played in front of a graveyard scrim strewen with crosses. The show must go on, and if the show had fake blood and gore and violence before the reality kicked in, well, so be it.

Let me take you back a bit - a little more than two decades, to the now-defunct Channel club in South Boston. First time I’d seen GWAR. Some of my thoughts back when … Before the show, in the connecting Necco Place, the red-haired woman beside me at the bar took off her jacket and revealed a mostly bare and bloodstained back. Either she'd recently been in a horrible accident or she was . . . GWAR Woman!

She was GWAR Woman. In less than an hour, she was onstage sporting a bustier that made Madonna's look mild, swinging maces and axes, walloping and beheading various other GWAR members, all of it choreographed to a ferocious speed metal/punk rock soundtrack. Of course, she wasn't the only perpetrator; lead singer Orderus Urungus got in his share of hacks, too.

It was an afternoon of blood 'n' gore 'n' a whole lot more: It was Alice Cooper times 10, your favorite splatter movie transposed to a rock 'n' roll setting, a sadomasochistic circus from hell, a decadent demi-monde populated by the same sort of amoral goon squad that ran wild in "The Road Warrior." It was also a lot like professional wrestling. Totally, Completely over the top. A place where "That's disgusting!" is uttered by people with wide grins on their faces.

GWAR -- a 14-person conglomeration of musicians, dancers and art-school refugees from Richmond, Va. -- is more elaborately costumed than the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It is, however, unlikely that GWAR will spin off a line of action toys. Too many spikes and chains. Too much hardware.

You know how theater people say that if there's a gun on the wall in the first act, you can bet it will be fired by the third? Well, with GWAR you can bet that if a character wanders onstage -- the pro-censorship "Granbo" in a wheelchair, a 10-foot human-chomping dinosaur, a dazed hippie -- he or she is going to be bleeding profusely by the end of his or her stint. Various GWAR folks gushed quarts of fake blood allover the stage and into the front rows, composed of folks only too willing to enjoy the massacre. This was one long, wet job.

ongoing

When I was a younger rock critic, out about town ‘til all hours and famished, my choices were a microwaved steak-and-cheese sub at the nearest Store 24 or a fill-up at (the late, lamented) Buzzy’s Roast Beef. Times change ... Never would you call Boston the city that never sleeps. The city traditionally shuts down early, nightclubs by 1 or 2 a.m., and most restaurants by 10.

But the nightscape has evolved. More and more restaurants are catering to the late night crowd. Recently, we went on a mission to check out the scene. We started in Kenmore Square, but found ourselves frequently in the South End, a nexus of late-night dining. Did we get everywhere? Certainly, not. Space and time were limited. But my wife and I found top-notch places to satisfy late-night cravings. (A version of this story ran in the June Where Boston magazine and can be found at www.wheremagazine.com .)

After a night game at Fenway Park – and they seem to last forever now – you may be primed for cuisine that surpasses ballgame fare. Skip the chains and head to Eastern Standard, part of the Hotel Commonwealth. Walk in and you may feel like you’re in an old-fashioned train station. Sitting in a burgundy leather booth, proprietor Garrett Harker explains the name came from an old postcard of Penn Station, which had a giant clock reading Eastern Standard. "Eastern Standard sounded like an old railroad company,’ he says, and that’s the motif.