YSP! WSD!'s Devon Clifford recalls his shoe-snatching nightmare
We somehow get a good international band over to Shanghai and how do we show our appreciation? Apparently, by bamboozling footwear, which is exactly what happened to YSP! WSD! drummer Devon Clifford, who spent what should have been time making out with groupies, looking for his red Adidas instead. Combined with the fact that last Tuesday night was his 29th birthday, I decided to take him to La Bella's, get him drunk, and hopefully make up for his traumatic experience.

First, we had to discuss the shoes themselves; they really pulled the outfit together, kind of like the rug in The Big Lebowski. "They really did," laughs Clifford. "You know, I bought those shoes here (in China) specifically because they did tie it all together."

Then he opened up about what really happened that night. "Okay, I don't play with my shoes on, so I took them off, and I went backstage without them," explains Clifford. "About 10 minutes later, I go back out on stage, somebody runs up to me and they say, 'Dude! Some girl took your shoes from the stage!' And I'm thinking, if there's anywhere I'm going to find her, it's going to be downstairs when she's leaving. So I run outside, and it's raining, my socks are soaked--" he pauses for effect, "and I'm enraged. Have I expressed my 'enragedness' enough?"

[Insert 15 minutes of interrogation, more "enragedness," hopeless abandonment and Vancouver passive-aggressiveness]. "So, you eventually found them?" I ask. "I did," Clifford says with pride. "The first one was resting inside the base of a plant, so I was halfway to being 'shoed'--is that a word? So, I'm thinking, oh man, my other shoe must be somewhere around here. So, this 20-something Chinese guy comes up to me, nudges me, so I grab him, 'Do you know where my shoes are?!' He kind of goes like this [points behind his head] and I follow the line from his finger to this lamp and my other shoe was resting on it."

So, in the case that this should be read by said thief, Clifford offers some final thoughts in his rendition of James Blunt's "You're Beautiful." He sings, "You're beautiful, it's true. When I see your face, and my feet are soaked, all I want to do is punch you." And with that, he was gone. A lesson to be learned here, kids: if you're going to steal something from someone, yes, first make sure they're Canadian, but also that they're someone who deserves it ... like Celine.

Aric S. Queen