I'm actually starting this entry Saturday night, although I'll post on Sunday when it's all been played out. This is a story of a possible event, and a definite weird husband.What can I say; he's a quirky guy. Among other things, we have not gone to a movie, a show, a concert, or for that matter, on vacation, for many years. He doesn't like to take any time off of work EVER, and he's got a variety of strange reasons for not wanting to do things. For example, when the kids wanted to give us tickets to see Tom Petty for an anniversary within the last few years -- the Hubs is a big Tom Petty fan -- they checked first, which was wise, and he said he wouldn't go. Why? Because, he says, he's too old to go to concerts.
Tom Petty is, of course, older than we are. He says it would depress him to be either the oldest people in the audience, or, conversely, to be in an audience filled with people our age. The bottom line is, he don' wanna go.
He has said that he doesn't want to go on a vacation because it would be a waste of resources. It would be frivolous to use any kind of fuel to drive or fly someplace just for pleasure. I would imagine that he's also not thrilled that his current job makes him fly to a conference someplace every year. Bottom line? He don' wanna go.
(As an aside, and this is what prompted me to start writing this now, one of his favorite movies was on TV this week, so I recorded it onto a DVD and gave it to him. He gave it back. He's says it's not right because he should only have legal copies of movies. I told him that I recorded it off of TV, just like you'd record on a videotape, and he said well, it was okay for me to keep something I'd recorded, but not to give it to him. So he's either off his rocker, or he has some other secret motive, but I did a nice thing for him and he should have just taken it, even if he threw it out in the other room. And he'd better not ever ask me to record something for him in the future when he's not home.)
Back to the story. You can imagine my amazement about a month ago when he came home one day and asked me if I wanted to go see Crosby, Still, Nash, and Young. (Also a fave of his.) I didn't ask when or why, I just said "Sure!" Because wives can be awful idiots, you know. It turns out that a friend of his through work had extra tickets and offered them to him. In his mind, this is somehow better than letting your children have the pleasure of giving you something you'd really enjoy, or God forbid, taking your wife to the movies once a decade. (Okay, we went to see Good Night and Good Luck last winter.)
We are going to the PNC Arts Center, which we've actually been to many times, although he hasn't been for several years. It's an amphitheatre with a roof over most of the seats, although some are uncovered, and a lot of the seating is on the lawn. After I chirped my cheery "Sure!" he told me they were lawn seats.
Ew. I cannot sit on the ground, or on a floor, for that matter, for any length of time. It totally screws up my back. If we get there early enough, we can rent chairs, so let's hope for that.
Did I mention that the people we are "going with" have actual seats? I have no idea how they turned up a pair of lawn tickets. So we are not actually going with them after all.
Did I mention that it's supposed to rain all day? And the show goes on rain or shine?
The funny thing is that the Sibs and her husband are also going -- they have seats, but uncovered -- and her twins and their significant others are also going, and have lawn seats. So maybe we can hook up with them.
Or maybe, as the Hubs indicated earlier today, if it's raining all day, we many not go at all. Fine by me. We could give the tickets to R and K, if they're more adventurous, and they can for sure hang out with their cousins.
End of story to follow ...
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It's Monday. I forgot to post the above yesterday before we went, and it was too late when we got back.
Yes, we went. (It never did rain.) First things first: the music was outstanding. They nailed every harmony, even after all these years, and the guitar work was just unbelievable. As I told the Hubs afterwards, I have now officially converted to Neil Young fandom, which I've resisted all these years. So the concert itself was really wonderful.
As for the concert experience ... well, I guess I'm converted there, too, because if this is what concerts are like these days, I don't need to go to any more of them. Maybe I've just become an old fogey, but seriously. It was just horrible to be seated in that audience.
We brought our little beach chairs, as did most of the lawn-seaters, got there early enough to find a good spot, and settled in. (Oh, did I mention that we were waved off into a parking lot that was -- LITERALLY -- a two-mile walk from the actual venue? A footpath that went under the Garden State Parkway?) As we sat and waited for it to start, I spotted my sister from a distance, but just then the cellphone rang; it was my nephew, also on the lawn, trying to find us. We both stood up and waved, and he and his girlfriend and my niece came over and said hello.
The spaces around us filled up. The show started a little after 7:30, no opening act, just CSNY. At which point
The man in the chair in front of me stood up at the first note and proceeded to jump, dance, wave his arms, sway, pump his fists into the air ad infinitum. Now, we were a good distance from the stage, but there were giant video screens, which this guy was pretty much bobbing back and forth in front of. It was very distracting and annoying. At one point he fell over on a woman he was dancing directly in front of; I couldn't believe that her husband didn't tell him to sit down. And ...
A woman with the group next to his, who had brought a blanket to sit on instead of chairs, stood up as well. Although not as animated as the first guy, she stood through virtually the entire concert (he pooped out during the second set), just swaying to the music, twisting her body this way, then that. She blocked any view of the stage. Now, understand this next part in the context in which it is intended. First, she had a gigantic ass. Which would not have been even noticed if she hadn't insisted on moving it rythmically and hypnotically in front of us all night. Second, she was wearing bright orange stretch pants. So it was pretty hard not to focus on. It's not as if we could see the stage or the screens or anything.
Also, everyone in the audience, it seemed, had come there to enjoy the concessions -- beer, pizza, other food -- and there just happened to be music playing. People were constantly on the move, back and forth in front of us. Apparently, we were seated at the nexus of the lawn, because I don't think a single person failed to pass in front of us, step over us, maneuver between our chairs, and so on. The Niece and Nephew, I'm pleased to say, only moved at intermission. There were two fifteen year olds seated next to us who behaved like human beings. 95% of everyone else there behaved like an asshole. I haven't seen so many rude and inconsiderate people since R's college graduation, which had a similar crowd. The Hubs said it was as if the entire audience had ADD and couldn't sit still.
We beat it out of there on the last note of the last song -- Rockin' in the Free World, awesome -- and hiked out to the lot, which we were able to get out of right away, but the wonderful traffic management system of the Arts Center (high school or college kids with orange vests and flashlights) were streamlining things by not letting anyone exit onto the Parkway North, only south. Shit. So that was a bit of a detour, having to go one exit south, get off, and get back on northbound. And you know that there were tolls at both exits. (Not much, but who gets that kickback, I wonder?)
No traffic on the way home; we pulled in about 12:30. Pretty damn late for a couple of old geezers like us! The Hubs says he only ever wants to see Tom Petty if the concert is being held in our back yard, or maybe, just maybe, at the high school football field. I'm afraid I will have to concur. All we wanted was to see them and hear the music, but there was so much adjacent shit, that I don't know how eager I'd ever be to do that again. Now if Clapton ever plays at Giants Stadium -- about 20 minutes from here -- the Hubs is gonna have some serious thinking to do.
I didn't get to sleep until 1:30 or so, and crashed on the couch as I do every night; I move to the bedroom at my first wake-up, usually a couple of hours in. But I slept on the couch until almost 8:00. Was I surprised! Not only is that sleeping very late for me, I don't remember ever sleeping there the whole night, with the sun pouring in. At one point, Q tried to get me to wake up and feed her and I knew she was there, but I didn't move. No idea when the Hubs got up and left for work, but it's usually about 5:30. He's not home yet, but I'll bet he's plenty tired.
So there you have The Event. Tomorrow is another day.
