We feel pretty safe in saying that we're the first people to ever make a bacon-based lollipop. And not just any bacon, either- we use sustainable, organic, cured bacon- we kinda felt that it went well with the pure Vermont maple syrup we were using as a base, you know?
While we admit that it's pretty far from the norm (it's definitely not kosher!), once you make that initial leap of faith and try it out, we're positive that you'll love it. The salty chunks of bacon make a delicious and unique counterpoint to the subtle sweetness of the maple, and oh, yeah- you'll be eating an oh-my-god bacon lollipop!
A perfect gift for the sweet-toothed pork aficianado [sic] in your life.
Oh dear God. Keep this away from my brother and my nephew.
Y'all should know by now that Coco (Co-Captain, Team Wilson) is just crazy.
But in the good way.
She has been celebrating her Birthday Week of Debauchery (now known as BWOD) all week, and we were invited to her place Saturday night. You may recall that one late night, in a stupor, she registered the domain GoddessOfDrink.com, which she used as the "location" name on the Evite. One couple was very late to the party, and apologized profusely. The date twisted the driver's arm until he confessed the true reason for why they were late: they spent 45 minutes driving up and down a stretch of the Mission looking for a bar called Goddess of Drink because he didn't read the Evite carefully and didn't clue in that it was at her apartment.
Good thing we never invited them to Club Jackson.
All of the embarrassing photos are up on flickr. But here are my choice few to amuse you over lunch today:
Coco lives deep in the Mission. This is the door of the apartment facing hers:
I just found it disturbing that Microsoft Windows and Jesus get equal props.
Coco also orders in these amazing tamales for her parties. I loved the way she labeled the different sets:
The ones with the photo of Terri Schiavo were vegetarian.
And Paul Day loves chicken.
Or is that just in the bars?
As usual, there was lots of drinking, dancing, and inappropriate touching. All good things for a party.
Of course, some boys had been drinking since noon and went down before the rest of us:
Lance has been working on Macy's.com and Bloomingdales.com for a while now, and shared a little "Friends & Family" love last week. He called me for an afternoon of shopping on Saturday, but we got the dates wrong and the 20% Friends and Family discount doesn't start until tomorrow.
However, that didn't stop us from "pre-sale buying" where the clerks ring you up at the discount price and you have to pick up your purchases during the actual sale dates. Until we discovered that for Earth Week, Macy's was offing the same 20% discount if you donated $5 to a forestry fund. And as an employee, Lance gets another 20% off of that.
I hadn't been shopping, much less for fashion over function, in ages. I made up for lost time.
Seriously, the economy is going into the tank and I am just doing my part as a good citizen.
Considering a good chunk of what I bought was marked down already, I think I pulled off a good 50%-60% discount over the day. Of course, (as my mother used to say) I was spending money as if I had it. But now I have a new wardrobe and some swank new heirloom-quality jewelry for ball season.
Come what, May.
Call your friends or friends of friends for the "Friends & Family" discount. Starts tomorrow and runs trough Sunday.
(Shopping hint: event without having a real friend and the discount card, flirting with the salesperson usually gets you the 20% discount during this time as well.)
It was a fun weekend-- starting with a HILARIOUS Alec Mapa show on Friday, a mass consumerisn and debauched Coco birthday Saturday and ending with a fairly mellow sunshiny recovery Sunday.
But it's Monday and it's back to the grindstone.
So WTF with the e-mail from Alert Reader Paul Day.
It must be a meme but I'm not getting it. This is so cracked out. And another reason to love YouTube. The comments are almost as surreal as the video.
The Carpenters sing--and I have never even heard of this-- "Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft."
Did people take this seriously 30 years ago? How on Earth, if you'll pardon the expression, did they get a backing orchestra for this SETI silliness? And how did everyone keep a straight face?
From time to time I check the information available through the free StatCounter widget (you can see the hit count under the list of links to the left). Two items of interest today:
1) I’ve been getting more than 30 hits a day this week from people searching for information on the fallen Ken (purposely not using his full name here to prevent this post from appearing in search results). I can see that people landed on this blog and on that post by a first-name last-name search for Ken, often accompanied by additional search terms “died” or “san francisco.”
I don’t know what to think of this. That post was in no way meant to be an obituary. And I never claimed it to be. That post, like many others, was less smarm or news or time-killing silliness and more of a personal diary entry of my thoughts and feelings about a personal event. I didn’t know Ken beyond the bar, and again, didn’t claim to. That post is more about me than about Ken, but as a diary entry, that’s sort of the idea. But with the subsequent searches and hits, I worry that Ken’s friends and family are seeking news reports or formal articles about him and that is so not it. I did receive one comment bordering on nasty, who clearly didn’t get the point. Others have been kinder so I’m feeling less concerned about it.
But still.
Nothing but respect for Ken. Writing that post was just my way of journaling and dealing with what I experienced that night. And nothing more. So to those who want more, please look elsewhere.
And
2) Other searches that have landed strangers on my blog this week are just weird. Sure, there are the expected queries such as Steeplechase and Hunt Ball and such, but someone spent a lot of time reading my archives because they performed a Google image search (I couldn’t see the terms) and decided to grab this image from this post from March 2007:
The URL I could see in the stats included the file name for the image “Scott Manure belt buckle,” which at first made it look like someone actually searched for the terms “scott manure belt buckle,” which made me want to call Skot and ask him WTF?, or let him know he had a stalker. But it looks like someone searched for something else, selected this image from the results, then spent some time on my pages. I tried to recreate the search so I could see where I’m Just Sayin’ or Skot’s belt buckle fell in the results. Entering “scott manure belt buckle” did not bring up the photo of Skot’s belt buckle, but it did yield this:
Much more interesting.
This is sculptor Scott Gentry, who does not seem to have a Web site of his own. Chiseled indeed. Searches for just “Scott Gentry,” or “Scott Gentry sculptor” do not yield many useful results, but the articles or gallery notices that do include an image all include that one, which leads me to believe that is his press photo.
So that’s the photo he puts out to the world. Not a headshot, and not really so much a sculptor-in-action shot either. More “I’m hot and have strong hands.” If that is a press photo, then the slightly slutty wardrobe was chosen purposefully.
Neighbors of mine and friends of RoMo's Joe and Paul hosted a wonderful New Orleans style cocktail party Saturday night, complete with candles, decorations, and bling for the guests (you know how we love a theme).
Paul is from New Orleans and used to be a chef-- now he deals in ports around the Bay Area so many of his friends are foodies and winies. And the food was amazing. As was the the company. I met a great bunch of transplants (unfortunately, all of them with husbands) and felt so much back at home with my southern kindred. And land sakes if my accent wasn't out in full force by the time we left.
This was a Saint Expedite party--the patron saint of procrastination. Got to love that. I can only imagine this party was put off for some time. RMJ told me it had to do with last minute tax filing. Paul told us the local story of how Saint Expedite got his name--unidentified relics shipped from Italy with the box labeled Expedite ("Rush"). Sort of like the Fragile lamp from A Christmas Story. There are several variations of this origin story, all of them merely apocryphal, provided in the Saint Expedite entry on Wikipedia as well as additional information such as the other causes he is patron to.
Paul has been taking Saint Expedite candles to his clients around the Bay Area as a little local color and/or shtick (I used to do the same thing with Goo-Goo's and Jack Daniels on job interviews when I moved out here from Tennessee). When he ran out of candles and tried to ofrder more from his Louisiana connection, he was shocked to find them unavailable. The Pope and his gang have been cracking down on the "lesser" saints and decanonized a lot of them and now, officially, Saint Expedite is just Expedite and there shall be no candles of or praying to. But since when has the Pope stopped any practitioners in the Bayou or the Bay.
Paul found a witch who makes these candles, and in the North Bay no less. They set up a shrine to Saint Expedite, complete with jars of snakes and frogs:
And provided feathered pens and post-its so guest could post their prayers and wishes on the mirror.
I wished for "Fresh breath.... in all things."
Robert, his breath fresh from an afternoon of underwear models at Armani, wished for "Speedo fantasies."
Last weekend (or was it two weeks ago? I'm so behind) Amy Droptrou hosted a little chocolate fountain party. And I will say that freely flowing Ghiradelli makes everyone happy. Fat, but happy.
(No Shilpa, just because I put your photo after that comment does not mean I am calling you fat.)
Amy, you may notice, dressed in chocolate colors. I thought she was just being thematic. She explained, "in case I drip." Which made perfect sense.
As Whitney, not through the door more than five minutes, learned as the first casualty.
Shilpa, Roland, and I had to leave the fun fountain early for a little Jimbo birthday party at the Cookie show at Harvey's in the Castro.
Also there the lovely and talented and always so much fun Michael and Susan, who really made the night shine for us all. It was a B-52's themed night to coincide with the new album release. Cookie's show doesn't compare to the raunch and sheer entertainment of Heklina's soon-to-be-retired Trannyshack or Peaches Christ's Midnight Mass, but it has its moments. Most of the acts during the Friday night Cookie Dough's Monster Show are big on costume, but small on actual act. After I've absorbed the initial theme, I get bored easily (we show fags have the attention span of a tsetse fly).
This show was easy to love though, as I am a huge B-52's fan. Even when the act was a snoozer, we were entertained. Of course, being bar-adjacent and on friendly terms with the tender didn't hurt.
Susan and Joanna were great backup dancers-- I believe for the Rock Lobster. But by FAR my favorite act of the night, and the clear crowd favorite, was this:
The Office of Government Commerce, headquartered in Norwich U.K. with offices in London, commissioned a new logo "to signify a bold commitment to the body’s aim of 'improving value for money by driving up standards and capability in procurement.'"
The new logo cost 14,000 pounds and is very bold and confident.
Although frankly, I could come up with that in an afternoon and be happy to charge a mere 14,000 dollars.
Of course, once they printed all of the mouse pads, notepads, pens, and keychains, the employees noticed right away what the designers did not consider. Turned on its side, the logo conveys something else all together:
According to the article in the Telegraph, a spokesman said of the unintended implication of the logo: "it is not inappropriate to an organisation that’s looking to have a firm grip on Government spending."
"Firm grip" heh heh. A brand expert is also quoted regarding the added publicity...heh heh... he said "column inches."
Frankly, with the phrases "firm grip" and "column inches," I thought this whole thing might be some sort of UK April Fools bit, but it appears legit. And if so, funny.
Apple iPhoto Store: Take 20% off Apple print products, including photobooks and calendars. Must order by May 11. Just in time for Mother's Day. Use the coupon code LoveMom when checking out.
Borders Books: Border's printable coupon: 20% off one item. Good for big tomes or even DVD box sets.
Dining Out for Life is tomorrow night. Participating restaurants will be donating 25% of your bill (some for lunch, some for dinner, some for both) to the Stop AIDS Project.
Nationally, other cities and restaurants are participating to benefit services in their communities. (Nashvillians take note that Dining Out for Life is taking place in Nashville too and benefiting Nashville CARES).
Go out, enjoy yourself, and the more you eat, the more you raise.
Someone died dancing next to me on the dance floor last night.
It was during the line dance Mmm Bop, which we were doing to Cowboy Up.[iTMS]. There's a part of the dance when the moving left, the right crosses over left and you pause for a beat. Some advanced dancers use this bat for a quick squat and touch the floor before quickly popping up and uncrossing and recrossing the feet and continuing. I like to do this but it is hell on the knees and it is really easy to lose your balance. Sometimes people slip and stumble during this bit.
It was on this turn that the guy next to me went down. I just assumed he stumbled during the cross, squat, pop and cross. But he didn't get up immediately. He lay splayed on the floor, and my first thought was that he was just embarrassed about falling over and was lying down in comic self-deprecation. So I smiled and offered my hand to help him up.
He didn't take my hand. I knelt down and he didn't respond to my hand rubbing his chest. We had been dancing at the end of our lines, and someone from the stage rushed out and cradled his head and started checking him out.
The music was still playing and the crowd was still dancing.
I bolted to the bar and told the bartender that we needed an ambulance right away. I was thinking that he might have just fainted, but the call could always be canceled and for these things sooner is better than later if needed at all.
It took a moment or two to convince her that this was serious. There is not a phone behind the bar, and as someone else said "Call 911!" she said "Well, call 911. You all have cell phones." "No we don't." I explained. "We don't dance with stuff in our pockets." Later someone else pointed out that land lines get priority and quicker responses to 911 calls as it hits a different center. Shortly I saw two people on cell phones. Then the music stopped and a crowd had gathered around the fallen dancer.
There were at least four of five people physically tending to him and I held back. I was conflicted on one side by my desire to help, my experience in handling crisis situations, and my lack of confidence in those rushing to be involved (only because I didn't know them), and on the other side by my not wanting to add to the confusion or possibly interfere should those administering aid be competent and more knowledgeable than I. Although I wasn't sure that administering CPR wasn't doing more harm than good--one person said he had a pulse and recent medical reports and revised practices now exclude respirations--I decided to trust those at his side. I will admit that I worried some were at his side less for their experience in medical care and more for their need to be the center of attention, even if unconsciously.
Later Kevin, whom you may recall is an emergency room nurse, told me that when laypeople look for a pulse, false positives are extremely common and compressions are generally better than not when a person looks like they've had a heart attack or such. I also learned later that at least one of the people at Ken's side was a medical professional.
It never registered to me that that it was Ken who went down. He looked so different prone and unconscious when I went to help him up--Ken is notably tall, dark, and handsome, and always animated. He's the kind of guy who smiles with his whole face, and when that animation gone, I didn't recognize him.
I didn't really know Ken. Ken Brandow. I only knew him from the country/western events and to dance every now and again. A ruggedly handsome, silver-bearded, black-hatted, physically fit and often shirtless towering figure of a man, Ken was noticeable. And a lot of fun to be around.
His stillness was disturbing to say the least.
I could hear the sirens after about three-to-four minutes (what I thought was a pretty impressive response time). It was a minute or two more before the fire department EMTs walked though the door. While we were all anxious to save Ken, the firemen approached this rather nonchalantly. For them, this was another day at the office. I was bothered, though, that for one of them it looked like it was his first day. His aid was awkward and required correction from his mates. But every seasoned professional has had to learn somehow.
I've taken several CPR courses, and even practiced on live people before, but not with the sort of pressure to really get the job done. Do be effective, you're going to have to crack a rib or two (which is one of the reasons I was worried that CPR might be doing more harm than good if he had merely passed out). Several images from last night refuse to leave my mind. The most disturbing is the grotesque, unnatural way his belly would extend with every deep chest compression. From the depth they were pressing, I can't imagine his sternum and ribcage weren't broken. But broken ribs hardly matter if you don't have a heartbeat.
I remember looking down at the professionals doing the business of life saving, seeing his almost trademark, and clearly loved, black hat strewn aside--alone and forlorn on the dance floor.
The SFFD who had arrived in a truck were joined by SFFD EMTs in an ambulance and this crew seemed to be more emergency-medicine focused, calling for lines, needles, and additional shocks from the portable defibrillator. (Frankly, I'm surprised the club didn't have one.)
As more and more firemen attended to Ken, all I could see was the soles of his shoes. My thought then: At least he died with his boots on.
It wasn't such bad a way to go-- quickly, doing what he loved, surrounded by friends, and he left the party dancing.
There are worse fates.
After about thirty to forty minutes of CPR, they transferred Ken to a board and began to move him. They were still performing compressions. I knew enough to know that after more than thirty minutes down, they're gone. It was 10:45. Ken had gone down at 10:00. I talked to Kevin in the car, and met some of the other witnesses for a final drink and toast in the Castro.
Sundance Saloon organizers sent out an e-mail this afternoon informing members of Ken's collapse at Sundance Saloon and subsequent death at SFGH. We'll be gathering in the Red Room next Thursday at 7:00 for remembrance and support. Beyond the frightening fragility and uncertainty of life, what I am choosing to take away is this: Ken lived his life to the last. And he danced his way to the end.
Does anyone else remember Isis from Saturday mornings? A Captain Marvel spinoff? I don't know what I loved more—her mother nature super powers, or those enormous glasses she wore in her meeker identity.
This weekend the Bay Area has been BLUSTERY. Lots and lots o' wind. It's been clear, sunny, cold, and windy, windy, windy. Chicago is looking over here asking WTF?
I took my coffee and ran a few errands, and I returned to my corner only to see one side of the intersection blocked off by police cars. The winds were so strong today that it blew the scaffolding off of a building under renovation.
The fire department was called to assess the situation. While I was watching and taking photos of this event, I noticed an apartment was open for lease across the street. I was curious as to what a one bedroom without parking was going for in my neighborhood and thought that as long as I was there I'd check it out. The rental agent was closing a deal in the kitchen and completely ignored me, which was fine as it gave me an opportunity to get this perspective on the wreckage.
The plywood which the renovators had used to cover the upper windows was flapping in the wind and was in clear danger of blowing off into the street and into traffic and/or pedestrians. The SFFD called in a ladder truck to secure the upper panels.
Video from the day.
And wouldn't you know it, only one hot fireman in the bunch (never got a clear shot). Not counting the little cutie fireman who looked like he started shaving for the first time earlier in the week.
I got a call from the Editor and Managing Editor of Nfocus-- they are putting the May issue to press and are rocking out to the Homo-a-Go-Go CDs I sent them. I told them about the concert and according to their Music Row insiders, local artists hate Rascal Flatts, generally because they are considered such sell outs. Industry and artists refer to them as Fascal Ratts.
I'm feeling a little better about being so vitriolic in my earlier post.
I never got around to blogging about the Rascal Flatts concert last Friday, so here's the synopsis:
It sucked.
I have never had a band ruin themselves for me. Their live show was so painful it has left a distaste for their recorded songs I really liked.
Let's run this down:
A couple of months back, Amy Day heard that Rascal Flatts was coming to town and very excitedly asked if Shilpa and I wanted to go. We like the band well enough and really dig a few of their songs. Originally we thought they were playing in Fremont, probably at the Saddle Rack, and thought it would be fun for a lark or possible south bay adventure for about 20 to 40 dollars.
When the day arrived we found out they were playing HP Pavilion in San Jose, and the tickets we agreed to buy were $67. Yipes for a lark. But Shilpa and I see adventure in all things, and for $67, we were damn well going to have a good time.
That is not the same thing as enjoying the show.
And would you believe, the show was sold out?
Here's what the $67 got us: crap seats stage left in the nosebleeds. Here's the view from our seats.
Taylor Swift opened, which was nice, but this crowd was CRAZY. Lord knows where they all came from. Their cheers were deafening, and certainly drowned out the performers.
And what a crowd it was. I'm sure we were not the only ones who drove almost an hour to get there, but probably we were the only ones whose destination was less metropolitan than their origin.
[Fair warning: I can tell that the rest of this post is going to be me being a nasty, nasty snob.]
I have never thought of Rascal Flatts as all that big a deal. OMG this crowd was crazy for them, and I can't figure why. Sure, a lot of their songs are good in a top 40 country sort of way, but some are terrible. And their best songs are not the ones they wrote themselves.
I've also never thought of the band as being all that pretty. Being either cute (Brad Paisley, Trent Willmon, Kenny Chesney), handsome (Darryl Worley,Josh Turner) or handsome/masculine (Trace Atkins) is generally a requisite for being a country star these days (video having killed the radio star and all). But these guys are sort of dorks, and the front man is a bit of doughboy by celebrity standards.
As a plus-sized guy I am not knocking doughboys, but for teenage girls to go batshit? He's not even butch. I'm just sayin'.
And this crowd was mostly screaming girls, and they guys they dragged along. And there was surprisingly only two body types: big girls in big clothes, and super skinny girls with short denim skirts or "skinny" jeans tucked into boots. Almost all hat hats, which were the cheap costume variety and not true cowgirl/boy hats. And when I say the skirts were short on the skinny girls, I mean they treated the world like their gynecologist. My former boss at the bank was a delicate Air Force wife with three kids, and I am reminded of the way she described the skirts on the former receptionist: "Her skirts were so short you could see tomorrow's shit."
Delicate flower that Carole.
The guys were hard to read. Fans or boyfriends? They had their own interesting looks. Like this one:
Sunglasses (for an indoor concert at night) on cowboy hat.
Upon entering the crowd, we immediately knew we immediately needed drinks.
Beer choices were Bud or Bud light for $7. There were separate lines for liquor, which was poured into small cups using a tiny jigger for $9. Oh, goodie. Weak drinks for twice the price. But that was to be expected.
the beer line
And then we had to fight our way past the line/crowd vying for souvenir apparel.
t-shirt line
This is what they were selling:
And lucky for those whose babies were not taken by Children Protective Services, smaller sizes were also available.
Once we found the way to our seats, I was afraid we would not be able to reach them without calling "On belay!" We arrived during one of the final songs of Taylor Swift's opening act. The crowd was pretty wild for her, but no one was standing up (only those on the floor). I imagine no one was standing in our section from sheer vertigo. Except, of course, the teeny boppers directly in front of me and Shilpa (Amy Day and her sister were sitting behind their parents). After a song, and again, no one else in the stadium standing, we asked them to sit down. They complied for about two and a half minutes before standing again, and the seats were not such that standing was going to help their view. We we looking down on the stage.
We were tempted.
(To give you an idea of how inclined our rows were, the girl is standing, Shilpa is sitting.)
For her final ballad, Taylor Swift asked everyone to get out "their electronic devices" (cell phones, Blackberrys, etc.) and wave them. I thought that was such a sign of the times that so few carried lighters anymore, and so many had at least some sort of digital device. It's sort of hard to see here, but after a tipping point of participation, the effect in the stadium was pretty cool.
And it seems that effect was lost in the conversion to YouTube.
As far as pyrotechnics and visual technics, the Rascal Flatts show was pretty amazing. The most impressive feature was the stage, which was pretty much just one enormous flat screen. From our vantage point, it looked like they were playing on a giant plasma screen which would play a variety of screen savers and occasionally display images and text.
That was cool.
As far as performance? The show suuuuuuuucked.
Maybe I'm a jaded Nashvillian who expects a lot from musicians and performers. I feel that I have a strong musical experience and have a deep appreciation for quality song-smithing, musical performance, and stage performances. Those three are very different talents and skills, and the truly fortunate are blessed with more than one, and the true stars with all three.
I'll say it once and then try not to belabor the point: These guys are hacks.
Despite the nearly-incessant roar of the crowd, the show failed in several ways. (A person could argue that if they crows roared, then the show was a success, but that person would not be me. Thomas Kincade also sells a lot of "paintings" but that doesn't mean his work is anything approaching good art.)
As I was saying, the show failed in several ways:
1) They talked more than they sang.
It wasn't even good banter. Or meaningful. Just self-serving "aren't we awesome" sort of arrogant exposition.
2) What's with all the covers? Was this karaoke night in the Shark Tank?
3) They always went for the cheap applause.
They would say "San Jose" and the crowd would LOSE IT. And they would do it over, and over, and over again. And every time they crowd went into absolute fits, as if to say "They know the name of my town! I'm so validated by celebrity!" Never mind that no one at the pavilion that night actually lives in San Jose. And of course, we were thinking "Wow, the band knows where they are. Is having a clue what city you're in really worthy of such adoration?"
Then they kept saying "We love San Jose!" or "Let's hear it for San Jose!" or "We wanted to finish the tour in our favorite town: SAN JOSE!"
Oh my god. And every freaking time the crowd would go nuts. We started a drinking game among ourselves that we had to drink every time they said "San Jose." That was a bad idea as we finished in sheer minutes and weren't willing to battle the lines or pay the premium for more drinks. I started counting the times they said "San Jose" for a cheap cheer, and got bored with it after I passed 30. Thinking back, how crappy must the show have been for them to work in "San Jose" on average more than once a minute? How much time did they spend actually singing?
When they weren't calling out "San Jose!" there were monologues calling for applause, along the lines of "did you ever have a guy treat you bad?" "Did you ever dump a worthless guy? And I mean kick him to the curb?!" "Woo woo!" cried the girls. I guess their boyfriends just drank more beer and wondered why they were there, paying $200 to have their dates get wet over dorks, and getting insulted for their trouble.
I was reminded of a magician from my childhood. When we were pre-schoolers, it was the height of cool for mothers to hire Madame Fifi to play a birthday party. In my memory she resembles Lucille Ball. Madame Fifi would do the typical milk-in-the-paper-cone or rabbit-in-the-box tricks and we would marvel. But this was her greatest trick: Each child in the audience got a paper sack to fill with candy or trinkets she would throw out during the performance, and the first one to applaud after each trick got a special prize. It wasn't until we were adults and reminiscing one Christmas about Madame Fifi that we realized how the "first one to applaud gets a prize" thing was such a ploy.
In their pandering, these guys were much less magical.
And the number of ridiculous solos were equally asinine. When the fiddle player went out for his five-minute riff, when the crowd's noise started to wane, someone at the mic yelled, "The louder you scream, the faster he plays!"
Um, okay, when it comes to music, even good fiddle playing, "faster" does not equal "better." This guy was no Mark O'Connor. And they better a violin/fiddle is being played, the quieter the audience should be to hear it. Whatever.
And pulling eight dress Marines on stage, for only the final seconds of a song, as props for applause? Cheap, cheap, cheap.
4) Good performers give their all to the crowd. These guys just sucked.
And by that, I mean they just took from the crowd. Before I started the post, I spent a couple of days wondering just why we thought this show was so bad. And finally my conclusion was this: I got nothing from the performers, and they took everything they could from the room. They gave nothing. I felt like the entire room was robbed, but they were too star-struck to notice.
The performers gave every appearance of insecure high school boys who were never popular and now starving and desperate for any applause or validation. Great performers love the audience; these guys demanded to be loved. Even though the majority of the room seemed to cheer this self-adulation, I felt embarrassed for, and at times even pitied, the performers.
By the end of the night, we were just angry. We paid far more than we would have liked and got so very little in return.
I will admit that maybe we are too savvy, or even too arrogant in our experience and the level of quality we expect from a show, to have appreciated the Rascal Flatts red-neck prom. But we have also come to expect a level of quality from performers, and a level of bang for our buck.
I also wonder what sort of flames I'm going to get from this post. I had to disable comments on the YouTube video of the stage because of the number of irate and illiterate posts. The hater posts (ironic because I am actually the hater in this rant) were all from users labeled as flamers who seem to have nothing better to do than surf and leave short nasty comments on people's videos. Kind of sad, actually.
One asked why we went if we didn't like their music. The point is we DID like their music, which is why we were so disappointed in the show.
I chose not to engage to posters. I remember someone saying this about online flames: engaging in Internet arguments is like competing in the Special Olympics: you might win but you're still retarded.
One last look at the night: Waiting to pay for parking— it's 90 degrees at night, and these girls are wearing short skirts and Uggs.
And that's not hose, the girls were that white.
Afterwards, Shilpa and I needed to cleanse the experience with another adventure, so we found the Saddle Rack and paid $30 in cover for a much better show. Although I will say, for a country bar, they played very little country, and not many people country dance. Shilpa thought it was really funny how clearly we were not in the City anymore: I would ask someone to dance (a girl, mind you, not looking to get beaten/shot) and they would react defensively: "I'm with someone!" or "I have a boyfriend!" or "I'm married!" I was like, "Uh, that's not what I asked...."
Shilpa just thought it was really funny that they didn't read me as a Big Mo right off the bat. And outing myself didn't alleviate their discomfort, it just altered its source.
It was a big chick night though, and wonderfully cheesy in its own way. Typical girl-power scene:
There was also a healthy quantity of good looking guys. Sure they were straight, but they were also drunk. And I'll just stop there or else they are going to put me on a list that keeps me from living near a school and I have to register every time I change neighborhoods.
We feel pretty safe in saying that we're the first people to ever make a bacon-based lollipop. And not just any bacon, either- we use sustainable, organic, cured bacon- we kinda felt that it went well with the pure Vermont maple syrup we were using as a base, you know?
