1e41 From: dale@unislc.slc.unisys.com (Dale Clark) Subject: *LAST* TIME I GO TO A SHOW! X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL9] Message-ID: <1993May18.135425.10999@unislc.slc.unisys.com> Organization: Unisys Corporation SLC Date: Tue, 18 May 1993 13:54:25 GMT Lines: 130 SECOND, AND POSITIVELY THE *LAST* SHOW I EVER WANT TO SEE --------------------------------------------------------- By Dale W. Clark a.k.a. "The Porsche Guy", "Tuna Breath", "Yuppie Scum", etc. Ladies, Gentlemen, Horses and Mules. (Well I guess that takes in all of you). I was asked to go to this Vegas 'thing' and no one, not even God, knows why I agreed. I thought I had a bad time 5 years ago, but nothing could have prepared me for this experience. I went along thinking that perhaps since I've mellowed out as I'm getting older, (I'm 32) I may have been a little 'tight' last time. The trip to LV was fine, I hit 146 mph on a long stretch of road for a brief time. We stayed at Caesar's Palace and spent some time gambling the night before. While everyone else went to bed, I stayed-up and went on a good hearty dusk-to-dawn rampage, hitting almost every casino and bar on the strip. Losing a fair amount of money was, without doubt, the beginning of a hellish weekend. Getting to the stadium was not half-the-fun. I was glad to ride in a car other than mine; I'm sure I would have been placing $68,000.00 in jeopardy. When I awoke the day of the concert I felt like Mike Tyson beginning round 29, I knew I was in Mark's van, but I had no idea how I got there. I fell back to sleep until I was aware that we were apparently in a line waiting to get in as the sounds of the road had stopped banging my sore brain up and down. I woke up to the sight of a huge bony black lab which had burrowed his nose in my armpit and I had scratched myself red in my sleep. Mark's dog, Max, smelled like it had ejaculated all over itself. There were literally hundreds of shitty, rust-infected bombs in a long hideous parade, and we sat waiting, and waiting, and waiting for hours. As we sat, I observed the general appearance of the people on the way to the show. Several dead-heads had already been arrested on the side of the road, and were being loaded into Las Vegas police cars. "Ye-Gods", I said out-loud, "I hope I haven't let you guys talk me into another fiasco like the last one." My friend Mark grinned and admitted to me that he liked taking me to things like this just to see my reaction to them. "Hell Dale, last time listening to you was a hoot! You were a riot!" After saying this, I felt my stomach utterly drop like I just swallowed a cup of raw cookie dough. When we finally pulled into the parking lot, amid the cooing of my friends about how beautiful and fun-loving this was going to be, I was immediately met by the contemptuous glower of a mid-twenties, overly made-up, body-rotted, battle-ax who was munching demonstratively on carrot sticks and not doing a very good job of containing the chewed stuff. I was not wearing levis nor a hole-ridden shirt and she looked me up and down as if I just murmured explicit sexual fantasies involving cattle. The parking lot was a gigantic flea market of secondhand trash having no beneficial purpose, use, or worth to anyone in their right mind. The scrapped rags, papers, glass, and metals were being vended by terrifying, glass-eyed hippies, who were also attempting to extort money with beads and rattles and sententious remarks about living and dying for the Grateful Dead. I broused around the wabbling, junk covered card-board tables in a few isles and then, there they were, low and behold: tuna-fish sandwiches. I kid you not! However, I felt that at $2.00, they were just slightly above the usually budgeted expenditure for decomposed Osteichthyes. Entering into the stadium and finding a place to pause, I was immediately hit with two things: the first was a whiny, skrieky request to put out my cigarette; the second, and more offensive, was the smell of the people standing around me. The band 'Sting' opened the dreary spectacle and it started raining as if God was illustrating his manifest sorrow for the gravely unfortunate living conditions of the bus-people. Their personal appearance clearly demonstrated a withdrawl from reality and conventional society and their juvenile behavior and dress was a general rejection of life's mores. We moved around a bit in the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd, but I knew I was getting to close to the collection of loosely-knit, nonconformists when I spotted them drinking what appeared to be pressed industrial waste from a Thermos. I didn't even want to rub shoulders and get it spilled on me, then be treated to the mind-bending technicolor venue I got 5 years ago. So many of the people there think the most frightening things are in vogue, and dead-heads seem to be able to find them like a bird spots a worm from atop a tree. Flamboyant and discordant colors, grotesque deformities, designs that cannot possibly be other than bad, and aside from striking novelty, there is nothing good about them. Some of the conspicuously repulsive dresses should have been relegated to the trash can years ago. Standing there in the pouring rain with a huge, gnawing, pounding headache making me cringe like the sound of a fire engine's siren blasting through a traffic jam. Along with a haze of several thousand mosquitoes and Mark's stupid dog who sat there with that stupid grateful look labs have whether your feeding them or whacking them over the head with a stick. I knew this was a dreadful mistake. It didn't take long before I knew to the full how terrible this situation was. There was no way of dropping through the ground or waking myself up. The meal of music being served was endless; each course equally unappetizing and abominably served. The show itself was tehnically atrocious. It was incredible, apalling really, that the Grateful Dead would show such disdain for their audience by obviously not even practicing enough to remember their own lyrics. To add to the sleep- inducing chords were broken strings and a variety of equipment which was not working. Some poor, pathetic, destitute man was struck by lightning in the parking lot and several other times I wondered if God's wrath was about to come upon the place in the form of lightning bolts. While I was standing there, cursing my fucking lifetime friend for talking me into this mess, I felt something hit me in the back of the neck. Then I felt another. I turned around and was astounded to see people throwing marshmellows at each other! Just when did this little custom start? Mark and the others were looking at the expression on my face, along with the statements I was making and apparently enjoying every minute of it. Mark patted me on the back and said, "Oh, Dale. You're the life of the party!" Near the end of the show, some fruit-cake jumped onto the stage and was immediately removed by security. We left, finally, after what seemed to be days. My hangover admittedly compounded my suffering, but I'm sorry, I didn't have any better of a time this go around. No, I won't go again. Don't ask me. ____________________________________________________________________ \____\ DALE W. CLARK "Pipe down kid! The /____/ \___\ dale@unislc.slc.unisys.com old-man's hung." /___/ \__\ -Auntie Mame /__/ \_________________________________________________/ . 0