Next time I'm handing out a questionaire before the concert.

 Good afternoon!  It's been a month now since I last posted and I have some news.  I did manage to write 50000 words on my new novel "Spark of a Hero," so I completed my Nanowrimo goal this year.  Now, for December, I'm fully focused on getting the Second Elsie book out, so that you can just get both of them for holiday gifts.  That will be my focus in the next two weeks.

I wasn't planning on blogging today, but sometimes things just happen to me and I have no other choice but to share with you.  After all, the blog is called "It Can Only Happen to Sarah" and boy, is that true this time.

Most of you know I'm a gigantic Rick Springfield fan.  (If you're uncertain about that, check out my first novel, Dream In Color ((which has a brand new cover!)) and you'll get the idea.)  Anyway for my birthday this year, (which was two weeks ago) Hubby did very, very good.  Hubby got two tickets to Rick's solo concert "Stripped Down" which was at the Barrymore Theatre in Madison, WI. This was to be different from the other concerts I'd been to because it was billed as "an intimate solo performance of music and storytelling." 

I was super excited.

Dressing for these things is always a problem for me, but Hubby did good there, as well.  He suggested I NOT wear my usual attire of Rick T-shirt and jeans and instead class it up a bit.  He wore a bow-tie, I wore a sparkly holiday-ish top.

The Barrymore, if you haven't been, is an old theater in one of the more fun, funkier neighborhoods in Madison.  I've never been there, but I knew right away we were at the right place because MY PEOPLE, (fluffy middle aged girls) were flocking to the place.  We got in, found some fine seats  (general seating, but I was okay we weren't up front.  I have a thing about theater seating, I have to be on an aisle.  Not only was I on an aisle, I was slightly higher than the seats in front of me, giving me a very clear view of the stage.) and we settled in.

The opening act was a pretty cool guy who sang some folksy songs about beaches and dead artists and drinking...believe me, he was a lot of fun.  While he was playing, the woman behind us, and this is key, started consuming beer. (In retrospect, my guess is the beer was to fill in the holes left by the quantity of other alcohols she consumed before the concert.)

He played for about a half hour.  After he left the stage, this woman leaned over the seat and started talking to us.  I didn't think much of it, Hubby and I sort of are those people who wind up just talking to people...sort of like the nice lady at the last Rick Springfield concert...you remember her...the wildly drunk woman behind her dumped a gigantic beverage all over her?  Yeah.

Anyway, so this woman starts talking to us.  And at first, while she's talking way too loud, and too close, and it's clear she's "deep into her cups" as they say, she's seems normal.  She asks if we're from Madison  (we're not) and she tells us where she's from  (also not Madison). Then it gets...well, I'll let you judge.

She says, "When my husband told me he got these tickets I asked him why?  He said we needed a date night.  We've been married 25 years, what do we need with a date night?  We have two kids.  We don't listen to the radio, we don't watch TV, we just do whatever the kids need us to do."
Yep, I should have moved right then and there.  Warning bells went off in my head.  She doesn't listen to the radio.  She questioned her husband about why he bought her Rick Springfield tickets. 

She doesn't watch TV.

We should have moved, but like I said, we had seats that really suited us.

The concert started...and her husband brought what I believe was her third round since they sat behind us.  And that's when the inappropriate WHOO HOOing began.

For those of you who haven't been to one of these, it's a quiet affair.  Sure, there's singing and cheering, and singing along, but for the most part, this was a lovely, cultured, grown up evening  (no one was wearing concert t-shirts) except for Date Night behind me.  Her only goal was to goad the front rows into standing up and dancing to cover the fact that she wanted to charge the stage...but only when Rick started singing 'Jessie's Girl.'

Ah, okay, I see the problem. 

See, there are two kinds of Rick Springfield fans.  There are those of us who have all the albums and know all the songs, we've read his book, we've gone to a ton of concerts, we've watched "Hard to Hold" RECENTLY.  And then there are the fans who just like "Jessie's Girl."    And it seems lately that I wind up sitting next to or in front of women who drink until he plays Jessie's Girl and then make idiots of themselves.  (We had the mean lady in the Dells, "Red" in Nashville, and now Date Night.)

So Date Night is sitting behind me and every five minutes, no matter what is going on up on stage, she WHOO HOOS and then said, "Come on front rows get off your asses and DANCE! And when she's not yelling this, she's talking...out loud...with her husband.  About what, I cannot imagine, because I'm trying to hear the stories Rick is telling on stage.  I wanted to turn around and say, "Hey, if you want to talk on your date night, go someplace that encourages that...like a coffee shop, or your own living room.  BUT SHUT UP I AM TRYING T HEAR RICK!"

(I didn't say that.)

Well, bad behavior begets bad behavior and this started a sort weird echo from the other side where a younger gent decided it was super cool to shout, "YOU ARE SO CUTE" every time there was a quiet moment in the show.  First time, funny.  Tenth time, not so much.  And oh yeah, there was plenty of quiet time in the show.  IT WAS AN INTIMATE PERFORMANCE OF SONG AND STORYTELLING.

Date Night is undeterred.  At some point she leans in, between my face and Hubby's  (I got a buzz from her fumes)  and she says, "I'm going up.  Are you with me?"

Hey, I've been on stage with Rick...couple times... but this was not that kind of thing.  I shake my head.  THEN, Date Night leans in closer and starts talking really loudly, and she puts her hands on our shoulders.  "I'm GOING, are you with me?"

I say, "I'll pass." and I lean forward in my chair so her hand sort of falls away.

I'm not sure at what point she dumped her drink.  I did enjoy the fact that unlike the woman in the Dells, Date Night didn't dump it on anyone in my row.  Instead, she dumped it down the aisle, ice cubes and all.  And she kept yelling for the front rows to DANCE.

And her husband kept getting up to get her drinks.

Here's the funny thing:  At some point during the concert...they left.  They just left.  And yes, they left BEFORE he played "Jessie's Girl."

So here's what I've decided.  I think the next time Hubby and I go to a Rick Springfield concert I'm going to have a questionnaire ready for the person behind me.  It's going to have just a few questions:

1)  Have you locked yourself away from society for the last 25 years, thereby rendering you incapable of understanding how to behave in an adult social setting?

2)  Have you already or do you intend to drink your body weight in alcohol?

3)  Are you just here to hear Jessie's Girl?

A "yes" answer to any of these questions is going to guarantee we find alternate seats.

If you haven't been to one of these "Stripped Down" shows, I highly recommend it.  Rick fans, music fans, fans of just good shows will all enjoy this.  But a word of caution:  Don't be an idiot during the Q and A section.  Don't bring some award you won and ask him to rub it on his body.  If you feel the urge to ask such a thing...chances are you've answered "yes" to at least two of the above questions and you have no business being in that auditorium.

My nomimation for Worst Person in the World: #1

Good morning!

I'm not a person who likes to judge people, as most of you know.  I'd rather live and let live.  But in recent weeks I've come across a couple "humans" that I think need to be nominated for the worst person in the world.  Now these aren't mass murderers, these aren't people who have done, as far as I know, any real crime.  These are ordinary people who have proven, in the very short amount of time I've observed them, they don't have the skills and manners other normal humans have.

My first nominee is a woman. 

This the woman who sat one seat behind and one seat to my left at the Rick Springfield concert last month.  Now, how could a fellow Rick Chick make my list of nominees for worst person in the world?

Read on:

At the concert hubby and I sat next to two women.  In front of us was a vastly tall man, and the one woman, I'll call her Friend, was shocked and disappointment at having to sit/stand behind a mountain of a man. Hubby offered to swap our seats, thereby putting the women more toward the middle of the row, but away from the tall guy.

Friend and a lovely lady I'll call Tina refused.  See, Tina had had a knee replacement a couple years early, and it hadn't gone well.  The result was that the poor woman had to walk with a cane and sit on the end of the row because she needed to stretch out her leg.  However, she'd bought the tickets for Friend because Friend was one of those girls who, in the 80's, had a Rick poster in her bedroom and she kissed it every night.  She'd never been to a concert, and this was Tina's gift. 

Tina, however, was not at all able to stand during the concert, which sort of sucked for her because once Rick hit the stage, everyone got up.  Even the guy next to hubby, who informed hubby he'd been "dragged" to the concert, but, once halfway through his bucket of Bud Light, starting yelling, "THIS GUY IS F***ING AWESOME!"

(I know that, and I don't have to drink multiple beers to admit it.)

Anyway, Friend  (who missed making this post only because the woman behind us was so horrible) sat on the end instead of Tina.  (Tina sacrificed her seat and comfort so Friend could dance in the aisle.)  Tina, meanwhile, listened to the concert while watching the tall guy's butt.

Because the horrible woman at the concert
drank it all.

The horrible woman behind us, a leathery, smokey girl in the plus 50 years age department, was, preconcert and pretty much through out, slamming rum and cokes like she was on a mission to finish all the rum in the Wisconsin Dells.

While sucking down plastic cup after plastic cup of the brown elixir, horrible woman would also run up to the front, accompanied by an equally horrible male friend of hers, to dance in the front.  (We'd been told at the start of the concert to stay in our rows because those who were in the front had paid for front row tickets and we, in row Z, had not.)

That did not deter Horrible and her male companion who would, at random times run into her row (row AA) take her by the hand, and run her up the aisle.  Much of the concert she'd run of there with her drink in hand.  (Hey, priorities.  If they're going to kick her out of the concert for running to the front, then she wasn't going to lose her drink.)

At some point in the concert, I took off my shoes.  I like to be barefoot.  I liked the feel of the cold concrete floor on my feet and I really like dancing barefoot.  I was careful not to dance to wildly because, you know, Tina was sitting next to me, her head about level with my hips.  That would be an unpleasant post, having to admit I hipped a girl to death.

Anyway, one of these times when Horrible and her male companion made a mad dash to the front, she lost hold of her rum and coke and it flew forward...all 24 ounces of it...right into the back of Tina's head.

I knew something was up because I got the residual dribble as rum and coke flowed from her row to mine.  My feet got very sticky.  But not as sticky as Tina's head and shoulders.  Went and messy, she had to hobble out of her seat, past Friend, and out to get herself cleaned up.  She did not return until after the encore.

Meanwhile, Horrible returned to her seat and while we were all waiting for the encore to happen she said to me, "Was that girl with you?"

"No,"  I said, "but we'd been talking, so I sort of know her."

"Did my drink get on you?"

"Just my feet.  But she's sort of a mess.  She had to leave to get herself cleaned up."

And ladies and gents, this is the point of the story.  This is why this woman is nominated for Worst Person in the World.  She shrugged and said:

"Well, it's a concert. What do you expect?"

And there it is, friends...my first nomination for Worst Person in the World.