Brian Wilson 'Smile'

I don’t know what happened to me last week. I haven’t had any problems with my ears. Those jokers seemed to be just fine. There was the normal amount of earwax production. I heard the usual amount of rhetoric, sizzling gossip, and recipes for pizza éclairs. And yet I didn’t hear two people telling me that my seats to last Friday night’s concert with Cheap Trick, Poison, and Def Leppard were located on the second row.

I got the tickets from a connected man “in the business” a few days before the concert.

I don’t really know what “in the business” means, but I hear people using it quite a bit. It sounds like lots of business suits are involved and I don’t want any part of that.

Anyway… The guy gave me the tickets and my eyes noticed that they weren’t on the lawn where anything goes.

The lawn seat is a one way ticket to four hours of heat and hell-raising. A place where men with inked road signs on their backs dance topless with the balance that only 90 proof can provide. It’s a place where a woman can smoke and drink 24 ounce cans of beer while wearing a novelty t-shirt proudly proclaiming that she has one in the oven. The lawn seat area is a place that not even Hank Williams Jr. wants to spend two minutes.

The tickets I had received had silver “VIP” stamped on it. My mind told me that the seats were in a good location. I immediately translated “VIP” into “beer wench”.

For me, there aren’t too many things more important than having someone fetch beers. Why should I be deprived of watching Poison perform “Talk Dirty To Me” while standing in a beer line?

Side note… All “beer wenches” should be women and gay men. No studly hunks. No cute looking snicker inducing dude. No young men named Stacy.

Women sell beer and men like beer. My girlfriend likes beer too, but isn’t going to want to see our server walk away as much as I will. There’s more money to be made with women servers.

Gay men don’t cause any “dude tude” flare-ups. Gay men that drink beer will also like to watch their server walk away regardless of that person’s sex…

To get back on thought… I looked at a seating chart to find the exact location of the seats. Since my mind had booked a flight on the beer wench express, I located where I thought our seats were. I thought it must have been in a box location where overpriced beer would be brought to me.

I told Jamie where I thought we were going to be seated for the concert.

She was the second person to tell me that our seats were located on second row. The “in the business” guy told me when I first got them.

But I don’t recall either one trying to explain that I was going to be up close and personal with Robin Zander and Rick Nielsen. I didn’t realize that I would actually run into my friend and “Checkered Nation” brother, Clay Howard and his wife Nicole.

My ears didn’t pickup on this fact. I was told twice and seemingly never heard a word. I must have had an experience with hysterical hearing loss. The excitement about the possibility of having a beer wench caused my hearing loss.

It also caused me to totally not be able to read their seating chart. I don’t understand how they have their seats arranged. It confuses me.

So this picture will give you an idea about how close to Cheap Trick Jamie and I were.



I will share the rest about our Cheap Trick adventures with an update tomorrow or Thursday.