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Why Martians Could Have Snagged Me at a Rock Concert Last Night

Why Martians Could Have Snagged Me at a Rock Concert Last Night

Last updated on: August 20, 2007 at 9:55 am by John Shore

Why Martians Could Have Snagged Me at a Rock Concert Last Night 2007-08-20T09:55:35-08:00 John Shore

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Be afraid, Martians!!

Last night my wife Cat and I went to the largest outdoor concert venue in San Diego to see (in order of appearance) REO Speedwagon, Stray Cats, The Pretenders, and ZZ Top.

Whoo-hoo! Rock ‘n roll!

Except … older!

Whoo-hoo again!

By way of generally complementing my mostly silver goatee (which, many people don’t know, is French for, “Bleed less while shaving”), I wore to the concert my usual middle-aged hipster outfit of khaki pants, a Tommy Bahama Hawaiian shirt, and leather boat shoes.

Once on the grounds of the show, I felt like I’d slipped into some sort of Felliniesque, constantly-shifting hall of mirrors. Everywhere I looked were middle-aged men with silver goatees sporting khaki pants, Hawaiian shirts, and leather boat shoes. It looked like some kind of giant … Bahama family reunion.

Cool! For how long have I longed to belong? There is, after all, protection in numbers. If the tour guides at San Diego’s Wild Animal Park are to be believed, one of the prime advantages of animals herding together in the wild is that their markings make it difficult for perspective and color-challenged predators to single one of them out. (As if such predators don’t have enough problems.) To a lion, for instance, a herd of zebras all packed together apparently looks like a single zebra that’s 50-yards long and weigh 20,000 tons. This tends to give the hunting lion … paws.

Get it? Paws!? Pause?! Get it? Huh? Did you get it? Did you get the joke? Huh? Didya?

Man. I cannot believe that when I was a kid I used to think it was impossible for middle-aged people to be funny. How woefully wrong I was.

And how woefully wrong any hovering, predatory Martians looking down from their spaceship with a mind to extract a single man from last night’s concert crowd would have been to have thought that what they were looking at wasn’t a bunch of individual men, but rather … well, whatever 10,000 bald spots floating atop loud tropical patterns would look like to Martians. Maybe like 10,000 large, single, pupil-less, hair-surrounded eyes staring back at them from a deep, dense jungle.

Pretty scary!

The point is, we’d have been safe.

And all of our wives and girlfriends would have been safe, too. Because … well, because balding and slightly pudgy though we may be, we’re still men, and of course would be instantly ready to do battle with any and all aliens who started trying to kidnap our wives and girlfriends.

Besides, it’s safe to say that if Martians have come to attack us, they’ve studied us first. And I don’t think you’d have to watch Our Kind for too very long to know that, when it comes right down to it, it’s no safer to Martian-nap women than it is men. They must have noticed how much of Human Life women so commandingly control. Plus, men don’t carry around 80-lb. purses they can swinging around like killer Wal-Mart ninjas.

If I was an attacking Martian, I’d go for the men. Women will take you out. Men will try to … bond with you, or charm you, or just chat you up first. You can have a man tied up or drugged before he can finish saying, “So, what football teams do you think are lookin’ strong for this season?”

With a woman, all you can do is scream, duck, and get your Martian backside back to your ship.

Wait. What was I talking about?

Oh, right: Naturally confusing hovering predatory Martians.

Well, last night I would have been snagged by the Martians, because I did break from the pack. And do you know why at last night’s Major Concert I willingly separated myself from my fellow pupil-less Sky Starers?

Because my wife and I totally had backstage passes to the show!

Oh, but woot, and woot again.

That’s right. I, personally, and quite privately, got to chat with Chrissie Hynde. And I now count as one of my personal friends who doesn’t yet know me as well as he really should Slim Jim Phantom, the inimitable, show-stealing drummer from Stray Cats.

The Martians could have snagged me somewhere during the walk between Everyone Else and the VIP area behind the amphitheatre –where, last night, while sipping beer and gnoshing free munchies, major, legendary rock stars showed themselves to be not snotty, ego-crazed basket-cases, but rather everyday, humble, polite people who had the class, for instance, to pretend not to notice that, try though I did to resist, I pretty effectively scarfed down all their M&M’s.

Mmmmm …. rock star M&M’s …..

Man, did this blog ever not accomplish anything.

Stupid Mondays after you spent the night before at the rockinest’ rock show you’ve ever been to.

Tomorrow: I stop doing stupid, lack-of-sleep triggered meanderings about bald-spot confused Martians, and actually maybe say something about the show and my Excellent Backstage Adventure.

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August 22, 2007 Chrissie Hynde and Me

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