Elton John played for three hours Friday night, and that might very well be the longest show by a single performer I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen a lot of ’em. Not even Bruce Springsteen remained onstage for such a length of time. It was a real marathon.
He played all the old hits, about five songs off the new record with Leon Russell, and a few album cuts as well. Nigel Olsson and Davey Johnstone were in the band, and those guys were around during the 1970s heyday. It was a good time.
My only complaint: two of the songs were dragged WAAAAY out, like some kind of acid rock jam band. And I’m not a fan of that kinda shit. It’s why punk happened in 1976. The two songs were “Rocket Man” and “Madman Across the Water,” and each seemed to last for thirty minutes or more. It was insane. They just kept jamming and jamming and jamming…
No, I didn’t much care for the musician masturbation, but the rest of it was solid. Elton is, what, 65 now? So, he’s not doing too many high-heel scissor kicks off the speakers at this point. But he sounded good, and his band – when it could keep the excesses in check – was excellent.
The place sold-out in 24 hours, and the age of the audience members ranged from about 8 years old to something like 75. I saw plenty of oldsters in there, a bunch of kids, and everything in between. I can’t think of too many performers who could pull off such a thing. And it wasn’t some flashy Vegas-style show, either. It was pretty damn rock-oriented, with no frills or ridiculous theatrics.
Before the last couple of songs in the main set, security allowed the crowd to move to the edge of the stage. Once they finished playing, the band exited and the audience started the traditional foot-stomp demand for an encore. But Elton remained and signed autographs and shook hands.
Then he returned to his piano and played “Your Song,” and most of the crowd sang along. I saw a guy who looked like he might’ve done a stint or two in a federal penitentiary, just belting it out. And a woman seated to my left was wiping away tears.
It was a good time. I’m glad I finally got to see Elton in concert. I was a big fan when I was a kid, and am still fond of those big ‘70s hits. It might fall under the heading of “guilty pleasure,” if I felt guilty about it. But I don’t. So there.
Here’s a picture from the concert, taken by somebody else, and lifted by me:
On Saturday I gave Andy a bath, and it was quite an ordeal. I went upstairs, started running water into the tub, and he went and hid somewhere. I found him and tried to pick him up, but he ran and leaped onto Toney’s lap. I came for him, and he (get this!) bared his teeth at me, and growled.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve, shitlips!” I told him, and snatched him under my arm. All four of his legs were in motion, and he was flopping around like a trout on a pier. I almost dropped him a couple of times, because of all the frantic thrashing, but I finally wrestled his big ass into the bathtub.
He was shaking in absolute fright (every time!), and I started scrubbing him down. He never moved during this part of the process. He just stood there, staring straight ahead, like some kind of vibrating ceramic statue. At one point it started smelling like fish in there, and I’m fairly certain he compressed his sac.
Eventually I got him washed and rinsed, and let the water out. I asked the younger youngling to hand me a towel, and began drying him off. I’d only started when Andy ROCKETED from the tub, and did a series of those big dog shakes in the middle of the bathroom. I think there was water in the ceiling light when he was finished.
I tried to grab him, but he was having none of it, so we just opened the door and set him free. He spent the next ten minutes running from room to room, and rubbing himself on the furniture. Toney was screaming in protest, but the hound would not be denied.
My son and I were soaked and laughing, the bathroom was completely covered in water and fur, and most of the house was now wet as well. It was crazy, but long overdue. Ol’ Blacklips had started to smell like the goat pen at a petting zoo.
Andy’s excellent. He’s the best dog I’ve ever known.
Before I get to the Questions of the Day, I need to ask you guys for a favor. If you ordered a signed copy of Crossroads Road, I’d appreciate it if you could send a quick email, and tell me how you would like it personalized. The PayPal special instructions option didn’t work very well, so this might do the trick. You can also confirm your mailing address, and include whatever else you want me to know.
Please send the info to thewvsr@gmail.com That’s an address I don’t use often, so it’ll be easy to organize. I’m going to complete this project within the next few days, so your books should be arriving soon. Thanks, folks!
Oh, and if I don’t have any direction from you, I’d rather not guess and use the PayPal account name. In that case I’ll probably just sign the book, without a personalization. OK? OK.
And now for the Questions… At the concert on Friday, I saw a woman nearly fall out of the upper deck. She was probably 55 years old and was a person of substantial heft, attempting to step over a seat and get into the front row. But the chair folded up, she stumbled forward, and very nearly went over the railing. I mean, she was up on top, a-teetering.
For some reason I was sitting there watching all this transpire from afar, and yelled, “Oh shit!” when tragedy nearly struck. It was a long way down, and I don’t think there would’ve been a happy ending if she’d gone over. It gives me a full-body shiver, every time I think about it.
And I’d like to know if you’ve ever seen someone get hurt in a stadium or arena setting. Two stories jump immediately to my mind…
At a Queen concert, a hundred years ago, a cop came strutting through, giving everybody the “you better watch your step” stink-eye, and promptly fell down a flight of stairs. Needless to say, the entire section erupted in sustained laughter and taunts. The cop landed in a heap at the bottom, got up, dusted himself off, and continued on his way.
And one of my aunts was at a high school football game, and fell through the bleachers. She was climbing to the top, and one of the boards said fukkit. She plunged all the way through, and exploded her forearm across a bar, on her way down. It messed her up pretty bad, and I think she had to have surgery. But I can’t help laughing. I mean, seriously.
So, there you go. If you have any stories about people getting hurt in an arena of some sort, please tell us about it.
And if you’d like to tell us about any especially lengthy concerts you’ve attended… that’s cool, too.
I’ll see you guys again tomorrow.
Have a great day!
Now playing in the bunker
Buy Jeff’s first novel, Crossroads Road
First!
Because, you know, I’m from WV, I was at a dirt track race with my dad when I was a kid. This was the special 4th of July race and the hillfolk heft was out in full force. Halfway through the evening, one of the rusty rotted homemade bleachers gave under the weight of one too many supersized #3s and fell off the cinder block mounts that supported the back legs. It didn’t topple completely over, it just rocked back and down half a foot or so. The impact generated a shock that sent ripples of flesh jello shaking and rolling in every direction. The race in progress had to be stopped so the ambulance could come out of the infield and “tend” to the hollering hicks and hickettes. The flab-shift had also upset the huge cross timbers and caused them to creak like the Mayflower in heavy seas.
During this time the drivers in the race stopped, got out of their cars and watch until a fight broke out on the track. The melee spilled into the pit area and so into the crowd. We hightailed out of there and missed headed home.
Being a kid, this was all awesome except the part about missing the rest of the night of racing.
??
I believe I dozed off at the Spectrum during a Doobie Bros. show when the band did the extended jam during “Black Water.” And I submit, the only people who enjoy drum or bass solos, are the guys who subscribe to “Drummers Weekly” or “Thump, the magazine for bassists.”
I like a good bass solo, as long as it doesn’t go on forever. A few bars by a great bass player never hurt a live performance. Unfortunately, there just aren’t that many good bass players. The majority of them will never be John Entwhistle or Barry Oakley, even though they all seem to see themselves in that league.
I have hours of music that is noth ing but bass. I write it so that bass guitar takes the role of rythm, lead, and bass parts. So it is a whole band of bass players.
How can a person play music on a freshwater game-fish? What in the world does it sound like?
You play it like the bagpipes, it’s very atonal and wet sounding.
I remember that concert all too well. Hee hee. Pat Simmons basically toured the whole Spectrum playing up close and personal. You can imagine how long that song lasted.
I attended a Keith Jarrett concert in about 1974 — drove eighty miles each way from Seattle to Bellingham and back — and was dead bored from nearly the start until the very finish, which seemed like a six-hour stretch, but turned out to be a little under three hours.
This was nothing like the stuff he did with Art Blakey or Miles Davis. This was just Keith, and Keith was in a very introspective mood. Oh, yeah. And because Keith was really hot stuff at the time, the college crowd had to pretend that they all really dug the ten or twelve chords Keith played over and fuckin’ over.
I was still too young to realize that all I needed to do was grab my smokes, find some Diet Pepsi, and head outside to stargaze and wait for my hipper friends. So the fact that I sat there for three fucking hours and hated it says a lot more about me as a young punk than it does about Keith. And that thought pisses me off too.
Hey, I’m learning how to express myself from AngryWhiteGuy.
jtb
Also around ’74 or so I drove from Parkersburg to Pittsburgh to see Jarrett at Soldiers and Sailors hall. It was a quartet though so it was pretty good. Dewey Redman on sax and I don’t remember who the other two were. I bought the Koln concerts (on vinyl) and depending on your mood the selections are either hypnotic or boring. Playing the same triads over and over does not a genius make. I prefer a Chick Corea or Herbie Hancock.
I’ve seen Keith Jarrett twice, about 20 years apart. Both times he was somewhat of a prima donna. The first time (1980-ish) was at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall. He kept demanding, from stage, that someone close that door that was open up in the back of the hall. Someone finally got it through to him that there was no door; it had been removed for repairs. The second time (2000-ish) was at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, before the renovation. He was accompanied by Jack DeJohnette and Gary Windo, and that combination is what persuaded me to buy tickets. But I kept hearing piano notes coming from behind me, and drum hits coming from the ceiling. After about the second song, old Keith said to the crowd, “has anyone else noticed how bad the acoustics are in here?” But I completely agreed with him.
Herbie Hancock just plain rules. I like that he started college majoring in electrical engineering (!), although he switched to music. Head Hunters was one of my first albums.
I’ve never seen anyone get hurt at an event. The best I can do is an incident at probably Shea (maybe Yankee) Stadium circa 1970. A popcorn vendor was walking across the front of the nosebleed section where we were sitting. A guy halfway up wanted popcorn. As was the custom at the time, the vendor threw the (closed) popcorn container up to the guy, and the guy threw his quarter down to the vendor. But the quarter went over the side, and the vendor demanded another. The customer didn’t want to do that, because he’d already paid, so he returned the popcorn instead, by tossing the (now open) container back down, showering everybody with popcorn.It was funny because I was not in the line of fire.
.
Saw a Pink Floyd concert in ’88 in Perth (SW Oz) and it seemed to go on for ever. That may have had something to do with the smell of hooch in the air but it was friggen awesome!
As for mishaps, haven’t seen any at a sports event but I’ve seen a few fall through the floor or roof at a fire. Of course after checking to see if they are all right, there is nothing funnier. Especially if they only go half through and get stuck. HA!
And as long as I’m admitting shit in front of Reporter witnesses, I still remember all the lyrics to “Your Song”, although it’s been 25 years since I’ve heard the damn thing and although I don’t own a single Elton John disc.
I liked the Elton/Taupin three minute songs of the 70s. I really thought Candle in the Wind would live a hundred years. Of course, now it will because of the you know.
jtb
I have seen two people hit in the head with hockey pucks. The first was a kid at the local rink. He was hit in the side of the head, it knocked him off his seat, but he got back up and didn’t seem too messed up. The second was at a Toronto Maple Leafs game, back in the early 90s before the NHL put up netting above the glass behind the goals. It hit an older guy right in the face. In a split second there were ushers with towels running from all directions to keep the guy from bleeding over the other fans. EMS showed up and took him away.
I’ve got two:
1. I was at the Tibet Freedom Festival at the old RFK stadium in 1998. A girl got struck by lightning about 15 rows in front of me. Nobody knew what it was because there was hardly any lightning beforehand. I thought it was a bomb some Chinese terrorist set. (Dumb, I know.) The girl lived but got messed up pretty bad. I heard it even burned all her pubes off.
2. At a Cincinnati Bengals game in the late 80s maybe early 90s. It was a close game I think, (might have been the 88 season finale when Redskins PK Chip Lohmiller doinked a game winning chip shot) because the stadium was completely full at the horn. Boomer Esiason gave an interview over the PA system after the game. Afterwards, he trotted off to the locker room to a huge ovation. As he disappeared into the tunnel, every eye in the stadium was on him. Some idiot tried to reach over the railing at the top of the tunnel to shake his hand. The dude must have been drunk because it was easily 30 feet high. Anyway, the guy went over the railing, did a 1 and 1/4 flip with a 1/2 twist and landed a PERFECT belly smacker on the floor. The entire stadium saw it and let out an “OH!” that, to this day, I believe to be the single loudest noise I have ever heard.
Good old RFK! I was at that concert too, but wasn’t close enough to the lightning strike to smell the burned pubes. My favorite thing about RFK was that if you didn’t have a ticket, you just walked around and asked one of the gate staff to “help you out”. $20 later, he would lift up a corner of chain link fence & let everyone in.
I went to one of those HFStival shows (a local radio station that used to play rock music & would hold a giant music fest in a DC area stadium annually) in Baltimore, and it seemed like every semi-feral Maryland tween was there, shirtless & drunk. This was a concert where the audience built a fire in the middle of the crowd, got it going, and then people were leaping through it, like some pagan ritual. There were probably some burns from that one. And lots of mosh pit contusions –
Ha! Yeah I saw an HFS show on Pennsylvania Ave between the Capitol and the WH. Jimmie’s Chicken Shack was on and Jimmi Haha made some comment that they take donations. He then had to run and hide behind a speaker as the stage was pelted with coins. “Throw paper you cheap bastards!”
Man this is a blast from the past. I just bought an old Mary Prankster album a couple weeks ago too.
I went to one of those – HFStival or Lollapalooza, can’t recall which – because Gang of Four was playing. This was sometime in the mid-1990s. Weasel is somewhere in satellite radio land now, since the Spanish Revolution.
In other news: one of my current co-workers (was a member of? opened for? toured with?) JCS in the late 90s. Brush with greatness here.
.
One of trombonists in the HS band showed up for a football game so gobsmacked that he literally slithered through the bleachers and onto the dirt below – tall fuzzy hat and all. It was pretty dang funny, but I couldn’t admit that at the time.
Poor Andy.
Don’t you mean a tromboner.
Wilco, their last tour. They played a long set, but they are known for that so it wasn’t a surprise.
I’ve seen people get fucked up at a lot of shows, but we’re talking about punk shows in basements and 200 person max capacity clubs. Broken noses, etc.
I went to see the Black Sabbath reunion tour at the Rogers Center in Toronto about 10 years ago. We were seated on the first row of the mezzanine beside a guy who looked like he fell out of a Helix video from 1982: about 6’6″, skinny as an alumni of Auschwitz, long feathered back hair, 80’s metal t-shirt with a white body and black 3/4 selves, and skin-tight black jeans. He was smoking a joint the size of my wrist. One of the opening acts was Pantera and as soon as they took the stage he was on his feet leaning out over the waaaay to low railing screaming. At one point I looked over at him and noticed that he had hooked his feet under his seat, and his knees were on the railing which was acting like a fulcrum as about 70% of his body was suspended over a 60’+ drop. He stayed this way for their entire set, screaming “PANTERA!!!!!” the whole time.
Don’t you just love the way dogs emerge out of bath trauma–happy as pigs–running and wiggling. My two old dead ones used to even be excited after the mini butt wash with the hose when there were dingle issues. Running and laughing. Or maybe it was just relief that I didn’t drown their raggedy asses.
Last year, at a Rays game at the Trop, I watched a Lakeland hicklet stand on the rail at the top of the escalator that was going down to the lower level. As usual, before nothing good ever happens, he shouted to his toothless buddies “Hey, y’all, watch this!” I guess he planned on riding the rail all the way down, but he toppled off and fell between the up and down escalators onto the pavement about 60 feet below. Couldn’t help but point and laugh. Newspaper said he suffered multiple broken bones.
Saw Springsteen in Orlando about 18 years ago start at 8:00 pm, took a 15 minute break at 10:00 and came back and performed until 12:30. Well worth the money.
Saw a guy at a Lightning game get hit with a puck in the throat several years back. It ricocheted like it had hit a wall into the aisle fifteen feet from my seat. I got Phil Espisito to autograph it and I have the puck in my office. I did however have to shove a ten year old boy out of the way to get it.
Oh man. I have a crap load of painful near death (and maybe death stories) about people getting hurt at concerts and shows.
I’ll start off with the only time I ever got hurt in any significant manner and that I hurt someone else in a more significant manner. This happened a few years ago.
I was a music festival when Apocolyptica was on stage. Some ass hat with giant combat boots was crowd surfing. Well this paint licker apparently couldn’t keep his body rigid and was flopping about like perch in a dry live well. His 10 ton boot came crashing down on top of my head and put me to my knees. I got a good look at the fool just before the world started spinning and all I could see were crotches and butts. Lucky for me mob rules were in the “On” position and someone shouted man down and helped me up. I was dizzy and woozy for the rest of the night.
However, I was now a lot more paranoid. I kept watching for crowd surfers coming up from behind me. Eventually that same teenage punk came flopping along over the top of the crowd again, but this time I was ready.
When he came to me it was the most perfect revenge set-up; this shit was straight out of TNA ‘rasslin’. I grabbed that little shit by the arm pits so that we were facing away from each other, I then proceeded to administer a little bit of ultra-violence. With the help of the people supporting him behind me, I lifted him over my head and power-bombed him onto the cement floor. Nobody shouted out for man-down and he didn’t look like he was doing too well, but everyone gave him a wide area because none of use wanted to be seen next to a dead guy. He just laid there in a loose form of the fetal position. Eventually he rolled over and stumbled out of the area. It looked like he was bleeding pretty bad, but not like any bone damage occurred.
I was relieved that I didnt’ kill the guy.
The longest concert I ever attended was Bruce Springsteen back in the 80’s. His “Tunnel of Love” Tour. Fantastic. It lasted about 3 hours with a dozen encore’s.
The second longest was ZZ Top “Afterburner” Tour. Again, back in the 80’s.
All three of my mutt’s need a bath. Desperately!! My pugs are easy. Although they act like they are being punished and going to be sent to the salt mines. Our american bulldog is afraid of her shadow. She shakes like she’s shittin peach pits when it rains, for crips sake. The last bath she had, the shower curtain was torn, the bathroom was completely drenched and there were water droplets on the friggin mirrors in the livingroom from her shaking the water off. It takes two of us to bath her. I hold her head so she won’t shake and my boyfriend does the rest. I think it would be easier to wait for warmer weather and just hose her off outside and sham-wow her afterwards.
I was at that show in the Burgh. Killer show. I was exhausted, Can not imagine the Boss performing that show night after night and not needing a coma-like rest for about 6 weeks afterward.
I was at Tiger Stadium with my Dad about ’78 or so, and saw an elderly drunk nearly kill himself. The guy looked like a real wino who had somehow snuck into the stadium, and he had been lurching around the area all night, waving his arms and shouting out random ballplayers’ names, regardless of who was at bat. Towards the 7th inning, he started to stagger up the steps while chanting “Let’s Go Tigers.” When he got to the top near the base of the scoreboard, he finally lost his balance and somersaulted his way all the way down to the fence, smacking his head at least twice on the benches as he rolled. He had built up so much speed, I was sure he would tumble right over the edge. But he didn’t. In fact, he stood up immediately and wandered away like nothing had happened. And except for a few laughs from the crowd, almost nobody reacted.
As for concerts, I don’t hit many big arena-type shows, but I did attend a Steve Earle concert which felt like it went on forever, mainly because Earle quit playing music and delivered a dissertation/lecture on the death penalty during the half-way point of the show…
I was at an inter-league baseball game in 1997 or 1998 at Comiskey, White Sox vs. Cubs.
I was in the nose bleeds way up behind first base, the seats so far up that you can’t even see half the field. Right behind us there was a beer cart in the concessions area. Later in the game after all the Cubs and Sox fans got good and liquored up a brawl started at the beer cart. It seems as though some White Sox fan cut in front of a bunch of Cubs fans because, “It was his house, not theirs.” I had crappy seats for the game but front row seats for the fight.
About half a dozen people were pushing and shoving and what have you. The one good punch I saw was when one guy got hit square in the jaw. I think it got dislocated or something because that ended the fight. The EMT’s had the guy sitting up on one of those emergency gurney’s and I remember the guys mouth looking crooked. They had to wheel him away from the crowd.
I have some public accidents, even though they’re a bit off the subject.
I was sitting in Hooter’s last year, having some beer and buffalo shrimp, and this guy a couple of tables over started moaning and slumped over, onto the floor. The waitresses put his legs up on a chair and put a rag over his face and started pouring water over it (water boarding?) The paramedics showed up and they were way to lax with everything, I thought. They stood outside and smoked cigs and shot the shit for at least 20 minutes. I have no idea what they were waiting on. I guess the guy had a heart attack, I’m not sure. It was just weird. I always feel uncomfortable, or queezy, when someone has a seizure or something around me.
I was at a high school football game and this guy got pushed out of bounds on the visiting side (no fence). He ran into the shitty ass bleachers and a shard of wood the size of a butcher knife came off the bleachers and stabbed him in the leg, right below the knee. I was sitting right there. He started rolling around in pain, and the giant fucking splinter actually broke off. I almost puked, mostly because I was laughing so hard.
The most frightened I’ve ever been when seeing a person get hurt at a show was when I was 13 years old at an Acid Bath show. It was in Lafayette, LA. It was in a club that could hold about 300 people.
A fight started up near the stage that drew the show to a stop. Some guy whipped out a knife and threatened to start stabbing some other guy. The, from behind the dude with the knife, a member of the security hit the knife man with a flashlight or a billy-club or something like that. Once knife guy went down the security guard and the guy who was being threatened start stomping the shit out of knife guy. This went on for several minutes. All the crowd was cheering to kill the guy. It wasn’t until a few members of the band and another security guy started yelling to cut it out and break the fight up, respectively, that the stomping stopped.
The security guard who broke guys up took knife dude by the arms and drug him out of the room. He was pretty pulped up and damaged looking. I don’t know what happened to him after that. I was unsettled for months after seeing that horrendous stomp down.
It sort of bothers me now even.
1. ZZTop concert in early 80’s in Charlotte. Drunk dude with no shirt on fell across our laps. We stood him up. He put both hands in the air, yelled out, “Raise Hell” and tumbled headfirst down the stairs to the bottom. He crawled over to the side at the bottom floor and I never saw him again.
2. KISS concert in Charlotte. Bitchy policewoman that looked just like Jane Curtain got hit in the head by a flying pizza box. It knocked her hat off. I laughed at her and got a dirty look.
As far as long shows go, Springsteen during “the River” tour lasted 6 hours.
I saw a guy fall onto the screen behind home plate at Yankee Stadium while chasing a foul ball. The crowd started the “Asshole” chant in his honor.
That’s awesome. It seems like every day I find a new reason to love New York.
.
at a braves at pirates game for my 8th grade sr trip we saw a beer vendor take a huge spill. We laughed because we were 8th graders but I think back and feel pretty bad about it.
Got Crossroads Road over the weekend. Started reading at the bar last night about 10:30 and as 5 AM I was at pg 178 (with a few breaks in between). Good read, and I feel like I already knew most of these people.
This is a story of minor injury, major funny (to me, anyway).
Early /mid 1990’s. Charles Town. Lollapalooza. I was in a band (who wasn’t), still in college, attending with the other two guys in my band plus a couple of other friends. We walked into the show- it was 95 degrees and dusty- during the set of Kim Deal’s Breeders. We was drunkened. Immediately, we laughed that the other college punks at the show were moshing. TO THE MUSIC OF THE FUCKIN BREEDERS! Apparently, the moshing idea had just reached wherever these kids were from.My house mate/bass player decided to enjoy some of this “moshing,” and proceeded to run, like a badass pro slam dancer, full speed into a crowd of kids.
He was immediately swallowed into the belly of the beast, a whirling dervish of testosterone-fueled mini-pansies of destruction and chaos. The Breeders were playing the almost anti-mosh anthem “No Aloha.” Me and my other house mate rushed to his rescue, ready to go to jail if need be. Our bassist was being mauled by Breeders fanatics. WTF? No worries- all of the sudden, bodies flew, and a gap opened like the Red Sea was parting, and out running and swinging came Dan the Man, bloody in the face and heaving great breaths of anger. His sunglasses were broken in half and sticking into the side of his nose. He was wearing a DIFFERENT baseball hat than he was wearing when this had started, and had THREE others- none his own- stuffed into his pants. Plus a pair of unbroken sunglasses in his pocket which also weren’t his. Foaming. Bleeding. Roaring. Laughing.
Me and Andy (guitarist) literally fell down laughing ourselves…
To this day we all nearly die laughing when we think of the day Danny was almost murdered by the Breeders before he saved the day by becoming a violent, slugging, moshing, drunken, bloody serial thief of hats and glasses.
Oh, and later that night, Billy Corgan threatened to remove the Pumpkins from the stage if “one more fucking water bottle” was thrown in his direction. After which one solitary totally cool concertgoer hit him square in the chest. With a water bottle. The Pumpkins Smashed on and completed the set.
Ummmm, 1994.
I is slow witted…
Once I was at a Rush concert when I see a flash of bright light just down the row from me. I look to my right and this guy had occasion to, ahem, light something and caught himself on fire! His friends put him out and he stayed for the rest of the show.
Reading CrR in a bar drinking a PBR wearing a shirt by thewvsr.
Is that too gay for jeff Kay?
Are you listening to CCR?
Actually Bowie. And just finished.
Saw a guy fall outa the upper deck at a Texas Rangers ballgame. Also the balcony collapsed at the Arcadia during a Circle Jerks show in 86
Watched a guy die at Wisconsin State Fair a couple years ago…while his chain-smoking wife sat next to him and worked the hell out of a 256-ounce Coke cup. I thought he was just a hefty guy taking a bit of a rest on the picnic bench, but then one of the undercover cops noticed him and suddenly there was a flurry of beefy guys in Hawaiian shirts (evidently there’s a “shirt theme of the day” for the undercover cops working State Fair – I noticed a slew of sports shirts on other days). The ambucart showed up, the real ambulance showed up, they pulled out the paddles and shocked him a couple times to no avail.
One of the newspaper subscription guys working the booth with me weaseled his way closer and overheard the wife say, “It’s no wonder, really – he’s got heart problems and emphysema.” Which is who *I* would want to spend 6 hours in 90 degree heat, 95 percent humidity with.
It was creepy seeing that woman standing there, while they worked on him, continuing to chain smoke and drink her Trough O’ Coke while watching impassively.
I believe an arena accident is what took out Maude Flander’s.
For myself, all I recall is streakers being tackled by keystone cops at football games and being made an example of after – such a crowd pleaser!!!
I used to wash my dog in the river – I know it’s not very environmentally friendly but it was the only chance I had, I tried it once in the tub and he made such a scene. He’d swim out for a stick, I’d shampoo him and throw the stick in again and again to rinse, then I put some fruity smelling leave in conditioner on him which I believe embarassed him when other dogs ran up for a sniff. Anytime after swimming he would wait until he got in the back of my SUV before doing the big shake. Wish there was a button i could have pushed to trigger it beforehand.
Jeff,
The dog bath story is the reason you are a great writer. That was pure gold. Love it! You could write a book full of those little stories and I would be first in line to buy it.
i agree
We just washed the Beast the other day. He’s a 135 lb pussy. Had to corner him in the yard to do it – had to cut off all of his escape routes because I can’t stop him – he’s bigger than me! IT’S A BATH NOT THE CHAIR for chrissakes! Thank gawd I only have to do that a cuppa two tree times a year.
Happy Tuesday, Surfers! (well, it’s Tuesday here now, anyway…)
there is a perfectly good reason that I take my Henry to the groomer. I hate the mess of a shaking wet dog.
I was at the Pink Floyd concert in Indianapolis when some asshat decided he could fly from the 3rd tier of the arena and bit it. i do not recall seeing anything out of the ordinary but was shocked when i read it in the news the next day. I was oblivious allthough clearly not as messed up as the man who thought he could fly.
I was at a Mets game and saw the same thing. Guy on the top tier decided to buy the farm in front of everyone exiting the stadium. He crashed through a fence. It was pretty horrific.
Another time we were at a Stones concert in Hartford and things went wrong from the very beginning. The worst though, my sister and cousin got up to get a drink and this big burly bastard came tumbling down from about 6 rows back and landed in my sister’s chair. If she had been standing there, she would have been killed. Another drunk asshole sprayed us with beer. It was awful. Hartford Civic Center won’t see my money again.
I’ve decided that if I want to off myself, I’m going to do it at a crowded karaoke bar. “Listen up people, pay attention, I’m only going to do this once!”
Then I’ll put the gun at the BACK of my head so that my brains go out all over the crowd.
http://www.favstocks.com/%E2%80%9Csorry-for-all-the-mess%E2%80%9D-oregon-audience-applauds-as-teen-commits-suicide-in-mistaken-belief-it-was-performance-art/1846567/
Saw the New Pornographers Saturday. Two hours of awesome.
I was at an Indians game a few years ago, when a guy in a wheel chair took a foul ball directly off his forehead. By the time the paramedics got a stretcher there, he had a goose egg on his head nearly the size of the baseball. Do I go directly to hell for laughing at the misfortune of the handicapped?
Yes, but hell’s got all the good bands, so you may well enjoy it there
I’m a little late catching up but I had to share on this one.
When I was in the 2nd or 3rd grade they took a couple bus loads of us kids to see the circus. About halfway through the high wire guy does a handstand and then starts doing those 360 circles.
I’m not sure if he slipped or if he intended to let go, but what I do know is he had no intention of overshooting the net.
They got him out of there pretty quickly and the nice clown told us he was fine and the show went on.
The next day we found out he died.
Nice to know you’re still kicking, Lefty. Long time no see.
.