From: DDuBray@cox.net   
      
   Sunday night (8/13), my wife and I took another couple to see the MM/SD show   
   at Nissan Pavilion, Bristow (Suburban DC), VA.  The venue did the obligatory   
   'upgrade' of lawn seats for $10 each because the house was somewhat sparse.   
   Eventually, the shed mostly filled up for the show and the lawn was   
   scattered with a few remaining squatters who were afraid to pay the fee.   
   We'd reserved near row seats in the house on day-of-sale.  It was my fourth   
   show, my wife's third and the guest couple's first.  It was too confusing,   
   however, for the Washington Post which did not deign us with a review.   
   Instead, we got Bela Fleck at Wolf Trap...who doesn't appear every THREE   
   years...he comes every year now.  Go figure.   
      
   The bad vibe at the VA show is a kissin' cousin of the same issue that   
   cropped up in the earlier thread that developed from the VERY KIND posting   
   of audio clips from the Atlanta show -- a wonderful act by a patron of this   
   group.  A wonderful act of altruism, indeed.  Much more so than, say, 1)   
   buzzsawing into the thread with bad manners and limited vocabulary to rant   
   and rave about an apparent inability to work through the modest effort   
   necessary to obtain aforementioned sound clips and 2) not taking any effort   
   whatsoever to have the FORETHOUGHT or PRESENCE OF MIND to collect clips of   
   their own, and STOP PLAYING ONLINE POKER long enough to follow through and   
   post them as a nice response for the group.  But, as Steve Martin once said,   
   "Noooooooooo", we had to SPOIL IT FOR EVERYONE!   
      
   Ahem.   
      
   Where was I?  Of course, in Virginia.  I was there to listen to the   
   show...which brings me back to...   
      
   THE BAD VIBE   
      
   In our section, from some wonderful seats, we got to witness the witless   
   dumbass who had apparently consumed Cuervo Gold all afternoon as some sort   
   of twisted paean to Walt/Don.  In this drunken stupor, he proceeded to stand   
   up throughout the show, clueless to the fact that his fat ass with its   
   ill-fitting clothing was blocking the view of everyone behind him.  Perhaps   
   he didn't see everyone.  Understandable, because of the wraparound cheap   
   sunglasses that he must have thought made him look 40 pounds thinner or   
   helped to conceal his by-now-all-too-obvious bloodshot eyes even in   
   now-darkness of the venue.  Perhaps the shades had an impact on his hearing   
   or helped conceal that he in many ways stood as yet another example of how   
   Natural Selection so frequently fails us all.  Throughout the show this   
   dolt, his fawning date, and another inebriated couple with them decided that   
   their concert attendance required them to yammer on to each other through   
   most every song, particularly ones with more limited dynamic range and   
   nuance.  They were yammering when the sat, yammering when they stood,   
   yammering when one stood and others sat -- it was atrocious.  The people   
   directly behind us were yammering too, especially during MM...but they   
   finally settled down.  The real wild boors, however, were two rows in front   
   and in full bloom; no amount of brilliance from the stage or coaxing from   
   the crowd could shake sense into them.   
      
   Finally, during "Deacon Blues", the older gentleman behind them had a belly   
   full of it.  And who could blame him?  He asked them to please shut the hell   
   up...to which fat sunglasses guy responded by turning around and grabbing at   
   the man's face and holding onto his ear.  In most jurisdictions, I think,   
   that's assault.  The guy who was easily 30 years older than this rube could   
   hold his own and didn't need my help but at least one witness to this got   
   up, flagged down security and complained.  Meanwhile the verbal jousting   
   started anew.  Older guy told him to turn around and listen to the show.   
   Fat Bastard turned around and grabbed at him again.   
      
   At this point, a yellow coated security guard slowly came up the aisle and   
   motioned for Mr. Ray Ban Pork Rind to come with him. He was taken around the   
   apron off stage right.  This was taken as an affront by  fawning date gal,   
   who spun around and hurled insults at the older gentleman (and his lovely   
   wife) who had been assaulted.  Then, with a stream of   
   drunken-prom-date-after-the-eventual-dumping tears in her eyes, she too went   
   off to join the backstage melee.  (Don was singing: "...I want a name when I   
   lose...they call Alabama the 'Crimson Tide'...")  It was incredibly stupid   
   but not nearly as stupid as security's decision to send these people BACK TO   
   THEIR ORIGINAL SEATS for the rest of the show.  Now, emboldened, they spent   
   the rest of the entire night standing, with arms frequently entwined,   
   blocking the view of everyone behind them, exchanging knowing glances with   
   each other and sometimes turning and smiling at the seated, older couple now   
   staring straight ahead.  Then, there were the grotesque soul-kisses that   
   harkened back to the lizards in Hunter Thompson's blurred vision of a Las   
   Vegas cocktail lounge.  Others seated nearby this scene seemed so horrified   
   by the turn of events that, late in the show, they offered the older couple   
   now-vacant seats with a clearer view, which they politely declined.   
      
   The moral of the story?  As Bruce Cockburn once sang: "If I had a rocket   
   launcher, some son-of-a-bitch would die."  More precisely, I wish that after   
   the show Sunday night, those four assholes drove their car off I-66 into a   
   ditch and were eaten by fire ants.   
      
   How can people not get the vibe of this music and just ride the torpedo into   
   the waves?  What do they possibly have to say that any one of them or us   
   needs to hear above the sound of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen playing   
   live -- an occurrence that, these days, is about as rare and fine as it   
   gets?   
      
   Woody Allen says in the new movie, 'Scoop', that he was raised in the Hebrew   
   'persuasion' but "converted to narcissism".  It's a hilarious line but it   
   seems to be truer than you'd think.   
      
   Well, there it is.  I feel better now.   
      
   It was a great show.  Really.  Wish you could have been there...but not   
   exactly where I was sitting.   
      
   Dan   
      
   P.S.: Loved Don's bright white Adidas with the head-to-toe black outfit.   
   They were bad sneakers, all right.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)