Ding Dong to the Rescue

I can't even tell you how happy I am that Hostess went back to wrapping Ding Dongs in foil. I don't know when they did it, but I remember how upsetting it was when they switched from foil to plastic wrap. I curse plastic wrap. Everything delicious should be wrapped in foil. Gum. Cadbury Creme Eggs. The aforementioned Ding Dongs. And that's everything I can think of right now.

So, after I heard that Hostess was doing the bankruptcy thing two months ago or so (my word, I've been eating Ding Dongs for TWO MONTHS?), I thought I'd do them a favor and buy some Ding Dongs.

I curse that delicious mistake.

Yesterday was hard. Corbet yelled a lot. His naps were too short. I didn't get much sleep the previous night. Turns out he has a cold. But anyway, here's how I coped: 

Beautiful hockey-puck, foil-wrapped dessert.

 Empty foil means full belly.

p.s. No. I know. These photos are A-MAZ-ING. I'm not a professional.

Facing Down a Salesperson (and Winning!)

Back in November I sat on my favorite glasses and broke them into a million pieces. The frames were made by Smith before they started doing their own prescription line (I do believe). I had prescription lenses put in and I wore them for seven years or so. I got a lot of compliments. The first time I met Stoker I was wearing them and the only reason I caught his eye was the glasses and my attractive behind.

Kidding of course. There were other reasons.

Smith has a great warranty, but I think I was beyond the time frame, or at least, the damage to the frames was obviously NOT from a manufacturer's defect (unless the manufacturer had used macaroni and paste to construct the frames). So I couldn't send them in and expect much. Or I could, and Smith would probably do something about it, but then I'd feel guilty the rest of my life for taking advantage of a company when I KNEW it was my fault.

To make matters worse, the pair of glasses I got the year before were total crap. I guess it's my fault for being such a sucker half the time, because everything special the eye place (Optique on West End in Nashville) could do to my glasses, they did. Because I let them. Because they're so forceful and they read you a list of what they're going to do and you can't follow what they're saying and then at the end of the list, they say, "Ok, the amount you owe is X dollars." To avoid looking stupid, after all, you've just spent two hours picking out the glasses and wasting their time (you're made to feel; or perhaps you just suffer from a hyper-awareness-guilt), you nod mutely and hand over your debit card.

So the last pair sucked. I got the special aerospace engineered jet-aircraft high tech poly-whatsit plastic/glass so the lenses were real thin and light and didn't turn my ears saggy from all that heavy glass/plastic weighing them down all day. I got the type of glasses with no nose-pinching things just so I don't end up with a skeletal bridge when I take the glasses off. You know what I'm talking about. The only problem is, those glasses with no nose-pinchers are harder to adjust.

That was why the last pair sucked. Thin, high-tech lenses and no nose pinchers. "We'll adjust your glasses any time, for free." You just have to make the time to go in and have them adjusted. Headache city. In short the last pair was too light and fell off my face all the time, and they were crooked even though I had them adjusted the day I picked them up.

I lost that pair. Before I sat on the other pair. So I was wearing the very first glasses I ever owned. A fifteen year old Tommy Hilfiger job (that was back when Tommy was the bomb) or something like that, which, as it happens, also always managed to fall off my face. I have a very small face, I guess.

In November I went in to get new glasses. I spent a few hours picking out what I wanted, then sat down to do business and the lady told me I couldn't get a new pair until January according to my insurance, unless I wanted to shell out $500. No, I didn't want that. But if I'd been AWARE that I didn't get another pair in 2010, I would have canceled the stupid insurance and reinstated it the next year, because I'm devious like that. Who knows if it would have worked. (They pillage me, I pillage them. That's how it works, right?)

January rolls around. I return to the eye place. They pull out the glasses I'd picked before and I sit down to pay for them and talk business. The chicklet rattles off the list of charges fast enough to make an auctioneer jealous, and finishes up with, "The total is $190."

I stare at her for a second, blinking rapidly. "So wait, I owe you $190?"

"Yes, that's correct."

"What exactly is my insurance paying for?"

She sets the paper down and shows me. This paper would have been helpful to see before she read me the charges.

Essentially, my insurance is paying hardly anything and the frames I'd picked out were priced at some astronomical amount. $400 or something like that. And they weren't even the Dolce Gabana kind with diamonds and crap on the stems! In fact, I have no idea what brand they were! Nothing spectacular. Nothing to provoke envy in my enemies. Certainly not worth $400.

"Hmm," I say, "The last pair I bought, seems like my insurance covered more and I ended up paying hardly anything out of pocket."

"Maybe those frames were on sale or they were on the list of frames that your insurance paid more of."

"Where are the frames my insurance will pay more of?" I ask, feeling fleeced. 

She stands and walks to a drawer in a side-table and yanks the drawer out. This is obviously the drawer of cast offs and birth-control glasses and I laugh, remarking as much. To which she only smiles, politely. Originally, when I bought my first pair there, the so-called sale-frames were on display, like the other glasses. They must have learned in the interim that to discourage customers from getting the cheaper frames, they needed some psychological warfare. It almost worked on me. Almost.

I found a decent enough pair that wasn't too repulsive and returned to the desk. "I'll get these."

She goes over the charges with me, again. I still owe too much (for my taste. I've got a lot of expenses this year, you know). The thing that's costing so much is the super-high-tech-weightless polywog crap lenses. So I say, "I don't think I want the special lenses. I mean, what do they even do?"

"They make it so that when someone is looking at you or talking to you and you have your glasses on, they see your eyes instead of their reflection." And it does something with computers. And somehow takes the glare off cars. So, basically, I'm being charged $75 or whatnot for polarized lenses. So other people can see my glorious eyes and not their ugly face. I bought a pair of polarized sunglasses from REI for $20 recently. Something doesn't seem right here.

"I don't want that. Don't do that to my lenses," I say.

"But that puts your lenses under warranty. If you don't do it, they're not under warranty. If you break your lenses today or tomorrow, for example, then you'll have to pay $65 to get new lenses." 

"So you're saying that I can pay either $75 now for a warranty, or $65 should my lenses happen to break?" I'm not making this up. Stoker pointed out that with the $75 you do get the better lens, but still! It's absurd. And in any case, my insurance was only going to pay a $20 of that.

The girl did try to convince me a bit more to get the better lenses, but I won! It was a hard fought victory, too. Those people have a way of making you feel like you don't understand how stupid you're being for not getting the most expensive crap in the world.

Stoker claims I had a deer-in-the-headlights look about me during the battle, but he understood why. When someone talks to you with auctioneer speed and then wants to take your money, there's a level of discomfort. I might have fallen for it two years ago. But I'm older now. Older and wiser.



p.s. Even if I manage to break my lenses next week, I will still be the winner.

Velvet Horses

What does every home need these days? If you said a giant horse painting done on a velvet canvas, you're correct.

On Saturday, I made a whimsical purchase of this horse. I wish it were a real horse and that I lived in northern Utah where I could simply gallop into the mountains on a moment's notice a la The Man from Snowy River, and shout things like, "Heeyahh! Heeyahh!" and crack a whip as I round up wild mustangs.

You can't tell from the picture, but the horse painting is too large for my house. It's pretty enormous, and I'm embarrassed now that I bought it. I couldn't sleep Saturday night because of buyer's remorse. I don't even have a room suitable for it. If the walls in my house were bigger than five-by-five (that's a stupid joke, no one could live in a house with five-by-five walls), like maybe if I had a room with vaulted ceilings, then maybe the velvet horse wouldn't send the proportions in my house spiraling into hobbit sizes. As it is, I'm going to put it in the "office" and proportions be damned!

Why? Because. Everyone needs a horse like this one. Look at the eye for heaven's sake. Look at it! Does it not melt you? Do you not find yourself thinking, "My! What a beautiful horse! Is it a horse? It's as magical as a unicorn!" This magical quality is only enhanced by the velvet nature of the canvas. And the frame! The frame bears no description. It's beyond words.

It would look fantastic in a cabin. Someday I'll get a cabin by Bear Lake in northern Utah or somewhere in southern Idaho in the mountains, and this horse will be the crowning piece in the cabin. It will look fantastic over a fireplace. Next to some tack. A tack display. Every cabin needs a tack display, just like every castle needs an armor display.

Anyway. For about two hours I felt like I was very cool and into vintage 70s and 80s stuff as I browsed the store where I made the velvet-horse purchase. I fancied myself chic enough to wear a pink women's sport coat from the 70s, which I found idly hanging on a clothing rack. It's awesome and clearly homemade, however, now that I wasted my money on it, I'm having second thoughts. I'm not cool enough to wear this pink jacket. From past posts, my readers know that I have issues with pink. I struggle with it. I can't wear it. I don't like pink at all. It's the wimpiest color in the entire spectrum of color. Even orange is better than pink.

But the jacket. The jacket is awesome.

I just need to work on my attitude, that's all.

______________________________________________

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Pink

Pink. Purse.

Purchased: Carl Sandburg "Honey and Salt"

Tell me this cover is irresistible and I'll say "I know." Because I know. This cover is a beautiful example of 1960s style. What a gem.

It's an artifact of a time period and I'm in love. The bookstore owner asked me why I didn't get the collected works because it was right there on the shelf next to it and I said because I like this one better. I like the little paperbacks that say things on them like "50¢ slightly higher in Canada." And that feature cutting edge graphic art. Can you see the butterfly in that line drawing? It's too good to be true.

This collection has a poem that goes like this:

"Love is a door we shall open together."
So they told each other under the moon
One evening when the smell of leaf mould
And the beginnings of roses and potatoes
Came on a wind.

Late in the hours of that evening
They looked long at the moon and called it
A silver button, a copper coin, a bronze wafer,
A plaque of gold, a vanished diadem,
A brass hat dripping from deep waters.

"People like us,
us two,
We own the moon."

That poem is called "Moon Rondeau" and it was the first one I read when I found the book on the shelf. I bought it for the poem, which I really enjoyed, but also because the cover is so great. I paid four dollars for it. Can you believe that? I could have saved three-fifty if I'd been alive in the sixties and bought it then. THAT'S why they'll never invent time machines. Because then you can get around inflation and the government won't have anything to do with that.

One more thing. This collection features a poem with these line that I'm sure are famous, somehow:

Love is a deep and a dark and a lonely
and you take it deep take it dark
and take it with a lonely winding.

From the poem "Love Is a Deep and a Dark and a Lonely." Beautiful. For some reason, I think it's true. Love IS a deep and dark and lonely. But not just dark and lonely, A dark and A lonely. They're things that deserve articles because they're not just adjectives here. They're nouns.

Sometimes language baffles me and so I'm not entirely sure that adjectives can't take articles. Usually they don't. Usually articles only go with nouns. I think. Don't quote me on that. This isn't a grammar blog, this is more or less a bull shit blog. As in full of b.s.

So anyway. I really like buying books.



p.s. Not all poems in this collection are love poems. I just happened to find both of them first off because I'm a love magnet.

p.p.s. HEY! When did they take the cents symbol OFF the keyboard? Oh, right, when anything less than a dollar became an artifact of inflation. Or maybe it's never been around on keyboards? I don't remember.

Belated Birthday Post

Last Thursday I turned thirty. I could go on and on about the woes of aging and how strange it feels to say, "I'm thirty," and all that, but what's the point? This isn't a Hallmark card, or Shoebox Greeting or whatever brand of greeting card it is out there perpetuating all the hilarious jokes about getting old. In fact, why am I even talking about it?

Birthdays are still great, even when you get old. Honestly, I'm not really SAD about aging, if for no other reason than that the older I get, the better the presents get. Okay, so not really every year, just this year, otherwise by the time I am thirty-five I should have a Hummer . . . or a tank (the kind with cannons on it, not the ones seen driving around American towns doubling as Cadillac Escalades or some other "family" vehicle). And what's with all the crap about the economy being bad? I'm still spending money. Loads of it.

Last year I got a Trek 4300 for my birthday. That's a mountain bike. This year I got a Scott S40, that's a road bike. A picture:



What's with the bikes, you might ask. Simple. I haven't ruled out nuclear holocaust and when the shit is coming down, how else am I going to get around quickly? The rest of you will be in wheelchairs. I'll be gliding along on all my bikes.

Really I just wanted to say "the shit's coming down." For my sensitive readers out there, I've given up on you. The only sensitive people I know stopped reading my blog long ago. I'm too crass, I guess.*

I almost got a Sledgehammer this year, but instead I just put pegs on my Trek.

Seriously, who knew Scott was out there making bikes? Ski poles, ski goggles . . . and bikes. I guess I'm WAY behind the times.



Special thanks to my lover for working all the long hours just to put bread on the table and a bike in my back pocket (it weighs so little, you see). And also thanks to all the relatives who kindly sent me money (even though I KNOW you don't read my blog [secretly YOU are the sensitive readers I was talking about]). This is where it went: the bike and bike accoutrements. Happy birthday.



*Understatement is funny because it's understated. No one in their right mind could presume to think that the word "shit" is offensive. Understatement is a form of exaggeration, and we all know exaggeration is funnier than hell.

Buying a House in Nashville

We finally had to get rid of our old realtor (pronounced "real-tor," not "real-la-tor," as my mother pointed out to me once upon a time. I've never been able to forget it). In some ways we thought we should just buy a house without a realtor. But a couple music guys (a songwriter, a session player, and another engineer) couldn't stop insisting on their realtor.

By "get rid of our old realtor," I mean get out of our contract with her, not, as it sounds, bump her off (is that a phrase? It sounds so weird right now. Perhaps because I'm so caffeined up, my heart's got the pedal to the metal -- my arteries are about to explode) or send her to sleep with the fishes. Again, I'm not very versed in mob-talk. We don't have HBO and I've only seen the Godfather twice, and it's been awhile since I played the Xbox game.

Hopefully you get the point. Nothing happened other than a phone call between the old realtor and Stoker, wherein Stoker said, "It's just not working for us." And she said, "You WORK too much! You shouldn't be buying a house!" At least she finally told us what she was REALLY thinking.

Stoker and I are the kind of people who stay. That's one of the reasons we got married. We both found something we liked and we ran with it. I figure this correlates nicely with how we are in working relationships, friendships, and when we find the right house. We've already put two offers on houses.

As my many fans will recall, the first offer didn't pan out because the house was missing a portion of its foundation. The second offer wasn't accepted. For that we partially blame our former realtor and I could explain why and you'd agree with me. But I haven't the time and you haven't the attention span for it.

We're first time homebuyers. Part of the reason we sought a realtor was because we needed someone to hold our hands through the process.

I'm still not entirely comfortable writing about people on my blog without their consent (unless you happen to be a friend or family, in which case, bad luck, you happen to be a friend or family member). So, I'm not going to mention our old realtor's name, but I'm also not comfortable using our NEW realtor's name, even though at the moment I only have good things to say about him (those music guys were right). We've put an offer on another house already.

The new realtor is professional yet polite. When we went to look at this house we're trying to buy right now, it could have been a very awkward thing because the current owners were there. But the new realtor (a name would make this so much easier, but . . . still not comfortable) totally put both Stoker and me, AND the current owners at ease. I'm pretty sure they were at ease, though I didn't ask them. After we looked around he thanked them and asked some pretty damn pertinent questions, and he phrased them in a diplomatic way. I wouldn't have dared asked the current owners anything. I always feel awkward about that.

By the time we left it was dark, but it was still 100 degrees outside. The three of us stood on the road by our cars and talked. It was so damn hot. This new realtor had the courtesy to say, "Let's talk in my car and I'll turn on the air conditioner." !!! I couldn't believe it. Another cool thing was that he didn't put on airs about his success. He showed up at the house in a Mercedes.

Stoker and I aren't high rollers, you know. We have good credit, but we have student loans, so we're not buying a super sweet house. I know that there are salesmen out there who are very calculated about that stuff -- they don't want to appear too successful or not successful enough. Perhaps this realtor is that slimy, but so far he hasn't felt sleazy, plus he's been more willing to work for us than the realtor we stopped working with.

The house inspection is on Thursday. Both of us are nervous about it. You know, it's such a difficult process, buying a house. It helps immensely to have a realtor you like. Then you feel good about that 3% they're going to walk away with. After the crap experience with that other realtor, it's like, "3%? You should have 4%!" Ha ha. Yeah right. But you know what I mean.

And Then The Mother Raccoon Shreds the Insulation, Making a Nest for Her Babies . . .

I really think a family of raccoons lived in the house at some point. We almost bought it. We came this close to buying it. Then we had it inspected yesterday and we were lucky enough to get a thorough and honest inspector who charged a fortune, but can you really complain when he saves you from purchasing a former raccoon's nest? Do raccoons live in nests? Is it only rats who live in nests?

I know it was raccoons by the names of Angel and Sheila because those were the names written in the circuit breaker. They also seem to have operated a barber shop somewhere in the house. I imagine it was in the room with the black disco ceiling fan. Though it could have also been in the little room next to the closet and the master bathroom. I had thought there used to be a vanity in there. But now that I've put more of my deductive reasoning powers to work, it's occurred to me that one of the raccoons was a barber and he cut hair in the little room by the master bathroom. No vanity. Just a barber chair and maybe a mirror (both gone now, of course). Of all animals not in the homonoidea superfamily, the raccoon is the only one I can think of who could brandish clippers and a comb.

Angel and Sheila seem to have been fond of jury-rigging important household items like the water heater. They enjoyed storing their treasures in the ventilation ducts for later use, items such as nail files, crayons, and pogs. It was also extremely necessary that every room in the house be cable friendly, thus the six way cable splitter dangling from the house like a fly caught in a spider web.

Angel and Sheila also loved nestling in the insulation in the attic, or when it got too hot up there, down in the crawl space. The crawl space insulation was a little more tricky because first they had to rip it away from the air conditioning ducts. But that was actually convenient, as they could then tear a few holes in the duct and instantly cool the crawl space at the same time. And why have your dryer duct carry dryer heat and lint to the outside world when you could make another perfectly soft nest in the crawl space with all that heated lint by not connecting it to the dryer vent? For the winter of course. When the attic was too crowded.

The crawl space was the perfect spa for two raccoons.

Only raccoons would think a Lowe's emergency jack would really support a structure, when they realized their kitchen was sagging because it didn't have a finished foundation. And that was the biggest mistake of all. That was the real kicker. That's why we won't be buying that house. I could live with all the other crap. Rather, I could fix all that crap. But the sagging kitchen? No way.

To make a very long story short, I guess if you don't take care of your house while you're living in it, when you move out you realize you've been living like an animal. Or you never realize it and simply move on to the next house and destroy that one through neglect, too. It depends on your level of enlightenment. Do you collect crap and store it in the vents like a rat? Do you tear things apart and leave them a mess like a raccoon? Do you feel comfortable and cozy wallowing in your own filth like a pig? Or, are you more like a cat, bathing all the time?

So it's back to the drawing board for me and Stoker. In our defense, the house looked pretty good.

Pictures to come. Maybe. If I feel like it. If I get around to it.

Buying a House and Doing the Triathlon Thing: Hard Things are Fun

You know how you always plan on doing something but you never do it? I've been that way my whole life. I've been planning on going back to college to get a doctorate. I've been planning on finding a teaching job and getting my teaching license. I've been planning on becoming a big adventurer.

I'm finally doing two things that I've been planning on doing for a while. We're buying a house and I'm getting ready for my first triathlon. I know! I know! It's amazing that I'm actually doing something.

For some time now I've been using the excuse that I'm still settling after getting married and moving twice, and yeah, that's why I haven't been getting things done. It's been over two years since I got married and we've been in Nashville for nearly a year and a half. I'm not sure how long it takes to get used to big changes, but I've always been a late bloomer (my favorite book, as a child, was Leo the Late Bloomer. I'm not kidding. I had my mom read it to me over and over again. It was very short).

I have no evidence to back this up, but I think big changes are harder to adapt to the older a person gets. That's been true for me, at least. I think it's because you get more familiar with how shitty life is. Even if you're a very positive person, you have to admit that life is quite crappy. Yes, you DO have to look on the bright side. It's very hard not to ogle the dark side of things.

Anyway, I finally took the bull by the horns and said, basically, to hell with convention* and not having the best gear and not having an easy place to swim, I'm going to be a damn triathlete. A sexy triathlete. I don't know if triathletes are typically considered sexy, but I think fitness is good looking. Fitness and living healthy are the bright side of things. The dark side is not being healthy when you could be healthy. Like when you choose to drink and smoke and live a depressing, harsh life as though you have something to prove about your misery.

That's just my opinion and I've been there before. And in most things I'm not very good at being middle of the road. So if I'm not trying to be healthy, I'm sliding towards the dark side of things. That's the way it works for me and I guess you could call that human nature.

So on Wednesday I found a place to swim. It's kind of a long drive and it's going to cost money, but it's a great program. I found it through the Googles (as the cool kids are saying these days). They swim two to three times a week and there are two coaches. On Wednesday I nearly drowned a few times because I'm so unfit for the pool. I've been running and riding a lot, so I'm pretty good there. Surprisingly enough, running and riding strength don't translate much into swimming strength. I guess that's the beauty of the triathlon.

But it worked out great. The coach already gave me some tips that improved my stroke immensely. The thing for me is always getting my chin out of the water enough to not drown. And you know how it is, when you're worried you're not breathing well and you're running out of breath, the panic makes you breathe harder and instead of focusing on swimming well, you're struggling to calm yourself down and all that.

When I got out of the pool at the end of the session, I could barely lift myself up onto the pool edge. I was so worn out. But it felt awesome.

Buying a house is a different story. It feels great too, but it also feels stressful. A couple of times both Stoker and I were about to snap. I don't know what that means, really. Not that we were both about to go berserk, but that we were about to say, "Hell no. Let's not buy a house." The two of us know that it will be a good thing. All the stuff leading up to the closing is just a gauntlet, to see if you really really want to buy a house.

It's a very hard thing to do. What kills me is that there are all these people who have done it. And there are people who do it at the same time as breaking the law, like with stolen social security numbers and stuff (that's what I've heard, anyway). How the hell do they get through that? They must have no soul.



*I'm not sure what convention is in this case.

Mother's Day: Lush in Philadelphia and Spider-man 3

In Philadelphia, my sister and I found a really great store. Lush. They sell handmade soaps. I know handmade soaps are a huge thing these days. Everyone's doing it. In fact I've often considered starting my own handmade soap company and calling it something clever like Howling Moon Soaps. I'm not sure why that's clever. The moon doesn't howl, after all. That's why it's clever. Because the moon is howling back.

Anyway, Lush is the cleverest of all handmade soap companies. They have clever handwriting on their signs. They have a clever logo and they cleverly mold it into some of their products, like their bath bombs. They shape some of the foaming bath soaps into clever things, like stuff you'd find in a Candy Land game -- candy bars and kisses -- so you want to eat them. And the products are colorful too. It's a veritable landscape of candy, color, and cleverness. They have tubs of ocean salt for exfoliation, a lemony lotion that moisturizes, and the crème de la crème, their Jell-o shower gels. I mean, who would have thought? A Jell-O shower gel. Some of them even have flowers in the Jell-O, like a real Jell-O with pineapple or carrots (yes, some people put carrots in Jell-O. Crazies).

Obviously my mom's present was from Lush. How could we resist? And she loved it and went back to the store with us and spent $60 more.

On my return flight from Philly, I read Anthony Lane's review of Spider-Man 3. I've been getting the New Yorker for two years now (I used to get it in college, when I was more liberal-minded), but I never have time to read it and I'm not renewing the subscription when it runs out (I'm more moderate/conservative now and the New Yorker opinions suck). But I save all the issues as though I'm going to make time at some point in the future to read all the back issues. I see myself doing this and can't stop. Like, someday I might search through them to find David Denby's review of something I can finally get on video, read it, and then decide I don't want to see it after all. Like I did with the new Spiderman, except this time it's a recent issue and the movie is in the theater.

I won't be seeing the new Spiderman. Unless I'm going just to laugh at it. Lane and Denby kill me with their reviews, especially when they think the film is tripe (like the Britney Spears movie), and though I sometimes wonder which independent film executive producer paid them to make love to their new "indie" movie, the review of Spider-man 3 is probably one of my favorite reviews ever. The thing with Lane is that he often puts into words what the average movie-goer (me) can't express, but most certainly feels. Sometimes you see a movie and all you can say is "it sucked." Then you read a review by one of the grouches from the New Yorker (Lane and Denby) and you feel as though you've found your new spokesperson. Those two are the only reason I have kept a subscription to the stupid magazine. It used to be for the poetry, but then I caught on that the poetry editor was incredibly biased.

Surcharge My Ass

I wanted to go to a show tonight. This band, Phoenix is playing. Some of you may have heard of them. A bunch of French young men who’ve gotten together to play what the young folks like to call the “rock n’roll.” Though I’ve heard some young people call it “electronic,” which I assume is like the rock n’roll. I have no idea why I’m talking like that. Forgive me. I have what I like to call a “minor migraine.” So I took about a million little brown pills, what I like to call Ibuprofen, to assuage the burning upper back pain and that fabulous dull headache. No really. I’m sorry, I’ll stop with the whole “I like to call it,” ‘they like to call it” bit.

So I go to the good ole’ Smith’s to buy some tickets. Advertised price on the website: $12 in advance, $15 day of show*. When I get there, I pull out my debit card, already to pay, knowing what I’m getting myself into and what to expect as far as price goes. I say to the girl in the spirit of hustle or be hustled, hoping she’ll sell them to me for $12 instead of stupid $15, “So what, how much are they anyway? $12?”

She says she doesn’t know, but looks it up on her ancient computer (so it could be wrong, really, because it’s so old and decrepit).

“Okay, actually it’s going to be $22.75.” She turns, looking a little frightened, because honestly, I’m ripped. I AM RIPPED. I work-out like, 3 times a week or something. Plus, she too realizes how absurd this price is.

“$22.75?!” I repeat, stupidly, like an annoying old lady with poor hearing, clutching her hat, gloves and handbag in arthritic hands, all hunched over. You can imagine me yelling something like, “Speak up, young lady!” But I don’t. In reality I look large and threatening. It’s my demeanor. I really project when I’m angry. “Are you serious? I just looked on your website and they were advertised for $12.”

“Did you look today? They sometimes go up the day of the show.” She’s projecting too, but projecting the innocent little Bambi deer-look. I almost feel bad for being so annoyed. And honestly, I haven’t been that rude. It’s not like I told her to go to hell and punched her out or something.

“Yes I looked today. Just a few minutes ago.”

To make a long, stupid story short. The price difference was because of the SURCHARGE. She explained that there was a $7.75 surcharge. So I told her "surcharge my ass" and "go to hell" and then I left. I don’t LOVE Phoenix, the band, that much. I like them. But not $22.75 much. I’d have to get two tickets, too, because I was obviously going to take my lover, Stoker**, with me. Also, it’s not like I have no experience with surcharges on concert tickets. I used to have to explain them when I worked at the Graywhale and we were a Ticketmaster outlet. But $7.75 is OUTRAGEOUS.

I’m telling you this hilarious, sad story because I’m calling for swift and sudden change in the concert ticket industry. How many shows can a person go to a month or a year if every ticket is already between $12 and $30 in addition to a surcharge? Like two, or something (and I’m not talking the $100 ticket prices for acts like Bob Dylan and David Bowie. These are small, indie-type acts. It’s a joke, not to mention, absurd). Most kids are in college anyway and we’re already dumping thousands of dollars into our music addictions. I have news for you, I am not made of money. Money does not grow on trees. My parents are not ATM machines. Stoker is not an ATM machine. My credit union’s ATM machine is not an ATM machine. I mean, does not give away free money. So I say someone should make one of those free online petitions to require that ticket outlets start listing the damn ticket prices with the surcharge already added in. No more of this false advertising.








*A $3 increase just because IT’S THE DAY OF THE SHOW? What? Why? Whose idea is this? Who do I have to speak to to get some service around here? I mean really people. Do they do this to increase sales so people will buy their tickets way in advance so the show is more likely to sell out? What’s going on? And speaking of, I’d say hours before the show should be considered ‘in advance.’ So whose definition of ‘advance’ are we going by, anyway?

**And yes, he’s afraid of my muscles.