I’m Gettin’ Old…….and Crabby

One of the ways I can tell I am getting older is my annoyance with younger people.  This was extremely evident to me this past Saturday night.  As you may have already read, Leblanc, La Hermana, Michael TD, and I went to the Will Hoge/Jason Isbell show at the Cannery that night.  It was a very good show, but I think I would have enjoyed it so much more had there not been so many younger people there.  It was an 18 and over show and was the second Will Hoge show I had been to….the first was at the Exit/In and was largely populated by what appeared to be Vanderbilt students.  So anyway, there were many things these younger folks did to lessen my enjoyment of the show…..both directly and indirectly.

First off, a hate how younger people (especially those who recently turned 21) go out of their way to basically say, “Hey, look at me!  I’m out drinking alcohol……in public!!!”  Everywhere I looked there were young folks dancing around with their beer bottles or hoisting them in the air or using them as a pretend microphone to sing into.  Here’s a tip for you guys:  No one is jealous or thinks you are cool, except maybe the 18- to 20-year-olds in the crowd.  Everyone else has pretty much been there and done that…..and to many of us, it’s pretty old hat.

The second thing kind of goes hand-in-hand with the first…..and doesn’t necessarily just include younger people.  People who go out to shows and get so wasted that they lose control of their bodies were in abundance the other night.  Leblanc has already documented the instance of the girl dancing around wildly, flailing her arms and carelessly hitting unsuspecting men in the ding-ding.  There was also the crazy-haired guy in the front row who stumbled passed us during the show smelling as if he had soiled himself and the guy in the suit who claimed to have gone to high school with Will Hoge who got so enthusiastic about seeing Will play that he almost fell on and crushed the afore-mentioned ding-ding smacking girl.  I saw some of these same folks at the Exxon station on Broadway after the show and I hoped to God they weren’t driving themselves home.

OK, next point and this one also probably applies more to the younger folks than the older ones, but I don’t know.  People, please, when an artist is up on stage singing a quiet, soulful song with all their heart, please shut the hell up.  The buzz of conversation made it impossible to hear opening act Dawn Landes’s ballads but I just thought that was because she was the opening act and nobody was familiar with her music, but sadly, no.  Even when Will was performing one of his slower tunes I could barely hear him for all of the yakking.  That is so disrespectful and I am really impressed that Dawn or Will didn’t stop in mid song to yell, “Hey, y’all shut the f&*# up, I am trying to sing here!!!!”  I know I would have.

My annoyance with all of this is probably pretty normal and in another ten years I’ll probably be posting about how people in their early 30s really just get on my last damned nerve and it’ll continue on until I’m complaining about those damned 80-year-olds when I’m 94.  Hopefully I’ll make it that long so I can find out for sure.