ruaidhri
08-22-2005, 07:45 PM
What a weekend I had! Americana at its best. On Saturday, Miller Brewing Company put on a big celebration of its 150th anniversary. They leased the huge baseball stadium in Milwaukee (Miller Park) and had a huge party. In the large parking lots adjacent to the stadium people parked their cars, pickups and vans, opened their trunks, hatches and tailgates, put charcoal broilers and lawn chairs next to their vehicles and consumed great amounts of food washed down by staggering amounts of good Miller Beer. At numerous locations on the several interlocked parking lots radio stations and cable companies set up small stages with live performances by local rock, country, rap, Latin, Jazz, blues and soul music bands. This celebration was totally open to the public and began at 1:30 in the afternoon.
At 5:00 PM the stadium opened its doors to over 35,000 invited guests to enjoy a free concert that included Robert Randolph & The Family Band, the Goo Goo Dolls and Bon Jovi. I had two free tickets right down in the lowest section of the stadium close to the field and right on the aisle. I offered the second ticket to my two sons to fight over. My younger son had a wedding he and his fiancé had to attend so my older son came with me. Obviously, we were very pleased with our seats. We could easily see the stage and the performers.
Shortly after we arrived two teenage girls (I suspect around 14 or 15) sat in front of us. From conversations one had with her mother I assume the mother had given the girls the good seats and was sitting in a higher level of seating, perhaps as a guest of another friend. Miller only gave two tickets to each individual. Although the tickets claimed they were non-transferable, two friends could give one set of tickets to someone else, which is how I believe the girls got those good seats.
Now that I’ve set up the scene, I’ll describe the events. First, consider that I am a 64 year old man. My son who is 25 does research and teaches at the University while studying for his Ph.D. Both of us are quite reserved and not at all demonstrative. We both enjoy music of all genres from classical to metal but we like to actually listen. Other than the two teenage girls, the people around us were not that different from ourselves.
The girls were both wearing the same thing. Conformity is another way of spelling comfort. Each had jeans that were so low on the waist that they had to constantly pull them back up or lose them altogether. Each also had on a black top that barely covered the waist with Bon Jovi printed on the back. Of course the top was low cut in the front.
While they were waiting a couple of hours for the shows to actually start, I can only describe the emotional state of the two girls as extreme excitement. They rarely actually sat in their seats. They were far too excited for that. No, they were up and down, spinning around, talking on the cell phones and screaming in joy in anticipation of who they were going to see. All in all it was quite amusing.
During this period before the show started it became obvious that all the older people that had been issued tickets in the lower sections were not at the event. People from the higher levels started to sneak down and take the vacant seats. These were decidedly younger and not quite so reserved people. A friend of the two girls in front of us joined them. She also appeared to be around 14 to 15 years old. Like the other two girls, she was wearing the same clothes, low cut jeans, and top. But, this girl had huge breasts that threatened to explode out of her top. To cap it off she had placed stickers on them which only served to further focus the eyes of the many young and old males in attendance.
Now, understand, there is no way I want to look at a 14 to 15 year old girl’s body as something of sexual interest. But, these three girls were so excited they were totally oblivious of how they were affecting many of the young (and not so young) people now around us. At one point, the well built girl bent over at the waist to pick up something in front of my son. Her ample breasts were dangling about 12 inches in front of his face. That, you can’t ignore. He turned to me and commented, “I’m going to hell.”
It didn’t take long. The drunken fools were aplenty especially at a celebration of a brewer’s 150th anniversary. A guy I’d guess to be in his 40’s hurried down to grab the vacant seat next to the buxom girl. He was creepy! Luckily, the girls recognized him as weird and stood in the aisle away from him. Meanwhile, the girls, now in the aisle were even better targets for the young guys in their 20’s who had either drunk too much beer or were simply too stupid to know or care that these were young girls they shouldn’t be messing with.
The first act was Robert Randolph & The Family Band. Wow! They made sounds with a guitar that bombarded us with notes that came from everywhere at the same time. Awesome, awesome, awesome is the only thing I can say. They were mostly instrumental with Robert Randolph identified by Rolling Stone Magazine as one of the top 100 guitarists in the world. I believe it. I truly enjoyed their performance. The younger people, including those in their 20’s, didn’t appear to really appreciate the band as much as I did. There was respectable applause but no real excitement.
Next, came the Goo Goo Dolls. Again, very talented but not as accomplished musicians as the lead band. The girls in front of us started to scream and jump up and down and the vultures descended putting their arms around the girls and attempting to dance with them in the aisle. I could see from the girls facial expressions that this was unexpected and undesired. They didn’t know how to stop it. They were uncomfortable with the hands and the attention but they were oh so excited by the music. There was one big guy that was getting way too familiar with one young girl that I could tell was attempting to escape. My son who is 6’3” and over 200 pounds, holds four black belts and who has had a lot of police and security training was about to stop him when the guy left the girl. She quickly took the opportunity to get out of the aisle.
Following the Goo Goo Dolls there was a short intermission waiting for Bon Jovi. I heard some guys behind me guessing at the girls’ ages saying they must be 18 or 19. Yeah, only if you squint real hard and don’t mind being called a pederast. Guys have got to stop letting a relatively small appendage think for them. The creepy guy in his 40’s that sat in the seat next to the buxom girl decided to leave and the girls reclaimed their seats. They were somewhat shook by the attention they received from the older men. While the men found them attractive it certainly was not reciprocated.
Then, Bon Jovi came on stage. The entire audience leapt to their feet and started to scream and sing along with him. Despite all the noise from the audience, the music was so loud that Bon Jovi could still be heard above the din. Now, understand, I am of a different generation. I was born in 1941 and grew up in the 40’s and 50’s. We didn’t need music quite so loud. We sat in our seats where everyone could see the stage not just the people in the very first row. Young girls screaming is not something new. The bobby soxers did it to Frank Sinatra in the 1940’s. Heck, my generation did it to Elvis in the 1950’s. But, this was the first time I personally experienced it. It hurt my ears. I mean it really hurt my ears. The girls in front of us were screaming so loudly and so shrilly that I had to turn my head to deflect the damage to my ear drums. Also, once on their feet, the audience stayed on their feet. I’m 5’ 8” tall. With everyone standing no one, except perhaps those over 6’ tall, could really see the stage anymore. We were forced to watch huge television screens of the performance that were placed high enough for everyone to see.
I don’t like standing in one spot for long periods of time. It hurts my back so I sat down. Now, I couldn’t even see the television screens. My son, to be kind to me I suppose, sat down with me. His reward was some 40 something woman’s butt banging him in the head as she jumped up and down waving her arms and singing along with the songs. I know the woman was enjoying herself and I’m not criticizing her for having a good time. I know I’m the odd one. I just didn’t belong.
Yes, I did enjoy the music. Yes, Bon Jovi is a very good artist and I can certainly see why he is a star. Regardless, with the screaming and the jumping up and down and the audience singing along I was very uncomfortable. I turned to my son and asked if he wouldn’t mind leaving. He didn’t mind. I do believe he would have stayed if I hadn’t been there but by this time we had been at the event for almost 9 hours. I was beat. My ears hurt. I couldn’t see the stage and I didn’t want to stand when I had a perfectly good seat that I would have been able to see everything had the people in front of me just sat down. So we left the stadium while Bon Jovi continued to sing. We walked to our car and easily escaped the lot and the area. This would have taken us an hour or more had we walked out with the crowd. We were home by 10:30 PM. My son left my house about 11:00 PM and was at his own apartment by 11:30 PM. Both of us were exhausted and slept well that night.
The following morning, I woke up late at about 7:00 AM. I remembered that it was the last day for the Dodge County Fair. My wife was from Dodge County. She grew up on a farm just outside of Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. I asked her if she wanted to go to the fair and of course she did. My younger son was going to be with his fiancé so he didn’t want to go along with us. My older son likes farms, farm equipment and the livestock shows so he agreed to go along. Now, this was a county fair. In the United States we have counties, which are political entities within the state. Smaller entities are cities, villages, towns and townships.
We took my car because it would be more comfortable. The Dodge County Fairgrounds are just outside of Beaver Dam, which is about an hours drive from Milwaukee. Dodge County is primarily farm country. As I wrote before, it’s where my wife grew up and went to High School. Of course we visited all the barns and saw all the cows, pigs, sheep, etc. That’s what my wife really enjoys. We also looked at the farm implements and the youth baking and craft exhibits. We watched the Demo Derby for awhile, which for the uninitiated is where Americans take old cars out on a track and smash them into each other. The last one moving on its own power wins. While walking around the fair, we came across the WTKM tent, which is a radio station from Hartford, WI (http://www.wtkm.com/) that is our local Polka station. My wife enjoys Polka music. So do I.
The WTKM tent had a small stage and was broadcasting live from the stage. A new group was preparing to take the stage. It consisted of a farmer, his wife and their eight children, four boys and four girls. The youngest child was 6 and the oldest 22. They sang and played primarily string instruments, including guitar, mandolin, banjo and fiddle (violin). They also played a piano, percussion and the harmonica. This was a real down home band. The girls all wore a white blouse with a long blue skirt and the boys work a colorful cowboy shirt with black jean, cowboy boots and cowboy hats. The family had home schooled all eight children, which Wisconsin permits. They primarily sang old time bible thumping I love Jesus music. Everybody remained sitting in their seats. No girls screamed. There was some quiet singing along and hand clapping in time to the music. This was a very different crowd from the Bon Jovi concert I attended just the day before. They were good. I enjoyed listening to them. The songs they sang with true emotion were very old and very good. You could tell it meant something to them.
I’m not a Christian although that is how I was raised. I went through much of my life as an agnostic, not knowing or really caring if there were a God. Now that I’m older I consider myself a Theist because I would like to believe that there is a God and all does not end with death. I recognize that religion and belief in God does play a very important role in many peoples lives. I still can’t identify one particular God but as I said I would like to believe so therefore I call myself a Theist. My son, who is an engineer and scientist, is, of course, far more certain that there is no God than I am that there isn’t.
Anyway, I digressed, which, considering that this is my editorial, as Azrael likes to call them, I can do whenever the hell I want. I certainly don’t subscribe to any religion, just the idea of it.
Altogether, we stayed at the county fair for about 3 hours and got back on the highway for home. At home my wife and I made steaks and salad and sweet corn for dinner. The meal was a great ending to the weekend. My son went back to his apartment in the city and my wife and I went to bed.
At 5:00 PM the stadium opened its doors to over 35,000 invited guests to enjoy a free concert that included Robert Randolph & The Family Band, the Goo Goo Dolls and Bon Jovi. I had two free tickets right down in the lowest section of the stadium close to the field and right on the aisle. I offered the second ticket to my two sons to fight over. My younger son had a wedding he and his fiancé had to attend so my older son came with me. Obviously, we were very pleased with our seats. We could easily see the stage and the performers.
Shortly after we arrived two teenage girls (I suspect around 14 or 15) sat in front of us. From conversations one had with her mother I assume the mother had given the girls the good seats and was sitting in a higher level of seating, perhaps as a guest of another friend. Miller only gave two tickets to each individual. Although the tickets claimed they were non-transferable, two friends could give one set of tickets to someone else, which is how I believe the girls got those good seats.
Now that I’ve set up the scene, I’ll describe the events. First, consider that I am a 64 year old man. My son who is 25 does research and teaches at the University while studying for his Ph.D. Both of us are quite reserved and not at all demonstrative. We both enjoy music of all genres from classical to metal but we like to actually listen. Other than the two teenage girls, the people around us were not that different from ourselves.
The girls were both wearing the same thing. Conformity is another way of spelling comfort. Each had jeans that were so low on the waist that they had to constantly pull them back up or lose them altogether. Each also had on a black top that barely covered the waist with Bon Jovi printed on the back. Of course the top was low cut in the front.
While they were waiting a couple of hours for the shows to actually start, I can only describe the emotional state of the two girls as extreme excitement. They rarely actually sat in their seats. They were far too excited for that. No, they were up and down, spinning around, talking on the cell phones and screaming in joy in anticipation of who they were going to see. All in all it was quite amusing.
During this period before the show started it became obvious that all the older people that had been issued tickets in the lower sections were not at the event. People from the higher levels started to sneak down and take the vacant seats. These were decidedly younger and not quite so reserved people. A friend of the two girls in front of us joined them. She also appeared to be around 14 to 15 years old. Like the other two girls, she was wearing the same clothes, low cut jeans, and top. But, this girl had huge breasts that threatened to explode out of her top. To cap it off she had placed stickers on them which only served to further focus the eyes of the many young and old males in attendance.
Now, understand, there is no way I want to look at a 14 to 15 year old girl’s body as something of sexual interest. But, these three girls were so excited they were totally oblivious of how they were affecting many of the young (and not so young) people now around us. At one point, the well built girl bent over at the waist to pick up something in front of my son. Her ample breasts were dangling about 12 inches in front of his face. That, you can’t ignore. He turned to me and commented, “I’m going to hell.”
It didn’t take long. The drunken fools were aplenty especially at a celebration of a brewer’s 150th anniversary. A guy I’d guess to be in his 40’s hurried down to grab the vacant seat next to the buxom girl. He was creepy! Luckily, the girls recognized him as weird and stood in the aisle away from him. Meanwhile, the girls, now in the aisle were even better targets for the young guys in their 20’s who had either drunk too much beer or were simply too stupid to know or care that these were young girls they shouldn’t be messing with.
The first act was Robert Randolph & The Family Band. Wow! They made sounds with a guitar that bombarded us with notes that came from everywhere at the same time. Awesome, awesome, awesome is the only thing I can say. They were mostly instrumental with Robert Randolph identified by Rolling Stone Magazine as one of the top 100 guitarists in the world. I believe it. I truly enjoyed their performance. The younger people, including those in their 20’s, didn’t appear to really appreciate the band as much as I did. There was respectable applause but no real excitement.
Next, came the Goo Goo Dolls. Again, very talented but not as accomplished musicians as the lead band. The girls in front of us started to scream and jump up and down and the vultures descended putting their arms around the girls and attempting to dance with them in the aisle. I could see from the girls facial expressions that this was unexpected and undesired. They didn’t know how to stop it. They were uncomfortable with the hands and the attention but they were oh so excited by the music. There was one big guy that was getting way too familiar with one young girl that I could tell was attempting to escape. My son who is 6’3” and over 200 pounds, holds four black belts and who has had a lot of police and security training was about to stop him when the guy left the girl. She quickly took the opportunity to get out of the aisle.
Following the Goo Goo Dolls there was a short intermission waiting for Bon Jovi. I heard some guys behind me guessing at the girls’ ages saying they must be 18 or 19. Yeah, only if you squint real hard and don’t mind being called a pederast. Guys have got to stop letting a relatively small appendage think for them. The creepy guy in his 40’s that sat in the seat next to the buxom girl decided to leave and the girls reclaimed their seats. They were somewhat shook by the attention they received from the older men. While the men found them attractive it certainly was not reciprocated.
Then, Bon Jovi came on stage. The entire audience leapt to their feet and started to scream and sing along with him. Despite all the noise from the audience, the music was so loud that Bon Jovi could still be heard above the din. Now, understand, I am of a different generation. I was born in 1941 and grew up in the 40’s and 50’s. We didn’t need music quite so loud. We sat in our seats where everyone could see the stage not just the people in the very first row. Young girls screaming is not something new. The bobby soxers did it to Frank Sinatra in the 1940’s. Heck, my generation did it to Elvis in the 1950’s. But, this was the first time I personally experienced it. It hurt my ears. I mean it really hurt my ears. The girls in front of us were screaming so loudly and so shrilly that I had to turn my head to deflect the damage to my ear drums. Also, once on their feet, the audience stayed on their feet. I’m 5’ 8” tall. With everyone standing no one, except perhaps those over 6’ tall, could really see the stage anymore. We were forced to watch huge television screens of the performance that were placed high enough for everyone to see.
I don’t like standing in one spot for long periods of time. It hurts my back so I sat down. Now, I couldn’t even see the television screens. My son, to be kind to me I suppose, sat down with me. His reward was some 40 something woman’s butt banging him in the head as she jumped up and down waving her arms and singing along with the songs. I know the woman was enjoying herself and I’m not criticizing her for having a good time. I know I’m the odd one. I just didn’t belong.
Yes, I did enjoy the music. Yes, Bon Jovi is a very good artist and I can certainly see why he is a star. Regardless, with the screaming and the jumping up and down and the audience singing along I was very uncomfortable. I turned to my son and asked if he wouldn’t mind leaving. He didn’t mind. I do believe he would have stayed if I hadn’t been there but by this time we had been at the event for almost 9 hours. I was beat. My ears hurt. I couldn’t see the stage and I didn’t want to stand when I had a perfectly good seat that I would have been able to see everything had the people in front of me just sat down. So we left the stadium while Bon Jovi continued to sing. We walked to our car and easily escaped the lot and the area. This would have taken us an hour or more had we walked out with the crowd. We were home by 10:30 PM. My son left my house about 11:00 PM and was at his own apartment by 11:30 PM. Both of us were exhausted and slept well that night.
The following morning, I woke up late at about 7:00 AM. I remembered that it was the last day for the Dodge County Fair. My wife was from Dodge County. She grew up on a farm just outside of Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. I asked her if she wanted to go to the fair and of course she did. My younger son was going to be with his fiancé so he didn’t want to go along with us. My older son likes farms, farm equipment and the livestock shows so he agreed to go along. Now, this was a county fair. In the United States we have counties, which are political entities within the state. Smaller entities are cities, villages, towns and townships.
We took my car because it would be more comfortable. The Dodge County Fairgrounds are just outside of Beaver Dam, which is about an hours drive from Milwaukee. Dodge County is primarily farm country. As I wrote before, it’s where my wife grew up and went to High School. Of course we visited all the barns and saw all the cows, pigs, sheep, etc. That’s what my wife really enjoys. We also looked at the farm implements and the youth baking and craft exhibits. We watched the Demo Derby for awhile, which for the uninitiated is where Americans take old cars out on a track and smash them into each other. The last one moving on its own power wins. While walking around the fair, we came across the WTKM tent, which is a radio station from Hartford, WI (http://www.wtkm.com/) that is our local Polka station. My wife enjoys Polka music. So do I.
The WTKM tent had a small stage and was broadcasting live from the stage. A new group was preparing to take the stage. It consisted of a farmer, his wife and their eight children, four boys and four girls. The youngest child was 6 and the oldest 22. They sang and played primarily string instruments, including guitar, mandolin, banjo and fiddle (violin). They also played a piano, percussion and the harmonica. This was a real down home band. The girls all wore a white blouse with a long blue skirt and the boys work a colorful cowboy shirt with black jean, cowboy boots and cowboy hats. The family had home schooled all eight children, which Wisconsin permits. They primarily sang old time bible thumping I love Jesus music. Everybody remained sitting in their seats. No girls screamed. There was some quiet singing along and hand clapping in time to the music. This was a very different crowd from the Bon Jovi concert I attended just the day before. They were good. I enjoyed listening to them. The songs they sang with true emotion were very old and very good. You could tell it meant something to them.
I’m not a Christian although that is how I was raised. I went through much of my life as an agnostic, not knowing or really caring if there were a God. Now that I’m older I consider myself a Theist because I would like to believe that there is a God and all does not end with death. I recognize that religion and belief in God does play a very important role in many peoples lives. I still can’t identify one particular God but as I said I would like to believe so therefore I call myself a Theist. My son, who is an engineer and scientist, is, of course, far more certain that there is no God than I am that there isn’t.
Anyway, I digressed, which, considering that this is my editorial, as Azrael likes to call them, I can do whenever the hell I want. I certainly don’t subscribe to any religion, just the idea of it.
Altogether, we stayed at the county fair for about 3 hours and got back on the highway for home. At home my wife and I made steaks and salad and sweet corn for dinner. The meal was a great ending to the weekend. My son went back to his apartment in the city and my wife and I went to bed.