I am now one of THOSE people

I love concerts. I have been going to them since I was 12 and they've always been the one thing I will plunk lots of cash down on. In fact, I have paid ridiculous amounts for tickets, $75/ticket to see the Pixies (worth every penny, I became a fan shortly before they broke up so I never was able to see them live), and nearly $300 US to see Morrissey at Royal Albert Hall in London, which was an absolutely amazing experience. Basically I discovered Morrissey was going to be performing in London while we were there. How could you miss that? So I paid 185 pounds or a little less than $300 on ebay for 2 tickets to see him. And as I attended all these concerts, I stayed till the bitter end, through one encore or 3, even once at the Violent Femmes concert at Numbers in Houston, hiding from my friends who wanted to leave to make curfew. Screw curfew, this is music man! But now I know I am an adult. I missed Beck's encore last night.

Beck played at the Backyard, which is no longer an idyllic, beautiful place in the middle of the hillcountry, but a hellish, crowded piece of fake country surrounded on all sides by a shopping center. A gigantic shopping center that no one apparently goes to because there were tons of free parking spots. But will the owners of this montrosity allow you to park there? Noooo, you have to wind around and around the parking lot, down a narrow gravel road, into a dirt parking lot that is very similiar to the old lot they had at the Backyard, but a lot further away. All told, from the main entrance to the parking lot to the front gate of the Backyard, it took us about an hour. AN HOUR! I was thoroughly annoyed, let me tell you. Then I couldn't even get a beer because the lines were outrageously long. But I digress.

I was talking about encores. So I figured that it would take us at least an hour to get back out of the lot after the show, and we had told our incredibly kind, wonderful, generous, great friends Travis and Ashley who were watching Stella ALONG WITH their own 8 month old son that we would be back about 11pm. I was not about to abuse their generosity by showing up at midnight or later to retrieve Stella, not to mention the fact that by then I would be milk-full and in pain, so I decided we would leave before the encore. Dude, I am doing that from now on! We were back to our car and out of there in no time at all, maybe 10 minutes, then back to reclaim the monkey by 5 till 11. Brilliant! I may never stay for an encore again. No lines, no having to pee/being super-thirsty waiting to leave, no cursing yourself or other drivers for choosing to go to the concert. It was fantastic! Now I know what I've been missing all these years. See? I'm getting old.