Saturday, October 25, 2008

Can't Explain - Fresh Dung: A Night with The Who

I went to see The Who last night with my friend Amy. It was time. I mean, The Who - rock 'n' roll legends! Why did it take me all these years to check them out? I think my resistance to seeing them stemmed from the fact that I cannot stand the whole Tommy thing. Rock opera is not my favorite genre. However, after enjoying a Who tribute band at the Beachcomber over the summer, I realized how many Who songs I actually really do love. Substitute, My Generation, Baba O'Reilly. Really, there are so many greats.

The show was at the Garden, formerly known as the Boston Garden, home of the Boston Bruins and the Boston Celtics. I'd been there in its heyday to see the Barnum and Bailey circus as a child, and even a Stanley Cup game way back when hockey tickets were affordable. The place has some history.

Our seats were way up in the balcony. Wayyyyy up. The higher we climbed, the more fearful we became of falling to our death. We finally got to our seats and while we were so far up, our view was great. In fact, it was quite a relaxing area, full of old timers and families. Very nice.

So, the concert opened with Who Are You and the crowd went wild. I began to get very excited and a little weepy, knowing that we were seeing true rock gods. Roger Daltry's voice was like butter. Pete Townsend was flailing windmill-style on his guitar. It was very powerful. And then it hit me...

...no, we won't go there yet. First, I need to explain that I have a very sensitive sense of smell. It is both a blessing and a curse. The aroma of marijuana was everywhere along with a few currents of cigarette smoke, the latter of which irritated me. Anyway, the band went into a few more hits, and as the first few bars of My Generation filled the air, a waft of fresh human dung filled my nostrils.

I mentioned this to Amy and she tried to tell me that someone probably just had gas. "No," I told her. "I can recognize the difference between flatulence and human feces." Again, she tried to reassure me that one of these fathers probably ate a Nathan's hot dog and drank a few Guinesses and maybe his system wasn't handling it well. Again, I begged to differ. Suddenly the stickiness on the floor beneath my boots and the chair that I was sitting on started to freak me out. I tried not to breathe in too deeply but the smell would just not go away. Finally, I looked around me and there it was - a smattering of something behind my seat that had the appearance of, well, poop. Needless to see I was appalled and disgusted. My only guess is that someone did not feel like making the trip back down the 100 steps to the restroom so he or she (come on, you know it was a guy) decided to lay cable right there in the balcony. Ahhh, humans.

2 comments:

Carolyn said...

That is an excellent story. Man, that's disgusting. I don't think The Who would approve.

Spanky McCloud said...

WTF? Jesus would not approve.