Because summer time is concert time, here is a list of six of the worst people you will see at concerts this summer. If you are one of these people, please either die or get such bizarre taste in music that I will never have to see you again.
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1. Shirtless Bro
*Please note that Shirtless Dude and Shirtless Bro, though different, are both addressed here.
This is a guy who feels, regardless of the temperature, that wearing no shirt is the best way to enjoy musics. Why, long after dark, someone would need to remove a shirt is unclear. There are certain situations that are inappropriate for shirtlessness. Rather than trying to categorize them all, I’ll just give you a couple references.
-If you are using a belt to hold up your pants or shorts, you are clearly not swimming and should not be shirtless.
-If you are wearing shoes you should not be shirtless.
-If you are enjoying beers that are not in some sort of contraption to keep them out of the water, you should not be shirtless.
-If you are wearing a baseball cap backwards, you should not be alive or shirtless.
Buddy, I know it’s really warm outdoors at 10 PM, but I think you’re just going to have to learn to deal with that level of heat. If that’s too much, what else are you doing shirtless? Sometimes it heats up the kitchen to make pasta. Are you taking off your shirt to make spaghetti or, in your case, Ravioli-O’s?
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2. Ms. Night on the Town
Yes, we all LOVE your outfit. Why you chose to wear it here is mind-boggling, but yes, it’s very nice. I want to reassure you that only the really good guys are appreciating it, and the fact that your “nice” equals most people’s “revealing” has gone totally unnoticed. Um, also, adults should not be wearing glitter on their FACES. Ever. Ever ever ever.
Ms. Night on the Town goes through a metamorphosis during the night where she transforms from a bitch into a gilttery pile of drunken vomit on legs. The timeline, in phrases, goes something like this:
9 PM: “Let’s have ALL the drinks there is!”
10PM: “This is the best night ever! Woo! Did I mention the ranking of this night already?”
10:30PM: “God! Becky is such a bitch!” *sobbing* “I mean, it’s just like, God!”
11:50 PM: “I have about ten minutes to attach myself to a clingy friend who gets some sick pleasure out of taking care of me when I’m far too wasted because I made a bad decision again.”
I’m not saying don’t have a good time. Believe me, if it wasn’t for booze I wouldn’t have had any good times. At all! But you need to learn your limits. And by that I don’t mean how many you can tolerate and still remain upright while hoisted out of a room by two friends. I mean, figure out how many it is before you puke or start crying, and then do less than that. Like, three less.
I know you are going through some rough times, Girl at Red Rocks who was kneeling in the middle of the goddamn road so that nobody could get by, but just because you’re going through some shit doesn’t mean I won’t go through the front of your skull with my bumper.
Wear jeans, drink a little less, and leave your baggage back in your step dad’s shed where it belongs.
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3. Smelly Guy
This guy? Again? How does this guy go to all concerts? And you will find him no matter where you are. I suspect that you could go to a Celine Dion concert and somehow sit next to a kid in a faded black metal t-shirt who smells like he’s been smoking brisket in his toilet for eight weeks.
Maybe the thing that’s so frustrating about this particular breed is that it seems so avoidable. All it takes is a stick of Old Spice. This DOES go along with my theory that, along with condoms and motorcycles, deodorant should be provided to all humans for free. But that’s no excuse for not spending the three bucks now.
Smelly dudes also never have friends. You never see their friends anyway. Probably because if they had friends, one would say something. Maybe this is my way of saying, Reggie, you fucking stink, man. Toilet Brisket City.
I understand that some people just smell more than others, sort of how some people are taller and some people are good at complaining via blog. But there’s a difference between the dude who is trying his best to fight his natural musk and the guy who has just given up. I would never say this in any other context to anyone even if it was the thing that convinced my son to pull a shotgun from his mouth, but Don’t Give Up!
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4. Phone Slave
Yes, I know your phone can do some amazing things. But here are a couple things it cannot do:
-It cannot make me understand what you are hearing when you call me and then hold it up in the air at a packed concert venue. Do people do this to you? You get a bizarre phone call at 11 PM on a Tuesday, and when you pick up it’s just white noise that sounds like the background layers from a Stone Temple Pilots album? Stop calling me. I know it’s my favorite song, but it sounds like complete dogshit.
-Your phone, when lit up, cannot simulate the flame of a lighter. Fire is cool, fire is great, and fire evokes feeling. An electronic screen can’t match that. And yes, I am aware there is an iPhone app that displays a zippo lighter. That’s fucking worse. How about next time, instead of buying a t-shirt after the show you just buy a JPEG of a t-shirt?
-Finally, your phone cannot solve your communication issues as your issues go far deeper than the lines of communication. I would like to tell a brief story from last week’s concert:
A guy is in front of me in line while I go to buy 2 hot dogs (fuck you for judging me before I even typed “and nachos”). When he gets to the front of the line he doesn’t ask for beer or dogs or the beloved hot pretzel. He asks the lady behind the counter if she has a phone charger he can use. When she reasonably says no to this very unreasonable request, he asks what kind of phone she has, as if she was referring to the compatibility issue and not the fact that putting your phone behind the counter with total strangers who are just trying to make cash handing out bags of popcorn is insane. His final plea was something like, “I’m basically breaking up with my girlfriend right now and I could really use a charge.” Fuck you! Break up with your dumb girlfriend at home. Stop bothering people with your phone. If you’re breaking up with your girlfriend, what are you even doing here you stupid piece of shit? Maybe if you spent a little less time worrying about the status of your phone and a little more time working on your relationship your girlfriend would at least wait until after the concert to break up with you via text message.
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5. Dad
Ugh, sucks to be you. You’re the guy who is here with his teenage daughter at a show that you don’t really even understand. I wish I could muster more hate for you here, but the really sad part is that I hate you because you make me afraid of a possible future, standing in a terrible leather jacket while a band that I can’t ever name properly bangs away at tunes that I try to get into but ultimately fail. Fuck my future life.
I’ll never forget the concert where there was a dad and a group of teenage girls standing near the stage, right on the edge of the mosh pit. Granted, there were some pretty annoying bros whose idea of moshing is double-handed shoving someone as hard as they can right in the back, but this dad thought he was transported into thunderdome. He threw himself in front of the teens and, looking like Dennis Franz fighting off giant Hot Pockets in the dreams I bet he has, shoved the bros with all his anger. And between every song he approached a different member of security to point out the problem, which was only a problem because teen girls who aren’t ready to mosh shouldn’t be anywhere people are moshing. The security guards did everything from shrug to showing a painful wince at the fact that this guy was requesting someone be thrown out for doing something that everyone was doing. That poor, poor, motherfucker.
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6. Anyone and Everyone Who Works at the Venue
This is the worst crew of all. Let me run through some personal incidents:
Door guy: All he had to do was take the tickets. 2 papers. One with the number 2 on it, meaning it was a receipt for two people, and the other was a single pass. How this doesn’t add up to three is something that I can’t explain to you more than a couple of ways. 2 and 1 is three. Yes, I know there are only two papers, but you see here that one of them counts for two people. I understand that only equals two, but that’s why there is also this second piece of paper which accounts for the third person. Your entire job is to count and you can’t make it to three!? What an asshole!
Bartender: First off, fuck the economic situations that have resulted in you thinking you should be tipped for opening a Miller High Life tallboy. I tip for everything, but that’s the most mindless, least stylistic and skillful thing you could do. Also, thanks for being real concerned about my safety. You don’t have any problem with me double-fisting all goddamn night, but when there’s only an hour left of the concert you start shutting down? Do the math on that one. I’m not processing 4 beers an hour, so how does this get me home safe. Idiots.
Security: Bottom of the goddamn barrel. Let me ask you this, security ace from Red Rocks who accused me of climbing the wall to see 311 (are you fucking nuts? I wouldn’t climb over the back of a couch to see them!) for no real reason: When you said my shoes looked like I was walking through the tall grass, what exactly does that mean? What do shoes that have gone through tall grass look like? Exactly like regular shoes? Gee, I guess I can see how you would make that mistake then. But you know what? Thanks for keeping us all safe. That’s really appreciated. I felt very safe while a toothless hillbilly examined my ticket with a flashlight in a dark path on the side of a mountain.
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Thus concludes this weeks 6 List. If you have topics that annoy, intrigue or [third word] you, give us a holler.