O, were it not for the awful awful girl next to me. She was about twenty, scruffy, vagabond clothes, dirty hair, which in and of itself, who cares? She was sitting behind us with her mother, and they were loudly talking during Mindy Smith. Unfortunately, the three seats to my left were unfilled (sold out show!) so she actually CLIMBED over the seats and plopped down next to me, continuing her conversation with her mother, again, loudly, over her shoulder. When John came on, they were ecstatic, screaming and trying to talk to him, a call and response situation where he would say something and they would answer, as though he’d asked them for an opinion. The mother clapped during every song, out of rhythm, and they both sang along, trying to harmonize, badly. I am a good giver of the icy stare, but they were impervious to me. Near the end of the show, the people in front of us left, and so Scruffy did some above the head leg stretches, then put her booted feet on the back of the chair, just grazing the shoulder of the poor man who sat there. They of course made many disparaging remarks about the crowd, how boring we were and how “civilized,” they scoffed. I was just dumbstruck, literally, by the narcissim. They were interjecting themselves into the show. In that customary space where the artist leaves the stage and the crowd is demanding an encore, she climbed up on the chair and I was sending ESP to her that said “If you fall on me, I’m going to sue you into oblivion.” And I don’t even believe in lawsuits! Then he came back to the stage. And while John was singing, in the final song, about the “world’s largest shovel,” he was being drowned out by the world’s largest asshole.

If you like John Prine, there’s a great 90 minute movie here, as he’s interviewed by Ted Kooser at the Library of Congress.

One good thing is my Netflix subscription. Here are the movies coming to my house for the weekend. Volver, with Penelope Cruz; Marie Antoinette; Dreamland. Dreamland is about this: