Missing the show II

Skipping ahead a little for narrative coherence: Saturday night after Mary Anne's shindig, Kam and I tried again to go to Too Much Light; we left M's place around 10:50 p.m., and got to the Neo-Futurarium around 11:10, and found parking immediately. Excellent! Twenty minutes 'til showtime! But when we got to the door, we found that they were sold out. Argh.

Turns out they often sell out on Saturday nights, generally right about when they open the doors at 11 p.m. (They had sold out the night before, too, which made me feel less bad about having been late on Friday night; even if we'd shown up 20 minutes earlier, we'd still have missed it.) The nice guy at the door told us that occasionally audience members leave before the show starts, or the ticket-sellers miscount the number of people, so we stood and chatted with him for 20 minutes to see if any seats opened up, but alas, they remained sold out. I attempted to get his sympathy by telling him that we were there from California, and Kam told him we'd tried to see it the night before, and I said that although I had seen the show twice in Chicago and once in New York, Kam had never seen it at all, but he was immune to our wiles. I bought two extra copies of the CD to give people. Kam chatted with the guy about OMSI; he knew someone who worked there, I think.

One person who showed up after we did and was sad to miss the show jokingly offered the door guy a hundred dollars to let him in; the door guy said he would let him in for a hundred dollars, then turned to us and said he would let us in for a hundred dollars. I was actually tempted—I'm unlikely to get another chance to see the show anytime soon, given that I've only been to Chicago about four times in the past fifteen years (and some day I'll tell y'all about my misadventure during my very first Chicago visit, on a stopover on a cross-country train trip during college)—but the door guy had previously noted that the fire marshal frowned on their former habit of letting people sit in the aisles, and I didn't know if he was serious about the hundred dollars anyway. Knowing those wacky Neo-Futurists, he probably was. They probably would've sat us on the stage or something.

I thought about mentioning that I'd first seen the show in 1991. (I was in Chicago attending WorldCon, but I wasn't enjoying it much. My friend Karen A, who was putting me up for the weekend, took me to Too Much Light, and it was by far the high point of the weekend.) But there didn't seem to be any point in mentioning that, other than to brag, so I didn't.

Anyway. Very disappointing to miss the show two nights in a row, especially given that it involved over an hour of total driving time (round trip) each night. Next time I'm in Chicago on a weekend, I'll try and show up by 10 p.m. (which is when the door guy said people start lining up on a Saturday night) to be sure not to miss it.

And if any of you find yourselves in Chicago of a weekend evening, you could do lots worse than attend the show. If you're dubious, let me know and I'll play you a few tracks from the CD to give you an idea of whether you might like it.

One Response to “Missing the show II”

  1. JeremyT

    Man, I love TMLMTBGB. One of these days, I’m going to get back to Chicago, or check them out in NYC.

    reply

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