If there is one thing you can count on at the Fair, it is the honesty and integrity of the sea of humanity in which you are enveloped. Today’s newspaper has a letter from a citizen whose wallet was lost and later returned with all its contents. I have twice written of such instances; how my own wallet was dropped and returned to me and how the Rose Guy found and returned a little girl’s wallet.
Generally it is my experience that people are good, will do the right thing, and follow the golden rule.
But, then there are the occasional dicks who ruin the experience of sharing the world with our fellow man. These dicks or pricks or assholes or jackasses or whatever orifice you wish to affix their identities, have the tendency to show up unannounced, blending in with us normal folks, and then when your guard is down, they shove one right up your ass.
Yesterday, the Dick of the Day Award goes to the New York State Trooper working the audience at stage left.
The 4:00 p.m. concert at Chevy Court featured Grand Funk Railroad. This band, which has been making music for as long as I have been listening to music, came rocketing out onto stage and hit the audience dead on with intense playing and hard soulful music.
People were on their feet; singing and dancing to the tunes known since childhood. Unlike most of the Chevy Court performances, this was not a tribute band (Bowser), it was not a band comprised of children of the original (4 Tops) nor was the band so burned out they had no energy (Joan Jett). This Grand Funkin band really proved they still got it after all these years. The drum solos were among the best ever and the guitarist found every screaming note. For more than an hour and a half, I enjoyed some of the best music at the Fair since Ted Nugent played last year. Certainly, Grand Funk played to the largest and loudest audience I have seen thus far.
Like every concert you have ever been to, at the conclusion of the set, the band waves goodbye and walks off the stage. The crowd does the cheering thing and the band comes back and plays at least one more song. This is not news to anybody who has ever been to a concert.
Apparently, it was news to one woman standing next to me. When the band walked off stage and everybody else was cheering and yelling, I sat down a moment and said “wait for it, they will be back.” The woman turned to me and said they wouldn’t because the parade was starting soon. Had she been able to see through my glasses, she would have seen the eye-roll. Instead I just smiled and was vindicated a moment later by the band’s return to the stage.
This time, the song played everybody knew. “We’re an American Band.” The whole crowd was on its feet … standing on tables and benches … as they had been the entire concert.
The came the buzzkill.
While the musicians were pounding out one of their biggest hits, and while I was singing and doing my world famous air guitar playing, with my head banging, and me singing horribly … along with everybody else … our Dick of the Day made his appearance.
Of all the people at all the tables in the entirety of Chevy Court, a tiny testicled trooper … walks up to me and tells me to “get off my table”. I make sure he sees me surveying the crowd and the people massed on tables and benches everywhere, INCLUDING my own table. “Get down”, he says. I complied; both in mind and in body and listened to the last notes of the song frozen in the mud and glaring at the cop. All I could see was the back of the head of the person STANDING on the table in front me. Before I could turn around and get that little dick’s picture to show you, he managed to disappear. Coward better hide.
But, to quote all the new friends I made in that one moment, …
“What a fucking asshole.”
