2001-05-06 - 9:31 p.m.
I�m so glad I�m not a teenager nowadays. The Rocket from the Crypt show Friday night was all ages (or 16 and up, actually--I doubt there is such an animal as an all-ages show in San Diego anymore) and I think the club must have imported riot police from Quebec City to work security. If you wanted to drink you had to go down this looong hallway into the bar next door because of some city ordinance that says you can�t even sell alcohol in the same room where minors are present. And everyone was patted down going in. (Except me, of course. I�ve never been searched going into a concert--I could have had a nerve-gas canister poking out from under the seat of my chair and they would have waved me right on through). You�d have thought Wu-Tang Clan was playing.
Things loosened up after the show started, and the over-21s took it all in stride with a fair number of smart-ass remarks. What bugged me was how the kids reacted--or didn�t, to be exact. In my day, security overkill was the quickest and surest way to guarantee trouble at a show. There�s nothing that brings out a teenager�s inner asshole faster than some back-end-of-the-bell-curve goon ordering him around. But these kids didn�t do a damn thing. Nada. Not even a hearty oink-oink-oink in the police�s direction.
Twenty years of Baby on Board signs, school metal detectors, random locker searches and draconian juvenile-sentencing laws, and this is the result: a generation so docile that even the punks act like Boy Scouts. I weep for the future. Won�t somebody PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN???
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That aside, the show rocked. The fact that just two days prior I was in intensive care with an IV tube in my arm made it that much more enjoyable. Whenever I come out of the hospital I�m always driven to do something fun, insane and borderline dangerous at the first opportunity. It�s life-affirming.
I also got to tell Rocket's sax player about my kidney stone, and it made him scream. That alone was worth the price of admission.
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Here�s hoping I can get back on track now. Two weeks� worth of fever, clogged sinuses, diarrhea and dehydration put all my plans for world domination on hold, pretty much. Does Lex Luthor get anything productive done when he�s squirting his guts out every five minutes? I highly doubt it.
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