March 12, 2006

The Road to Cosby

Warning: Totally non art-related post here.


Whew! Yesterday was the busiest (non-work) day I’ve had for quite a while. The morning was spent in a fairly leisurely fashion, sleeping in and then cuddling underneath the Big Acoustic Kitty for quite some time. (This was after the discovery that the Small Electric Kitty had gone on a hairball spree, but let us not revisit those events again.) Then it was off to lunch with my sweetie before spending a few hours playing with kitties volunteering, while The Amazing Husbandini went to visit with The Amazing Grandpa B.


Then, the fun began.


For Christmas, I’d gotten my darling husband tickets to the one-night-only Bill Cosby show at the performing arts center. We’d both grown up listening to “Coz”, and we’d been looking forward to this for the past couple of months. 3:30 came around, my shift ended, DH came to pick me up, and as I got in the car, the first words out of his mouth were, “Did you remember to get the tickets?”


Crap.


I’ll spare you the details, but it involved abandoning dinner reservations to book back home, check on Madame Barfs-A-Lot, change clothes, and then scramble to get in somewhere (without a reservation) for dinner. Dinner was actually quite lovely, and we eventually headed back downtown, this time armed with the tickets. Home free….we thought.


We got into the driveway to the parking garage at about 7:15. (The show started at 8:00.) By 7:35, we had…not moved an inch. I have two rants about our experience last night, and here is Rant #1:


Whomsoever was in charge of the parking and traffic control at the performing arts center last night should be taken out and shot.


We sat there.


And sat there.


And sat there.


And sat there some more.


Now, let me say that we’ve been there before. It’s not like we don’t know how to get to the parking structure or what to expect when we get there. Somebody had their head up their ass. Incoming traffic sat there for more than twenty minutes while out going traffic sort of dribbled out of the garage. God forbid it occur to anyone to stagger the ingressing and outgressing* traffic.


(*Yes, I know the correct word is “egressing”. Leave me alone.)


But, we did eventually get in, and lucked into a parking spot just a short walk from the doors. We got our tickets scanned and figured out where we were supposed to be, then decided that a quick bathroom break before seating began would be in order.


Apparently, this is where I committed a performing arts center faux pas. Or, to phrase it differently, here comes Rant #2:


To keep anyone from sneaking in, there were ushers posted outside all of the doors. To one of these ushers, I walked up and very politely inquired (after she had finished with the couple she was speaking with), “Pardon me, could you direct me to a restroom?” Yes, that was the phrase I used. I may have some shortcomings in regards to the social niceties, but my parents did teach me to ask a polite question, thank you very much.


This woman, who had two seconds earlier been sweet as pie regarding a question about the specific location of a pair of seats, crossed her arms, cut me a look out of the corner of her eye and said through, I kid you not, gritted teeth, “Down! Stairs!”


What the hell?


I thought about it. I really did. I came this close to tearing into that woman. But, I refrained. I said, “Thank you,” as politely as I could manage, (which is generally quite politely, even in such situations), collected my sweetie and went down the stairs to search out the bathroom for myself.


So, let’s review: Idiotic parking and traffic control, and bitch-on-wheels ushers. Considering how much money I spent on those tickets, I think it’s understandable that I was a mite pissed by the time we got in our seats.


But…the seats were good, the show was excellent, and thanks to Mr. Cosby, I now have a new favorite response to a comment that has always bugged me just a little. In a bit about his daughters cooking dishes for Thanksgiving dinner – one of which was candied yams and mushrooms (!) – he mentioned that his wife defended her daughter’s cooking with, “Well, at least she made an effort.” To which he replied, “Yeah, so did Jack the Ripper!”


Hee!


(Okay, maybe he’s done that bit before. It was new to me.)