Boy, am I pooped today. We went to the Eric Clapton concert last night. This is the second time in this century that I've seen Eric. Maybe I'm getting jaded, but it didn't seem to have as much energy as previous concerts. Or maybe it's me -- at least we were able to get out of the parking lot before one in the morning, unlike last time when we went to see Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (now *there* was a concert! yikes, those guys can still rock it after all these years!) Anyway, we sat and waited to get out of the parking lot for about an hour (no exaggeration)...

Last night was memorable because of the exploding glass. We were sitting there in our seats and Eric had just launched into Pretending. It was a tad too loud, but hey, good way to kick off a concert. Then WHAM BOOM something exploded above us. Glass shards came showering down. Luckily it was tempered glass, so the odds of injury were small, but it was still startling. I had glass pieces about 1/4" big in my hair, my clothes ...

I was luckily holding my booze at the time, so no glass got into my plastic cup. That would have been a travesty since it took me almost thirty minutes standing in line to get that #*(@ mediocre drink. By the time I got to the head of the line, I made it a double. It was vastly overpriced but they've got you over a barrel, as it were.

So there we are, rocking with Eric and glass comes down. Then throughout the next two songs we got to see Our Security Guys at work. Someone notified them that a floodlight had blown above us (or *something* blew). A bunch of rather overweight guards came to our section, peered up at the lights, then the emergency crews came and mimed to us 'Anybody hurt? Anybody need first aid?' (I say 'mimed' since Eric was still playing full blast). Then the poor cleaning guy had to come and sweep up all the glass off the steps, since folks were trying to walk up and down the steps, crunching on glass all the way.

We had a front row seat to all this since we were seated mid-way in the section, in the aisle (section 109 of the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, in case you care to look it up).

Well, the whole thing gave me a great idea. Look for "Murder at the Rock Concert" sometime soon. See, our heroine is scanning the crowds with her binoculars and sees something suspicious -- what looks like two men fighting in the rafters, up near the lighting booth. Suddenly the light above her is shattered. She alerts Security, trying to get them to go up and look. By the time she makes anyone believe her, the murderer ....

Okay, that's enough. You get the idea 8)

J