The following was taken directly from my email to
Vicki, someone I hold near and dear.
Why I woke up early Saturday: 40 Acres Fest. It's a big, big organizational fair where every student org comes out, sets up a booth and does stuff. Some give away food. Some sell it. TGA played Guitar Hero and drew a big crowd all day long. JA drew Sharpie tattoos on people and drew cute girls all day long. I was already sunburned and tired, and then... IT happened.
Little Richard. His free concert on campus. The. Most. Awful. Thing. Ever.
Most people who I know know who Little Richard is, so I'll assume you do too. After all, you are a person with a life and everything. It's important to note that he's old. Roughly 75. Lots of legendary musicians reach this ripe old age and are content with their lives and who they are, and they're a joy to merely be in the same room with. Jazz musicians are a great example of this.
Little Richard, however, is not one of these people. He is a rather angry old man. He, in fact, stopped early in his concert to complain about the piano, which was indeed rather out of tune. The mic was hot while he launched into a 10-minute tirade about bad pianos coming from Indiana and threatening to never come here again. It was funny at first, and then just turned awkward. Awkward, like "daddy beats mommy at the dinner table" awkward. After a grueling 10 minutes - during all of which my TGA guys just started making fun of the situation, if only to ease the tension - the band FINALLY smarted up and started improving a blues tune. By this point, Richard sat atop a travel case and started to play an electric keyboard. Once the real concert restarted, in mid-song Richard asked Walter (his PA, it would seem) for a 7-up. Again, the mic was hot. His only positive interactions with the audience were the questions, "Are you havin' a good time?" and "Am I still pretty?" - both of which drew obligatory cheers, and I mean obligatory after the 20th time he asked the same question.
Senility. It kills - but never quick enough.
It also became apparent that Little Richard is a commercial whore - he was happy to mention his doing commercials for food, and that Disney asked him to voice Santa Claus in a movie (wtf??), and that he dislikes the Internet because he doesn't get paid for the videos of him that people put online.
This would ultimately become the final nail in the coffin for this travesty of the concert. He played "Tooty Fruity" - the song that made him a legend back in the early 50's. Probably the song that most of us came to hear.
HE STOPPED THE SONG. STOPPED IT. BEFORE IT WAS OVER.
He did this to call out a girl in the front row who was holding up a camera, and proceeded to spend 5 minutes accusing her of bootlegging "my show, my entire catalog, my life's work." In the words of one of my TGA guys, "I'm done, I'm going to get drunk." I agreed.
Why I woke up early on Sunday: Thesis Symposium. Dear God, I'm glad you missed it for your timeshare-sellers' convention. It was to be an 8 minute speech followed by 4 minutes of Q&A. Rough. It quickly became apparent that I wrote about 25 minutes' worth of speech, so I had to cut myself dramatically short. Given my pre-existing nervousness about giving this particular speech on a less-than-stellar night of sleep, this made me panic. At the very least, I can thank my lucky stars that the question askers were on my side (they proceeded to ask me about the PowerPoint slides I hadn't covered) and Domjan gave me an awesome grade anyway, because in her words I had shown that I had prepared.
Note: Vicki doesn't really sell timeshares. Inside joke.
