So, I'd been looking forward to the concert ever since it was first announced and we bought tickets. Originally it was going to be all three of us. Bryan and I were obviously not going to miss it, but I was surprised when Stacie said she wouldn't mind going along if it wouldn't make Bryan uncomfortable. You know, being seen out in public with the parents seems to be a real issue around here, as I assume it is the same with a lot of 17 year olds. She said she wanted to go because it would be something different. She hadn't been to a show like this before and I guess we kind of absorbed her into the camp of Sigur Ros fans by playing their music in the car so much while she drove. So I thought that was pretty cool and Bryan was okay with it. When he gave me his answer he said, "I'm not a little kid anymore, you know!" That was funny in it's own particular way and I had to try not to laugh.
The tickets went on sale in November, I think it was. For a concert that wasn't going to happen until early April. So yes, the wait was a long one. Surprisingly it didn't seem that way. I put it out of my head, didn't really think about it much until a few days beforehand.
Unforeseen scheduling issues came around and Bryan was unable to go. I know he was disappointed but oddly he didn't seem too shook up. Not nearly as shook up as I would have been. This meant we were stuck with a third ticket and nothing to do with it. I don't have any friends in these parts that are Sigur Ros fans and even if I did they would have to make plans for a Dallas trip we couldn't have helped them with. I wanted my daughter to come but I couldn't expect her to be able to find someone to watch the kids and scramble up a hotel room on what was relatively short notice. I put it up on Craigslist about a week and a half before the show but I've never used that service and for all I know the ad didn't even get published. There was the possibility of selling it at the show to anyone who was looking for a single ticket. I didn't feel comfortable selling it someone I'd have to sit next to for the entirety of the performance so I wasn't keen on that idea. As it turned out there wasn't anyone looking for a seat. Upon further deliberation I concluded that the $15 parking fee could have contributed to that situation. Who is going to pay $15 in hopes of getting a ticket? We wound up eating the $50 we paid for it. I chose to look at it in two ways. Number one, the wife would have an empty seat next to her which would be more comfortable. And number two, I figured even if we cut it in half and added it to the regular ticket price, $75 was still a really, really good price to pay for such an essential concert.
We left early Sunday morning with a reservation at a Howard Johnson hotel...
Well, we THOUGHT it was a Howard Johnson hotel. It turned out to be a Howard Johnson MOTEL in a neighborhood that, though it didn't seem too poor, was not exactly filled with places to see and things to do. I was very concerned upon entering the office that the motel would turn out to be less-than-inviting. Bad enough that we were both disappointed it wasn't an actual hotel. Don't know how we could have made such a mistake when we reserved it.
Still, the room wasn't so bad. It seemed clean enough. It might not have been luxurious but wouldn't be too terrible to spend a couple of nights in. The only real concern I had was that the water was slightly discolored. It was like the water in our town becomes when the river shifts and the fine dirt gets on the line. I'm sure the Howard Johnson water issue was similar and even it wasn't as bad as we've experienced here. I wondered if all of Grand Prairie's water supply was similarly "tainted". I kind of hoped it was...
Monday morning, the day of the concert, we sat around goofing off for a good chunk of the morning. When lunch time came around we couldn't be bothered so we decided to eat a large "lunch/dinner" in the mid-afternoon and maybe get something small after the show.
Don't ask me why, I don't even know myself...we wound up at the Golden Corral. Ugh. Nothing against Golden Corral in general, but the food isn't exactly remarkable. It's good if you're really hungry and want to pig out. The salad bar is good, if you don't mind eating off of a salad bar. But I always walk out feeling awful, or maybe it's an hour or so before I start feeling awful...I just know that many is the time I've said "never again". It was all my doing this time. I'll take the blame. Stacie wanted Chili's and in retrospect I seriously wish I'd followed her lead...hell, there was a Chili's not 200 feet from the Corral we ate at...It's bad enough we made that choice but to have made it on a real vacation, when you'd think we could "shoot the moon", was practically a sin.
This area (and maybe Grand Prairie in general, I don't know) is very much a Latino community. That whole damn Golden Corral was packed with Latinos. There couldn't have been 10 caucasions in the bunch. Which, of course, I have no problem with. It's cool...but then again it was quite disorienting to hear every conversation taking place in the restaurant being spoken in Spanish. It was, I suppose, a "shoe-on-the-other-foot" moment. Food quality, however, knows no geographical boundaries and this was some of the worst. Just one look at the salad bar and I knew immediately that I would not be eating from it...which was disappointing because that's usually what I load up on. I wound up sampling the taco salad & chili which I had hoped would be better, having originated in a Latino restaurant, than your typical Golden Corral. That turned out not to be the case. I should have known that GC's food is all the same anywhere and everywhere.
We got to the theatre and, as alluded to above, were greeted by a team of parking lot attendants enforcing the $15 parking fee signs. Of course we had no idea it would cost us to park because the lot is adjacent to the venue and obviously it's not owned by anyone other than the theatre. So I guess they're the ones reaping the profits. At any rate we did not have $15 in cash on hand. Apparently the policy allowed in such cases is that you give them your driver's license and get cash from the ATM inside then bring it out to exchange for your license. What if someone didn't have the cash OR the money in the bank? Or what if they just didn't have their credit card with them? Would they have to turn around and leave having already paid for a ticket? We did as we were told, feeding even more money into the ATM charge and the money our bank would tack on would be even more.
But it was Sigur Ros, so we never gave it a second thought.
The show was magnificent, as I knew it would be. Jonsi's voice was in fine form, the sound was exceptionally well mixed even if it was much, much too loud. The song selection was good (really hoped they'd play "Glosoli", which was the first of a two-song encore). Light show was jaw dropping, to put it mildly. They had an opening act...a one man vintage synth drone musician known as Onethrix Point Never. I hate to be negative about someone trying to do something new and different, but his set was very boring. It was a tedious wait for the band to take the stage, but once they did time flew by way too fast.
We decided the day before that we were going to avoid the heavy Dallas Interstate traffic entirely if at all possible. God I hate that traffic. I'm not that good of a driver and my nerves always get the best of me. We google a route that would avoid highways and even though it added another hour to our arrival time I felt it would be well worth it. A few commercial roads and farm roads, it was so much better than I-35 etc. Google got it wrong a couple of times and we almost got lost, but the MapQuest GPS saved the day. Those Texas farm-to-market roads are barren in some places.
We did make it home, though, and glad to see it we were.
