It is not a comfort noise

How's this for lame? There are two shows at the Hollywood Bowl that N. and I want to go to in September (that's not the lame part). We heard that the Bowl box office was opening at 10 a.m. on Saturday, so we set the alarm and got our asses to the Bowl at exactly 10 a.m. Now, I really don't know what we were thinking would happen (well, I do: I pictured us pulling up into the lot, parking right in front of the box office, jumping out, getting our tickets, not paying the Ticketmaster fee, and driving away in time for a 10:30 breakfast) but it was utter chaos there. The minute we had the Bowl parking lot in sight, we knew we were in trouble. After we figured out where to park, we hauled ass up the hill and lo and behold, all of middle-aged Los Angeles was there, along with a crafts fair! There was an enormous line for wristbands, which you'd get and then wait for your number to be called. Meanwhile, I heard an old woman sitting in her own personal lounge chair say she'd been there since 6 a.m. and had number 60-something, but hadn't yet been called to buy her tickets. N. and I waited and got our wristbands: 567 & 568. A worker told us it might be four hours before they called our number. Uh, how was this supposed to be any fun? To make a long story short, we ended up going back home and ordering both concerts on Ticketmaster, the bastards. But, we got the seats we wanted and it took all of 5 minutes. Sheesh.

Then, in another bit of Saturday annoyance, we left a full two hours early for the Elton John concert we had tickets for that night at the Arrowhead Pond. We decided we'd eat something along the way or at the show. The freeway ride was okay, but once we got off at the appropriate exit, it took at least an hour to pull into a parking spot and start walking to the arena. By the time we got there, it was 8:15, 15 minutes after the start time on the tickets. Do you know that that bastard Sir Elton had started his show exactly on time?? Who does that? So it took a good 1/2 hour to shed the drive and parking frustration and to get into the groove of the show. Also because it took at least 1/2 hour into the show for him to play anything remotely recognizable to us. But when he did, it evolved into a pretty good show. It gets a "pretty good" but not "great" because he didn't do much other than play the songs on his piano, with little variation to the originals, except for Rocket Man, which, well, rocked. And there were more middle-aged women in one place than N. says he's ever seen. Plus, by the time it was around 9 p.m., we were both so starving, we were completely distracted. N. leaned over to me at one point to tell me of his "plan" for getting food after the show, which consisted of walking across the street to a restaurant we spied on the way in. Every college kid in Anaheim with a fake ID was in the place, a couple of them getting down and dirty with a make-out session right in N.'s eyeline. I eventually had to turn around and check it out myself. Yikes!

Meanwhile, I didn't want to forget the sentence that my English-limited apartment manager said, so I made it the title of the blog. He was referring to the sound my door was making everytime I closed it lately. Something about wood expanding in the weather and a screw rubbing the bottom of the door the wrong way. He noticed this when I slammed the thing in his presence one night after a particularly bad day and came to fix it for me, unrequested. I guess the noise was discomforting him.

How was your weekend?