B3654.17 - The Tragedy of Tragedy

So here does this blog begin?  Obviously not with fantasy football,, where I have been sucking something severe this season.  It could start with the change meter, but that would require me going back through the blog in order to update it, and that is a level of effort I am not prepared to exhibit these days. 

Instead I am going to simplify to a degree, something moinor taht pissed me off.  At least I say minor in the grand scheme of things, it wasn't that huge of a deal.  But because it happened to me, it relevance ultimately gets magnified, after all this is my blog.

Our story begins on Sept 21st, or thereabouts where I saw an ad on my Facebook feed.   Mind you, not one of those off on the right hand side ads, more like it showed up in the actual feed.  It was for a concert, and better yet, a free concert.  As everyone knows, I am all about free.  The idea of the concert struck me as kinda cool too, a metal band (Tragedy) that does disco covers.  Honestly, I had never knew such things existed.  It definitely piqued my curiosity, so I clicked on the link and the show time was 9:00pm on Saturday (Sept 23rd).  I thought it could fit into my schedule, given Saturdays are a me day, I go in when I want and leave when I am done, I figure if I go in early enough I can have everything done, come home, grab  a shower and then head out to the show.

So I roll into work about 10am on Saturday, start doing my thing, which included on top of my normal paperwork, I had cigarette price changes to deal with as well as making new batches of chicken, tuna and egg salad for the coming week.  So I start banging away on my work when my phone rings around 12pm, it was Brian calling to say the overnight person on Saturday was trying to get off because he had to study for a test.  I called bullshit on this excuse, why would you find out on Saturday you have to study for a test? and who the fuck studies from 11pm-7am on a Saturday night?  I explained to Brian on the phone all of this and if this person did not show up, I would come in and work the shift and fire them at the same time, erasing them from future dates on the schedule and covering them myself.

So the 3-11 person comes in, I explain everything, saying if the 11-7 person doesn't show up, call me, I will get there as soon as I can.  I go home after finishing my first batch of work, I go home, shower, change and eat, the I walk to The Rex on the South Side, which from my place in Oakland is faster than walking up to 5th Avenue to catch a bus which will not get me there anyway, I will still get off and have to walk.  So I leave my place around 8pm, the show starts at 9pm (or so I thought, ha!), I walk down over the hill and cross the Hot Metal bridge, I stop at Unimart and get a coffee, as my day has already been long, and I knew it could get longer.  I get to The Rex about 8:45 or so, I go to will call and show my ID(even though tickets were free, you still had to sign up in advance  to get in), get my hand stamped and get in. 

Nothing seems to be set up yet, they have the generic biding time music playing through the sound system. It wasn't until almost 9:30 that the show got underway, with an opening act that was an Alice Cooper cover band.  Not that they sounded bad, but I am not an Alice Cooper fan, so the fact someone went to the extent to cover him is far beyond anything that I would consider good or relevant to me.  So I helped myself to the merch table where I bought a shirt and cd (I previewed the band online, shout outs to Youtube and Spotify for the help) so I knew if they sounded half as good live I would like them.

The first band played about 45 minutes, so Tragedy didn't make the stage until after 10:30, which is where iI knew a problem was going to occur.  The overnight shift at work starts at 11pm, even giving a little time until for the overnight guy to show up or not show up, there is a very good chance that I will not get to see the whole show.  The band came out to their namesake, Tragedy by the Bee Gees and we were off to the races.  All kinds of metal takes on disco and some post disco classics .  I say that because I would not put Toto's "Africa" in the disco category. 

I text into work about 11:15 after not hearing anything, about 10 minutes later my phone rings, sure enough the overnight guy had not shown up yet.  Till I got out of the South Side and into town on a Saturday night it was 12:15, I imagine the show was still going on at that point, I just was no longer enjoying it.  So I get into work, the first thing i do is take him off of the schedule permanently, which meant not only was i picking up the remainder of the overnight shift (12:15am-7am) but I was now picking up the 3pm-11pm shift Sunday as well. 

I make it through the overnight shift, go to get home and we have that stupid Great race going on, fucking up traffic everywhere, so it takes almost an hour to get home, i get settled in and am about to go to sleep when the phone rings.  It is the mom of the guy whom I just fired, she is apologizing for his behavior and what not, i just say he isn't on the schedule any more, if he wants back on the schedule, he needs to talk to the owner, then I doze off into slumber land for a few hours.  As for what I missed out on, leaving the show early, I am sure it looked something like this.......