saint-louise's Diaryland Diary
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And don't give me that "He's got charisma" crap.
I�ve been to my share of concerts in my life. I�ve been in crowds that have surged and pushed and swayed to the point where I couldn�t catch my breath and became terrified enough to make my way to the back of the venue, and I felt satisfied to view my entertainment from afar. Absolutely nothing I can think of is worth having to endure that horrifying sensation of not being able to breathe.
But this was funny to me: I saw on a brief news story yesterday that a concert in DC had to be suspended for ten minutes because the crowd rushed the stage and people were being stepped on and crushed. No one was killed, but one man had a heart attack and was revived. I had turned the channel over to the news story too late to hear who the band was that was playing.
Here�s one of the funny parts of that story. I had heard from a friend who lives out East that he was going to attend a Paul McCartney concert soon, and I thought absently that it might have been the concert in question. This suddenly reduced me to idiotic chortling as I pictured hundreds of McCartney fans milling about like disoriented cattle, clutching their �Wings� albums and looking doe-eyed at the object of their affection onstage. I really couldn�t imagine any of them having the mobility, let alone the motivation, to rush at anything, even Sir Paul himself.
The other funny part to this story? I went online this morning and found out that the concert where people found it necessary to trample fellow human beings in the attempt to get nearer to a person they considered to be their idol was, in fact, Eminem. That�s right. Eminem.
Whey-faced. Scrawny. Voice kinda whiny. Doesn�t appear to have a terribly impressive grasp on the English language. Perhaps isn�t even capable of tying his own shoes. And he appears to be rather pimply to boot. He reminds me of someone who would have been considered �King of Geeks� in high school. Hell, he doesn�t even intimidate my mother.
And suddenly, the idea of Paul McCartney fans starting a singer-worshipping concert frenzy seemed much more plausible.
10:55 a.m. - 2002-05-26
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