A Completely Impartial Review of the Dido/John Mayer Concert in Bryant Park

No matter what, the concert was a bargain. Anybody could wander into and out of the park, but the powers-that-be set aside a premium area for people who signed up for a Sony credit card, and I have to wonder how many people chose to risk their credit rating just to get up close to the stage. My estimate: a lot. I tried to sneak in, signing up for a Sony credit card with a fake name and social security number, but I failed shamefully when the kiosk girl asked me for ID. Turns out it didn't matter anyway; Rian and I walked into the premium area without so much as a glance from security.

The host for the event was 95.5 FM disc jockey and professional time-waster Rich Kaminsky. He seemed particularly concerned that the audience was having fun — he asked us in that manic music-industry voice if were having a good time whenever he appeared on stage. Well, Rich, we were having a good time, but to be honest, we didn't really come to see you (although it is interesting to put a face to the disembodied radio voice) and we certainly didn't come to watch advertisements for Sony products on the big screens. And although we didn't come to see this amazingly loaded protester doing his scary, spastic white-boy dance, he was by far the most entertaining part of the show. It's tough to describe this freakwad's movements, but he sort of alternated between pretending it was two-thirty in the morning at an iyengar yoga nightclub and pretending that the Holy Spirit entered his body and brought along uppers from heaven. Hilarious, but quite inappropriate — it wasn't a damn Creed concert.

(Off-topic, but thank God Creed finally broke the hell up. Although I guess, in their own strange way, they're kind of convincing in that God exists — remember that story in the Decameron where the Christian tries to convince the Jew to convert by sending him to Rome and letting him see all the miracles of Christianity?)

And then it poured... and if our those goddamn tall people obstructed our view before the umbrellas came out, we really couldn't see anything afterwards. Actually, that's not completely accurate: we could see a few things.

Examples:

Six girls standing right in front of us. They'd forgotten their umbrellas, and were just getting wet. [insert horny emoticon here]

A couple hugging and kissing under their umbrella. Eeewww. Public displays of affection make me nauseous. Unless I'm participating in one.

Guys taking their shirts off. And apparently, whatever mentality frees frat boys to take their shirts off in the middle of a public park also frees them to rub their chests and play with their man-titties. 8-(