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Tours de Farce: Working For The Weekend
That’s right, it’s Friday, the day we’ve been dreading all week.
You see, everyone here at Pollstar.com hates Fridays. After all, when you spend all week plugging in dates for Insane Clown Posse, researching dates for Leftover Salmon and Queens Of The Stone Age, or alphabetizing, then re-alphabetizing the dates for Sum 41, everything else seems rather anticlimactic. In fact, if we had to choose, we’d stay here all weekend, for there’s nothing like a fresh itinerary for Nada Surf or Joan Of Arc to lift the spirits and put a smile on one’s face.
But alas, come Friday we are forced to put our tour data toys away and go home for 48 hours where some of us will be forced to partake in activities like skiing, ice skating or, heaven forbid, s-e-x. However, these are just diversionary activities meant to help take our minds off of the dates for Ja Rule or The Reunion Show, and they do not actually replace our life’s goal of entering concert information 24/7 until that inevitable day when they come to pry our cold dead hands from our keyboards.
Now, you’re probably wondering why we can’t stay and process concert data all weekend long. After all, it’s our lives and if we want to spend the weekends slamming in dates for Kenny Chesney or Kings X, why should anyone be able to decide otherwise? Well, for one thing, the unions have a problem with that, as do the folks at the state labor board. They say we should be paid overtime for working weekends, or at least be allowed to accrue comp time, even though each and every one of us is willing to spend the weekend working for free. Damn union. Damn labor board. Damn liberals. Sometimes you just can’t win.
Well, it’s about that time. Soon the security guards will force us to leave at gunpoint, and our employer will lay down a trail of crisp, $100 bills from our cubicles to the parking lot in hopes of making our weekly trudge to the exits a little more bearable. Sure, we’ve tried chaining ourselves to our desks and Supergluing our buttocks to the chairs, but our boss is a harsh and cruel employer, and he insists that we take the weekend off to go out and have some fun. Ha! As if gathering dates for Toad The Wet Sprocket, talking to the agents for The Datsuns and The BellRays and dealing with the manager for Bon Jovi aren’t the most supreme pleasurable activities in which one can partake. Sigh…
So, we’ll see you on Monday. In fact, most of us will be camped out at the front gate of the Pollstar.com compound as early as Sunday afternoon in hopes that the guards will take pity on us and let us in early so we can knock off a few dates for Julio Iglesias or Marty Stuart. And if you happen to run into any of us over the weekend, perhaps at the ski lodge, ice rink or local taverns, and it looks as if we’re having the time of our lives, skiing, skating or whooping it up with our friends, remember, we’re really sad, miserable wretches who want nothing more than to process dates for acts like Saliva and Deep Purple. Have a good weekend, friends.
We know we won’t.