That’s been the number one question on our minds these past few weeks as we watched the crowd camped outside of the Michael Jackson trial. Don’t those people have responsibilities? Don’t those people have commitments?? Don’t those people have lives???

Easy for us to say? Perhaps. After all, our goal is the same today as it was yesterday and the day before; to bring you the freshest concert info available, come hell, high water or the news of Michael’s acquittal on ten charges of varying degrees of nefarious evil-doing. While the world went bonkers over Michael’s thriller of a victory in Santa Maria, we were diligently pursuing dates for Jon Anderson, Leon Russell and Casting Crowns. The doves may have flown on California’s central coast, but we were too busy to notice, for we were posting dates for Pat McGee Band and Julio Iglesias. That’s just the way we are.

But even though we paid nary a thought to the goings on in Santa Maria, we couldn’t help but notice the story going down outside the courtroom. Thousands, if not millions of people gathered in hopes of getting a glimpse, a glance, a peek at the cult of celebrity that is the self-proclaimed King of Pop. And while the trial continued to play out its varying levels of perversity, we couldn’t help but gaze upon the multitude and wonder; “didn’t their parents raise them better?”

A cheap shot? Yeah, we suppose. And when you get right down to it, we’re probably no different than them. Of course, we didn’t drop everything in order to hang around outside a courthouse for the past 60 days. We didn’t base our last two months of precious existence around whether the Gloved One would be found innocent or guilty. But we did spend last weekend going through Hilary Duff’s garbage looking for a few extra concert dates. Just as we tailed members of Coldplay in hopes of somehow getting a taste of their natural coolness and the oh-so-hip attitude that suits them so well. And, as everyone knows, our lifelong dream is to go hunting crippled squirrels with Ted Nugent. So, we can understand the attraction celebrities have to offer. However…

However, we cannot understand what would make grown men and women drop everything so that they could spend day and night huddled outside a courthouse in Santa Maria, California. We cannot understand why grown men and women would devote two months out of their lives to follow the legal trials and tribulations facing one solitary individual. We cannot understand how grown men and women would spend 60 days shouting, crying, screaming, yelling, weeping and sobbing as they struggled to get closer to a man who has been rebuilt from nose to toenail. A man who used to sleep in an iron lung and once dated a chimpanzee. Yeah, try as we might, we just can’t get our collective heads around why that crowd hung around that courtroom as if… as if… as if their very lives depended on being there. We just can’t understand it.

But then, we never did understand the news media anyway. Don’t those people have jobs? You know, real jobs?