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Tours de Farce: Ice, Ice, Maybe
She popped out of thin air and into our office just as we were reviewing the new list of tour stops for the Pat McGee Band. “Quick,” she gasped as she flicked the temporal dust off of her shoulders while reaching into her purse. “You must post these dates for Switchfoot and Curtis Salgado immediately!”
“What’s the problem this time?” we asked her. “Will publishing these schedules avoid a war? Stop a riot? Forge a reunion between Axl and his original Guns N’ Roses bandmates?”
“Aren’t you the eternal optimist,” she replied as she handed us a long list of dates. “But if you publish these schedules, as well as these additional dates for Lil’ Ed & The Blues Imperials, you’ll prevent the great Mars disaster of 2025.”
“Uh? Mars?” we asked, clearly astonished. “So we’re really going to Mars?”
“Heck, putting a man on Mars is easy,” she shot back. “Building the Gusev Crater Amphitheatre is hard. But President Britney Spears will solve that problem in 2024 by signing an executive order forcing Clear Channel and AEG Live to work together.”
“That’s astonishing!” we exclaimed, though truth be told, it would probably be more accurate to use two exclamation points.
“Not really,” she said. “Both Clear Channel and AEG Live will understand that their collaboration on the first Martian 20,000 seat amphitheatre, complete with landing pads for 10,000 personal spacecraft, as well as simulated, Earth-like gravity fields for the restrooms, is in the best interest of the entire concert industry.”
“But President Britney Spears??”
“Why so surprised?” she said. “Britney will be elected president in 2016, and her drive and determination, not to mention her natural knack for grabbing media attention, will lead the way to the conquest of Mars. After all, who knows more about space than Britney?”
“Point taken,” we answered. Anything else?”
“You might want to list these dates for Starlight Mints, Skeleton Key and Enrique Iglesias.”
“And that will prevent… What?”
“Oh, the usual,” she replied. “War, famine, the 2013 invasion by Ryan Adams clones from the seventh dimension. Things like that.”
“Gotcha. We’ll take care of it right away.”
“Well, gotta run,” she said as she reached into her purse, pulled out her iPod and started punching in the coordinates to return to the future, only to stop and stare at the newspaper sitting on our desk. “Uh… What’s that?”
“That’s a picture of Michael Jackson dancing on top of an SUV after his latest court appearance. It was quite the circus.”
“Oh, that,” she said. “That ain’t nothing compared to the crowds he’ll attract in the future. In fact, his 2104 tour will be the biggest grossing tour in concert history.”
“What? Michael Jackson will still be around a hundred years from now?”
“Kind of,” she answered. “He’ll be cryogenically frozen, but fans will still trek hundreds of miles to see him sleeping in the cryo tube.”
“And that will be the biggest tour one hundred years from now? An iced down Whacko Jacko?”
“Uh, uh,” she said as she completed her time travel calculations. “Of course, he will still have his detractors. They’ll claim he wouldn’t have sold nearly as many tickets if it wasn’t for a strong opening act.”
“How can that be?” we asked her. “Who could possible warm up a crowd waiting to see a frosty King of Popsicles?”
“I’m surprised you would even ask such a question,” she said as the time portal opened to whisk her back to the future. “After all, there are still plenty of Ted Williams fans in the future.”