Features
Tours de Farce: Buns Of Steel
Hardly a day goes by when someone, perhaps Vince Neil, or maybe Moby, asks the very same question that’s been asked of us ever since our founder, Festus Pollstar, opened our doors way back in 1931. For the newbies making their very first visit to our campus, the sight of bronzed and buffed bodies sitting at their work stations, entering dates for Slobberbone, Zwan and Ben Taylor Band, can be more than just a little intimidating. So, when people see the muscles rippling in the sun, the washboard stomachs and the latest dates for Cheryl Wheeler and Otep, there’s only one thing on their mind. They want to know how they can have a Pollstar.com body.
All it takes is exercise. Come on! Join us in a typical Pollstar.com workout. That is, if you think you’re tough enough.
We’ll warm up with a few deep knee bends while we look over the new dates for the Susan Werner. Are you ready? One, two. Okay, that’s enough.
Next, we’ll do a rigorous set of push-ups. Push-ups are important for the lightning-fast reflexes one needs to enter new the schedules for artists like Lisa Loeb or bands like Trout Fishing In America. Two should be enough, three if you’re up to it.
Of course, all this strenuous exercise is for naught unless you have a proper diet to go with it. We’ve found that starting each day with a balanced meal that includes at least one item from each of the four basic food groups – donuts, tobacco, chocolate and beer – improves the vision as well as the deductive reasoning skills needed to process itineraries for acts like Zubot & Dawson, Seven Nations and Rick Springfield. Go ahead, load up your tray. We’ll wait.
By now you should feel the burn. But it’s not over yet. We still have a ten second routine of jumping-jacks to do, as well as three or four sit-ups and at least five rapid eye blinks before we can tackle the big stuff, like the routings for Garnet Rogers, Widespread Panic and Guster. Oh, and don’t forget that mid-morning, vodka-fortified power milkshake along with a couple of smokes to open up those breathing passages.
Whew! How’s that for a workout? Feel that ol’ heart pounding, the blood rushing through your arteries, the big vein on your forehead pulsing away and your lungs gasping for air? Yes, it takes more than having a slick mouse technique and a way with a computer keyboard when your entering dates for Placebo and Quiet Riot for a living. It takes muscles, nerves of steel and a generous helping of the four “Bs” – bagels, bon-bons, Bud and Benson & Hedges – to acquire the physiques that each and every Pollstar.com employee is known for. And we’ll meet here tomorrow for round two of our famous, Pollstar.com workout. That is, if you think you can handle it. But that’s enough for now.
After all, you wouldn’t want to overdo it on your first day, now, would you?