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Tours de Farce: The Future’s So Bright…
She blinked into our offices, shook off the dust from the temporal superhighway and handed us schedules for Circle Jerks and
“What is it this time?” we asked her. Global warming? Energy crisis? Gary Cherone rejoins Van Halen?”
“Much worse than that,” she answered as she reached into her purse and pulled out more schedules. If you don’t publish those tours, as well as these dates for Flickerstick and Lynyrd Skynyrd, some junior promoter in 2003 will think it’s ‘cute’ to book both *NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys on the same show.”
“Oh, my god!” we cried in disbelief. How… how many?”
“At least 1.5 million unaccounted for,” she replied. “The resulting rip in the fabric of the universe sucked Nebraska, Colorado and parts of Utah into an inter-dimensional warp. We may never get them back. Here, you better publish The Samples and Prodigy, too.”
We looked over the itineraries, then turned to her and asked, “If we prevent the catastrophe, what can we expect for the next few years?”
“The concert industry will stay the course,” she answered. “The major promotion companies will continue to grow, culminating with SFX’s acquisition of Microsoft in 2011.”
“That’s amazing!” we replied in astonishment. “SFX will be that big?”
“Oh, sure,” she said. “They’ll buy out Gates and make Windows the official software for the concert industry. Every deal, every box office gross, every tour schedule, like Ozzfest or Mekka will be managed on Microsoft software.”
“Wow! What happened after that?”
“There wasn’t another show until 2015. We call it the ‘blue years of death.'”
“Gosh,” we replied. “If we publish the tours, we save Colorado, Nebraska and Utah. But if we don’t list the dates, the people in the future won’t have any shows, like Oasis or Counting Crows, for four years. That’s a tough decision.”
“There might be a third choice,” she said as she reached deeper into her purse. “If you also publish these schedules for Melissa Etheridge and Neko Case & Her Boyfriends, it could very well cause an increase in beverage sales at shows for Janet Jackson and Static-X in 2004.”
“No kidding? Publishing those tours will do all that? But why do we have to wait until 2004 for beverage profits to go up? Why can’t it be now.”
“There’s a very good reason for drink sales to rise in 2004,” she said as she put on her jacket and punched her time-travel coordinates into her PDA.
“And that is?”
“That’s when Barbara and Jenna Bush turn 21.”