My oh my, it’s been quite some time since this box has been cracked open:

It’s perhaps been long enough that a refresher is required. This box contains a multitude of items that I’ve been toting around for ages, my packrat tendencies preventing me from getting rid of all these scraps, slips and–as this edition makes clear–tickets that would be quickly relegating to the trashbin by less sentimental souls. I decided to start plucking items out, five by five, reviewing them here, and finally discarding them. It’ll take some time, but eventually I’ll clear this box out entirely.

I was a fairly regular concertgoer through the nineties, and I’d reached the point where I felt I’d seen most of my touchstone artists–R.E.M., Robyn Hitchcock, The Replacements, Bob Mould–and I didn’t feel many regrets over performers I hadn’t seen. The Who can reunite as many times as they want, if I can’t see them in the full Moon-propelled, guitar-smashing urgency of their late sixties/early seventies peak, then I’m plainly not interested. However, when Bob Dylan came to town, we decided that it was worth the forty dollar ticket to see a legend. By all accounts, the quality of Dylan shows on this everlasting tour of his varies widely and wildly. He was quite good on this night. Of course, I was totally amused and therefore thoroughly entertainment by watching him stalk around the stage like the world’s biggest, most sinewy praying mantis. Actually quality of the show may not have factored into my satisfaction all that much. There was a guy on the other side of the arena who went so maniacal when Dylan played “Rainy Day Women #12 and 35” that his excited jumping up and down almost ripped a railing out of the cement.

I feel like I should concede any explanation of this to my former movie review show colleague who created it. Does explaining that the poster for this production featured a cow in John Travolta’s Saturday Night Fever outfit help give you the picture? I don’t recall if this particular theatrical event included the choreographed dance to “Taco Wagon” by Young Fresh Fellows.

When we were still living in Wisconsin, we were starting to make fairly regular treks down to Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, usually to see revivals with famous ensemble members. Then they opened a production of The Weir, which my partner in viewing saw in its original run on London’s West End. This was the last thing we saw at Steppenwolf. One year later, we were in central Florida, where the theatrical offerings were, to be kind, of less interest to us.

It’s a good thing the added feature of this particular ballgame is elucidated on the ticket, otherwise I wouldn’t recall the significance of the ticket. I don’t actually remember the details of the number retirement ceremony, but I have a recollection that it was a pretty satisfying celebration at a time when the Milwaukee baseball franchise wasn’t generating much excitement.

That explosion of paraphernalia corresponds to the 2003 edition of the Florida Film Festival, which I think may have been the first edition of the fest staged in March rather than June. I was General Manager of the college radio station in town, which was selected to be one of the media sponsors. In exchange for on-air promotion, we got a couple of robust passes to the fest, and, like a properly corrupt media player, I claimed them for myself. Surveying the tickets, we clearly discovered the increasing limitations of our festgoing energy this year since many of those little paper rectangles correspond to films we didn’t see. Tribute is one of the films we did see, a very fun documentary about rock’n’roll tribute bands. A few weeks later, it surprisingly wound up as the “kickoff movie” for the trivia contest staged by my radio alma mater. Funny. I wonder how that happened.

(Posted simultaneously to “Jelly-Town!”)