you kids get off my lawn!

will you please help me figure out what has happened to kids in the past ten years? at the past two concerts i've been to, a group of idiot college-agers nearby was shouting OVER THE MUSIC THE WHOLE TIME. yes, in all caps. everyone in the area each time was annoyed, muttering and throwing mean glances. (oooh! mean looks scare obnoxious kids every time!) .....so, being a problem solver, i asked the idiot kids to be quiet. at the last concert, asking nicely worked well - the kids shut up, and we were all friends. but tonight, the group of kids was too smug and entitled (and surrounded by drunk paris-wannabees) to shut its collective fat face. after asking twice - very cheerfully, very calmly, and with all the usual magic methods - i decided to amuse myself, and told the ringleading Augustus Gloop, "Oh, are you leaving? Good luck with the rest of your life!" (he wasn't leaving)

man, did that piss him off.

i don't remember ever going to shows at similar venues - the odeon, the agora, the troc, the orpheum - and being near kids who wouldn't shut up. bump folks, maybe, but not talk OVER THE MUSIC THE WHOLE TIME. have I just been lucky? is this a DC phenomenon? are the gato negro and the 9:30 doomed by the low quality of available audience members?

no, i take that last one back: the crowd at the ghostface killah show was fabulous.

but anyway. i'm old and crotchety before my time - not to mention the dementia. the citizen cope show was great - much better than i expected. it's completely amazing these days the way an artist who is relatively new can flourish through word-of-internets, and then a bunch of kids of all stripes go to the shows and compete for who can sing the songs loudest. pretty bizarre.