Watching Drunk Country Bumpkins Torch Cash

Fun and Foolishness at the Country Music Concert

I’m an unashamed people watcher. There’s nothing more entertaining than to go out into my village and discreetly observe the untrained savages in their natural habitats, going about their daily lives unaware of their surveillance.  You readers out there who are my fellow creepy people-watchers have experienced the phenomenon… it’s easy to spot general stupidity around you at nearly every turn, if you know where to look.

Consider my recent experience when I happened upon a country music concert with my wife. I had a heyday with my voyeurism. All sorts of interesting country bumpkins, many from across state lines, converged to blow their hard-earned cash drinking, smoking, cussing, and fondling each other to the tune of music that was all about—you guessed it—drinking, smoking, cussing, and fondling. It was an eerie but entertaining night of self-fulfilling prophecies, and also good memories—I like to say that I fell in love with my wife at a country music concert starring this same individual nearly seven years ago.

And yes, in addition to all of this nostalgia, twang, and self-destructive social and health stupidity, there was plenty of financial stupidity going on in all directions.

It started out at the entry gates. First of all, the concert prohibited attendees from bringing in any kind of food or drink. Your bags were searched, and if you were found to be packing, you had to toss your contraband in the trash before entering. There were hundreds of beverages and snack baggies brazenly laid to waste that evening in dumpsters.

The first thing we passed once through the gates were the food and beverage counters. $8.50 for a plate of nachos… $4.00 for a salted pretzel… $6.50 for a beer! By the time I would have gotten a full meal for two people, we would have doubled the price of our tickets! A quick mental calculation for the 34 people in line, at roughly 65 seconds per order, put the wait time at just over 40 minutes for this gourmet feast! Yet there were people were actually lined up, excited to pay for the overpriced food!

Since we had already eaten, I happily gave the endless line and the food counters the mental “middle finger”, but offered my lovely lady the option of me buying her something at any time during the concert, without expressing my opinion of the prices. I'm extremely polite.

We headed up to the seating area. Since I so delinquently ordered our tickets so late, we ended up only able to get the cheap lawn seats. We settled down on our blanket in the grass to wait out the arrival of our superstar singer two hours (halfway) into the concert—the point at which the rain began to fall.

Overall, the entertainment was great once it finally started… but given the level of alcoholic consumption by the unwashed, underdressed, and underteethed masses in attendance, you can imagine that the stupidity wore on throughout the night… I counted the guys next to me crack at least five or six beers apiece at six dollars-plus a pop, sold strategically by the guys wandering around with coolers full of irresistible liquid refreshment.

So to be review, most of the people around me paid through the nose to get into the concert, dumped their paid-for snacks in the trash while entering, many bought a T-shirt so show their support for our local country celebrity, then proceeded to pay five times the average price of food and beer, to eat and drink it socially in excess. Fantastic experience--for a money-foolish country bumpkin.

As a cherry on top: about half way through the night, a small fight broke out next to us, with one of the “friends” being dragged out of the place by two others.

I had a great night, and a great experience… the star of the show provided some great entertainment, and so did the idiocy of the people around us. I’d like to point out that I paid a grand total of $74 for my tickets and had the time of my life... I even abstained from alcohol so I would have full recollection of the experience (although I actually don’t drink at all).

I’m sure there were others at the concert like me… but many people there undoubtedly ended up paying double or triple what I did, for less of an experience. I whistled happily home with my wallet and my mortgage payment still intact.

Wholesome, fun, and educational experiences like these don’t come along every day… unless you’re a carefully trained Village Jedi Master bent on financial freedom and life domination, like me and maybe you.

Because of the combination of eye-opening experiences you will encounter at a country music concert, I will go again sometime, and I recommend you do the same. Anytime I get the urge in public to drink, smoke, or binge on overpriced food, I’ll pull out this article and make my fellow concert-goers the “butt of my joke” (rhyme courtesy of Blake Shelton. Thanks bro) and have a good laugh, reminding myself of the awesome life I live.

Takeaways For the Future

Clearly, the financial stupidity of my fellow savages in the village is basically unabashed. The most interesting part of this brash stupidity is that the perpetrators don’t even know how dumb it all is. Ironically, the more money you spend, the more it feels like you have... when the opposite is actually true. This all makes watching them become more and more intriguing as their hopeless situations continue to unfold until utter collapse.

I don’t revel in the collapse, I pity it. That’s one of the many reasons I type all this philosophical crap into my computer, hoping some lost, hapless souls out there will come to their senses and save themselves.

Then I hope they’ll get addicted to this awesome blog, see the folly in their ways, and jump on board with us to head to our final destination—ultimate freedom from the woes of money.

Booya! And ya’ll have a good night now, ya hear!

Live long and invest,

Jeremiah