Rush Is Awesome. Rush Fans Stink.
I saw Rush in concert last night -- one of the many fine cultural opportunities offered by Connecticut's Indian casinos -- and discovered another way the laws of etiquette fail to account for human necessity: there is, alas, no polite way to ask a stranger, "Sir, please stop raising your arms because the stench wafting from your armpits resembles a necrophiliac fish fucking a dead goat." (Even if etiquette did provide a polite way to do this I still wouldn't, because to get the man's attention I would've had to tap his shoulder, and no way was I going to touch any shoulder a scant few inches removed from the stench vortex of his armpit.)
The hell of it is, my sense of smell is extremely stunted; whatever scent miseries I suffered, people with normal noses felt ten times worse. My concertgoing partner had quietly complained to me about the stench soon after the stinking man sat down; since I didn't notice anything I could only give him a sympathetic smile and my standard witticism: "I'm glad I can't smell things, because the world really stinks." I noticed nothing until the band broke into "Freewill," which made the Human Stinkbomb so excited he threw his hands in the air and OH MY GOD THE STENCH.
Still, it wasn't too bad so long as the man kept his arms by his side. A few minutes later I felt a huge thump on the back of my chair, as though someone kicked it as hard as possible, and before I'd turned around to see what was going on I heard a mortified woman's voice saying "Sorry! Sorry! Oh my God, I'm so sorry! I'll buy you a new shirt! I'll go down and buy you a shirt right now!"
I thought this a rather excessive apology for one mere kick to my chair, until I realized she was actually talking to the man sitting next to me, on whom she had just spilled her entire cup of beer.
So the man next to me stank like sour beer through no fault of his own, while the man in front of me simply stank. And I discovered another way etiquette fails to account for human necessity: there is also no polite way to leave your seat at a concert (requiring everyone between you and the aisle to stand up), introduce yourself to a stranger sitting in the middle of another row, and say, "Sir, can I please have a couple hits off your joint there? It's not even that I want to get stoned, so much as I'm hoping to not-notice how many Rush fans in my immediate vicinity really, really stink."
So I didn't.
The hell of it is, my sense of smell is extremely stunted; whatever scent miseries I suffered, people with normal noses felt ten times worse. My concertgoing partner had quietly complained to me about the stench soon after the stinking man sat down; since I didn't notice anything I could only give him a sympathetic smile and my standard witticism: "I'm glad I can't smell things, because the world really stinks." I noticed nothing until the band broke into "Freewill," which made the Human Stinkbomb so excited he threw his hands in the air and OH MY GOD THE STENCH.
Still, it wasn't too bad so long as the man kept his arms by his side. A few minutes later I felt a huge thump on the back of my chair, as though someone kicked it as hard as possible, and before I'd turned around to see what was going on I heard a mortified woman's voice saying "Sorry! Sorry! Oh my God, I'm so sorry! I'll buy you a new shirt! I'll go down and buy you a shirt right now!"
I thought this a rather excessive apology for one mere kick to my chair, until I realized she was actually talking to the man sitting next to me, on whom she had just spilled her entire cup of beer.
So the man next to me stank like sour beer through no fault of his own, while the man in front of me simply stank. And I discovered another way etiquette fails to account for human necessity: there is also no polite way to leave your seat at a concert (requiring everyone between you and the aisle to stand up), introduce yourself to a stranger sitting in the middle of another row, and say, "Sir, can I please have a couple hits off your joint there? It's not even that I want to get stoned, so much as I'm hoping to not-notice how many Rush fans in my immediate vicinity really, really stink."
So I didn't.
posted by Jennifer Abel at 10:31 AM
4 Comments:
Two words: Zicam swabs.
You'll also lose your sense of taste, except for Snapple diet peach, which will taste the same.
With Rush Limbaugh going deaf and Glenn Beck going blind, Hannity will soon lose his sense of smell, suggest Armstrong and Getty today.
It should be noted that Mr. Stinky fancied himself a talented air drummer. So his arms were up a lot.
Remember in Silence Of The Lambs when they rubbed something under their noses while looking at a body to block the smell?
I don't know what it was, but I bet a camphor and menthol petroleum jelly would do the trick.
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