Excuuuuse Me Mister?

'round these parts we have a little hickfest formally known as Countryfest. It brings out the finest, arriving in pickup trucks like the snappy little number above.

Suzy and I got up bright and early to truck on out to the show. Someone had given her two tickets in a thank-you card a month or two ago so we've been looking forward to it for a while.

We wandered around in rediculous traffic but got to the gates just around 10 am. We stood in line for a few mintues, and then we realized we were in a line to BUY tickets. Since we already hand them we walked to then next line over, waited a few minutes, and then handed our tickets to one of the people at the gate.

Then the real weirdness set in. Ticket lady glanced at our tickets. Instead of ripping them in half like tickets presented by the people ahead of us, she pointed at a tall guy (damn good looking, I might add) off to the side. Very briskly she said "Go over there to him."

Huh? We took a few steps sideways, and he looked at us and plucked the tickets out of our hands and dropped them into a giant ziplock baggie. "These are counterfeit tickets. You need to go back outside the gates. You can either buy legitimate tickets or leave the premises."

In unison our jaws dropped and we turned to one another and sort of blinked. If there hadn't been 30,000 other people around, one might have heard crickets chirping for a VERY long moment.

Then we sort of did a "whaaaaaaaat?" protest, but quickly snapped out of it and worked out a deal where she would wait outside of the gates, and one of the security people would take me through the fairgrounds to the ATM. (We did NOT have enough cash to buy the tickets, and no credit cards were accepted thank you very much.)

The gallon-sized ziplock baggie was full of OTHER tickets that looked just like ours. (DGL guy was probably a state police investigator, collecting them for evidence.) The bogus tickets had "serial numbers" with not enough digits. They also didn't have a watermark of the radio station sponsoring the concert. WTF? We heard that there were 4,000 fakes from one security person. Think on that. $80 grand in baaaaaaaad paper.

So, in the end we made it in, just barely. The line we got into was full of some VERY pissed off people who had actually PAID for their counterfeit tickets; we asked around a bit and everyone "bought them from a friend for $20".... gate price was $33. Since we'd been given ours as a gift we felt lucky that we weren't out the money. People who came to the festival with, say $40 or $50 in cash would be lucky and able to get a ticket, but not be able to really eat or drink much during the 8 1/2 hour show.

It was a blazing hot day but I got to see Keith Anderson fairly up close. He smiled at me! (I am such a dork.) I just happened to be standing in the right place when he went by to go sign autographs and do photos, and he saw me with the camera. If you don't know "XXL" it's a funny song, and "Everytime I hear your name" is completely different mood, but another great song.