The audience was starved for this concert. In fact, they lit their light sabres long before the music began. As for the program, it followed the format of past years. With Williams now up in years, the first half is a potpourri of great old movie music conducted by the legendary David Newman. Then, John comes out for the second half and may the force be with all of us. Geeks out of mom's basement for the first time in a year were in eighth heaven.
So this was a grand evening, Len?
Um not so much. Oh, the concert saved the night. But the evening was filled by one snafu after another. Thanks to...
Technology.
Yep, that wide scoping arena which is supposed to be make our lives easier made ours a living Hell.
What mystifies me is that this particular soiree was not my first rodeo at the Bowl this year. Given a shortened season, I only signed up for three concerts. And the first two went off seamlessly, except for a reserved parking lot misfire in July. Indeed, the John Williams fun started when, because of the overflow crowd, cars with ADA placards were put in a lot at the bottom of a hill. Good luck with anybody sporting conflicted knees. Like me.
Now the ADA placard also gets me into the ADA entrance, complete with elevator. And that worked well until I had to show my tickets which, like all venues in the COVID world, were nestled in my phone.
Except the ticket taker with the wand couldn't make magic with mine. We waited and waited for some sort of connection with the box office gods. Finally, the kid with the wand (and, yes, he did remind me of Harry Potter) called over his supervisor who is probably entering his junior year in high school. Hmmm, he said. We have to confirm that these tickets are real. So he got my name and location and called the box office guard assigned to this task. We were finally released to move forward. Jeez, people are getting through the US southern border with less problems.
The Harry Potter kid said he preferred it when there were paper tickets. I offered to adopt him.
So, our normal concert customer is then to hit the snack bar offering burgers, grilled cheese sandwiches, etc.. In the past, it has all worked well. You order, you pay for your food, and, five minutes later, somebody pops out of the kitchen and calls your name.
Okay, now during this summer, they installed a QR code so that you look at the menu on-line. Of course, I suppose that means people without cell phones go hungry, but I digress. Even this "innovation" worked previously.
But not on John Williams Night. You had to order your food either on your phone or a computer kiosk. My friends did and even ordered for me. But neither has a cell phone handy so they used my number. We received a text message with a confirmation number. We should go to the counter when we got the text that said our order was ready.
We waited.
And waited.
And WAITED.
I began to wonder if the cheese on my sandwich had been imported and delayed.
From the order going through to that moment, it was already forty minutes. The counter help, which probably went to the same high school as the ticket takers, kept looking at computer screens and handing out bags. But not ours.
The trouble is that we had the audacity to inquire about our order, they looked at us as if we had imprisoned their grandparents in a garage. Customer service that could be bored into a thimble without spilling a drop.
Eventually they went back to the old method and started calling out names. We finally got our grub. And, by the way, it's four days later and I'm still waiting for the text to pick up my food.
But this is life now. We make it easy for you. But it really isn't.
Still, once the music started, it was all wonderful again. Hope next summer is filled with mask-less people and cash transactions at the snack bar.
Dinner last night: General Ching's Chicken from PF Chang's.
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