Who the F@!* Are You?!!

For Mack's Christmas present, I got him two tickets to go see The Who live and in concert -- well, the Whos who are still alive. I'm not really a "fan" of The Who, but since few people our age are, Mack shared the second ticket with me. And sort of because we don't know anyone else really.

I left work at 4:30 on Monday so we could have enough time to make it to Long Beach for the 7:30 concert. Long Beach is 17 miles away. We had to give ourselves three hours to go 17 miles. But I got to leave work early, so it was one of those rare occasions that I was grateful for traffic.

We made it to Long Beach in far less time than we had expected, mostly because we were able to ride in the carpool lane the entire way. Mack found "the perfect parking spot" and we headed off to get dinner and kill an hour before the big show. Things were shaping up nicely when I realized I'd left my debit card and my ID at home. Mack suggested we just scalp the tickets and get our money back, and after I slaughtered him on a public sidewalk for being so flippant about my extremely thoughtful and expensive gift, he came back to life and somehow suckered an ATM into giving him money that didn't exist.

The night had finally given up its attempts to thwart our good time. We took the cards the universe had dealt us and slid into a booth at a Mexican restaurant for tacos and margaritas. With bellies full enough to rock, we walked to the Long Beach Convention Center and took our seats for a three-hour glimpse at middle age.

The Who put on a pretty good show, once Tragically Hip sat the hell down (not a fan). The song that really brought everyone to their feet was "Teenage Wasteland," which Pete Townsend said Americans love more than any other country. His hypothesis was that we can relate to "Out here in the fields, I've worked for my meals" or that we love songs that have absolutely no meaning. Since I don't know a single person who has actually ever worked in a field, I'm going with the meaningless school of thought. Roger Daltrey was a lot less of a personality that I thought he'd be. It seems like the lead singer should be the front man, but in The Who, Pete is the front man and Roger has the best gig in rock n' roll.

While Pete windmilled his guitar to near death and Roger patted away at his sweaty brow, I found a real source of entertainment. Let's call him Tie-Dye Guy.

Tie-Dye Guy caught my eye at first because of his incredible hair. He had the most unique balding pattern I've ever seen. He had a halo of hair along his outter hairline so that he actually had bangs. I'd never seen a bald man with bangs before, but then, I'd never seen so many balding specimens in one place at one time before either.

His outfit, capped by a swirl of purple and green tie-dye, amped up his style even more. He started the evening out in basically blue and green plaid pajama pants, which reminded me of a pair I got my dad for Christmas some year, but after a couple songs and some intense rocking, he had to tight roll those bastards into shorts. T-to-the-A-to-the-S-T-E-Y, boy you tasty.

The thing that made him really fascinating, however, was his dancing. This man moved from waving arms of encouragement (much like they do at Jesus revivals) to playing air guitar to playing air drums without a moment's hesitation. When The Who wailed, "Fall on my knees and pray....," Tie-Die Guy did as he was told. Bald, in his jammies, and with 30 years of rock dust covering his bones, he put those fogies on stage to shame. And when I realized mid-yawn at 10:30 p.m. that he hadn't sat down for a single minute the entire night, he put me to shame.

In short, old people rock, and people in their late 20s need naps.