Concerts and jeans

Dar Williams did not wow tonight. She was good; you can't go wrong with her--she has a rich, beautiful voice, and her music is deep and engaging--but she was not as amazing as I've seen her. She also wasn't on for long, and did almost as much talking as singing. Now, it's folk music and the stories behind the songs are interesting, but they needn't take up half the performance. All this, together with the Birchmere's newfound nickel-and-diming (a service charge even if you pick up tickets at the box office--for parking and "security"?? only bottled water?? really??), left one with the sense of possibly being ripped off. I mean, I can ramble up a storm, too, but I don't charge you to listen to it (if I could put it to music, then I might, but I can't; that's why we pay musicians to put it to music. We do not pay musicians to ramble on stage). Loudon Wainwright III also did not wow; he was also good. Maybe they were both tired. If so, it showed.

Does this mean I'm done with seeing her live, now that she's disappointed the last few times? Or would that just be cosmic temptation for her to amaze once again?

***
You notice what you're focused on, so the non-musical parts of the evening left no doubt in my mind that I was focused on jeans. My accompanying friend was rocking hers, and there were several other women in the audience rocking theirs. Curvy women looked especially good in their jeans.

Actually, between errands earlier during the day, I'd tried on various pairs of jeans (Gap, Loft, Old Navy). The best-fitting were a pair of dark, 0P skinnies, but they were counter-intuitively unflattering, giving me the appearance of an emaciated teenager. I'm not very tall, and my legs were slim enough before the rest of me caught up. So these slimming jeans made my legs look stick-insect like. Which is as unflattering as the mom-jeans look, which must be the other extreme. Also, I hate it when the pocket embroidery makes it look like the jeans are falling down even when they're not, giving them an ill-fitting look.

I shared my frustration with my friend (who was rocking her jeans). She said you just had to keep shopping and try out a gazillion pairs and knowing that the right one is out there (later, when we were talking about dating, we agreed it was just like shopping for jeans). She also said that jeans were the item of clothing, if there were any, for which to let go of price concerns; the right pair will be priceless. We'll see about that.