What I'm Really Learning From College

Have you ever seen the movie Saving Silverman? If you have not, stop reading this sentence immediately, go rent it, and come back here in two hours. The film centers around two dimwits trying to save their buddy from his new girlfriend from hell. Anyway, the common link in their friendship is an obsessive passion for Neil Diamond "He's the greatest songwriter of this, or any generation." They even have a cover band called Diamonds in the Rough. It's actually a pretty hilarious movie, with the likes of Jack Black, Steve Zahn, Jason Biggs, R. Lee Emery, and Amanda Peet to name a few... but I digress...

What the hell does this have to do with Corey? So glad you asked, bored reader with nothing better to do.

My friend Steve gets ahold of me Thursday evening and tells me he has some "very important news." Incidentally, if you haven't had the pleasure of meeting my old roommate Steve, well I'll just sum him up in two words: clinically insane. Steve, lo and behold, has won Neil Diamond tickets for Saturday night by calling up the local radio station during a contest on his way to work (a number which I highly suspect he has on speed dial, or at the very least, committed to memory). I should point out that neither one of us is exactly what you would call a Neil Diamond "fan" or "listener." This aside, I do enjoy the aforementioned movie, as well as Will Ferrell's several renditions of Neil on SNL, and this is just too absurd to pass up.

Steve rolls into town around 2 o' clock. By about 2.30pm we realize we're going to have to get hammered to really enjoy this concert (at 8pm). We start off by watching the Family Guy movie, followed up by the only real (and ridiculously stupid) reason we are seeing Mr. Diamond at all - Saving Silverman.

Fast forward approximately 5 hours.

Steve has drank an entire bottle of whiskey by himself and I have ingested a large, yet, undetermined amount of refreshing Busch Light. Steve, in his incredibly intoxicated and incredibly loud state, convinces Mike to drive the two of us to the Schottenstein Center (roughly 5 or 6 blocks from where I live). Steve brings a Neil Diamond vinyl determined that the man will sign it, and his digital camera- which he stuffs down his pants because they are prohibited. Both items pass through completely undetected by security. Good thing Bin Laden isn't a fan of contemporary adult soft rock.

Oh yeah, the always lovely and talented Miss Alex was working that night, whom happened to be right pass the crack security force. Somehow, I think her keen intellect was able to pick up that we had been drinking for five hours, but perhaps not. Then again, when Steve demanded to know where Neil Diamond's tour bus was, it may have sealed the deal... in his defense, though, I could see a lot of the people who were also there willing to sprint to the singer's tour bus... if they were about 40 years younger. Man, everyone at that concert was old. Crazy old.

Oh yeah - our seats. We had to walk past ten people in our row to get to them, squashing many a fan's foot. This, booze was not to blame for, however. The Schottenstein Center's seats and aisles are about the width of the screen you are reading this on. So right off the bat these people probably didn't like us. Then some of them were irked by the flash the camera occasionally put out. By the end of the night Steve and I were yelling "ComeOnAYeah!" and "I will smack you in the face, I'M NEIL DIAMOND!!!!" I can only guess that they were wondering what the hell we were doing there at all. To that I say - Thank you Jack Black, Will Ferrell, and of course, Steve Patrick (and Alex for the ride home - what a hottie).




Next time I'll post some video of the super-political correctness that arose after the concert when Latimer turned the video camera on Steve - and my futile counterpoints.


*Come On A YEAH! refers to Neil Diamond's live performance of the song Holly Holy where he consistently interjects the phrase after several Yeah's. J.D. McNugent (Jack Black) also uses the phrase as his rallying cry in Saving Silverman, and in the process of doing so, making a somewhat obscure Neil Diamond reference. Got that? I hope you had to enlarge this to read that tidbit you will never find useful.