Saturday Slice

You know, it amazes me how much living can be packed into a day. I feel like it's been a week since I last posted.
Thursday night was pretty sweet. Thanks to my Aunt, who seems to know just about everyone over at the Hard Rock Casino down the street, I scored some really great seats at the Gilberto Santa Rosa and El Gran Combo concert. Amazingly enough, the only person I was able to go with me was Ricky Garcia (who shares space with me in the stage left projector room over at FRC - also known as The Bat Cave to insiders), so we got dressed up nice, pinky swore each other that we wouldn't pick up too many girls (just kidding), and went to the show.


As we walked to our seats to find our section, I started wondering if maybe my Aunt knew someone in the Mafia, as the seats were right up front near the stage in the level just above the floor (I could have probably thrown my shoe and pegged Gilberto in the side of the head. That's how close we were). Anyway, I think security got the raw end of the deal that night. The room was packed with a ton of Puerto Ricans. The band did the typical latin thing and did a country roll call, which Hispanics just love (We're a very nationalistic people, you know). By round of applause, I would say that I was one of pretty small group of Colombians in the arena, although we beat out the Nicaraguans and the Panamanians (take that!). Of course, the Puerto Ricans were out in full force, complete with flags. Anyway, the bad part about all that for security was that they spent a big chunk of their time trying to get people to stop dancing in the aisles and in general causing fire hazards all over the place, to which I was laughing at because, honestly, how are you going to keep a crowd of people who came out to see a dance band from dancing. I mean, once El Gran Combo started playing Brujeria, it was all over.
So yeah, it was a fun show overall. I think the neatest thing, though, was the range of ages I saw as I looked around the room. I don't know many bands that are still playing that can pack out an arena with songs they have been playing for over thiry years. I watched people my age singing and dancing to this music that people from their parents' generation just down the row were dancing to, too.
Ricky and I were talking about it afterwards, and we realized what a special thing that is. In an age where our culture is obsessed with the newest thing, it's nice to see something traditional that crosses generational boundaries that way. This is one of the things I love the most about my heritage.
¡Que siguen los latinos!