Colbie Caillat is dead to me...for now anyway

Last week I had the displeasure of enduring a poorly done concert. In fact, it was so poorly done, this was the first concert in which I have actually exited the building to remove myself from the experience.

I've been a Colbie Caillat fan since shortly after her album was available on iTunes. I've taken pleasure with her soothing voice and catchy lyrics over many Sunday morning mochas and danced to her song, Oxygen, at my wedding. So, when Jason told me he had bought us tickets, I was pretty jazzed. The fact that the concert was taking place the weekend of my birthday also added an element of anticipation.

So imagine my disappointment when the first thing I noticed when we entered the crappy little venue was the overwhelming stench of urinal cakes. This was quickly followed by an annoyance at the thicket of 12 year-old girls chomping gummy bears in the way of my view of the stage.

I don't know as that I've ever seen a larger group of brightly-lit cell phone screens with fingers frantically texting messages in my life. The combination of these things coupled with my smashing 5-foot-zero-on-a-good-day-with-big-shoes frame and I'm quickly becoming agitated. As if that was not enough to make me begin second guessing our choice of entertainment for the evening, I had some teenage guy push me aside, move in front of me and then begin pushing his ass into my stomach to make more room for his equally pimple-faced friend.

I tried to ignore the jeans covered flesh pressing into my recently eaten dinner. I pushed back, he pushed more. I leaned forward next to his ear and said, "Are you FU%$!NG kidding me?" He looked back...ok, back and down, saw the look on my face and moved away from my gut.

Still trying to jockey for a viewing position, I overheard a riveting conversation on 99-cent candy, another conversation about a girl playing two guys for nice Valentines Day gifts and decided I needed a drink.

I was pleasured by finding the location where adult beverages were being dispensed. This was better. A gin and tonic is just what I needed to put a different spin on the evening. We moved back into the concert area and again scouted for a place where I might see Ms. Caillat when she took the stage. When she finally did take the stage, I asked Jason, "Is she attached to that scarf I see through that hole over there?"

Then I listened. I listened hard, but was hearing a timid female voice that sounded like she was singing with marbles in her mouth. I strained a bit more and then when the chorus came, the only clear thing I heard was coming from the 14 year-old girls screaming the lyrics to the song.

Horrified, I thought to myself, surely this has to get better. But it didn't, it got worse. The teeny spot that allowed me to see the glorious scarf was covered by a gaggle of men wearing Patchouli and smoking cigarettes. I told Jason I wanted to go back to the kiddie section to see if I could find a place where I could see the stage.

This is where the crowd surfing skills I developed at metal shows during college would have come in handy. But, as I looked at the crowd around me, I knew that crowd surfing was clearly out of the question. Oooooooh, Colbie, why can't you sing just one song that would create a mosh pit that I could climb atop of? The closest she came to inciting crowd movement was when she sang a Bob Marley cover song, but that was so poorly done that I spun around, pouted and told Jason to take me to the liquor store so I could get my own bottle of gin and that I would rather listen to her album from the comfort of my own home.

The gin was fantastic. But I'll tell you, I've tried several times to listen to Coco on my iPod, all I can hear is those girls screaming the chorus to a song I used to love....