Culture vs. Community

My faith in community and the intellect of the average citizen is seriously waining!

I've been going to the celebrity concert series the last couple of weeks and at first the local turnout was making up for my disappointment in mankind at my photography class. During the Opera (Verdi's Aida), the audience knew when to clap and even shouted "bravo" at the end of this three hour parade of unbelievable vocal stamina.

...but just when my faith in the masses was beginning to shine forth, there was the ballet. Last night we went to the Moscow Ballet performance of Sleeping Beauty and I opted for the lone upper seat so I could see the staging (learned my lesson of front row woe when I missed half the BYU ballroom dance team choreography three weeks ago). Just when I'm taking in the amazing depth and grandeur of Tchaikovsky's score, someone's oxygen machine starts releasing great gasps of air every third second. The machine would turn on for ten minutes and off for ten. Every time it started up again, you could hear an audible moan from everyone around me. This was paired with an atrocious smell wafting throughout row N seat 17-21. The guy next to me, we'll call him Lloyd for all intensive purposes, had brought his icy-hot mentholatum and must have bathed in it prior to the show. He also had a stash of beverage: a huge water bottle that made a hissing sound every time he popped open the cap. I don't think the menthol would have been so bad if it hadn't been for the mysterious urine oder wafting through my nostrils at the same time. The clincher, however, was when [Lloyd] turned to me to start up a conversation during half-time:

"You know what this reminds me of?" he said, gesturing to the stage where 20 point shoes had just entered, "I need to cut my toe nails."