Ravinia – The Agony of Compromise

At the end of the day, marriage is all about compromise.  You must learn to get along and to co-exist with your spouse if you are to have a successful marriage, and in order to do that, you must be able to compromise.  And in fact, even if you are getting along with your spouse, and even if you are successful “co-existing” with your spouse, you STILL probably need to compromise in order to get some of the things you want.  And of course those things differ.

For instance, my wife is more than willing to compromise on certain things and certain issues in order to get me to go out and be social or in order to get me to green light a little shopping, while I am willing to compromise on certain things and certain issues in order to get more sex.  And sometimes we can work together to kill two birds with one stone. 

Take Ravinia for example.  Now, I hate Ravinia.  I’ve made no secret of that right here in this blog.  If I never go to Ravinia again I’ll be a happy man.  However my wife loves going.  She could probably go to Ravinia once a week.  She loves everything about it:   The socializing.  The music under the stars.  The picnic dinners and cocktails that she packs.  I, on the other hand, hate all of it.  However, I do love sex.  Unfortunately, as fate would have it, my wife doesn’t seem to love it as much as I do (seriously this is the cruelest part of my entire life), so a joint compromise occasionally needs to be worked out to satisfy both parties.

The compromise is simple . . . I go to Ravinia once a year (and I get to pick the show), and she has to have sex with me BEFORE we go (yeah, I’m not bright, but I’m not THAT dumb. . . . I get payment BEFORE I fight the masses for a 10’ x 10’ patch of grass where I set up shop for the next three hours, only to be trampled by a bunch of strangers looking for the rest rooms).

This year, one concert peaked my interest more than any other.  The B-52’s and the Go-Go’s were coming to Ravinia.  A blast from the past.  A way to relive my youth while fighting the malaria-spreading mosquitoes that were sure to swarm after the extremely wet spring we’ve had here in Chicago. 

So we got the tickets, invited a handful of other couples to join us (misery loves company), planned an elaborate picnic basket, and of course, per the compromise, a few hours before we left for the concert, we had sex. 

It wasn’t until we had fought the traffic just to enter the concert grounds, and then elbowed our way past hundreds, if not thousands of people just to reach our small plot of grass, that I started to wonder whether I was actually getting the short end of the stick here in regards to our joint compromise.  The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that I had in fact been cheated.

Here is a transcript of the night’s texts:

Me – Music hasn’t even started.  I’m miserable and cold.  Fucking awful.  Though I did have sex four hours ago.  That’s the only thing that’s keeping me going.

My Friend – That’s old news.  How are you going to get thru the next four hours?

Me – Not sure, and now that you mention it four hours ago suddenly seems like an eternity.

My Friend – Still cold?

Me – I’ve lost feeling in the lower part of my body.

My Friend – Hang in there. 

Me – Okay B-52’s just started playing.  There are some seriously weird people here dancing.  I don’t know this song.  I’m 0-for-1 already.

Me – Three songs into it and I’m 0-for-3, and I think I just felt rain.

Me – Good news, that wasn’t rain.  The guy behind me just spilled his drink on me. 

Me – Okay I’m now 0-for-6.  I need Love Shack or Red Lobster.

Me – No wait, not Red Lobster.  Rock Lobster.  I think I ate at Red Lobster once.

Me – 0-for-7.  I’m starting to wonder whether I’ve confused the B-52’s with another group.  Hell this may not be the B-52’s.  The stage is like a mile away from where I am sitting.  Who knows who’s on stage?

Me – I can’t take the cold anymore.  I’ve literally lost feeling in my extremities.  Going to buy a Ravinia sweatshirt.

Me – Just played Love Shack. 

Me – My wife just spent $51 on a Ravinia coat for me.  It is truly the ugliest coat in the world.  I think it’s the same coat the female security personal are wearing.

Me – Just played Rock Lobster. 

Me – I think someone just snapped a picture of me in this stupid coat.  I fear they’re going to post it on their Facebook page under the heading of “Weird dude at the B-52’s concert trying to impersonate a female security guard.”  It may make more sense to be cold.  I may have to take this coat off.

Me – The B-52’s are going all Grateful Dead on me.  They’ve been playing the same song for over 10 minutes.  I’m miserable.  Get me out of here.  I’ll pay you $100 if you come and get me right now.

Unfortunately, I realized that my friend had long ago lost interest in my situation and had stopped texting back hours earlier.  I was alone in my misery with no chance of rescue.

Finally, after a long wait, the Go-Go’s played for about 20 minutes, and the night was thankfully over. 

There were, however, a few saving graces:

• Some of the ladies took pity on me and actually brought food that I liked. 
• We had a great parking spot thanks to my mom’s parking pass.
• I did have sex.
• I don’t have to go to Ravinia again this year.   And maybe never again.

The Ravinia Night Dupe

I’ve been in sales for a long time.  Granted at the moment I’m sitting here without a sales job, but I’ve sold everything from 15-minute blocks of satellite space used for video news uplinks to cars to mechanical insulation.  I know sales.  Which is why I don’t mind being “sold.”  You’ve got a product to sell?  Well tell me about it, and make your pitch.  If it sounds good I might just buy.  I’ve had Comcast Cable for the last 10 years, but recently AT&T sent a salesman to my house to pitch me on their U-Verse cable package, and after listening to the dude’s pitch I signed up.  It’s great.  No complaints.  A number of years ago a guy was going door-to-door with some new carpet cleaning machine.  His whole pitch was “show me the toughest stain, and I’ll get it out.”  I said okay and showed him the stain on my son’s rug.  Years earlier my son had thrown up a combination of orange juice and children’s cherry flavored Motrin (really quite spectacular – didn’t tell us about it until the next morning – the pile of human waste just sat there for an entire night) and I told the guy “get that out and I’ll buy your product right here and now.”   Left him alone and went back downstairs.

This poor son of a bitch was in my son’s room for a good 30 minutes before finally coming out totally and completely deflated.  His machine didn’t make a dent on this stain.  And you know what he did . . . he packed his stuff up, thanked me for my time, and left.  He didn’t try to bull shit me or pitch me on some other product.  The dude gave it the old college try, and then left when he couldn’t get the job done. 

That’s sales.  Be honest.  Tell me what you have, and maybe I’ll buy.

Just don’t try to dupe me.  I don’t like feeling like I’ve been duped.  I think that’s why I dislike Ravinia so much.  Ravinia is billed as this wonderfully romantic “evening under the stars,” and yet it’s really an exercise in claustrophobia and frustration.

It’s supposed to be this great outdoor venue where you can lay down your blanket, set up your chairs and open up your picnic basket with your wine and cheese and get comfortable under the stars as live music (oftentimes classical) is played. 

What’s not to like?  You chat with good friends.  You snuggle up to your spouse.  You take down a few bottles of wine.  You eat some sandwiches.  Maybe you nod off for a few minutes during an intermission.  You let your worries and your troubles leave you.  It’s a shout out to easier times.     

And yet it’s not! 

What it is, is a hot, uncomfortable evening somewhat masked by friendly conversation and pleasant music.  It’s you, your 10×10 section of carved out lawn space, wine, cheese, and 20,000 strangers.  It’s nothing more than that.

The one or two parking lots fill up in a hurry, so typically you are forced to park blocks away which means the evening starts with a long walk carrying 50 pounds of gear.

Once inside the park you fight (not literally, of course, yet I suspect people have come close to blows) over a small section of grass where you can set up your blanket and chairs.  And whether you set up right next to someone else, or whether you set up in a totally wide open space, by the time the music starts there will be people on top of you in every direction.  If this place comfortably holds 10,000, then I am convinced they have jammed 20,000 people in there.  Suffice it to say this is NOT the place to have a private, candid conversation with your spouse or with your best friend unless you want some complete stranger hearing your every word.  You are guaranteed to trip over people walking the five feet from your chair to your cooler. 

To make matters worse, it gets so noisy that oftentimes it is hard to hear the music that you came to hear in the first place.  Despite having a very good speaker system that runs throughout the park, it simply is impossible to hear the music at times.  I’m entirely convinced that I could jam 500 people into my small backyard, have them bring their own food and drink, and play them some music on my iPod and they would have just as good a time. 

However, I will say that in all fairness to the folks that run Ravinia, it’s not them who are duping us, it’s the wives who are duping their husbands into thinking that a night at Ravinia will be fun, romantic and exciting.  It’s like fondue restaurants, which are supposed to be some of the most romantic restaurants around.  Why?  Someone puts a pot of boiling oil and some uncooked meat on my dimly lit table, and I have to cook it myself.  What’s romantic about that?  And yet the ladies are telling us how great it is.

Stop with the bullshit, ladies.  I know we’re fairly dumb animals, but cut us some slack.

Hey, we don’t dupe you nearly as much.  Guys know baseball games and monster truck races are unromantic.  Now we like going, and it’s sometimes fun to have our wives join us, but we don’t try to sell a nine-inning ball game with a few beers and hotdogs as anything other than fun entertainment.  But women try to sell guys on these crowded outdoor music venues or these weird fondue restaurants as being wonderfully romantic. 

Enough already.  Stop.   Ladies, here’s your pitch the next time you want your husband to go to Ravinia or some out-of-the-way fondue place.

You say “Babe, I want to go to Ravinia.  I’m going to invite three or four other couples to join us.  I’m going to spend most of the day cooking and preparing food for this event, and I’ll need you to clean the kitchen when I’m done.  I’m not going to wear anything too sexy as it’s hot and humid outside and I don’t want to be uncomfortable.  I probably won’t even put makeup on.  We’re going to park a half mile away, and I’ll need you to carry the blanket, the two folding chairs and the cooler.  We’re probably going to be surrounded by 15 to 20 thousand people when we get there.  We won’t know any of them, but they’re going to be really loud and we probably won’t be able to hear the music.  You’re going to be eaten alive by mosquitoes, and you’ll have two choices when it comes to your full bladder:  hold it for a good three hours or get lost for close to 25 minutes walking to and from the bathroom.  The whole thing will be miserable, but I promise to have sex with you when we get home.”

There you have it.  Your sales pitch.  You’re welcome.  Now you can officially stop trying to dupe us – and I guarantee it will work.