Tuesday, April 24, 2012

The Human Edsel

Sunday April 22nd, 2012 – Milwaukee, WI

   No. Not again. Yes. Again. It’s another direct kick to the keester by life with a steel toe combat boot dipped in vinegar. I am now a living, breathing, walking official example of Grade A stupid and I don’t know whether to scream or cry. I did both on the way home tonight, but it still hurts.

   What in the black hole of Uranus was I thinking anyway? The very definition of stupidity itself is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I have tried time after time to fill up a particular room for a specific purpose, usually to benefit charity, but I constantly fall short and am bitterly disappointed afterward. It happened again tonight, and I’m devastated.

   This one took every last bit of wind out of my sail, even though I thought it would be different this time for some insane reason. I needed roughly 100 people to make the suggested donation of $11 to cover all my expenses for the C. Cardell Willis Tribute Show at Shank Hall in Milwaukee tonight, but only 80 showed up. I was grateful for every one of them, but I’m still upside down.

   I honestly thought I did all I could do, and expected a WAY better turnout. Nobody who came out knew the difference, and when the room was sat it looked relatively full at first glance, but it was a total ‘comb over’. There were empty seats everywhere, and I noticed every one of them all night as I walked back and forth throughout the room doing my hosting duties. This was painful.

   I have no idea what else I could have done to promote this show, and to see the return numbers so small made me want to end my life and move on to whatever if anything is next on the docket. If there is another side, it has to be better than this. If I didn’t have someone in the car with me as I drove home, I swear this might have been the night I drove into a wall. It stung me that badly.

   The fact is, the general public en masse is just not interested in whatever I have to offer. That’s a bitter pill to swallow, but it appears to be true. I feel like a human Edsel right now. Contrary to popular belief, the Edsel’s demise was not because it was a bad car. The Corvair was a bad car.

   The Edsel flopped because it didn’t sell to a large enough audience. The masses just didn’t take to it, and the plug was pulled. The same thing happened with New Coke. It never was able to get a big enough customer base to keep it around. These are prime examples of supply and demand.

   Whatever I’ve been supplying, a large demand for it hasn’t been there. I feel like I’ve been on the wrong planet since birth, and I never felt more that way than tonight. Apparently, my passion for paying tribute to someone who gave his life helping others was not shared by as many others as I had imagined. I thought for sure we’d be able to put at least 300 poopers in the pews tonight.

   I had an extremely difficult time hiding my disappointment all night, but I had no choice. I was the one who put this whole thing together, and I had to smile and pretend everything was peachy. The people who came out had a wonderful time, and I’m delighted they did. That’s exactly what was supposed to happen. What wasn’t supposed to happen was that I lost money. That was what I hoped wouldn’t happen the most, but it did. I guess I could be angry, but what would that do to change anything? I tried my best to pull this off, but it flopped. Where are the keys to my Edsel?

Posted via email from Dobie Maxwell's "Dented Can" Diary

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