[Dixielandjazz] Smokers

[Charlie Hooks]

on 6/23/03 10:27 AM, Larry Weil at kc1ih at mac.com wrote:

 Not a good 
way to to attract people to your concerts, by not giving a s--t about
your fan's comfort and safety.

I've just got to chime in on this!

   Larry, I don't need you or anyone else concerning themselves about my
comfort and safety.   Thoreau once commented that if he ever saw a man
coming toward him with the express intention of doing him good--he'd run for
his life.  I totally agree.

   In the wonderful movie, "All About Eve," there's a scene where Marylin
Munroe (at that time a relatively unknown)  at a party calls out for
"Waiter!"  George Saunders, with whom I often identify, sitting with full
aplomb on the stairway, reproves her--"Ask for the butler."   She objects:
"Somebody's name might be Butler."  Saunders then delivers my favorite line,
looking her slowly over as though searching vainly for a brain: "You have a
point; an idiotic one, I admit, but a point."

   My feeling exactly about your "what if it causes the next guy to have an
asthma attack?"  If a guy that asthmatic elects to enter a smoky venue,
that's his choice.   I quit smoking seven years ago (I'm 74) after smoking
three packs of unfiltered Pell Mells a day since I was 15.   Sure smoke
smells bad to me now.  So do lots of other things.   Tough.  I like smokers.
They're good people.

   I also quit drinking for almost 10 years because I was overdoing it, and
I offer to non-smokers the commendation given me once when I refused a drink
offer by saying I'd quit drinking.  The guy looked at me and said, in his
Preston Foster voice, "Sir, you are to be commended--and avoided," and
sailed on around me to the bar.  He was right, and I'm making up for those
lost years.  

   Jazz music has always been associated with social freedom and good
fellowship--the freedom to smoke and drink and be convivial.  Sometimes the
smoke gets too think, sometimes the booze flows to the extreme and a hockey
game breaks out.  That's life.  You get uncomfortable, leave.  But never
whine because other people are doing what they have done for hundreds of
years.

   And you should probably avoid Chicago altogether.

"I was not trying to moralize or to dictate personal behavior.  I was only
talking about venues."

    Sure, Larry, sure thing.

Charlie the curmudgeon
in Illinois