Not very long ago, I was able to see Todd Snider for the second time in just a few months. This last time, however, I got the chance to chat with him for a few minutes and I couldn’t help but bring up the previous show, the one at the oh-so-chic restaurant in downtown Tuscaloosa (yeah, seems like a contradiction, doesn’t it?).

“Man that was a weird show, huh?” I just stood there, looking at him, my silence representing my agreement with his assessment. “That was some rich guy—called me, asked me to come play, said he was a fan. I didn’t think he’d pay me what I asked, but shit, when he did, I grabbed my guitar and headed his way.”

Honestly, even if Todd hadn’t told me that story, well, I could’ve figured that much out on my own. That was the show I took my son to see and, when we walked through the door and found some rather exquisite cherry chairs arranged on a well-polished, shiny hardwood floor in front of a fairly small but well-designed stage, I thought something was a bit off. But when I wandered up to the bar and ordered a margarita and was charged the price a family of four is charged for a meal at the Waffle House on the other side of town, well, I pretty much knew something was really off. Now mind you, it was a mighty good drink, and it damn well better have been, given that when you pay the same price for a drink as you would a tank of gas, well, that tequila better be some high octane stuff. And it was.

The crowd that came in, they mostly looked lost. Not in the lost, is-this-where-we’re-supposed-to-go sense, but lost in the hey-what-the-hell-are-we-doing-here sense. The men mostly stood together, back-slapping, ball-wagging their way through conversations that periodically erupted with loud, insincere laughter. They had all tried to dress down, looking all casual and such in their $450 loafers, their well-coifed mistresses and/or occasionally beloved wives who had been folded neatly onto their bended elbows now having wandered off the form their own circle of pomposity. And if you’re not familiar with Todd, well, this ain’t his usual crowd.

Now that isn’t to say that Todd’s fan base is a bunch of degenerates but, well, in the eyes of the crowd that assembled for his show that evening, us regular folk are just a bunch of foodstamp-wielding hooligans who dye our own greys and, with our very presence, threaten the good taste of them there society folks. We deserve a pursing of the lips cleverly designed as a polite smile. And nothing more.

As for Todd himself, well, he’s one of those folks who you’d likely consider, at least, to be a bit of an anti-establishment sort. I mean, he does come on stage typically wearing a hat and a vest…but when it comes to shoes, well, they can be a bit cumbersome for Todd so he usually kicks them off before he straps on his guitar.

My son and I sat there, almost completely surrounded by these well-mannered people who rolled their eyes as they fake-kissed the air next to the cheeks of the folks they greeted, not one willing to pass up the opportunity to feign excitement at seeing the next. But we considered ourselves fortunate because, next to us, sat no one. Until halfway through Todd’s set.

That was when a younger woman walked in and plopped herself down, the other vacant chair being taken up by her husband/date/boyfriend/pimp/john/gardener/poolboy. Maybe he was one of those things, but likely he was all. She, however, was the one who commanded attention and for oh-so-many reasons.

First off, this woman waddled in, having apparently being recently stricken with a rather acute case of elephantiasis, a severe case that had so unfortunately and severely attacked her ass and nothing but her ass. I suspect this illness came on suddenly, too, thereby explaining why she had been unable to go out and purchase a pair of decent fitting jeans before the show instead of squeezing herself into the pair she'd worn, jeans that served as nothing but an impressive testament to the wondrous strength of a denim-spandex blend (with an emphasis on the “span”). And that she was able to balance herself on a pair of boots with itty-bitty, slender but rather tall heels proved to be yet another feat of engineering beyond my own comprehension. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t watching her, waiting for her to split those jeans, topple from the heights of those shoes, or, if I were really, really lucky, a spectacular combination of the two. Damn my luck, though, she made it to her chair before I was so rewarded.

Now once she had balanced the aforementioned elephantine ass on the aforementioned exquisite cherry chair, she still had to careen about, in a seated position, scanning the room for familiar faces at which to wave then turn to her husband/date/boyfriend/pimp/john/gardener/poolboy to make a snarky remark. Pure charm, she was, pure charm.

However, to give credit where it is due, she’d shown up, indeed, to a show, arm in arm with what's-his-name, and flipped her blond-highlighted but naturally mousy brown bob from side to side, just to make sure that everyone noticed that yes, she had arrived. At some show. Down at that new place. Where everyone was going. And it started at 8. So she’d show up at, say, 9:30.

So, yeah, unfortunately she missed the part about, well, this is Todd Snider she was going to see, a fact that came upon here rather horrifyingly when Todd relented to the shouted requests of a few die-hards in the back and sang a crowd favorite. (Ok, it’s a crowd favorite at the other shows but, well, at this particular show, it kind of fell flat.) He wasn’t too far into the song before Ms. WideWhiteAss caught on and took offense. She raised her middle finger on both hands, then gently swayed her hands in rhythm with the song. Being a lady and all, she was polite enough to hold the extended fingers of her swaying hands just below the backs of the people in front of her, thereby making this display of her cultured and enviable upbringing visible only to those of us lucky enough to be seated in the fog cast by her perfume. Or maybe she held her hands down like that not so much because she was being a lady but, perhaps, because she’d realized the limits of the heels of her boots under the weight of her ass, unable to stand up and flip off Todd Snider honest-like.

It took only about twenty seconds of this before her husband/date/boyfriend/pimp/john/gardener/poolboy snatched her hands from the air and yelled in a whisper, “Jesus Christ, it’s only a song. Why do you always have to do this?” And he snatched his expensive overcoat from the back of the chair and headed for the door. I wish I’d had the guts to stand up and cheer for him but I didn’t want to be rude to Todd. You see, some of us really had shown up to see his performance, no matter what the motives of the well-mannered folks.