This afternoon, I went to see a movie, "Three Needles," at the Village East Theater in Manhattan. While seated in the theater waiting for the movie to start, there were several songs playing in the house while various advertisements and trivia questions were flashed upon the screen -- you know the drill. The last song was Tom Waits singing "You Can Never Hold Back Spring." However, just a little ways into the song, the recording began to skip every several seconds, forward, then backward, then forward again... then backward, then ahead... and on and on. No attempt was made by the theater staff to correct this problem, nor did anyone in the audience react to it even slightly. The song ended about five times, each time ending and then skipping back about ten seconds and ending again. The malfunction ceased finally after a good ten minutes when the previews finally started. (I checked ITunes, the recording of that song that appears there is 2 minutes and 26 seconds long.)
I was in stitches at this point. I imagine that I was the only person in the theater that found this even slightly funny (in light of the latest episode of the Best Show), but if other FOTs had been there, they'd have either been laughing too, or having aneurysms. Tom, you can thank your lucky stars that you weren't there.
