- 19
- Nov
- 08
Dear Celine Dion,
You suck. Your music sucks. Your lyrics suck. Your musicians suck. Your choreographer sucks. Your set designer, producer husband, record label, touring entourage, and publicists all suck. Your parents suck for having you; your fans suck for liking you. There’s nothing you have done, are doing or will ever do that will serve as reparation for how much you suck. Your sucking, quite unlike your singing, is timeless and will never fade. You will suck as much a hundred days and a hundred years from now as you do today. “Jesus fucking Mary,” the historians will say. “Did that woman ever suck.”
I’m not writing to let you know you suck. You know you suck. That was just the context for this story. It serves as the overture for the suck opera about to unfold.
My mom adores you; she always has. Whenever one of your sucky records comes out, she has it the week it is released. Whenever some event takes place where she has a hand in the soundtrack, you are on it. You are her absolute favorite celebrity – even more important to her than Oprah.
I love my mom and would do anything for her. Despite my repeated assessment of you vis a vis the sucking, seeing you in concert had been one of her lifelong ambitions. So when I bought tickets for her to go see you in Las Vegas, you should know how great a sacrifice that represented. That were it not for the wishes a mother, this son would sooner swallow shattered glass with sugarcoated ebola before seeing you live in concert. Indeed, this son would first ask for seconds.
We were going to Vegas with a full crew of family friends – three dudes, two ladies. My plan to make it through the mess hinged on gender segregation. In charge of the ticket purchasing for the expedition (the sole purpose of which was to see you suck live), I picked up five spectacularly overpriced to witness your sucking firsthand. In a fit of filiality and moderate lunacy, I then traded two of the tickets on StubHub for an additional sum so large I remain too embarrassed to admit to another living soul.
The gentlemen would watch your banal performance from the second balcony. My mom, who wished for nothing like seeing you sing, would watch with her friend from a lot closer. My ma had never seen such a large production in her life would be watching you from the 8th row, dead center.
For months I sat on the tickets. Unwilling to disappoint her should something prevent her from attending at the last minute, I kept the position in the crowd a secret. She would ring every week and ask occasionally where we were sitting. I would always fib and say I couldn’t remember, to spare her hopes from getting too elevated.
Finally the trip came and we assembled at last that night in the Monte Carlo, smartly dressed with my mom percolating enough enthusiasm for the entire crew. On the floor before we went to the cab stand, I broke the news.
“Well mom, I’m sorry,” I explained. “Thursday nights are in high demand and I wasn’t able to seat us all together.” She tried to assure me it was alright, but I quickly butted in.
“The guys will have to sit together, I guess. But with the ticket I got a little something to keep us company,” I said, as I handed each of my soon to be suffering brothers-in-arms an engraved flask of their favorite hard liquor.
“How far are we going to be from you guys?” ma asked, slightly disappointed.
“I think it’s pretty far,” I stretched, pulling the tickets out of my coat pocket. “Row HH. I’m not good with the alphabet, but I think that’s 1… 2… 3… yeah.” I paused. “Eight rows from the stage.”
My mom freaked the fuck out. So ecstatic was she to hear this news, she went into an instant joyful shock. Her eyes began to water up. She began to gasp for air. She couldn’t even take the tickets from my hands. She was so blown away she just cradled the tickets in her palms, kissing them delicately as if they might disappear. It took a few minutes before I could even hug her, such was the hysteria surrounding this news.
She wanted to see you so bad just the idea of being a few feet away quite nearly broke her brain. On our way to the theatre she was talking to people we didn’t know. She was babbling to the cab driver, repeating “We’re going to see Celine. We got five rows!” while he politely nodded and pretended to know what the hell she was on about. I had finally let go of the apprehension – my ma was finally going to see this woman and would see her in a style never before experienced in her life.
She literally floated from the taxi through Caesar’s Palace. We came up to the theatre – some hideous architectural abomination I was told was designed specifically to make you suck more – but the doors were closed. In front of the doors was a man from the casino, handing out sheets of paper. He handed one to both me and my ma, standing stunned by my side.
Celine Dion is suffering from an upper respiratory infection. We apologize but this evening’s performance is canceled.
My brain reeled with the meta implied by the announcement; you failed to do the very thing you are known for being terrible at doing. The man just told my mom that you suck at sucking.
—
What could be worse than arriving at Disney World to find it closed? Glad you asked.
Celine’s further trespasses against my mom will continue tomorrow!