Lionel Richie concert.

It was incredibly easy to sneak into the Lionel Richie concert while posing as a Human Resources personnel guy. I had on my polo shirt, and walked into the big convention center hall in the midst of a crowd. There was this 90-year old white woman at the door who worked for the convention center and she was asking everyone to raise up their arms and be like "Wooh!" for Lionel Richie, so she could see their yellow armbands, so I did that along with everyone else, only I held my book I took with me over my wrist, and she never saw, and I just walked right in.

In the convention center itself, the seats towards the front were filled more with black conventioneers, and the seats towards the back were more white, and there were a lot more women there overall than men. I sat down in front of some black women who were already dancing and yelling the responses to Tina Turner's "Proud Mary" playing over the loudspeaker to get the crowed pumped up, and they told me I was going to go deaf.

"You better watch out too," I was like, "because before you know it you and me are going to be up there dancing on the ceiling," I said to one, who gave me a look and laughed.

Later, another black lady sat down beside me next to her friends, and she started telling me about how "White Nights" was the first movie she ever went to go see without an adult, and she's been fond of Lionel Richie ever since. She also told me how she grew up in inner city Denver and had put on ten pounds just at this conference from eating so much at T.G.I. Friday's, and she was saying how one summer when she worked at a correctional facility she also worked part-time hauling wood, and it toned her calves without her knowing it, to the point where one day she wore a short skirt into the office and her boss was like, "Watch your dress, please, Ms. [her last name], those boys can't handle it," and she told him, "Bullshit, Mr. [his last name], don't be saying that, you know you the one who can't handle it," only later that day she looked in the mirror and realized that without noticing it, somehow she had gotten legs to die for.

The concert itself was solid, and I loved how all these fifty-year old black women went nuts and danced their heads off to Lionel doing his old Commodores number "Brick House".