Meeting Rob Thomas

First off, let me say, what a blast! Overall, a great experience and a great concert. Lisa and I haven't been to a concert in about 5 years or so, the last one being the Aerosmith concert at Riverport Amphitheatre in the summer of '98.

But I don't want to talk about that. Let me talk of Rob Thomas. Apparently, my wife has had a 'celebrity-crush' on him for quite a long time. I'm not jealous about this at all, for reasons I'll get into, but I don't think I realized how strong it was until after she was calling the radio station to try and win tickets.

This past Tuesday and for all of this week, the local radio station morning show, Phillips and Company on Y98 was giving away pairs of tickets to see the Rob Thomas concert and meet him before the show.

I think Lisa might have mentioned it prior to Tuesday morning, but I didn't really mentally absorb the rules of the contest. Apparently, at specifically mentioned times during the show, the DJs would ask for the first four callers to phone in and give their best story for why they deserved the tickets and the meet & greet priveledge. They didn't just want to tive the tickets to the first four persistent dialers, but to someone they judged to be really, really, really interested in them.

When the announcement came on for the time to call in, I had the phone in my hand and started dialing it and handed it to her. It rang, but then no one answered. She hung up and called back. Then she hung up and called back. I assumed that if she didn't get in with the first four callers -- which should probably take about 19.5 seconds -- that she was not going to get through. I kept telling her to give up and hang it up.

She was just about to and tried one more time. I think it was Steph Duran who picked up and simply said Y98...

I'm.. calling about the Rob Thomas tickets, my wife stammered, her voice rising in pitch.

Yeah, what's your story? the DJ asked patiently. Now according to Lisa, the previous day, the station had gotten a lot of calls with stories that they had rejected outright. Everyone had some sort of sob story about why they wanted the tickets. They were all downers about their single-mother, out-of-work son-in-law, handicapped back surgery, knee pains, hard luck sally sob story... stuff. After they had gotten Monday's winner the day before, the DJs had specifically stated that they didn't want any more sad stories.

Lisa had mentally rehearsed TWO DIFFERENT stories. I'll let you pick which one you think will win. she told the DJ diplomatically. The first story was related to the Friends television series and an episode they had where the gang came up with a list of Top Five celebrities that if they ever possibly met and had a chance to 'hook-it-up' with that celebrity, their spouses couldn't be upset about it because the celebrity was on their personal list of five. Rob Thomas is apparently on Lisa's list of five. This is why I can't be jealous of her fascination with him, because he rates her 'freebie' five. Of course, Lisa has a tendency to change the top five list without informing me ahead of time and like I said earlier in this post, I didn't know she was that in in lust with Rob Thomas. The point of the 'five-free' list is so that it's expected that if they someday meet one of their five that whatever happens should be forgiveable, but the list has to be set in stone for it to work. But I digress... Lisa told the DJ that Rob was on her top five 'freebie' list, but that apparently wouldn't cut it.

That story has already been taken. What is your other story?

Well, Lisa didn't miss a beat and told her other story ... which was also true. On the evening when our youngest daughter was conceived, the song Smooth that Rob Thomas wrote and sang with Carlos Santana was playing. We never did get a chance to thank Rob for our beautiful wonderful daughter and I think it would be great if I had the chance to thank him personally.

The DJ on the other end of the phone loved that one. She eagerly took Lisa's details and cell phone number and told her to listen to see if she'd won. After she hung up, Lisa explained to me that the morning show was having a daily Rob Thomas Conclave in honor of the Pope's death recently being in the news. Each of the four members of the show chose a story they liked the best and gave the first name of the caller and a brief summary of each story. Like the Vatican, the Phillips and Co. morning show had it's own plume of white smoke, except it was only spotted when one of the interns went out for a cigarette. At that point, they would announce their choice of which of the four stories they had collectively chosen democratically. That morning, two of the stories were sob-type stories; lost jobs and single mothers. Another just seemed a little dumb. The caller had gotten a new job and wanted a night out to celebrate with her friend. No offense, ...but Bo-ring!

As the team discussed the stories and talked about Lisa specifically, Guy Phillips asked jokingly if she wanted to thank him, or if she wanted a blood test. Guy even mentioned how much he liked the name 'Olivia'. Excitement mounted as they went to commercial and came back and awaited the plume of white smoke.

And the winner is,... and we waited with our breath held in. Lisa- ... Guy said, but paused. There had been another girl who called in named Lisa, but of course, he was pausing for the pronounciation on the last name. - Arconati, from Florissant. He finished, pronouncing it exactly right. Lisa and I jumped up and down, the girls running around the house in surprise and confusion. Lisa had done it. My wife had won tickets to the Rob Thomas Meet & Greet!

That's it, I can't type any more. I'm all Rob-Thomas'ed out! I'll finish the story another day.