Hey, you, in the front row...

Yeah, you, the ass-clown in jeans and a t-shirt sitting right in front of me. Do you see what's going on around you? Have you noticed that a large group of people have congregated on stage but have stopped singing and are, oddly, bending at the waist repeatedly in the direction of the audience while making gestures of heartfelt thanks and gratitude? Do you notice that the people seated around you are (hopefully) doing something vigorous with their hands? Yes, they're repeatedly bringing them rapidly together to produce a sound commonly known as a clap, usually used in polite society to express appreciation and respect for job well done. But you're not clapping. Did you not find that we all did a good job? By your slouched posture and back visibly turned towards the stage, I can only assume that you found something lacking in the evening's festivities and feel the need to show your displeasure by behaving in a fashion more suited to a small child recently denied a new toy from the vending machine at Safeway than an adult man who can obviously afford the best seats in the house but just as obviously cannot grasp how to show even the smallest modicum of gratitude for those who just worked their collective asses off to entertain you on this dreary Wednesday evening when they could have been home knitting. Were you dragged here against your will? Did the woman sitting one row behind you to whom you just directed a comment obviously offensive enough to cause her to adamantly shush you with both hands trick you into thinking that you were, in fact, going out for a night on the town with the boys to Dirty Dick's Tavern and One-Stop STD Shop to watch naked Jell-o wrestling while baseball/Nascar/bass-fishing played on the big screen TV behind you and scantily clad toothless waitresses served you $0.99 pitchers of Michelob, only to then have said woman, who must have been driving, turn the corner onto Mercer instead and say, "Oh well, since we're here, we may as well go to the opera?" Well, then I applaud you for making such a brave statement against the oppression of her and opera and all they stand for by putting on your baseball hat before the soprano even made it to the stage and casting around behind and around you for enough audience members who were also rude enough to try and flee before the house lights were brought up to obscure you in your escape attempt, using their great and equally insulting numbers to hide you in their midst. And for you, sir, and those other people, while I appreciate that, at a monster truck rally, your ticket buys you the whole seat but you only need the edge, a ticket for the opera buys you the whole seat because you need the whole plush, endowed, reclining $300 a show seat. Why do I need the entire seat, you ask, in a seemingly innocent manner? So your bourgeois and/or tornado bait buttocks will have a comfy place to repose while you show due deference to the people on stage who have just done what you could never do, even if you were stapled to Joan Sutherland's ass. Go buy a button down shirt, you Bud Light swilling, Camel smoking, Chevy-driving, gun-owning, refuse blanc dill hole who probably doesn't tip in restaurants or bring his wife to orgasm, either.