They Might Be Giants Show Canceled at Berkeley Tonight

They Might Be Giants performed in San Francisco in 2010.

A bit of panic washed over me yesterday while we waited to hear if They Might Be Giants were going to make it out of the Denver snowstorm in time to get to Berkeley for the show tonight. My husband and I had planned a romantic getaway, dinner at Julia’s at Berkeley City Club, a bay view suite at the Claremont Club & Spa, now run by Fairmont, and a stand-up general admission show at UC Theater Berkeley that would run way past my normal bedtime.

It’s not like we get to see They Might Be Giants all the time. Berkeley is about 90 minutes from Sacramento, maybe 2 1/2 hours in malo Friday night traffic. Plus, we haven’t been anywhere since we returned from our holiday trip to Cuba. This mini vacation was just one night. Yet just to make a trip for one night involves a lot of juggling. It means I have to reschedule other standing appointments for Friday for earlier in the day. Bring in petsitters to care for our el gatos and la casa. Move any weekend appointments to the following week. Complete all of my About.com writing assignments earlier in the week. Not make any listing appointments for Saturday or Sunday.

So, that was a lot of wasted effort. I now know how home buyers feel when their offers are not accepted. It’s circumstances beyond their control when they’re working with us. If they listen to us, their offers are likely to go through. If they don’t take our advice, they tend to get rejected. Every so often, there is that oddity, that one offer that doesn’t get accepted, which we predicted would.

Home buyers would be happier as well if they listened to They Might Be Giants. Then they would know important things, things like the sun is 93 million miles from Earth or why Istanbul is not Constantinople. But on the other hand, they’d probably wander around singing you’re not the Boss of Me now. There’s always the downside.

It was probably in the mid-’90s when I first went to a concert by They Might Be Giants. It was either in Chicago or Washington, D.C. while visiting my now husband. We’ve since been to a half-dozen shows but it’s been a while. The theater in Berkeley just announced this morning that the show has been canceled, postponed for some unknown future date. I spent about 20 minutes feeling unhappy about it and about the potential to end up paying for a hotel room we will not use. And then I made a reservation for us at Ella to compensate.

Perhaps that’s exactly what TMBG might do. Say, hey, we have a free night, we could go to San Francisco and whoop it up, or we could drive over to Sacramento and dine at Ella. Then they would write a song about it. Hella time at Ella.