Saturday, November 24, 2007

Your Attention, Please!

We interrupt this string of House on the Rock entries to bring you this bit of news that is just too quirky to wait for the end of the tour:

I ordered two CDs for my brother for his birthday and had them sent, gift-wrapped, from Amazon. They were Wesley Willis Greatest Hits and Wesley Willis Greatest Hits, Volume 2. Wesley Willis was a local Chicago music phenom and, let's just say, an acquired taste. I had given my brother a copy of his greatest hits CD as a Christmas present a few years ago, but, alas! He had loaned it to a friend and that was the last he ever saw of it. So I figured a replacement would be a perfect birthday gift. When I found that there were MORE compilations of Wesley Willis's "hits," I added onto the treasure trove.

They arrived to him in good order, but he plucked them out of his mailbox as he was heading into work at one of his several jobs--this one at a local coffeehouse and watering hole. He stuffed the wrapped CDs in his messenger bag, planning to spend the evening after work listening to the oeuvre of Monsieur Willis. Alas, yet again! Sometime during his shift, the CDs were pilfered, gift-wrap and all, out of his bag! He called me that night, angry but chagrined. I told him not to worry... stuff like this happens, and, while it sucks, it's just stuff. And Christmas is looming...

Well, he just called me. Turns out that he has a shift at the same place this morning, and when he arrived this a.m. he found the CDs, unwrapped, under the bar. Only one of them--the original greatest hits album--was out of its shrink wrap. A guy had brought them in last night, saying that he had picked them up out of the closet by mistake, and that he was horrified to discover that they were not his... so he was returning them!!

Now, really. The CDs were gift-wrapped with a tag addressed specifically to my brother on them, and they were INSIDE his bag, so there is no way this guy could have picked them up by mistake. The most hilarious thing about the whole incident is that the guy obviously opened the first one, popped it in the deck, and was so horrified at what assailed his ears that he didn't even bother to open the second one--he just gathered the two of them up and BROUGHT THEM BACK to the scene of his crime! Too funny!!

Sometimes the karma police have a grand sense of humor!

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