many many years ago, on a planet... well, this planet, i had reason to live in madison, wi, for a short time, through no fault of my own (a.k.a. i went to grad school there). shortly after i had started... i realized i just was not like the other students.

so when i won tickets to see tori amos and go backstage to meet her, well, i had a hard time finding someone to go with. (let's just say most of these people were more of the ones who would have moved into easy-listening land within five year's time or so.)

i finally hunted someone down who had at least heard of tori, and took the person with me. there were about a dozen or so people total that won this prize. we got to the arena, and of course... waited. and waited some more. and continued to wait. a long time later, we we led up stairs, and more stairs, then a pause to walk across the floor we were on to go up stairs on the other side. stairs, stairs, stairs.

when there was finally no more stairs, we were led to a large room that apparently was the dining area for the backstage people and the band. and we sat at a table and... you guessed it... waited some more.

tori came out a while later, and was nice... she had some publicity pics with her, and signed them for us (though we could not have our cd's or anything signed). she also gave us her 'recipe' for hair dye at the time.

at the time, she was working on a duet with michael stipe, and said he would be in the audience for the show that night. but that's another story.

about 15 minutes after she came in, she left.

and we went back down the stairs... and waited some more until the show started.