The Curious Case Of The Airborne Laptop At The Dylan Show

noah | November 27, 2006 2:40 am

And we thought the only thing people had to watch out for at an arena show was $8 beers: As a Philly-area Bob Dylan fan found out last week, flying computers are the newest high-tech concert hazard. The story, as told by the struck concert-goer (and feel free to stick a big (sic) over the whole thing):

Anyway, sitting there, enjoying the music and from above comes flying on a diagnol this big black thing. I only saw it for a split second and it was dark so I didn’t see what it was. It hit my knee, then the back of the chair in front of me, finally landing under that chair. I quickly stood up and looked around thinking I’d see…something. But I didn’t. No snickering teens and no upset Bethy. I felt my lap, bone dry, so it wasn’t a large cup with beer. But what was it. Throughout the rest of the set I looked up and around. Myself and people around me were speculating exactly what it was and where it came from. Finally, after the Raconteurs’ set, the lights came on. I reached down under the chair in front of me, and pulled up (to my and everyone around me’s surprise) an IBM Thinkpad. What?!? Did it come from one of the light or sound techinicians in the rafters. Maybe someone kicked it from there. That was really all I thought it could be. If someone threw it, people around them would have seen it happen.

As it turns out, the owner of the laptop wasn’t the person who threw it–the laptop was stolen before it was flung, so the strikee is still hoping that whoever threw it is “tortured by hanging upside down, with their eyelids clamped open, forced to watch hundreds of hours of men’s competitve ice dancing, while listening to recordings of bad country music, played backwards.” What, no Self-Portrait listening session?

Tales of the flying laptop at Dylan Concert, Philly, 11/18/06 [allalongthewatchtower.dk, via Philebrity]

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