71 lines
3.0 KiB
Plaintext
71 lines
3.0 KiB
Plaintext
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POPE CONCERTS
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Purveyors of popular music ply their wares at concerts. You have to follow the
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group's itinerary hoping they'll come to your town to play, if they're popular,
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at the local arena. You just never really know if they'll be around from one
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year to the next (i.e. Could Michael Jackson fill a stadium today?).
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The Pope, on the other hand, holds regularly scheduled concerts as well as a
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tour now and then. He just, in fact, held a couple of concerts at St. Peter's
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square over the Easter weekend (coincident with Spring Break).
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You have to be impressed with the attendance record at pope concerts. Remember
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a few years ago when he toured Poland? The whole country turned out.
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This for a guy who can hardly carry a tune! (Well, even Mary Travers goes flat
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now and again...)
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But there is concern among the Pope's managers that his home dates aren't
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drawing the crowds they used to. His Palm Sunday gig, for instance, at St.
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Peter's, drew only 75,000.
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What's wrong? Recently, the Pope's management group--they call themselves The
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Curia, I think--held a meeting about attendance...
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CARDINAL OGNIBENE: "I don't get it. He wears expensive, custom-made costumes.
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Plenty of glitter. Good backup, too. Why the low draw lately?"
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CARDINAL GEPETTO: "Mebbe it's the lyrics. Mebbe it's his repertoire--y'know
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that hasn't changed in a coupla thousand years. Mebbe it's time to update,
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whaddya say, guys?"
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CARDINAL FORSOOTHI: "I think it's the advance team and those advertising guys
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that are messing up. The faithful aren't getting the message soon enough. They
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got lots of other things going on these days--not like it was, say, in the
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1300s, when Pope didn't have any competition."
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CARDINAL OGNIBENE: "You mean like Prince and Kiss?"
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CARDINAL GEPETTO: "--And football and baseball and politics!"
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CARDINAL OGNIBENE: "So what are we going to do about it? The coffers are
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getting low, boys."
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CARDINAL CANDIDE: "It's not like he ain't getting any free press coverage,
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either. The PR section's doing its job. Look, that assassination gimmick was
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great stuff and we drew real heavy for 13 months after. Why not pop another
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stunt?"
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CARDINAL GEPETTO: "He don't wanna do those stunts, man! The guy wants to lean
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on his message, for chrissakes."
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The meeting went on in the same vein for awhile, but really didn't get anywhere
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until the Pope himself stepped in...
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POPE: "You guys are forgetting that I'm the most popular pope since
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what's-his-name the 23rd. You're getting all worked up about nothing. What I
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say is book me into some more communist countries like, maybe, Nicaragua or
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Afghanistan. Boy, would you see some crowds then!"
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CHORUS: "GREAT IDEA!"
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CARDINAL OGNIBENE: "Hey! Let's go after the Soviet Union! Forget those little
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fish in Central America!"
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CARDINAL CANDIDE: "Right! Like a summit with that guy Gorbachev! I can dig
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it!"
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The meeting ended on an up-note and everyone left to work out the details.
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