u/Mysterious-Bee8839

I can understand if one of the specific marks didn't sign the release and asked to have their face blurred because they felt embarrassed by one of the bits (like the "What Does That Mean?!?" guy, I'm still surprised he signed the release)..

and sometimes the bits are so funny even with the blurred face that they still air them anyway..

but during this morning's marathon they showed the Texas episode, and during Q's punishment they showed random crowd shots and I'd guesstimate that around 15% of the faces were blurred out..

I can see that for privacy reasons some rando in the crowd might want their face blurred (guy tells his wife he's working late, but he went to the local rodeo instead)..

but I'm still surprised that Chá or Christine or Dan Cast or Pete McFartland or bargain basement Matt Damon would go through the entire crowd getting releases signed, instead of going with the "no expectation of privacy while out in public" reasoning

I'm gonna be attending my first event, in Dallas this September.. lots of interesting guests who I would love to shoot the shit with for a couple of minutes and then leave them alone..

I (53m, fwiw) would love to bullshit with Charlie Sheen about "Major League" for a bit, or Keifer Sutherland about "Stand by Me", or Joe Pantoliano about "Running Scared"..

but I wouldn't have any subsequent personal attachment to a $200 autograph, or a $200 photo that I would probably never even look at again on my phone..

anyone ever go to one of these things "just to say you went" and kinda wander around aimlessly for 2 1/2 days, and perhaps get lucky and catch one of the celebrities during a moment of "downtime", maybe to/from a concession stand or restroom, etc?

I graduated December 1994, found my first job in February 1995 making $26k in DFW as a staff accountant..

I remember during that two month stretch of searching the newspaper wantads for jobs, I also utilized a couple of different recruiters.. I swear that for one or two of them, had they placed me, I was gonna be on the hook to pay their fee, instead of whatever company hired me.. is that still a "thing"?

TLDR version is the title..

are they better down around Austin? maybe Dallas "proper"?

on a handful of occasions over the last five years, I've tried various tacos (the Trashy Trailer Park being the most common one) at just about every location in the Frisco / Little Elm / McKinney / Celina areas..

just about every one of those times was me sitting at the bar, ordering a beer and a taco.. I could count on one hand in all that time, the number of tacos that tasted like they'd just come out of (or off of) any sort of heating element..

(I got lucky one time earlier this year with a Ranch Hand when the steak was a bit hotter, so it helped overcome the lukewarm eggs)..

the other 90% of the time it's as if the chicken or other filling had been cooked an hour ago, and been sitting on a shelf until I ordered it (I presume the green chile queso on the Trashy Trailer Park is refrigerated because it's always cold-cold, which doesn't help the lukewarm chicken)..

depending on what sort of mood I'm in, I usually just treat it as "it is what it is", but on a couple of occasions I've taken one bite and said "no, fuck this" and asked to have it redone, especially if even the tortilla was less than lukewarm..

a couple of times I've gone ahead and finished the meal and just mentioned it to the bartender afterwards, and I've never gotten so much as a "oh, sorry, let's take that off the bill", instead it's been just an "oh well" shrug of the shoulders (one time even with the queso dip that was barely warm)..

they must be doing something right if they're expanding into places like Celina, but holy shit am I just ordering the wrong tacos?

I'm not the author

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1CnZwoCPYC/

As a Marine who fought in Iraq and as someone who cares deeply about the integrity of our institutions, I need to speak plainly about what I’m seeing in the Frisco mayor’s race and the Collin County Marine Corps League.

Mark Hill purchased a $2,500 table to support the Marine Corps Birthday Ball put on by the Collin County Marine Corps League at the Omni PGA in Frisco – a major fundraiser that carries the name of the Brotherhood I served with.

Because of a jumbled email situation, the invoice and contact info got messed up, and the sponsorship payment didn’t get processed as quickly as it should have.

Once Mark was finally notified of the discrepancy, he paid the invoice. It was late, but it was not due to negligence or a lack of willingness to support Marines.

Here’s where it crosses a line: someone with access to League sponsorship information appears to have leaked that internal invoice to Rod Vilhauer’s campaign or his allies.

Instead of refusing to exploit the clerical error, Rod chose to turn it into a political stunt – paying the invoice himself and blasting out a narrative that Mark “stiffed” the Marine Corps League.

Now his surrogates, Dan “I want to resist arrest” Stricklin and convicted J6’r, Larry “don’t kill police, unless necessary” Brock, are all over social media obsessing about a late payment while ignoring the fact that Rod wasn’t anywhere near supporting the Marine Corps League or the Ball until he saw a chance for a hit piece.

There are two big problems here. First, it sure looks like the only person who actually stepped up with a $2,500 commitment to support the Marine Corps Birthday Ball was Mark Hill – and Rod only showed up when he saw a political opportunity.

Second, someone inside a Marine Corps League detachment apparently decided to weaponize confidential sponsor information to tilt a municipal election.

As a Marine, I find it abhorrent that anyone associated with the League would politicize support for an organization that carries the name of the Corps and the Brotherhood I fought alongside in Iraq.

If the Collin County Marine Corps League wants to maintain the trust of fellow Marines, sponsors, and the public, they should immediately investigate how that invoice made its way into a campaign’s hands, identify who leaked it, and remove that person from any position of trust over donor or sponsor data.

The League should issue a public statement, apologize for the misuse of information, and make clear that it will not be a pawn in anyone’s political games.

Anything less tells future sponsors that their support can and will be weaponized depending on which candidate they back.

Frisco voters deserve better than this kind of desperation. And Marines – and the Marine Corps League – deserve better than to have our name dragged into campaign stunts.

TLDR version : spent $75 for a preshow meet and greet with him (plus $40 GA ticket to an outdoor music festival in DFW last Friday) only for there to be no confirmation or "envelope" waiting for me at Will Call, and once that mess finally got fixed, he couldn't have cared less.. he barely mumbled while we briskly walked from his tour bus to the stage, which took all of about 90 seconds..

---

He's always been one of my (53m) favorite performers, and I've seen him a handful of times over the years, and I know the words to pretty much all of his songs.

I went to watch him play at the annual Wildflower Music Festival this past weekend in Richardson, TX (north of Dallas).. the show itself was good, but the experience of paying $75 for a meet-and-greet with him prior to the show was a total letdown.

First of all, the confirmation email from his website basically just said "you'll need a separate ticket to get into the festival, but show up at Will Call when the doors open and you'll get an envelope with further instruction for the meet-and-greet".

That all made sense, so I also purchased a $40 GA ticket to get into the festival grounds.

Of course when I show up to Will Call, none of the people working there have an "envelope" with my name on it, and they're telling me that all of that isn't handled through the Wildflower Festival, but rather through "the band", so they were as nice as could be, but all they could do is shrug their shoulders and scan my GA ticket to let me in.

(No one who I dealt with at Will Call even knew who "Justin Moore" was, and I think they kept looking for an envelope with that name written on it, as if that were MY name 🤣).

With my meet-and-greet confirmation email there was an email address and phone number to reach out to if there were any issues or questions. Once I got into the grounds I sent an email and text to both, letting them know what a clusterfuck this was and I never did (and still haven't) received a reply from either one.

At the end of my rope, and getting ready to go the $75 credit card chargeback route (which I've never done one of those), something inspired me to ask the young guy working at the Justin Moore T-shirt booth (who looked like he was doing hardly any business) if he was "connected to the band" at all.

He took down my information and started making a couple of calls and thankfully got a hold of somebody who said for me to be hanging out at the left side of the stage at 8:30 "and someone will come meet you, since you're the only one who signed up for the meet-and-greet" (Justin Moore was scheduled to take the stage at 9:30).

Sure enough, one of his road crew guys came and met me a little bit after 8:30, and told me to hang out there for a little while longer. Around 9:00 he came back and walked me backstage.

Interestingly enough, if you're familiar with the area, his tour bus "backstage" was parked in an area that wasn't at all "hidden from the public" and was just adjacent to our Galatyn Park light rail station.

The same light rail that I had hopped off a couple of hours beforehand, where people were just coming and going for the 15 minutes they had me standing there, waiting for him to exit his tour bus.

When he came out, he was now in a hurry to get to the stage and after taking maybe five seconds to shake my hand, he and I and a couple of his road crew guys were in a dead sprint "walk" to the stage.

I was asking him a couple of dumbass questions about his career, writing his own songs, etc, but he didn't seem interested in chatting at all.

I'm sure it looked like when you see a politician walking fast to get away from someone interviewing him, with no interest in answering the interviewer's questions.

One of his road crew guys offered to take a quick photo using my phone, and so he stopped for about 10 seconds to do that, and then I was ushered back to the front of the stage for the show.

Total ripoff for $75 (and the mess of just trying to figure out "who I was supposed to check in with from the beginning") definitely left a bad taste in my mouth after the show was over.