That's just a stupid, stupid law

In the fall of 1996, I was a college freshman in Green Bay, trying desperately to be cool and make friends.

One of the first people I met who wasn't a roommate or one of the escaped mental patients who lived on my floor was gold-star commenter, NAD. We bonded over our lack of respect for biology lab reports and hippie music like Dave Matthews Band and Blues Traveler.

It was a Blues Traveler/Wallflowers show that came to town that provided the first opportunity to venture off campus and NAD had a friend who had access to the school's passenger vans. As an RA, he could sign out the keys, load the van with people and claim it was a legitimate outing for students.

I quickly alerted said mental patients to the possibility of a ride and we filled the van without much trouble.

When we got to the show at the less-than-glorious Brown County Arena, we waited through the opening Wallflowers and got to the main event. Without thinking, one of the guys lit a cigarette - and let's face it, it wasn't the worst thing being smoked at a Blues Traveler concert - and was tapped on the shoulder by security a few moments later.

The guard told him he had to put it out because the arena was a non-smoking facility - in Wisconsin in the 90s, no less - but there wasn't much of a hassle about it.

Our guy thought a second and pointed to the stage and asked why he had to put his out if the bass player could smoke while he played.

"Do you want to take the time to file a formal complaint?" asked the guard.

"No."

"Then shut up and put out your cigarette."

The reason I bring this up is because the city of Chicago has determined that the actors in Jersey Boys - set in New Jersey, in the 1950s - cannot smoke on stage. Not even clove cigarettes. On stage. During a show set at a time when everyone smoked. Even in doctors' offices.

How stupid is that?

Worse yet, the whole issue came to a head because someone complained about the smoking on stage and took the time to file a complaint. A complaint that was probably more paperwork-intensive than the one in Green Bay that was refused by someone who had even less to do with their time.

As someone who recently saw the show, I have no idea how close the central complaining idiot had to be sitting to be bothered by smoking on stage, but it had to have cost them a serious chunk of change to get near enough to care.

Also, for those who think it's a bad influence for children, keep in mind the multiple f-bombs, scenes featuring adultery, petty crime and loan sharking and you'd have to be a highly functioning chimp to think smoking was the worst part of the show.

Oh, wait - we might have a winner.

From the Tribune blog where I first saw this story:

I wrote about the absurdity of this when the smoking ban was first proposed. I am no fan of smoking but to legally require that shows pretend that no-one ever smoked in the history of the world is absurd, unreasonable, damaging to the city's cultural reputation and injurious to art.

Yeah, and that, too.

(Image from:RealOne.com)