gossip from the biz

One of my friends (a fellow performer) emailed me pics of another local performer who had been sued on a court television show. My friend didn't recognize the person out of costume and was trying to figure out who it was. I identified the defendant almost immediately.

Apparently the performer booked one party and then booked a second party afterward that was about 45 miles away. There's nothing unusual about that in our area. I've had days where I've put over 150 miles on my car in one afternoon. Here's the kicker though, the 2nd gig was booked 15 minutes after the first one ended! It takes almost an hour on the highway to get from the first city to the second one.

I'll give a disclaimer right now; I didn't see the court tv show, any info I have on the case is secondhand. Of course the performer was running late. When the client called and left an irate message on the cellphone the performer didn't return the call and decided not to even show up. In addition they refused to refund the client's deposit-which is how they landed on a court tv show.

I'm trying to wrap my brain around the stupidity of the performer. But my brain just doesn't work like that. There is no logic to the situation. The only thing I can come up with is that the performer in question is either incredibly stupid-approaching the IQ of Forrest Gump and George W. Bush-or incredibly unscrupulous. (Or a combination of both.) I can almost accept that they possibly thought if they left the whole thing alone the client would simply forget about it. But once they received notice that they were being sued on court tv why didn't they just send back the deposit and wash their hands of the situation?

The whole thing is hysterical. I don't know how I'm going to keep a straight face the next time I see this performer.