My fervent hope is that he's playing caretaker until we get slightly closer to the election, but at a point he's got to let go and let someone electable have some time to build their credibility.

💯 this

I put in a lot of work with the idea of some future benefit to me, but I'm very shy of involving other people to assist in that because it's an intangible reward

ah, see, I needed another ex-USian to chime in for validation and comparison 💜

Yeah, that's nearer to the actual rule as I remember it from my youth - nothing current or from the previous tour.

See, this is perfect, to me - but I don't know metal etiquette

I'm usually at odds with any such norms, but concerts are a sacred thing to me.

Like, I'm the one who turns around in a crowd to check to see if my hair is too big for the person behind me to see around 😂

Interesting! Despite my storied concert experience, I've never been to a metal show on either of my continents, so I've never put this one to the test.

I also have a very sweet David Bowie shirt on deck as an alternate, but seeing as it might be the only time they're ever back in NZ I feel like I should rep my first time seeing them as a full-circle thing.

There's just something fundamentally odd about it to me if the gear isn't the first tour / vintage, but that's just me being a major concert snob who grew up somewhere that got constant big tours (so many opportunities for merch)

I dunno where it came from but it is DEEPLY ingrained.

I think it'sa pre-internet inclination from when you could mostly get merch AT SHOWS but then if you wore it on the next tour it was like "ugh, those people are wearing the shirt from the last tour" as if you were showing off or something.

T-Rex-Mas?

Now that I'm on the outside looking in on how USians use the internet it is both hilarious and humbling how much I see them(/us) assuming they(/we) are the primary audience and rightful arbiter of every single thing happening on the internet and must comment on it as such.

Still so many characters! 😂