What is one thing you were looking forward to, and when it finally happened it was a total let down?

My husband’s office Christmas party. Nothing happened. The music was too loud to really talk.

disneyland

I went to a Fear Factory concert once, it was bloody brilliant, so decided I wanted to go another Fear Factory concert. The price of the ticket for the second concert was considerably more expensive and cost a fair bit more to get me and my friend in there.
We’d both been to the first one, figuring that that one was great, it could be worth the money. OH MY GOD WAS I WRONG.
There was Burton C Bell doing his bit as the vocalist, and whoever the hell worked on the sound for that concert was a complete amateur, lazy, or just a complete dumbass.
You could tell almost immediately that he was not happy with the sound setup himself, and he did his best to compensate for the sound technician’s complete lack of attention to detail in his job. It was not enjoyable. I never went to another Fear Factory gig again after that. My friend thought was it was great, but I sensed that Burton was kind of annoyed and disappointed in obviously getting the wrong guy for the job – which was contagious. Because I thought that sound technician was a complete tosser.

I’ll let you know after I see all this year’s Oscar-nominated films

I love System of a Down. xD But having been to a few concerts I can see where you’re coming from.

For me, it was meeting David Walliams (he’s a British comedian and author, in case anybody didn’t know). Me and my dad travelled for 4 and a half hours to meet him at a book signing. Don’t get me wrong, he was very lovely and conversational, but there was a strict no photographs or personalisation of the book messages rule (so basically it’s not like he could write, ‘To ____, Best wishes, David Walliams’. He just wrote his name). That was such a huge let-down because it would have meant the world to me to get a photograph with him. What annoyed me most is that there was a question and answer part of the day, and the people sat in front of me were looking through their camera and they had photographs with David, and their books were signed with a personalised message. When somebody else nearby asked why they were allowed to have that, their response was, ‘We have a friend who knows one of David’s friends.’ I felt like saying excuse me? We all paid the same ticket price, we should all get the same reward. The fact that they got a photo with him really did taint the day for me.

Adulthood. Not always a lot of fun.

Yup – I was going to say becoming an adult too.

Marriage.

Sex (at least initially).

I kept a bottle of champagne in my fridge that I was going to open when I got a job. But the job I got was sort of temporary, so I didn’t open it then, and after a year or so, it became permanent, but it didn’t seem like a big deal, so I didn’t open it then.

I’m not sure how many years that bottle stayed in the fridge before I decided to open it at some dinner party we held apropos of nothing at all, except that we were having a dinner party. Oddly, it was still a decent bottle.

I stopped going to “legendary musician” concerts.

Let’s face it, I want to see Aerosmith circa 1981, not Aerosmith circa 2013. So unless you get me a time machine, I’m not going to see Aerosmith.

The first time I saw Ozzy, he sang the first verse of Crazy Train three times. I curled up on my blanket and fell asleep.

Getting a tattoo.

I thought it would be this great rite of passage experience, but it really wasn’t like that at all. It wasn’t much different than going to get haircut – a little bit of time, a little bit of money spent to alter my body in a very small way.

In no way, shape or form do I get ‘strength’ from it, or inspiration or anything like that. It’s just a fancy scar, really.

Because I tend to imagine unattainable outcomes for many things, I’m often disappointed in reality versus my anticipation of the reality.

Among all the letdowns, my greatest is romantic love. I’ve been disappointed by it and disappointed in my contributions to it.

Paula Deen’s restaurant (really).

Oh!!! How could I possibly have forgotten the biggest let down in cinematic history?

The Phantom Menace

Considering its heritage, it was probably the biggest pop culture disappointment I’ve ever experienced. It’s hard to believe some poor fools camped out for a month before it opened in order to be first in line for this piece of crap film. Hell, five minutes after it started I was mad that I waited in line for an hour, it was that bad.

My first time having sex.

@FutureMemory Gotta agree with you, I, II, and III were gawdawful.

@ragingloli‘s next response. ~

Owning my own house.

I’ve always looked forward to marriage. But it never happened. Which is a let down. Dunno if that counts.

Hot air ballooning in Egypt…oops, too soon.

Agreed.

Seeing the twin towers from an aeroplane’s cockpit.

We took a mailboat cruise down the coast of Norway. One deck had windows around the prow of the ship. It had the only full view from 3 sides of the ship and it It was full all the time. It seemed like most of the people were oldish Norwegian and German women and they left their coats on the chairs, so no once else got to sit there. Finally, we got the nerve to remove some of the coats when the chairs weren’t occupied and sat down to enjoy these choice seats.
Well, we found ourselves in such a miasma of passed gas, that we left after 5 minutes. They ate and then sat in those seats for hours. Incredible.

Sex, drugs, and watching the Rolling Stones in 1978. All first time let downs.

Oh jeez just a few weeks ago some friends and I were going to go to an improv comedy show in Boston.
The friend who was planning the trip said the show started at 9:30 and we just kind of took his word for it.
The friend who was driving took a wrong turn at one point and we went 20 miles out of our way.
We got to Boston almost exactly at 9:30. Then we couldn’t find parking ANYWHERE for 15 minutes.
We took literally the last spot left in a parking garage a few blocks from the venue, then ran there. By this time it was at least 9:50 or so.

We arrived. The show had started at 9. We caught the last 5 minutes. We had each paid $8 for the show tickets and an extra $4 for the parking garage…

Silent Hill Revelation 3D. Now fuck 3D, but I was looking forward to this…it’s not that it’s a bad horror movie, but it’s based on a video game series. I never expected much from the first movie, because game movies suck, but it turned out to be very faithful to the first game, but didn’t fuck it up by forgetting that it was a movie, not a video game. Most of the elements were there, and while I resent the presence of Pyramid Head…not because it wasn’t cool, and I guess no Silent Hill fan would be happy if he wasn’t included…but that just wasn’t his place…still, the movie respected the game’s mythos, and set an atmosphere that was quite worthy.

But this here Revelation sequel completely forgot the essence of Silent Hill itself, and was just a slasher movie, but with barely anyone dying. Damn man, it’s like pick one or the other, but don’t NOT pick both. Ass baskets.

This is a GQ @ucme – I’ll come back to it later.

Err, ex-squeeze-me?