It’s noise. It’s all noise. You can get lost in it. When you tune in, you might catch a few quick shards of something familiar and comforting. You might be like: “Oh, huh, Blonde Redhead, that’s cool. Did one of their songs blow up on TikTok or something?” Most of the time, though, it’s sheer roiling alien chaos. It’s here to overwhelm you. It’s here to fuck up your day.

Presumably, every time the good people at Goldenvoice unveil another poster for their flagship festival Coachella, they want you to think, “Oh, wow! Amazing! I will spend so much money to go to that!” Maybe that is what you think! Probably not, though. Judging by widespread online sentiment, at least in my corner of the internet, your reaction will be more like: “Oh no. How could this happen? I am so old! I don’t know who any of these people are, except perhaps Green Day and Kraftwerk! The children are doomed, and also they hate me! This lineup has been specifically constructed to piss me off! The music-festival landscape is a fetid, rotting institution! Woe unto us!”

I get it. You will never again be the same age that you were when you saw your first Coachella poster. Maybe you used to go to the festival every year. Maybe you went once or twice. Maybe you simply glanced at the lineup and thought, “Oh cool, they got Rage Against The Machine, maybe I’ll go to that someday.” Maybe you always thought it was a crass and disgusting commercialization of left-of-center music. It doesn’t matter. Time marches on, and the Coachella Valley Music And Arts Festival continues to unveil new posters. They are full of unfamiliar names, and they overflow with information. If you can get beyond your initial reaction, they also tell a story. They tell many stories.

I don’t know why I started doing this, and I don’t know why I keep doing this, but I am here to unearth those hidden stories, to make sense of the chaos. There must be sense somewhere in there, right? About 125,000 people attend every day of Coachella every year. It is America’s biggest and most important music festival, and it sets the stage for the coming festival season and also, at least in some ways, for the next year of music. Last year, for instance, there were dozens of stories about how Coachella ticket sales were moribund and the festival’s cultural relevance was gone, but it still played a crucial role in the twin rises of Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter, the most exciting pop stars reach the A-list in recent memory. You might not want it to matter, but it does.

It matters before the festival even happens. In laying out the Coachella poster — a process that presumably includes a great deal of negotiation with managers and booking agents — the people at Goldenvoice put the music world’s pecking order on cold and merciless display. If you’ve been invited to play Coachella at all, you have already won. You belong somewhere in the zeitgeist, at least as imagined by the people who put this festival together and who are thus devoted to capturing this zeitgeist year after year. However, you might be shocked to discover that your role in that zeitgeist is less than you previously imagined. You might find out that you’re a tiny-font artist, an artist who belongs way down in the sixth line and whose name will become a joke to the online hordes who like to clown Coachella lineups.

Once again, I am among those hordes, and I must talk my shit about this year’s poster. What does it mean? Does it mean anything? Let’s find out.

1. Coachella goes big. The poster came early this year. It doesn’t usually drop until January. I saw someone, I forget who, theorizing that this was strategic. Coachella sales were famously slow last year, but if they drop the lineup before Thanksgiving, maybe people will buy each other tickets as Christmas presents. That makes sense, and it also explains why Coachella got a bunch of stadium acts as headliners.

Last year, Coachella tried to anoint a new class of headliners. Lana Del Rey, Doja Cat, and Tyler, The Creator are all distinctly Southern California artists with roots in the various alternative scenes that Coachella has long celebrated. All of them command vast online cult fanbases. They are not monocultural figures, exactly, but they all seemed like they were on their way. In elevating those acts, Coachella’s bookers offered one vision of how the future might look. That’s over. This time, they went out and got the big names.

Your 2025 headliners are Lady Gaga, Green Day, and Post Malone. Lady Gaga headlined once before, in 2017. Post Malone has only played Coachella once, topping the Sahara Tent bill in 2018 and presumably playing to crickets because Beyoncé was on the big stage at the same time. He also guested during a Bad Bunny headlining set once. Green Day have never played Coachella before, but I guess the bookers liked the way that the Blink-182 experiment went last year. All three of those headliners have mounted full-on stadium tours within the past few years. All three have tons and tons of hits. Your mom would probably recognize all of their names. You don’t even necessarily have to be a fan of any of them; you might still have fun singing along with like 10 of their songs. They’re all pros, and there’s very little chance that any of them will pull a Frank Ocean.

Once upon a time, all three of those headliners were insurgent forces. In Green Day’s case, they were on the vanguard of the ’90s alternative revolution. There will be people at the festival who got into Green Day because their parents would play Dookie or American Idiot in the car while driving them to daycare. Individually, all three headliners make perfect sense. Taken together, they point to something weird.

For the purposes of this argument, I’m not considering Travis Scott among this year’s headliners. His name might be the same size, but he’s at the bottom of the poster, and you can’t be a headliner when you’re at the bottom. It’s just how I feel. But anyway, this is the first time since the 2013 Stone Roses/Phoenix/Red Hot Chili Peppers bill that all of Coachella’s headliners have been white people. (I was about to say 2016, but then I remembered that Slash isn’t white.) If you average out those headliners’ ages, you get 40. That’s still younger than me, but it’s pretty old for a festival that famously makes everyone feel decrepit whenever it announces its lineup.

Green Day are pretty much a pure nostalgia act at this point, and they’ve done awfully well for themselves in that lane. Lady Gaga and Post Malone both remain hugely relevant, though. “Die With A Smile” and “I Had Some Help” are among this year’s biggest hits. They’re both duets, but that’s not a drawback, since there’s a very good chance that Bruno Mars and/or Morgan Wallen will make guest appearances. Still, they’re not headlining because of “Die With A Smile” and “I Had Some Help.” They’re headlining because of “Poker Face” and “Bad Romance” and “White Iverson” and “Sunflower.” Gaga and Posty might not be legacy acts, but there’s at least a hint of millennial and gen-Z nostalgia in these selections. This year’s headliner roster includes some of the signature hitmakers of the ’90s, the ’00s, and the ’10s. Are any of them still at their peak? Maybe Post Malone, maybe not.

That’s pretty smart booking! I like singing along to gigantic songs that everyone knows. Lots of people do. Post Malone has more widespread appeal than Doja Cat because he’s got way, way more hits. But can Coachella keep doing this? How many legitimate stadium acts are out there for future Coachella years? They could always bring back the Weeknd or Bad Bunny or Eminem or Guns N’ Roses, but the roster of gigantic acts is relatively thin. Taylor Swift is too big. Beyoncé made such a seismic impact with her last Coachella set that she has no reason to return. Drake is in a rebuilding stage. Rihanna and Kendrick Lamar both reportedly said no. Who else is there? The Linkin Park reunion? Alt-rock legacy acts like the Foo Fighters and the Red Hot Chili Peppers? Bruno Mars? Justin Bieber? Ed Sheeran? Yeesh. It won’t be easy to maintain any kind of cool-kid sensibility when you’re constantly going for the biggest names. They pulled it off this year, but I don’t know if it’s sustainable.

2. Travis Scott “designs the desert.” Hoo boy. There’s an obvious built-in storyline that Travis Scott’s people would love to push right now. Scott was supposed to headline the COVID-cancelled 2020 Coachella. The festival came back two years later, in the immediate wake of the tragic and catastrophic crowd crush during Scott’s set at his own Astroworld fest. Coachella was not trying to bring Scott back after that. But then he made a big album and staged an arena tour where nobody died, and it appears that he’s been welcomed back with open arms.

This fits a few cynically obvious narratives. This country has a changing cultural climate, and nobody’s getting permanently canceled anymore. Travis Scott is still big with the kids, and his name implies a chaotic, cathartic energy that none of the proper headliners can offer. He could bring out any number of big guests, and he can offer the crowd an opportunity to mosh all crazy. He seems to play about 400 Rolling Loud fests per year, so we know that he can headline a festival without anything too dangerous happening. His team can now trumpet the culmination of his redemption arc or whatever.

I’m on record saying that the Astroworld atrocity was mostly not Travis Scott’s fault. I believe the responsibility lies with the promoters and planners who utterly failed to keep people safe when setting up that shitshow. Coachella has a much better record with this kind of thing. Still, people are going to have some extremely justified concerns about Scott’s inclusion, and the way his name appears on the poster is almost hilariously ill-advised. “Travis Scott designs the desert”? That’s what you don’t want him to do. We’re apparently still in the post-Kanye moment where big-deal rappers want to be seen as cultural difference-makers, but “Travis Scott raps some songs onstage” would be way more accurate and way less objectionable. Don’t let this guy design the desert!

3. A different font! I couldn’t let this go any further without addressing a very important typeset situation. The reunited classic-lineup “Original Misfits” are playing Coachella, and their actual spooky-letters logo is on that poster. Why? How? I’m not going to go through every poster to fact-check this, but I don’t think Coachella has ever put a band’s logo on their poster. They’ll go along with whatever questionable capitalization decisions you might make, but they’re not pulling a Sick New World with band logos. The Coachella poster always has to be orderly and uniform. The Misfits are the exception, I guess. There’s more to say about the Misfits being there, and we’ll get to it, but in a story about Coachella font-sizes, this demanded comment. Someone must’ve written some strongly worded emails insisting on this.

4. Brat Summer is truly over. I’ve already said this, but my big idea for this year’s Coachella was that Charli XCX, Chappell Roan, and Sabrina Carpenter should headline. Roan and Carpenter both played last year, and Coachella hates to book artists back-to-back, but this would’ve acknowledged the reality that trashy and ebullient pop has dominated the discourse for the past year. That’s where the action is. That’s the conclusion that the Primavera Sound Festival reached, and that’s the exact slate of headliners that they chose. That’s awesome, and it gives that festival a real identity. It’s not what Coachella did, though.

Charli will return to Indio, and she’s higher on the bill than she’s ever been. But even after the incredible year that she just had, she’s still apparently not a headliner. Last year, Charli XCX would’ve headlined. This year, she’s on the big stage before Green Day. That makes sense, but it’s also kind of sad. Nevertheless, I bet her set will be triumphant. It’s kind of interesting that they went with three white headliners and three immediate-support acts who are all women of color.

5. The dream of the ’90s lives on. The following artists on the Coachella 2025 lineup released great music — their best music, in most cases — during a little decade that I like to call the 1990s: Green Day, Missy Elliott, the Prodigy, Basement Jaxx, Jimmy Eat World, Three 6 Mafia, Blonde Redhead, and Portishead’s Beth Gibbons, who sadly seems to mostly avoid Portishead songs during her solo sets. (Give the people what they want, Beth Gibbons!) Some of the dance DJs, like Pete Tong, are probably ’90s types, too.

Reaching back further, we’ve got artists who peaked in the ’80s (the Go-Go’s, the Circle Jerks) and even the ’70s (Kraftwerk, the Misfits). Also, my extended deep dive has led me to Los Mirlos, a psychedelic Peruvian cumbia band that apparently started in 1972, and it turns out that they are fucking awesome.

We’ve got at least four Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame inductees on that lineup. That doesn’t mean that Coachella is turning into a nostalgia-fest, but it’s pretty fun for old people like me.

6. This festival’s K-pop dalliance is still happening. When Blackpink made their first Coachella appearance in 2019, a global fanbase got very excited, and that led to the K-pop girl group headlining the main stage last year. (They didn’t actually close the stage out — Calvin Harris did that — but they got to be at the top of the poster.) This year, the different Blackpink members are all attempting solo careers, and two of them, LISA and JENNIE, are both on the poster in the exact same spot on different nights. A couple of other K-pop groups, ENHYPHEN and XG, are also billed very high. (XG are Japanese, but they’re part of the K-pop system. Also, I’m going along with the all-caps names where they appear on the poster, but I’m not happy about it.)

At this point, the inclusion of K-pop idols almost feels rote. I haven’t been to Coachella when K-pop acts were on the bill, so I don’t know how they go over, but it just doesn’t seem that special anymore. The point, from what I can tell, is that it’s cool for these groups’ teams and fanbases to trumpet the fact that they’re playing at Coachella. There’s value in that. Even with American stadium acts at the top of this lineup, Coachella mostly seems to be going less for mass appeal and more for a constellation of smaller, more devoted audiences. That’s not just the K-pop fan armies. It also extends to the rest of a bill full of acts from different parts of the world.

Last year, for instance, Coachella went all-in on regional Mexican music, with Peso Pluma in the immediate-support spot. That genre is still a big deal, and while there’s nobody else at the Peso Pluma level, Junior H and Ivan Cornejo are both in marquee spots. Brazilian pop superstar Anitta will make her big return. African music doesn’t have a huge presence on this bill, but Tyla, Rema, Amaarae, and Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 are all on there. So are the genre-fluid Argentinian duo CA7RIEL & Paco Amoroso and the Venezuelan indie-pop band Rawayana. What kind of audience will go see the Egyptian actor and rapper Mohamed Ramadan? I’d be curious to find out!

Earlier this year, India’s Hanumankind went mega-viral with his extremely cool video for “Big Dawgs,” the song where he raps about riding around Kerala bumping Project Pat. Now, he gets to share a bill with Three 6 Mafia. That’s awesome! I like the idea that you can wander around this festival and have your mind blown by some artist from a scene that you’d never even heard of.

There are also lots and lots of Dutch DJs, but that seems less exciting.

7. Puuuuuunk! Goldenvoice founder Gary Tovar came up booking punk shows in Southern California in the early ’80s, and that stuff has always had a presence on the Coachella lineups, though it’s been decreasing in recent years. This year, it’s back in full. Green Day are headlining. The Misfits and/or Danzig have never played any previous Coachella, but now they’re back together and near the top of the bill. It makes sense because they’re still a cultural presence, though I have no idea how many people with Crimson Skull tattoos have ever actually heard “London Dungeon.” Now, Glenn Danzig will get to howl at teenagers about how he killed their baby today, and I bet they’ll get a real crowd. Will the Circle Jerks get a crowd, too? I truly have no idea, but I would be curious to find out. Meanwhile, Jimmy Eat World are playing for the first time since 2011, and I don’t think anyone would complain if they just played every year.

The one time that I went to Coachella was almost a full decade ago now, but I had a great time watching Bad Religion and the Rev. Horton Heat, and I like seeing that nostalgic punk stuff continuing as a festival presence. This year’s bill also has a lot of IDLES-core ranty post-punk stuff, including Viagra Boys, Amyl And The Sniffers, Bob Vylan, and SOFT PLAY, the group formerly known as Slaves. I didn’t realize that Together Pangea were still going, but they’re in the mix, too. There’s also a strong sprinkling of real-deal, currently-active hardcore bands, with Speed, Gel, and Prison Affair all in there. Prison Affair! The ultra-lo-fi band with the dick-nose logo! That’s crazy! (Sorry to Speed and Gel, but I have never written your names in all-caps, and I am not going to start now.) I bet those sets will be crazy.

8. The rap selections are beautiful chaos. For much of its history, Coachella focused on indie-backpack type stuff when booking rap acts. The very first Coachella had the Roots, Gang Starr, Mos Def, Jurassic 5, and DJ Shadow. This version of underground rap no longer has any relevance to Coachella. The focus started shifting when mainstream rap stars became big festival draws, and now the indie-backpack stuff is gone. In its place, there’s an unruly archipelago of subgenres.

For the first time in a long time, Coachella doesn’t have any rappers as headliners, since nobody has used the word “rapper” to describe Post Malone in a long time. That’s if we’re not counting Travis Scott. If we are counting Travis Scott, then he’s a prototypical present-day Coachella rap headliner: A mega-famous and energetic performer with mainstream appeal who’s got at least some influence on current underground movements, since all the rage-rap kids couldn’t exist without him.

Megan Thee Stallion is another version of a big-name rapper on the Coachella lineup. She’s probably just as famous as Scott. She doesn’t quite have the same mystique, since she’s been chasing crossover hits for most of her career, but she can rap better than almost anyone else in her weight class. Missy Elliott and Three 6 Mafia are this festival’s versions of still-relevant old-school legends — Missy with a reportedly-amazing arena tour, Three 6 with underground influence and random TikTok virality.

Mostly, though, the rappers on this lineup represent different undergrounds — some regional, some internet-based. Shoreline Mafia have been California cult favorites for years, and it’s very cool to see them billed as high as they are. Also billed high: California overlord Mustard, who can be counted on to bring out a parade of collaborators, YG in particular. GloRilla and BigXThaPlug are rising stars who sound very much like the places that they’re from — Memphis and Dallas, respectively. I guess you could say the same about Belfast’s KNEECAP, though they might actually be the closest thing to a 1999 Coachella rap act on here.

Playboi Carti and his Opium crew are kind of conspicuous in their absence, though Ken Carson and Destroy Lonely both played the most recent fest. But glitchy rage-rap is still in the mix. Genre figurehead Yeat is pretty high on the poster, and 2hollis is buried way below. Do you know about this kid? Super-handsome white boy, son of a very powerful music publicist, whose music sounds more like extreme hyperpop than like anything resembling rap? I cannot get my head around it at all.

Is there any audience crossover between Missy Elliott, Shoreline Mafia, and 2hollis? This is the kind of question that keeps me up at night.

9. Chilled-out alt-pop is well-represented. There’s a certain kind of soothing, reassuring, playlist-friendly indie-ish bedroom-pop that’s all over this poster, often given prominent billing: The Marías, Clairo, beabadoobee, Djo, d4vd, Eyedress, Lola Young, Still Woozy, Ginger Root. From what I can tell, that stuff serves the same function that the War On Drugs or Ryan Adams might’ve once done — the non-DJ version blissout music that might play during sunset. There’s been a generational shift in that music, but it still gives a percentage of this crowd something that it needs.

10. Regular old indie rock is not well-represented. Back in the day, Coachella used to set aside a certain number of spots for, I don’t know, Titus Andronicus or Angel Olsen — relatively traditional guitar music that could be spiky or textured or lyrics-forward. I’m talking about stuff that routinely gets extravagantly praised on websites like this one. That seems to be totally over. That lane of music still exists, but Coachella is not making room for MJ Lenderman or Fontaines D.C. or Wishy or Chat Pile or Mannequin Pussy or Cindy Lee.

Case in point: The bill doesn’t include Horsegirl, the Chicago band who recorded their much-anticipated new album with Cate Le Bon, but it does include horsegiirL, a DJ who wears a horse mask. Along those same lines, I respect Coachella’s decision to book real-deal hardcore bands like Speed and Gel, but I wonder why it doesn’t go for groups like Drug Church or High Vis or Fiddlehead — the bands that blur the line between hardcore and indie rock. Old-school indie rock bands of various stripes and subgenres have their own festivals now, but I’m genuinely curious why they have no real purchase here. Maybe those spots are going to people who played Tiny Desk Concerts instead.

11. Indie sleaze? The fun, anachronistic, generally inaccurate term “indie sleaze” has been floating around for a couple of years, and it usually refers to hedonistic ’00s stuff like blog-house and the Strokes. Coachella could’ve booked any of those OG indie sleaze acts — they’ve all been there before — but they’ve instead gone for revivalists like the Dare, Snow Strippers, and Fcukers. The younger groups must be cheaper.

12. Shoegaze revivalists? Coachella also used to bring in every ’90s shoegaze band that broke up and got back together. None of those acts are on this year’s lineup, but a few of the young shoegaze revivalists who do TikTok numbers are down in the small-font names: julie, Wisp, Glixen. That’s cool. I like those bands. Fleshwater, probably the biggest and best of them, would’ve made a lot of sense, too. Maybe next year.

13. The Coachella/Stagecoach connection? Post Malone soft-launched his massively successful country phase at Stagecoach, the all-country fest that comes to the Empire Polo Grounds right after Coachella every year. It’s kind of interesting that Posty is playing Coachella rather than Stagecoach this year. When he’s not doing Coachella, Posty is touring stadiums this summer with Jelly Roll, another face-tatted rapper-turned-country-singer. This year, Jelly Roll is headlining Stagecoach. Also playing Stagecoach: Lana Del Rey, one of last year’s Coachella headliners. Worlds are colliding!

I could easily imagine a world where Zach Bryan, another of this year’s Stagecoach headliners, played Coachella instead. Meanwhile, Jessie Murph, the Alabama country singer whose biggest hit is a very fun Jelly Roll collaboration, is playing Coachella but not Stagecoach. Another artist on the Coachella lineup is Thee Sacred Souls, who I assumed were a rootsy country thing but who actually turn out to be more of a retro-soul situation. Out of sheer stubbornness, I’m keeping them in this paragraph anyway. I bet they could’ve done well at Stagecoach.

Shaboozey, the singer whose surprising crossover smash “Tipsy (A Bar Song)” might still be parked at #1 on the Hot 100 next spring, is playing both Coachella and Stagecoach. Also playing both festivals: T-Pain! But that’s a different thing.

14. R&B singers should feel insulted. R&B has had a huge commercial and artistic level-up in recent years, to the point where someone like SZA belongs in potential Coachella-headliner discussions. There is a lot of R&B on this year’s poster, but most of the singers on this lineup are billed lower than I would’ve expected. It’s nice to see that stuff getting booked — especially T-Pain, who is probably here for nostalgia purposes but who deserves credit as a no-shit popular-music trailblazer. But some of the singers on here — Tyla, Ty Dolla $ign, Muni Long, Tink, Ravyn Lenae — are way down in the tiny-print lines. Some of them might’ve had some things to say to their booking agents when the poster came out yesterday.

15. Are we sure that some of these people have more than one song? Benson Boone has one giant hit, and he’s got a mustache and does backflips. That’s pretty much all I know about him. He’s on the lineup in the same spot as the Misfits and Zedd. The producer Artemas had a giant global hit with “I Like The Way You Kiss Me” earlier this year, but I can’t name any of his other songs. Djo is Joe Keery, the guy who plays Steve on Stranger Things, and his song “End Of Beginning” went crazy on TikTok, to the point where it reached the Hot 100. Does anyone want to hear multiple songs from him? The novelty of “that’s Steve from Stranger Things” presumably helps, but how far can it go?

There are many more examples of this phenomenon on the Coachella bill. There’s Mau P, whose “Drugs From Amsterdam” feels like a catchphrase-driven novelty. There’s Shaboozey. There’s d4vd. There’s SAINt JHN, whose one giant and random hit happened years ago! I am sure that some of these artists will have long and fascinating careers, but I’m still surprised at how many potential one-hit wonders are on this poster.

16. Dance music remains unstoppable. I don’t have time to sit and run the numbers, but a vast percentage of the Coachella lineup belongs to the DJs — same as it ever was. Casual fans will recognize some of the bigger names. The Prodigy and Basement Jaxx, survivors of a time when people used the word “electronica,” are here. So are people like Zedd, who have big hits to their name, and critical-favorite types like Arca. But many of these names are totally baffling to me. For instance: Did you know that Keinemusik, way up in the second line, isn’t a person or even a group? It’s an entire German record label, and I guess it must be a big deal.

Last night, I spent way too long making a playlist of all the Coachella-lineup names I didn’t recognize. Every once in a while, I’d land on someone like Glass Beams, an Indian-Australian project that makes funky old-school instrumental music. But the vast, vast majority of that stuff is dance music, and a lot of it comes from Germany or the Netherlands. Some of it is pretty good! Maybe I need to spend more time watching Boiler Room videos or whatever. Probably not, though. At Coachella, dance music mostly functions as its own gigantic, self-contained Sahara Tent festival, and the ravers have evidently not gotten tired of raving.

Also, when I posted the lineup last night, my eyes completely glazed over Kraftwerk. This is the group that essentially invented electronic pop music, and I missed them, possibly because there were too many other German names on there.

17. It helps to have a gimmick. Allow me to introduce you to MEUTE, the world’s finest techno marching band.

18. A symphony orchestra is not a gimmick, but it is in this context. In past years, Coachella has offered big spots to film composers like Hans Zimmer and Danny Elfman, and they’ve played with orchestras. This time, it’s the Los Angeles Philharmonic, playing without a film composer but with celebrity conductor Gustavo Dudamel. At Coachella, this will probably serve the same novelty function as a techno marching band.

19. You have to be kidding me with this Yo Gabba Gabba! shit. Come on. You might as well book Big Bird and Elmo. Let’s be adults here.

20. Certain names are conspicuous in their absence. It is genuinely strange that Mk.gee is not on this bill. That one seemed like a gimme. The same goes for Addison Rae and Troye Sivan, though one can only hope that both will pop up during Charli XCX’s set. Also, hear me out: What if Young Thug designed the desert instead?

21. Something about FKA twigs and Darkside and Japanese Breakfast and Miike Snow and MARINA and Sam Fender. I am tired of looking at this poster. This article is long enough.

My daughter wants me to take her next year. In the past, I have shown the Coachella poster to my kids, and they have reacted with eye-rolling boredom. My favorite was my daughter being like: “What is Ye?” She said it like “Ye Olde Shoppe,” not like Kanye West. This time, she noted a bunch of artists that she would like to see, none of whom are the headliners, and then tried to convince me to take her. I will not be doing this unless my book suddenly vaults onto the bestseller list or a low-flying plane accidentally drops a bundle of cash onto my doorstep. I might get into this for free, but she won’t, and I am not trying to pay for a Palm Springs hotel. Still, the simple fact that she wants to go is worth noting. She thinks this lineup looks like fun. So do I.