PITTSBURGH – Philip Hansley, a self-proclaimed “scholar and devotee” of the progressive rock genre, expressed his outward frustration about having to wait for an unskippable 15-second commercial to finish playing before he could watch a video, several unshaven sources report.
“This is fucking bullshit,” Hansley was heard yelling at his laptop, six seconds into an ad for online pet care retailer Chewy after he realized the “Skip” button wasn’t going to show up as early as he was hoping it would. “Why is it taking so long? Who the hell has time for this much pointless nonsense? I feel like every fucking second of my life is getting sucked up by advertising. My time is precious and I simply refuse to allow it to be wasted so wantonly.”
Otto Dawson, Hansley’s roommate and fellow “proghead” who could hear him distinctly in the next room, says this occurrence isn’t uncommon.
“Multiple times a week, you can count on Phil getting upset because he can’t see that 35-minute ‘Tarkus’ live performance or whatever else quite as quickly as he would like,” Dawson said. “I try and tell him to just install an ad-blocker, but he says that would be ‘a hassle’ and ‘take too long’. I’m not sure if someone I know has listened to and enjoyed ‘Moonchild’ sober at least 30 times is the best judge of time management.”
Dr. Jedediah Stivers, a professor of music history at Northwestern University, notes Hansley’s behavior as a clear-cut example of the phenomenon known as “prog patience,” said to have been first observed in patients sometime in 1970.
“Philip, like so many other prog fans, exhibits incredible patience and resilience in some instances, such as while listening to all six parts of Yes’ “Fly From Here,’ said Stivers. “But that’s not much of a virtue when he’s still the kind of guy to aggressively honk at someone who takes more than half a second to go through a green light. You would think listening to all those flutes would’ve made him more chilled-out in general, but I guess not.”
At press time, Hansley was enraged that the 25-minute slowed and reverbed Porcupine Tree song he was enjoying was interrupted by a phone call from his mother who “just wanted to say a quick ‘hello.’”