The Upstate Life

Monday, September 20, 2004

Party Like It's 5765 Edition

Hot damn, looks like we have an extended version of the Wrapup today. And as a further bonus, it looks like it might even be posted at a reasonable hour, so let's give you the proverbial jump off. Immediately following work Wednesday night, I headed up to BWI for a flight back home to Albany that came in at around 10pm. The next morning, the family and I drove down to Long Island at our cousin's house for Rosh Hashanah dinner. The food wasn't too bad, but whoever brought the chocolate bobka got some points in my book. The rents and the broham went back up to Albany that same evening, but I stayed over at my grandparents' place in Queens for the night.

I set my alarm to 9:45am before I went to bed in order to get up in time for the Pixies presale. I'll go on the record and state that I now despise WebTV more than ever before. Besides the fact you can't get AIM to work on it, I was on the Ticketmaster site at 10am on the damn dot only to find out that their website was incompatible with my grandparents' inferior WebTV unit. I kept getting an error saying that I didn't fill in the quantity box, even though I selected four tickets in the field! Enraged, I called my brother at 10:45 after several failed attempts to see if he could order tix for me using a normal computer. Nothing available. Fuck me. Did my own blog work against me? My fury diminished a bit knowing that general public sales for both the Tuesday and Wednesday show would go on sale the following morning. Friday night, we ordered in some amazing food from possibly my favorite pizza place ever, Woodside Pizza. Besides their amazing slices, they have some of the best garlic knots around. I won't deny it that I brought two orders of them to Shea Stadium last year to snack on.

Friday night, I took the 7 train over to Times Square, transferred onto the 9, and headed over to Bri's apartment. After killing a 12 pack, we took a taxi over to Murray Hill to meet up with my friend Dana and some of her LI buddies at The Joshua Tree. As Bri put it, "I wouldn't want to be there if I was sober." It was actually a fun place, blasting 80's and 90's novelty songs accompanied with multiple plasma screens plastered among the walls playing the corresponding music videos. Around 3ish, we hailed a taxi and stumbled back to the Upper West Side. I even stunned myself by remembering to set my alarm for 9:45 again in order to get those precious Pixies tickets too.

Saturday morning came and I was sitting at Bri's Power Mac, anxious and ready for the madness that was soon to follow. 10am arrived and only Tuesday's show was showing up on sale but not Wednesday's, even though the Pixies website said both dates would be available for purchase on the 18th. Strange. When I tried searching for 4 tickets, I received an internal error message at first. On the second attempt, the website said it would take approximately 10 minutes to process my request. 10 minutes!?!? 10 changed to 12, which then became 14, then back to 10, then 6, then 1. When the page finally loaded, Ticketmaster said no more tickets were available for the show, but then there was a link to check for seats for a newly announced date, the Wednesday show of course. Hot shit! In possibly the fastest combination of mouse clicks and keystrokes, I was able to get a hold of 4 tickets in the orchestra section! But wait, I needed my credit card to complete the transaction despite the fact I registered with Ticketmaster in order to avoid this crapfest of an ordeal. Bear in mind, those bastards only give you 2 minutes to purchase tickets or else they are automatically forfeited. By this time, I only had about a minute left and my wallet was still buried in my jeans scattered somewhere in the apartment. I bolted out of the chair and ran towards the living room, searching in a frantic pace to find my credit card. I thankfully located it in time, punched in the numbers, and raised my arms in victory. I'm even more psyched that I got tickets to the Wednesday show instead since I get to see TV on the Radio open rather than The Datsuns. If anyone else has a great success story and/or is going to the show, let the roll call begin.

I took the Amtrak from Penn Station to Albany Saturday afternoon, checking the Maryland score every 5 minutes on my cell phone to see if we were winning or not. Turns out the Terps lost in OT which definitely sucked, but after I found that out, I was able to nap the rest of the way home. After dinner with the rents, I went out with some friends to The Bullpen in Saratoga for a few drinks. Nothing too special especially since they seemed wiped out from Irish Fest held earlier in Altamont that day. Caught the Southwest flight the next morning, arrived back in Maryland by 1, and was able to watch my horrible Giants lineup defeat the Redskins in a blunder of a game. Both teams played like crap, but I'm glad the G-Men came out on top... still not too optimistic about the rest of their season though. Anyways, how's that for a Wrapup? Still not satisfied? Hey, it's not my fault. Probably because you didn't get score Pixies tickets... ohhh, how's that for a burn?

Posted by Brett at 1:10 PM |