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April 18, 2005
Frustration
Internet ticketing is baffling to me. How do they do it? And, importantly, does anyone actually ever succeed at buying tickets online? I'm talking about the ticket sales for Jimmy Buffett at Wrigley Field over Labor Day weekend. I spent the last hour shuffling around the office as my browser continually reloaded in Tickets.com's virtual waiting room, only to finally get an opportunity for tickets when there were but scattered seats left. Then, even when I chose one of those tickets, I got kicked off the website. What a pleasure!
Of course, this doesn't stop the entrepreneurial folks among us from cashing in. Even as the ticket sales were still going on, blocks of 6 tickets - the maximum allowable purchase - were popping up on Craigslist. Now, I don't know what to think about people who do that. Part of me admires their brilliant capitalism, paying $110 for something and then reselling it at double the face value for a tidy $100 profit per ticket. However, the other part of me thinks this is terribly cynical. They should be left to people who actually want the tickets.
Either way, you will now be hardpressed to find me at the Friendly Confines come Labor Day weekend. The cheapest ticket was selling for $90, and will probably get jacked up to $160 at the minimum in the "secondary ticket" market. In my opinion, this is simply too much money to pay for seeing Jimmy Buffett, even if it is at Wrigley Field. $160 will easily turn into $250 after I get loaded up on beer, hot dogs and maragaritas. I don't even like Jimmy Buffett all that much, and I can think of plenty of things I could spend $250 on, such as a weekend in Vegas; four kegs of beer; 500 copies of the Chicago Tribune.
On the topic of such banal pursuits, I have also become hopelessly addicted to Solitaire on the computer. This is the most frustrating game devised by man, especially if you are playing the draw-three Vegas version. I have actually been late to stuff because I've been trying to win at Solitaire. Every time I am lured by its song, and am eventually drawn into a desperate attempt to beat the house, I have visions of a man dying from electroction after punching his monitor when he yet again loses at computer solitaire.
Posted by oz115 at April 18, 2005 11:11 AM