Author - Paul Schatzkin

What A Fucking Racket (Updated) Redux

I have tickets. Send me an e-mail or a private message if you want the secret handshake.

It’s a long story, and IOverlay-McCartney-2013 don’t want to go into the details now, but a little bird me told me a secret password and I managed to get into the site and score a couple of nosebleed level seats for $107 each.

But just to give you some idea how fucked up this is: the tickets are not officially “on sale” yet, but if you want a seat in, say, the first section off the floor, the $200 seats, good fucking luck: the “best available” today – 24 hours before the tickets “go on sale,” is behind the fucking stage.

That’s great if you’ve always wanted to see Paul McCartney’s ass.

What A Fucking Racket (updated)

Yes, the show will be sold out before the tickets go on sale.

Overlay-McCartney-2013I missed Billy Joel when he played at the Bridgestone Arena in Nashvile a few weeks ago. I saw him a couple of times in Los Angeles in the 1970s, but after hearing from people who went how great the show was I’m sorry I didn’t see it.

And I let Bruce Springsteen come and go last week. Him I saw the last time he was here, and frankly was disappointed in the show. I do not know entire Springsteen canon by heart, and the sound was pretty awful to my ears. I guess that’s how it goes for arena shows (although the sound for U2 at the Vanderbilt Stadium one hot July night several years ago was OUT-fucking-STANDING, due largely to “the claw” stage and sound system).

I also missed Paul McCartney the last time he came through Twangtown. The tickets were pretty well sold out before I could get to them, and when I looked at the after-market prices, I was looking at nearly a grand for nosebleed seats.

McCartney is coming back to Nashville in June, and not to be morbid or anything, but anytime he’s in the vicinity is quite possibly the last opportunity I will have in my lifetime (or his?) to see an actual Beatle sing Beatles songs. So I have made a note that the tickets go on sale Friday at 10 AM and have arranged to be at my keyboard-and-screen when the time comes.

According to the Bridgestone Arena website, the tickets for this show will be priced from a low of $29.50 to a high of $254.50. I’m sure something in between would make sense and even if all I can get is “nosebleed” seats, at least they’re in the arena.

But I don’t think it’s going to happen. I just noticed a friend posted to Facebook that she already has her tickets “in hand.” She got them through “American Express card holders pre-sale.”

Well, I don’t have an American Express card. I got out of the credit card habit years ago, I now have ONE credit card and ONE debit card an neither of them is American Express. So no surprise I was not offered a “Pre-Sale” opportunity.

But the whole operation is fucked up from the get go. I fully expect that there will be not tickets available when I go online on Friday. Because even though the tickets will be “going on sale” at that time, much of the venue will have been “pre-sold” before the tickets become available to the general public.

Or, I could just jump the gun on the after-market and pre-buy them from an outfit called “Ticketdown” which is also offering “pre-sales” tickets at something between 3 and 4 times the ‘rack rate’ listed on the Bridgestone site. Tell me, how is an after-market website able to offer tickets BEFORE they ‘go on sale’?

The whole set-up is kinda like saying “the tickets will cost $X. Unless you actually WANT one. Then it will be 3- or 4- times $X. And that’s assuming know the secret password and handshake.

Because it’s a fucking racket.

I dunno, maybe I’m jumping the gun here. But based on my past experience, and what I’m hearing from private channels and seeing online, I expect pretty much the same. I’ll get online at 10 AM on Friday and there will be no tickets available.

Stay tuned. Or, if you’re reading this and you know somebody, just please tell me who to call so I can be part of the fucking racket, too.

– – – – – – –

Update 140423: My Facebook friend who snagged her tickets via the American Express Pre-Sale offer has informed me that she paid no premium for the tickets, they were sold at the rack rate that the Arena is showing on their website. OK, fair enough. She also told me that she’d purchased the $85 seats – arguably the sweet spot in terms of pricing and seating – and then adds, “…there are $55, $201, & $297 seats [still] available….” which sounds to me like the $85 seats are gone. I’ll find out Friday. I’m pretty well resigned to sitting in the “nosebleed” seats if I can get inside the arena at all. Good thing we have a pair of great binoculars….

 

 

 

Social Media Faux Pas

Such perilous times we live in…..
I got sorta scolded for posting this to Facebook (via Instagram) since apparently some of the usual suspects were left off the invite list for the party.
<*sigh*>

#HappyBirthday Dana Cooper @dcroadshow #nashville

Weekend In The Smokys (2)

I’m pretty sure it’s spelled that way, not the more obvious “Smokies.”
But what do I know…

Another keeper from “Springtime In The Smokys” – Spruce Flat Falls #greatsmokymountains #smoky @gsmnp @Smoky_Mountain w @getolympus OM-D EM-1 #digest

Weekend In The Smokys (1)

Sunset from the very top of Clingman’s Dome…
…which is the highest point in all of Tennessee (though you have to weave in and out of North Carolina to get there….)
I spent the weekend of April 11-13 in the Smoky Mountains with my friends from the “Nashville Photo Gang” – Ken Gray, Keith Miles and Cindy Wall, Dennis McGuire, Nick Coury, and Bob Wheaton. We ate too much, hiked around in the woods, ripped a lot of ‘film’ and learned a lot from each other.
This impression of the sunset from Clingman’s dome is unique to my Olympus cameras. It is actually a blend of two frames produced by the “art filters” inside the camera. With a bit of tweaking to both frames before the blending.
I’m going to make it available as a free desktop file next week.

Springtime In The Smokys #greatsmokymountaina On top of Old #smoky @gsmnp @Smoky_Mountain #godrays #sunset #goldentime #digest

Really, I Wish They Wouldn’t Encourage Me

Study Shows: Dark chocolate ingredient may prevent obesity, diabetes

I do prefer dark to all the other chocolates.  And "white chocolate" is an oxymoron in my book.

Too bad the source is Fox News:

Dark chocolate is rich in flavonols, a type of antioxidant shown to improve cardiovascular health by lowering blood pressure and improving blood flow. In order to determine whether flavonols also have a protective effect on weight, researchers placed lab mice on a high-fat diet rich in flavonols.

Their results, published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, demonstrated that a flavonol known as oligomeric procyanidins (PCs) seemed to have the greatest protective effect on health.

I do prefer dark to all the other chocolates.

And “white chocolate” is an oxymoron in my book.