News
August 31
The e-mail read, "I'm going to do everything in my power to be there." Out of curiosity, I went to the accompanying website. It was too good to be true. For one night only, Billy Joel would be returning to Madison Square Garden to perform songs he never played before in concert. Here's the best part: the concert would take place on New Year's Eve, Dec. 31, 1999. I couldn't believe my eyes. However, at this point, this concert was still a hypothetical. If I wasn't to be there, then in my own mind it wasn't going to occur. All of a sudden, all my fears about leaving my safe Manhattan apartment on the eve of Y2K disappeared, and I could conceive only of spending my New Year's Eve with tens of thousands of screaming New Yorkers listening adoringly to "Piano Man." My reply to the e-mail? "OH MY GOD!! OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD!!!!!! WE HAVE TO GET TICKETS. WE HAVE TO GET TICKETS. We need a strategy. How can we work this to our best possible advantage? We have to go. This is not a choice. I will sell my body. I will sell my soul. (Um, maybe not my soul, but definitely my body). Talk to me, here, people, what do you think we should do??" Okay, I was kidding. Well, sort of. The point is, this concert become so all-consuming that all of a sudden my upcoming econ. exam seemed a lot less important. Who am I kidding? EVERYTHING seemed a lot less important. Thus, 20 e-mails and two days later, we came up with an official game plan. There were five players in this game. Four of us were on one team, we called ourselves the Billy-nators, and we were on the offensive. The fifth player was on the other team and called himself Ticketmaster. He was on the defensive. Ticketmaster may not sound like such a scary name, but we had felt his wrath in the past. He is famously known for charging unreasonable mark-ups on tickets, and taunting "nah-nah-nah, I have tickets and you can't get through my phone lines." Even though there were four of us, and only one of him, we knew victory would not come easily. "ALRIGHT!" Shouted the coach, "Here's the plan: players one and two will use high-speed ethernet to their best advantage. Players three and four, who live off-campus, will dial Ticketmaster until we break through his defensive line. ARE WE CLEAR?!" "Yes, coach!" I screamed. "To avoid buying 16 tickets, we must communicate. Turn on your Instant Messengers. Good! Plan of attack begins at 08:45, tickets go on sale at 9 a.m. Players three and four - redial will be your best friend. Use it wisely. I don't want any excuses. No sissies here. No, sirree. You will come back with tickets, or risk being cut from the team next year! NOW, ARE WE READY?" "C'mon, put me in, coach! Let me get 'em!" "Good, Resnik, I want to see that kind of aggression on the field! Now, GO GET'EM!" So it was that at 8 a.m. the next morning, four very groggy college students awoke and turned on their phones and computers, ready to launch our attack. We joined online and prepared to meet the enemy, and we somehow knew that we would win the day. With our four-pronged plan of attack, we could not lose. As it turned out, we never even got to the playing field. An unexpected rookie joined the team at the last minute, and insisted on taking on Ticketmaster all by himself. Player three's brother, who lives in New York, got online at Tower Records in Manhattan at 5 a.m. and would be the third person at that outlet to nab the best available seats at less than $1000. The outcome of the game was that Ticketmaster forfeited. He just couldn't block the powerful offensive led by our star rookie and we got the best seats we could afford. This, too, however, was a problem, as the middle-end seats were selling at $225. Doh! I pictured my savings account being depleted. Thank goodness for my overly-generous aunt and uncle who gave me an overly-generous gift for my 21st birthday. And we breathed a sigh of relief, because we knew that we had overcome. In telling a friend about the endeavor, she laughed and said, "All that, just to die on New Year's Eve?" I thought about that. The fact is, though, that no matter what I do on New Year's Eve, I'm going to be in New York. And if New York's going to blow up, there's nowhere else I'd rather be, but listening to Joel as he sings, "They said that Queens could stay, they blew the Bronx away, and sank Manhattan out at sea." And when the year 2000 finally comes I'll be listening in my euphoria and singing along with "Two Thousand Years." Even if the ceiling caves in, I know I'll be thanking the coach for putting in that star rookie, satisfied that Ticketmaster was defeated, and knowing that we still won the day.
