I've Been A Bad, Bad Girl

So yeah, the Billy Joel concert was unbelievably awesome. Better than I imagined, and even better than that, better than Beau imagined. Phew!! More on that later though.

You see, I did a very bad spouse thing. And I'm here to confess. It was very late one night and Beau had already gone to bed. I was just fooling around on the internet, and then suddenly found a ticket site, not Ticketmaster, but what I assumed was the New Zealand equivalent. I checked to see what kind of concerts come here, since I'm sure in a country of 4.something million people, you don't get a lot of Rolling Stones concerts. I was stunned, and thrilled, to see that Billy Joel was coming to Auckland, and not only that, in just a few weeks!

I tiptoed into our dark bedroom, climbed into bed beside Beau, and whispered, "Sweetheart....I know what I want for Christmas...and my birthday." (which is in January). Beau, startled awake, let out a startling array of protests and expletives, making it quite clear that he was not interested in hearing this right now. Okay, it was pretty late.

Feeling that perhaps it was not the right time to continue to the conversation, I went back to my computer and stared at the screen. Concert tickets are a second by second deal. When Elton John came to Madison, I was poised at my computer, as far ahead as possible as Ticketmaster would allow before the 10:00am starting point. As soon as it hit 10, I clicked like a ninja through the rest of the screens and in less than about 2 minutes, I had the tickets purchased.

And though we were on the floor, we were still in row 30. It's a competitive game. Which is why I was so incredulous at the amount of pissy people in Missoula when Elton John came to town just about a year ago. For some reason I couldn't fathom, it seemed a huge mass of people had taken off work, driven miles and miles, rented hotel rooms, and then.... STOOD. IN. LINE. to get tickets. Stood in line. I got my EJ tickets ONLINE almost a decade ago.

Well, big fat surprise, the majority of in-line people didn't get a ticket, since they sold out, ONLINE (duh) within minutes. What happened next? An unbelievable storm of protests from the hundreds (thousands?) of dumb-butts who had stood in line. Protests of how unfair it was that they had taken all this time out and not gotten tickets. How it had all happened so fast! Letters were written to the editor, hostility was rained on the University of Montana who had just implemented some new computer system for tickets recently.

I was stupified. People still stood in line for tickets? AND they were outraged that they didn't get any? And isn't it a LOT cheaper to take a couple hours off of work to sit in front of a computer with a fast connection (the public library?) somewhere and purchase them that way instead of all the driving and hotel renting and line standing? Supposedly, a chunk of tickets were supposed to have been set aside for the line standers anyway, and those had been snatched up online. Oops, computer error. Still, I was unsympathetic.

Anyway, back to my naughtiness, not my eternal confusion about Montanans. Again, as I sat in front of my computer in that stillness that is late, late night, I thought, "Okay, I'll just go ahead and buy the tickets anyway, and then that can be my Christmas/birthday present." Here was the second bad part -- well, they were expensive. Real expensive. They didn't have to be -- the site had two choices: super cheap or super expensive. I haven't been to a concert since Elton John nearly a decade ago, but I have been to plenty before that, I knew what the super cheap seats entailed. Desperate greed coursed through me. Shit, if the tickets are THAT expensive, they can't possibly be bad. Right?

As I finalized my purchase, with the map-grid open in another window, ready to pick seats as soon as possible, I was suddenly at the end. It wasn't letting me choose the seats. Sure, it was letting me PAY for them, just not CHOOSE them. Ummm.....

Yeah, I went ahead and bought them anyway.

The next morning, I brought up Billy Joel again, hoping to ease Beau into the idea. We wanted to go to Auckland anyway, and this would be a great reason, beside the usual shopping errands and restaurant hopping. I was feeling really guilty about the money spent, EVEN if I had bought it with our American money, which meant, since the NZ Dollar had plummented, that the tickets were half of what they sounded like. It was 72 cents to the US Dollar when we got here. Now it was down to 50 cents. Made big purchases feel like a 50% off sale.

Still.

Anyway, as I talked about it some more, some very disturbing news came to light. Beau didn't like Billy Joel. !!!!!

Who didn't like Billy Joel? Seriously.

Uh oh.

Eventually, the truth came out. Beau was not really wanting to go, and I couldn't blame them. Concerts are fantastic when you love the artist, but ugh, to go to one of someone you don't like. I visited TradeMe, the NZ version of ebay, but it seemed that everyone was selling their tickets and no one was buying. WHAT? At first, Beau tried to convince me to take a local friend of ours -- someone I really like a lot, but still. I'm not really the kind of person who feels comfortable going on a 6-hour drive, each way, with a casual friend. Shit, I'm not up for a 6-hour drive with someone I'm not sleeping with. Or my friend April, whom I'd feel pretty free to tell that I need to pull over every 2 hours to wee again.

But in the end, we were off to Auckland, and after some homicidal driving around town (my god, the roadways in that city are ludicrous), we ended up at our hotel which appeared super posh from the outside, which was awesome since I got our room for a song online. Turned out it was two hotels in one building. You go to the right, you get the high-end rooms. You go to the left...and you get our room. Well, it had a bed and cable TV, so that's what matters.

We made it to the restaurant that we were excited about -- an Italian one owned by the host of a reality TV show on local restaurants. We were surprised that his own place, Sal Rose, wasn't as fancy as we thought it might be -- pretty laid back with so-so decor, and good, but not great service, but the food was wonderful, and so worth the trip by far. We loved our meal.

So that night, we went to the arena for the concert. As we walked up to the ticket window to pick up our tickets, I was pretty petrified. Beau still didn't know exactly how much they were, and if by ANY chance there was a giant beam obstructing our view or we were 40 rows back on the floor. After a nailbiting wait in line (of course, those in front of us were having some huge issue), I showed my receipt from the internet to the ticket lady. "Oh," she said, "You're on the guest list. You have to go that window over there."

The guest list!? Wow. I knew the tickets were expensive and all...

Thankfully, a much shorter line here, and after the girl fretted for awhile (she went through her small pile of tickets twice and both times passed up my name on the envelope). Finally, they were handed over and I slowly pulled them from the envelope.

Fifth row. FIFTH ROW. Omg, omg, omg, omg, omg! I was thrilled, giddy, child-like. I nearly bounced up and down from the ticket window to the merchandise line where I got a nice hoodie. No program though. I never really did see the need for a program five minutes after a concert/play starts.

We walked in and were on the floor...closer and closer to the front. 5th Row and in the center (well, okay, slightly off to the right, but on the aisle!). I've never had such good tickets in my life, even when sprinting at breakneck speed during general admission concerts or when seeing has-been bands at the state fair. Bliss, pure bliss.

We got to our seats, and bonus! Each seat had a free Billy Joel handbag with a big, fat, glossy program. Ha! Free program!

I won't go into TOO many details, but the concert was absofuckinglutely fantastic! Billy Joel was hilarious, crass, and is still soooo talented. His voice may not be as crystal clear as 40 years ago, but it's still strong and warm, and pudgy and balding as he was, he still had enough energy to belt out each song with full gusto. And impressively, he can hit all those high notes that Elton John couldn't come close to when I saw his ass 10 years ago.

I was a little concerned, since Kiwis have a reputation for not being too.... ebullient, and to me, a concert's not a concert until you're permanently standing. The first half of the concert was seated and polite, until Billy Joel announced that they had a roadie who, if it was alright with us, they'd like to give him a go on stage. When the guy came out, it was just SO awesome. He was like a blatant stereotype of a roadie - he looked like he walked right off the set of Wayne's World 2. Old, grizzled, cut-off t-shirt and jeans. He marched purposefully on stage, and with Billy Joel on guitar (!!), the roadie, and every light in the place, exploded into AC/DC's "Highway to Hell."

The crowd went totally apeshit -- everyone was on their feet, shouting and cheering, banging heads and making signs as if at an ... AC/DC concert. Billy Joel and his band seemed to be having a great time with it too, rocking out on their guitars.

I had a major non-sexual crush on the only woman in his band, Crystal Taliefero -- a beautiful black woman with a gorgeous curly hair bob, dressed in flowing pants and a sparkly gold shirt. Officially, she played percussion, but she also played the sax (with 2 others), sang back-up, and could move her body in ways I dream of, but look ridiculous trying.

And this is the best part -- Beau loved it. He had a great time and really enjoyed himself. Sure, a part of my joy for him was relief -- if he hadn't had a good time, I would have felt like the world's biggest asshole. But of course, when you care for someone, it's almost more important that they have a good time than you do. It's about shared joy, really.

And that night, we had it in spades. :)