Parrothead Ramblings

A big ad in today's Arizona Republic announces that tickets for Jimmy's visit to Phoenix with "The Salty Piece of Land Tour" go on sale tomorrow at 10:00AM. Now. there's a fine quandary for some of us. Tomorrow's a work day, and most of us laid-back Parrothead types are actually gainfully employed. So, if you've used up all of your sick-time good will on hangovers, you got yourself a problem: How the H-E-double-hockey-sticks am I gonna break outta this salt mine and snag me some tickets? There's always the reliable "I'll be (enter lie here) all morning." You can fill in that blank with "in the field," or maybe "making sales calls," or for some of us "working from home." What you're really doing is hauling-ass down to the Pavilion to get in line, or more likely, setting up your own "Parrothead Communication and Ticket Snaggin' Command Post." This is war. It's us fans against the bastard scalpers, who are much better equipped and staffed. We get the house phone, no less than two cell phones, and our computer up and running. We get our coffee and Krispy Kremes. We stretch and warm up. We put one commando on each phone, and one on the computer. We make the obligatory call to a Ticketmaster in the next time zone east, in hopes they mucked it up and started selling at 10:00AM their time, but no good. Then the countdown, and BAM, it's GO TIME!! Busy signal after busy signal, failed log in after failed log in, but that's OK, we're in for the long haul. We ain't leavin' till we have our ducats. Finally, after seemingly a lifetime of punching numbers and mouse-clicking, it happeens: one commando throws up his hand, makes the universal shut the f**k up hand signal, and we're in! Only four minutes this time! we're talkin' front row, baby! Of course, that's when we learn that the reserved seats sold out twelve seconds in, so we pick up the grass seats and swear that we'll get luckier next time. Those good reserved seats are now in the hands of the bastard scalpers, and were already offered on EBay while you were still listening to those damned busy signals, or trying to read that stupid, contorted word that Ticketmaster makes you type to prevent scalpers from getting all the good tickets. Yeah, right. But, what the hell? We're in. And everybody knows that the grass is where the action is. Besides, if you had scored those up-front seats, who'd you brag to about it? You gotta drag your ass back to work, and make out like you did something productive that morning. Hey, nobody promised being a Parrothead would be easy. Bastard scalpers.

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