Infinitive Splitter

On Friday night, 800 of my closest friends and I watched Middle Distance Runner bring the house down at the 9:30 Club. I can say totally objectively that it was the most fun I’ve ever had in six years at that venue (full disclosure: I live with three members of the band).

Saturday morning, I awoke a few minutes before tickets for the May 4 Arcade Fire show at D.A.R. Constitution Hall went on sale, and I immediately spent the next five or six minutes refreshing the Ticketmaster page every four seconds. When the time came, my first search for two tickets in “best available” seating came back with a couple on the tier (upstairs) level, and in my first important decision of the day, I stupidly rejected the offer.

In a further, inexplicable extension of my presumptuousness, I specified in my second attempt that I wanted tickets on the orchestra level. When my search got to the front of the line (no later than 10:03), I was told to get real.

Sufficiently sobered, I retried the original search, knowing that the results that were unacceptable the first time had become my hoped-for best case. No dice on that, of course; by 10:06 there were no pairs of tickets to be found. In desperation, I tried for just one ticket — anywhere — which somehow returned a seat in the orchestra section with an “obstructed view.” Good enough!

(So anyway, if you were planning to ask me for an extra ticket, you’re out of luck.)

I spent the balance of the weekend importing into my new computer many of the CDs I have collected in the last 12 years or so — and which have gone largely unheard in the MP3 millennium. I look forward to reacquainting myself with the albums I liked well enough to pay for back when my paychecks didn’t have to go toward groceries and rent.

Hello again, Odelay. Been too long, Definitely Maybe.