Proud Member of the Rocket Club

Yes, you read that right, you are reading the blog of one of the newest members of the Elton John Rocket Club! I want you to know that in the name of entertaining you all, I am putting my head on the chopping block. If my husband reads this and finds out I spent $40 of his hard earned money to join Elton John's fan club, I will never hear the end of it. Let's just hope he has been too busy to keep tabs on my blogging.

Before you think I'm totally off my rocker, let me plead my case. As I mentioned yesterday, Elton John is coming to town and his concert sold out quickly. Eric and I went online last night and as we can all imagine, ticket prices are already out of this world on Ebay. People are getting upwards of $500 for one ticket and are selling pairs for close to $3000. There is no way I'm even gonna' go there! Lucky for me, good ol' EJ decided to add another show, on May 30. Tickets will go on sale Monday morning.

Always being the one looking for another angle, I decided to check out eltonjohn.com to see if they offer any special way of getting pre-sale tickets. What I found was that if you pay $40 to join his fan club, you get the priviledge of purchasing pre-sale tickets to his concerts. The site claims that the tickets are generally quite good (my words, not theirs) and each member is limited to 2 tickets. According to the newspaper this morning, out of the 8,000 seats in the arena, about 1,000 are set aside for promotional purposes and fan club members. Considering that each member can only purchase 2 tickets, my chances of getting tickets as a member of the Elton John fan club could certainly be better than those of the general population.

I figure at a membership price of $40, if I am in fact able to purchase tickets, I will have only paid a mark-up of $20/ticket. That's a far more reasonable mark-up than what people on ebay are paying and a portion of my 40 bucks goes to charities that Elton John supports. If I don't get pre-sale tickets I'll probably be pissy for about a day, I'll swear at myself for throwing away $40, and I will have made a charitable contribution.

After carefully weighing my options I decided that I have spent $40 on worse causes and, if nothing else, the drama over these darn tickets has been worth my $40. Who knows, I may even walk away from this whole thing with 2 tickets to an Elton John concert in my hand. Then we'll see who's laughing! If nothing else, I'll have a great Elton John poster to hang somewhere in my house. Are you jealous yet?

Sold Out

I was so excited when I read in the newspaper last week that Elton John was going to be in concert here in Anchorage. Elton John is one of those performers I have always wanted to see, but never thought I would get to, because tickets for his performances are always in such high demand. I remember growing up in So. Cal. thinking that if we lived in some out of the way place it would be so much easier to get the hot concert ticket. I discovered today just how wrong I was.

Tickets went on sale at 10:00 this morning for the concert on 5/28. I decided I wasn't going to wait in line with the rest of Anchorage. I was going to sit on my computer, waiting for the clock to strike 10:00 and I was going to be all over Ticketmaster's website. In my warped imagination, I was going to have tickets in my hand shortly after 10:00 and every fool who waited in line for hours would be jealous. Yeah, not so much!!!! I was on Ticketmaster.com at 10:00, but I didn't stand a chance. For the next 45 minutes I sat at our computer typing in secret code words and clicking on the "back" link. For 45 minutes I received message after message informing me that there were no tickets available. In a last ditch effort I even called my dad in So. Cal. for their local Ticketmaster phone number so I could try getting tickets through them, but that didn't pan out for me either.

All of you living in a large metropolitan area can take comfort in knowing that even when you live in Timbuktu, when a big star comes to town, it suddenly becomes as populated as Los Angeles. As I type this today, I wasted 45 minutes of my life on Ticketmaster.com and I still do not have Elton John tickets to show for it. Some neighbors and acquaintances I've talked to fared better than I did and some met the same fate. When it comes down to it though, I have to admit that I am pretty resourceful, so don't count me out just yet!