A running joke in my family has been to compare my father to the “Edward Scissorhands” of movie fame, our tongue-in-cheek reference to his…how to put this delicately…less than stellar history, shall we say, with the hedge trimmer. There were several instances of nearly mangled bushes, the time when he cut all the flowers off the lilac shrub by mistake - and, the all-time classic, the day when the power suddenly cut out in mid-trim, causing my father to frantically gesture that one of us must have knocked the cord out of the outlet, only to find it lying there, severed in half, on the grass.

The art of being Internet savvy is a similar talent – you either have it or you don’t; you either are or you aren’t. Rarely is this so-called “skill” found in varying degrees. My father, I think we all agree at this point, could use a bit of work in this field as well.  

Don’t get me wrong – while he may be perfectly capable of navigating through sites, downloading files and installing programs, when it comes to that vastly underrated knack for purchasing tickets online, the wires tend to become a bit…crossed.

Over the last several years, we have witnessed our fair share of errors when it came to buying online. Once, we ended up with two sets of tickets for two different shows at two different venues – for the exact same night, at the exact same time. On another occasion, my father somehow clicked “two” tickets when he really meant “three,” but still swears to this day that the number must have changed in the system when he wasn’t looking. He did manage to go back and purchase the three eventually but, needless to say, we never let him forget this “technical difficulty.”

Most recently, with the announcement that Billy Joel was to be the featured artist performing the “Last Play at Shea” to commemorate the final season of Shea Stadium, my father decided to set everything up on the computer the night before – from the site to the page to the member login and password. Everything. All set. Ready to go.

So, the next morning, at the stroke of 9 a.m., he set out to click away. Oddly, he kept receiving a message stating that these particular tickets were not available for a host of possible reasons, none of which seemed plausible. This was the date and time of the ticket sale; this was the artist and venue we were looking for - so, what was the problem?  

Almost a full hour later, having had no semblance of progress in the purchasing department, my dad gave up. How could he be the only person having these issues with the Ticketmaster site? Obviously, for 55,000 tickets to sell out in a matter of 48 minutes, something had to be “clicking” for these other buyers.  

If only Ticketmaster was the site selling tickets to this particular show.

Yes, seriously. 

Published: February 27, 2008