Vampires, Babies, and Another Day in Mystic Falls, V.A.

     I am hopelessly behind on The Vampire Diaries. Truth be told, I was over a season behind a few times for the first 4 seasons. We're only talking about 5-6 episodes now, which really isn't too bad. First, I  have to back up to comment on the end of last season. It's fine with me that the lead character Elena (Nina Dovarev) the very girl who kept the vampire diary, decided to leave. I'm not going to lose any sleep over it except that she is the main conflict of the show. Through each of the seasons, it has always come back to Elena. We need to protect her, we need to save her from herself, we need her to choose who she loves more... They have managed to move the season 7 story along dealing with the with the Salvatore brothers' family issues while also jumping forward three years so we have no clue what's going on.

Photo from "I Just Hate Everything" website*

     Where we left off. Elena died under magical circumstances  (like everyone else on the show) and she can't come back to vampire life until her witchy human friend Bonnie (Kat Graham) dies. Of course Elena wasn't the only one who died at that season finale wedding. Her pseudo father Ric (he dated Elena's aunt and he was married to her birth mom) lost the bride, his wife Jo, that same night. She was killed while pregnant with twins, and somehow their witch baby twins were placed in Caroline's womb. I learned a few weeks ago that Candice Accola (Caroline) is pregnant and gave birth in January.  Suddenly this plot twist gave the gang a new person to protect! Let's be clear, Caroline is way more of a badass than the whiny, needy Elena will ever be, so she won't be a victim for long. The real issue I'm facing is how Stefan could be so in love with Elena for years (they had multiple doppelgangers and Stefan was in lover with doppelganger ancestor Katherine since the civil war) and then he just jumped in bed with her BEST FRIEND. It's a little more nuanced than that, (he saved Caroline from her dark side after her mom died. Plus Elena went through a dark phase and chose Stefan's brother over him because she was going through something (a case of bad boy-itis). But in the simplest terms, Stefan basically put his life-altering love affair aside.

     Why did I tag this post as frustrated? I started watching episode 713 a few weeks ago and my on demand freaked out and wouldn't playback the episode. I tried again to bring it up and it didn't last. Finally I went back this week to catch up on episodes and I couldn't find 713 anywhere. This is crucially important because this is the episode where Caroline must give birth to the witch baby twins that are siphoning her magic. (Spoiler from the flash forward scene, the twins turn out fine!) My cable company On demand, Hulu and the CW website/app were all missing this episode. They had combinations of episodes 712, 714, 715, 716 but the vampire baby birth episode was oddly missing. I finally located it on Amazon and paid $1.99 to download and view the episode because jumping into 714 left me puzzled after a minute. Why were they getting the spun-off villainous Originals re-involved in their story. Why is  Cranky the vampire slayer  (new hunter Rayna) chasing Stefan Salvatore on a motorcycle? We will have so see how this unfolds now, but it's finally clear how Caroline ends up with Ric in the jump-ahead future. Once you have someone's baby for their dead wife, an unspeakable bond forms that just has to lead to love!

*For the record ANGEL only went into season 3 until it brought us a vampire pregnancy. #Darla

The (Ticket) Struggle is Real

     I love going to live events! I enjoy taking in theater, hockey games, and live music. Much to my dismay, I am finding this more and more difficult to do. I was recently looking for tickets for not one but two concerts and I found out that clearly humans have little to no chance of getting seats (not even decent seats) for a show.

John Mayer 2007 @ MSG

     If one does want to get tickets, be prepared to shell out big bucks (upwards of $75.00 a ticket in most cases for a terrible seat). To compare, I went to see John Mayer at Madison Square Garden in the Winter of 2007, nine years ago. My friends and I (three ladies waiting for Your Body is a Wonderland)  paid about $40.00 per seat in the 400's section (which does not exist since the MSG remodel), but it was a second or third row in the upper upper most spot of the stadium. The seats were OK, but with a camera zoom lens we could see John pretty great! The crowd was in good spirits and the music was flowing, so we had a blast. 

      In the Winter of 2010, I attended John Mayer at the Garden again. This event was legendary!

John Mayer @ MSG in 2010.

        I still have a photo of it up at my desk to remind me of the amazing night. I also happened to be the night a major snowstorm hit NYC and almost shut down the city. But I digress, back to the story of how I scored these amazing seats. I sat on my computer refreshing the page over and over again at 10 am on the day-before pre-sale. I got the pre-sale code simply for buying the album, not join any silly fan club or having a special credit card or any other nonsense that's available now. My friend was in disbelief because I called her with the news: we were sitting on the floor, in row E (read this, 5th row on the floor). She thought there must be some kind of catch. Maybe there were double letter seats before the single letters? She was wrong and we did have amazing 5th row seats. The catch? We paid a flat $90.00 to sit about 12 feet from the stage. The concert was like a dream, the kind you do not want to wake up from.  First of all, I felt like I was at some kind of exclusive party. Second of all, we got a private floor-only bathroom and our own concessions and merchandise stands! We will never, and have never had seats close to this good since then.

    In the summer of 2013, my friend and I saw John Mayer again in a large, open-air venue in Hartford, CT. The seats were in the second section back and while still closer than the first show, still so far away. We paid $70.00 for these seats and were disappointed because it was not as good as the 2010 experience. But we barely managed to snag these seats due to increasingly difficult measures from Ticketmaster.

Luke Bryan Ticket 1st Day Pre-Sale

    First of all, Ticketmaster is the only major ticketing site to buy first chance tickets. Sites like STUBHUB sometimes grant a last-minute deal, but it's rare to see seats for anything there for the actual face value. After successfully battling each layer of Ticketmaster's elaborate process, (logging into your account, selecting the correct date, choosing only images of hot dogs, clicking "I'm not a robot" etc..) , you begin your queue in line while someone is nabbing all of the tickets, leaving something like the photo below. This (LEFT) is a screenshot for last week's pre-sale of a Luke Bryan concert in Atlantic City. On the first day of pre-sale, only single tickets were left in sections. How could all of the seats in a row be selected except single seats on the ends? Even stranger than that, why are single seats left in the middle of sections? or even stranger, in the middle of sections?

Luke Bryan Seats Left 3 Days After Sale

     Are there any seats left for the actual sale date? My assumption at this point would be no if you're planning to go to the concert with another person. So, why are all the tickets disappearing in pre-sales? Clearly internet geniuses and spambots are taking them for scalpers. Plus, the ridiculous number of pre-sales give some people special privileges over the average Joe. It's very disheartening also that to go to a show, you have to shell out $100 bucks per seat. This is not a casual night out with friends, it's a commitment that can cause lots of issues and friendship fights.  What do the good people get left with, higher prices (the 200's section seats here costs $79.00 plus $16.00 in fees, totaling about $95.00) Plus, if you have a carload of people who want to go to the show, you might as well plan to get different seats spread out all over the venue, because you will not be sitting together. If you're lucky you might be able to secure two seats together. This stress, this lack of availability, and this high price makes every concert a long shot dream instead of a fun night out. Let's find a way to make the concerts about the music again! #ConcertsForAll