Ell. You. Vee. In Concert

The year: 2008.  That's the last time Madonna was in town.  2008. So very, very long ago. September 2012.  That's the next time Madonna is coming to town.  Not so very far away!

I am ridiculously excited to tell you that MJagger and I have secured Madonna tickets for her upcoming world tour. This just hours after Madonna's Super Bowl extravaganza.  The only thing that could be better is getting Madonna AND Lady Gaga tickets in the same twenty four hours.....

....well, that didn't quite happen, but Lady Gaga DID announce some of her tour dates within 24 hours of our Madonna ticket purchase, which is pretty dang fantastic.  Both of them going on tour this fall. Sweet! Coincidence that Gaga announced tour dates within 24 hours of Madonna's tickets going on sale? I think not.  It's hard to be Lady Gaga when you know everyone has been been babbling about Madonna for the past week. 

Thank the pop-culture-gods that Book de la Face alerted me of the Madonna tickets going on sale. There I was, drinking my coffee while perusing the Face page when I saw the Madonna announcement.  I spit coffee and starting texting MJagger--there was Madonna to be had!  We didn't have time to devise a plan or worry about charge card accounts--this required immediate action.

We got our tickets during the pre-sale.  If you haven't been in the business of buying concert tickets lately, you have no idea what a racket it has become.  (A racket that involves all sorts of add-on fees, I might add.) You don't go anywhere and stand in line. You don't call a place to order your tickets. You don't even buy them on the day they technically go on sale. No, it's a new game.  You go to a ticket business on line and you push your reset button a million times in a row during the pre-sale event, of which you need a special code once you are blessed with the opportunity to purchase tickets.  Unfortunately, no matter how good you are with a reset button and no matter that you have a pre-sale code, you are not at the same advantage as everyone else....because for every pre-sale code in the world, there is someone else out there with a pre-pre-sale code.

See? I smell a racket.

I happen to have the pre-sale code because MJagger and I are in the Madonna Fan Club. (Of course we are.  Did you have a doubt?)  Even though I had this magic code, the people in the Legacy level of her fan club got first dibs on tickets in the pre-pre-sale--one hour earlier than us peons in the Icon level of the fan club.  One hour of crazed Madonna fans means a whole lot of tickets got sold before we got our chance.  Oh, and by the way--those Legacy level fan club members get dibs on the first 20 rows.  Not a Legacy level, not gonna be getting a shot at the first 20 rows. Grrrrr.  I took the best available seats I could find.  I had several browsers open at the same time in order to try and get the best seats out there.  Well, by the time it was our turn, we got the scraps.  Madonna will not be dripping sweat on us or spitting on us when she sings.  That's what me and MJagger really want.  We want to be able to see the infamous diastama in close proximity.  We want to see the spittle when Madonna is singing. Instead, we will be seeing her just fine but not as close as we'd want to be, especially for the amount of money we paid for our tickets.

Do not ask how much a Madonna ticket costs.  You won't believe me. Google it.  Don't forget to add all those surcharges and handling fees and convenience charges when you compute the actual total. At least the ticket was cheaper than Lucy's dental surgery.

The actual ticket sales don't start until next week.  Wonder what will be left? You better believe I'll be looking, just in case.  I'll also be watching the various ticket-selling-web sites to make sure we're not missing something (another part of the racket, I might add).

As for Mother Monster, MJagger and I are piddling with glee about going to her concert, too.  We believe it is possible to be both a Madonna and a Lady Gaga fan.  I know, I know, there aren't many of us out there that subscribe to this tenet.

Can't we all just get along?

No, it appears not.  It's a jungle out there in the pop diva world.