Fallen facade

title updated 2/17/08 at 10:15am on the advice of carm

Last August I thought I’d be sad to see the last pieces of Shea Stadium hit the ground. A part of me thought that watching my favorite baseball team in some other stadium just wouldn’t be the same without that old rusty bowl - it wasn’t much, but it was ours. Then I saw video of it:

No tears, no sadness…nothing, really. Probably a culmination of the beatings that I’ve taken by that same favorite team over the last couple of years. I’ve been disappointed by them before of course - ‘91-’96 was pretty bad, as was ‘02-’04. A spattering of playoff appearances, the ‘99 NLCS and the ‘00 World Series are basically all I have to hang my hat on. I guess that’s why the last few years have been so tough - 177 wins but not a single playoff game. Brutal. And Shea Stadium has been home to it all.

So I guess I’m a bit soured on the whole thing and I want to start fresh. I want Citi Field to be a place of renewal and a place where the Mets play the kind of baseball that I think they’re capable of playing. I want to believe that using a pretty box will somehow turn a mediocre present into a great one.

Satan incarnate

hell

Ticketmaster and Live Nation may soon be joining forces to create a single ticket brokering conglomerate which will undoubtedly be bent on world domination.

While maybe the future isn’t that bleak, this really is something that should concern fans of live music. Ticket prices are going to rise, and you can bet that the best tickets - the tickets that these companies claim they sell to fans - won’t be found the day of sale. They’ll instead be found in the secondary ticket market (mainly TicketsNow, which Ticketmaster owns) marked up at a huge premium.

Though, given the myriad of problems during the Phish onsale last week, this could be somehow for the better. At least with Ticketmaster running the show I know that I’m out of luck in the first 5 minutes.

Sound advice in this topsy-turvy economy