it happened

last week the radio hardly gave away any they might be giants tickets. this began to cause some alarm with me until one of the djs announced what i suspected: they were holding them for this week, and would be giving them out like they were going out of style. [...because, after friday, they would be out of style...]
every hour between 10 and 6 on the hour, 101.9 will be giving away a pair of tickets to the first five callers. and so i planned to keep my radio on all day long, despite the poor reception my little clock radio gets [yes, i listen on the internet, but there's some sort of delay that i can't quite figure out, and time is of the essence here, people]. yesterday i made roughly 20 attempts at 10:00, all to no avail. eleven rolled around and found me with my phone in hand. mr. west [the dj] told me to call and i did. and he answered.
'hi who is this?'
'uh, this is jeff.'
'jeff, what's your last name?'
i spelled it for him, and followed with my city and phone number, when asked.
'and have you won they might be giants tickets from us before?' he asked.
'DID I WIN??' certainly it was obvious that i did. he wasn't going to get all this information from me only to say that they had already found their five callers and to wish me better luck next time. nevertheless, it was too wonderful to comprehend for those first few moments.
'yes, you won,' he replied with the non-chalantity of a man who makes dreams come true everyday.
i let my 'wa-hoo' ring though the house.

and i sat with a giant grin as he later read the names of the winners on the air. he even pronounced 'gustafson' correctly. i felt like i had accomplished something amazing, even though i had done nothing more than make a phone call. to be fair, i had made over 100 phone calls, yet this seemed far too easy. i picked up the phone, dialed, won tmbg tickets. it felt like i could do this all afternoon, give out a new name each time, and bring all of my friends.

so today i went out to the station office to pick up my tickets. i wondered if my guster tickets were still available. i won them a month ago; maybe they gave them up. i was hoping for a large bay window, through which i could see the dj, surrounded by all the panels and dials required to a solid alternative rock station. instead, the office was extremely bland; rather small, with closed doors at either end and a dull reception desk in the middle. the kind of thing you'd expect at the front of a secret government x-files building, a ninja training camp, or a video game test laboratory. ahead of me was a young mom, picking of a pair of tmbg tickets for her husband. i said i was there to pick up some tickets, a pair for guster and a pair for they might be giants. the lady asked my name, and i was prepared to show some id. but she just opened a drawer with no locks or thumbprint identification and pulled out my tickets. she didn't even cross my name off of the list she had. she wrote it on the list. i was astounded at the lax security here. getting back in the car, i contemplated calling jack and suggesting he come down and tell them he won some tickets, too.

actually, speaking of jack, i was faced with a bit of a dilema. i knew a lot of people who would have loved to come to this concert with me. jack would love to go. so would my roommate, mark. and there was a really cool girl at church with whom i had been talking about this and she agreed we would both try to win tickets. how do you choose over a really awesome girl? well, the tickets helped a little: they said it was a 21+ show, and she's 19. but, like many decisions in life, i made up my mind before i had to make the choice. my friend nathan is not only a fellow movie maker but also a fellow tmbg freak. he knows more about them than even i do. he gave me copies of their cds that i didn't have during 'minutemen'. my very first conversation with him, before i even knew him, was about they might be giants [in the production office on 'the outlaw trail' two years ago]. it was only right to invite him.

on the way home, i called to tell him the very good news.
then i called kristin and invited her to guster on wednesday.
wow.