I have a Serious Love/Hate Relationship with the Sold Out Dash

I hate to write so many entries on Wilco back-to-back, but the Los Angeles shows I referenced on April 15th went on sale to the general public today and I went into the war with someone else’s rifle (cue the A Major travis-style riff from Being There, disc two)...

Wilco’s upcoming shows in Los Angeles were indeed as anticipated as I predicted in my recent post. After Pomona stayed on sale for a week or so before selling out I thought that maybe the L.A. shows weren’t going to be as hard to score as I had originally thought. Wrong. I checked back to the site only to see that Pomona had sold out and then the pre-sale for the Wiltern sold out in about four minutes. Great. So, I got up this morning at 7a.m. thinking that the 10a.m. opening may be east-coast time even though the site clearly said PDT, then again at 9 a.m. I got some breakfast and then sat at my girlfriend’s computer and opened my windows to attempt to get tickets for both shows simultaneously. When 10 o’clock hit I was ready and logged in to the site already to avoid wasting any time. I went for four tickets right away and was shut down. Then when I re-opened the window I was only able to get one general admission. Then I proceeded to buy four tickets, two for each show, in four separate purchases. Every transaction just kept getting shut down until I finally walked with my four successful scores in four separate areas. WTF! The only time that I was able to get two together the window shut down and then the whole site was unavailable for a few minutes. By the time I got back I had about 35 seconds to finish clicking accept fourteen times to keep the pair, which I obviously lost. I usually love getting up to fight for tickets or stand in line, but this internet thing can really piss one off sometimes. Based on what I heard from other friends it sounds like the computer may have been screwing me, or maybe it was the wireless connection? PCs!!! I don’t know, but I wish I could have just got up early and stood in line somewhere like the old days. I suppose they weren’t selling tics at Tower Records...