u2 or new potatoes?

i'm an idiot. (you may enunciate that last word like napoleon dynamite, if you'd like.)

yesterday at 10 a.m., tickets for u2's october 29 show -- their only dallas appearance -- went on sale at ticketmaster.com. this was only one of two shows scheduled for texas -- houston being the other lone star venue.

at 9.50. i logged on, relentlessly refreshing the site until the digital ticket window slid open, so to speak. when it did, i humbly put in my order for two "best available seats."

while i waited, i imagined the ticketmaster himself running his unmanicured index finger over his well-worn american airlines center seating map, checking the inventory of seats against his reams of tractor-fed computer printout records.

but instead of watching some hunched over clerk work through my request, i was staring into my dell monitor, visually engaged by a loading bar that promised my request was being processed. i should know the answer within a minute, it reassured me.

the tension to see if my meager two-ticket request would be honored was building.

processing . . . processing . . . processing . . .

undoubtedly, my request was one of tens of thousands received at the strike of 10. i imagined would-be concert goers from oklahoma to amarillo to even the key city would be vying for one of the precious 18,000 seats available.

(actually, that number was certainly decimated by pre-sale tickets made available tuesday to those "subscribers" of u2.com.)

processing . . . processing . . . processing . . .

and then a new screen with this message:

"We are holding these tickets just for you." success! "You have 2:00 to purchase these before they are released."

my wide eyes scanned the page to find the section and seat. yet it wasn't the numbers that caught my eyes. it was this stark and unapologetic message: WARNING: THESE SEATS ARE BEHIND THE STAGE.

WHAT!!!!

[time remaining to purchase: 1:35]

this can't be right. let me check the seating map. oh no. these seats are, quite possibly, the worst seats in the house. one of the top rows in the upper deck. right smack behind the stage.

[time remaining to purchase: 1:15]

that's when the indignity of it all kicked in.

i can't stand for this!!! $120 for these two seats?!?!?!? what an outrage!!! don't you know who you're dealing with?! why, i saw these guys in '82 at the opry hall in austin for $7 and was four rows back. at the l.a. sports arena, i saw 'em -- twice! and mary and i were in the 13th row at the cotton bowl in '97, where we made eye contact with bono when he got out of that lemon car thing! what a slap in the face. i won't stand for it!!!! why don't you take your section 305 upper terrace "seats" and shove 'em up your achtung, baby!!

[time remaining to purchase: :40]

hmmm . . . of course, those guys do put on the best rock show in the world. and it sure would be fun to go.

[time remaining to purchase: :20]

yeah, but $60?!?! for a seat like that??? besides, in that section i bet they're only seats in the technical sense. hard bicycle seats, probably. and what an insult to be exiled to the concertgoer's siberia?? who do they think i am? some indiscriminate bandwagon-hopper who doesn't care about the quality of the experience. i mean, i only pay to see the front of performers, not their backs and that bald spot on The Edge.

tick . . tick . . . tick . . .

it was in this time-pressured moment of righteous fan indignation i made the click i'll regret from now until october 29.

"search for other seats"

i tell you, i'm an idiot. and i don't have to tell you there were no other seats to be found.

except the pair i passed up on -- now for sale on ebay for $248.

in my mind's eye, i see the wise old ticketmaster today, still shaking his head in disbelief at the one guy who passed on u2 tickets at face value.

cut to this afternoon. the doorbell rings.

a middle-aged woman who's spent too much time in the sun, dressed in an old t-shirt and ill-fitting shorts, stands on our porch. she's accompanied by a box of fruit and vegetables. and the knife in her hand, which she wields to quickly slice samples of her wares.

my hands are filling up with triangles of oranges, corn, tomatoes, grapefruit, apples as she delivers her aggressive sales pitch for the produce she's hawking today. grown by her family on their farm. only a couple of boxes left, she warns.

at which time her tooth-challenged pre-teen daughter joins her in the sales pitch, to add to the emotional plea.

after a bewildering and diversion-filled negotiation and transaction, she relieved me of a little more than $60 in exchange for a box of fresh produce. and as her disheveled family drove away in their dirty white pickup, mary and i started blaming each other. why can't you say no? why can't you? i thought you wanted them? you're the one who wanted to help that family??

we're suckers. total fools, we decided. for shelling out our hard earned cash in such an irresponsible manner. for buying groceries when we weren't shopping for 'em. for being too nice, dammit!

and in our moment of finger-pointing and hand-wringing, it painfully crystallized for me:

by spending the equivalent of the concert ticket i passed on yesterday, i'd rather have a box of vegetables and potatoes than see the world's greatest rock n' roll band.


consider this a cry for help . . .