tickets! (no of course I don't have any)

Yeah, no luck getting tickets to Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals. Upper-level seats were $500-ish on TicketExchange after the conference win Sunday and still are. I doubt other ticket services are much better, and Craigslist is exceedingly strange: a mix of very expensive tickets with $100-120-ish ones. If anyone legitimately can buy those, I'd go in for one, but I'm not sure what to believe on CL...especially since I saw Hawks vs Sharks tickets still listed after the series sweep on Sunday...and some on Monday...and some on Tuesday. A few minutes ago, I found this:

 

Wait, someone had to write out "laugh out loud"?!

Anyway, it's not looking too hopeful. I'm acclimating myself to the possibility of not getting to games 1 OR 2. (Doesn't help that I have to hear about someone who doesn't even have the Hawks as their #1 team, who's getting to fly here from Canada and see both Game 1 & 2, in the 100 level, while bloggers who've blogged about the Blackhawks dozens, hundreds of times this year can't get into the game. [And they're not a journalist or celebrity.] But oh well, I should have put aside money for finals tickets every time I was going to a regular-season game...) I'd totally be up for a ride to Philadelphia if anyone was driving...and if tickets were easier to get there, which I'm guessing they're not.

*****

If anyone wants to do a favor and be an amazing friend who'll get, I don't know, free advertising on this blog or a free place to stay on Chicago visits or homemade dinner--I need someone to DVR the games (or burn copies of DVRs). Still no NBC, still no functioning TV/DVR, and, well, can't buy a new one right now for some reason. I have ways to watch the games, of course, but I'd rather not wait until the Stanley Cup 2010 box set comes out (wait, do they make SCF box sets?). It's gnawing at me to think of all the apathetic Chicagoans (and there are some...I may have gotten a little cranky at someone on a social network about this) who have the ability to watch and record the games but won't, when I want to, and can't.

*****

I'm actually in a much better mood than this post indicates, because hey! I've signed back into Blogger again and can upload things. I'd be posting epic posts catching up on the weekend but I'm just posting this quickly in the midst of writing my story for this event in Chicago Friday which I've plastered all over the internet multiple times, but not on this blog yet. My first literary reading (and I call it "performing") in almost FIVE YEARS! I hope to get back into reading and even hosting an event or two (hmm, has anyone ever done a hockey blogger literary show? Maybe in Canada?) before long...

obsessive minutiae: StubHub NHL team descriptions edition

(this is a new "ongoing series" though I don't know what'll be next in it). so, I've only had to buy a hockey ticket from StubHub once, when I couldn't get a TicketExchange one for a Blackhawks game that happened to be the one-year anniversary (within a day) of my first hockey/Blackhawks game ever. I had to go to a separate pickup location before the game on a brutal January day, and pay more fees than Exchange. but I do check there often just in case, not just for Hawks but for other cities I'd wanted to see hockey in.

I was amused by the Blackhawks description, something like "Come see Toews and Kane lead the team to victory!" ...but then they dumped it for a more generic one. and I noticed the Buffalo Sabres one was kind of bad, too. then...I started looking at many more of them just for fun. for the most part these are so awful they're funny (at least to me). I pity whoever had to write these...but they're not even trying. if you're going to mention player names (Capitals does, but, get this, Penguins doesn't) why not spice it up a little with "Come see Daniel Carcillo get a well-deserved beating!" or for bottom-dwelling teams "Uh, well technically it's a hockey team, and uh, you like hockey, right?" anyway, I checked them all. I know I really only have to post a few for you to get the idea, but for the full deadening effect, here are ALL 30 listings (alphabetical by team name, not city name), each in more or less the appropriate team colors:

okay, the Hurricanes, Lightning, and Stars ones amused me the most, as did the egregious misspelling you may have seen twice, and the Wild's description, which sounds like it's really selling the chance to see the opposing teams!

(the Sabres one looks different because their ticket site through NHL.com isn't TicketMaster and TicketExchange--I have no idea why they use a different company.)