Arcade Fire stole the internet

Chris H., the purported victim of a heinous crime at the hands of one Win Butler seems to have sparked an Internet Fire (see what I did there) with his blog. Start here, then check out Win's brother Will Butler's response here. There's plenty of meat in the comment sections.

If you're keeping score, here's a snapshot of the bandwagon thusfar:

• arcadefirestolemybasketballplayer.blogspot.com/
• arcadefirestolemypuppy.blogspot.com
• arcadefirestolemylincolnlogs.blogspot.com/
• brighteyesstolemykickball.blogspot.com/

Ok so honestly, I thought there would be more when I set out to write this. Four isn't that many. I guess the Internet still rests in the diabolical clutches of the lolcats.

This is pretty cool

Not nearly as cool as having been there (the frustration of the ticketless hoi polloi is well-documented) but this is a very thoughtful consolation prize. The Arcade Fire have very kindly made one of their 5 NYC shows at the Judson Memorial Church available for download via NPR.

Arcade Fire - Live at Judson Memorial Church 2/17/07 (mp3, right click to download)

Well, that sucked

tickets.com is on my shit-list.

If you're in the vicinity of New York City and a beating heart resides inside your chest, you probably know that Arcade Fire tickets went on sale at 9am this morning for their 5 consecutive shows at Judson Memorial Church. As can be expected, there were many more losers than winners. I know only one person personally who got tickets.

Me? I got past the "virtual waiting room" (really just an automatic refresh page that saves neither your place in line, nor your dignity) but then found that, to my dismay, the number verification image wouldn't load. And then, even though I was under the impression that once you've selected tickets for yourself and finally gotten past the verification that you are not a robot your tickets are guaranteed for a certain timeframe, it's not the case. Because when I finally managed to load that image, the tickets that I thought were set aside for me were, in fact, not.

Now, I'm no genius when it comes to the internet, but I have to think that for all the incredible money that I imagine is in ticket retail sites, they should be able to afford a programming staff with some chops. I'm not the only one who's beside myself about this. The comments over at brooklynvegan do wonders to make me feel less alone.

There has to be a better way to do this. Of course, with shows of this magnitude people are always going to be disappointed and there're are always going to be voices crying "foul." But can we request at least not to be jerked around like rag-dolls on the road to disgruntlement*?

As for me, I'm just pointing out a problem. No solutions here. Just because I won the Nobel Prize for Lovemaking doesn't mean I have all the answers.



*It's a word, look it up.