ticketmaster v. swifties (2022)
the end of an era, the start of the eras tour
hello and welcome back to the news! i can’t imagine the panic and confusion you must have felt when you did not see my name pop up in the promotions tab of your inboxes the past two fridays. i’m very sorry! i wish with my whole heart that i did not have a 9-5 but i do and i actually have to do it in order to get paid so until i figure out how to get freelance gigs for Sitting Around and Being Hot, Having A Job will unfortunately take up a lot of my waking hours. but let’s get into it! the past two weeks have been full of epic highs and lows (of high school football), so we have a lot to catch up on.
i gave my blood, sweat, and tears…for this???!!
first i’d just like to address the blonde, bejeweled elephant in the room: no, i did not get tickets to the taylor swift eras tour. that woman didn’t even give me a presale code. but that honestly did not worry me at the time (i have aged 10 years since then) because in addition to a verified fan presale (which i was LOCKED out of for not buying her ugly merch), the eras tour also had a capital one cardholder presale scheduled for the same day. i happen to have a capital one credit card (please don’t treat me differently) so i figured there would still be a chance to get decent seats. i also figured that surely the ONE company that has monopolized the online ticketing market would know how to handle this amount of demand. this is where i would put a supercut of the chaos that unfolded during the verified fan presale (that i luckily was not on the frontlines of thanks to my sister and cousin), but i don’t have one, so you’ll just have to trust that it was a damn circus. a zoo, even!
if you’re not familiar with how a ticketmaster queue works, there is a progress bar that calculates how many people are in front of you while you wait to be let in to buy tickets, the maximum being “2000+”. turns out 2000+ also referred to the amount of hours people would wait to get through the queue, only to be told that there were no tickets left. 2000+ is such a condescending and misleading number, you truly have to laugh! at one point, the queue paused for 2 hours because ticketmaster fucked up the presale codes. some people never received theirs. anarchy! to quote taylor herself, “i think there’s been a glitch!!!!!” it was so bad that the capital one presale was rescheduled for the next day. i rescheduled my therapy appointment so i could devote 3 hours of my day to waiting in the queue (to no avail), and t*cketm*ster cancelled the general sale because they “accidentally” sold all the tickets (all of them!) during the presales lmao. taylor took to her instagram story to ensure us that this pissed her off, the department of justice launched an antitrust investigation, and resale tickets are now going for thousands of dollars. amazing job, everyone!
“you agree with me, right??”
forgive me for bringing current affairs into this space, but something is happening with kamala harris. the veep has given us some goofy sound bytes over the years (who could forget “we did it joe”?) but nothing compares to what we’ve seen in the past couple weeks. she started talking about yellow school busses and we lost her. if this woman even SEES a bus it’s over. i wouldn’t be surprised if someone edited this clip of her singing “the wheels on the bus” with eerie music to use for a smear campaign about how the democrats are backing Big Bus. if i were a betting woman (which i no longer am since my ex wife made me give it up to “help with the kids.” whatever that means!!), i would say the one thing kamala loves more than a bus is a venn diagram. “the three circles…the analysis about where there is the intersection…” she made some compelling points. everyone had something to say about how unhinged this was, so here’s my take: i thought we weren’t going to make fun of WOMEN for having INTERESTS anymore!!!! oh, so just because she’s the vice president, she can’t do a little show-and-tell at a press conference? as a treat?? so she brought props to the gig! who among us! i just hope she’s happy and on a bus somewhere right now <3
almost paradiso
i’m watching the new season of white lotus. are you watching the new season of white lotus? if you haven’t started it but you’re planning on watching and you don’t want spoilers…i don’t know what to tell you. do you want to know how to make god laugh? tell him you’re four weeks behind on one of the biggest tv shows right now and you don’t want people to spoil it for you. like…i’m sorry i’m not sugarcoating this for you. anyway, if you’re still reading, let’s talk about it. the second season opens with dead bodies floating in the sea, and so the game of clue begins. the only returning characters from last season are tanya (played by jennifer coolidge) and her limp-dick loser of a husband (played by uncle rico). the rest of the characters are new to us, including two couples vacationing together (aubrey plaza heads, we won!), tanya’s assistant portia, a very toxic grandpa/dad/son trio, and two sex workers who, even if they turn out to be the murderers, can do no wrong in my book <3 so far, every character has given me reason to believe they will eventually commit a murder at the sicilian white lotus. will it be the overworked hotel manager, valentina, whose patience is tested every day by hotel guests and her staff? will it be tanya, whose husband has to fly home “for work” in the middle of their vacation and Does Not Like Her? or will it be albie, the “nice guy” who wants to bone portia so badly but is beat to it by a naughty boy from essex? i think any of the characters could be pushed to the brink. i just hope this season’s murder does not involve human poop :) along with the season 2 who-done-it discourse, people on twitter have already begun suggesting locations for season 3. i think it should be set in mar-a-lago because i’d like to see a certain white POTUS get his shit wrecked at a white LOTUS!! but for now, we wait and see who’s going to get a vacation (prison time for murder) from THIS vacation (a resort for some of the worst people in the world).
other things of note
remember in parks and rec when andy falls into the construction pit and breaks both his legs and then writes a song (read: a banger) about it? well, move over andy because there’s a new pit fanatic in town and she is unfortunately a harry styles fan (bad for my brand). tiktok creator/dog walker/girl who does weird stuff with her bird @taraswrld for some reason admitted to spending $10,000 for harry styles tickets because she was “finna be in the pit.” what other choice did she have!
the tiktok trend “it would be so awesome…it would be so cool :)” the original video is a from a scene teen titans go! to the movies where robin tries to convince a producer to make a movie about him. king shot his shot, you have to respect it.
those two girls singing “crazy” by gnarls barkley in the parking lot. the way that one girl goes “whoa!” when she hits the “mi-i-i-I-I-I-I-nd” riff is very funny to ME. people are having fun with this one.
harry and olivia are taking a break. first one direction, and now olivia? what will harry take a break from next?? don’t say it. i know what you’re thinking, and i refuse to hear it!!!
well that’s all! i hope everyone has a happy thanksgiving. love you!!
xoxo tess