Ticketmaster, and Stranger Things (spoilers, for sure).
Disclaimer 1: if you’re a Ticketmaster sympathizer, move along.
Disclaimer 2: I have limited compassion and empathy for you if you find I spoil aspects of Stranger Things for you, given that the headline indicates there are for-sure spoilers.
Phewf. There, now that we have the paperwork out of the way, let’s get down to business, shall we?
Dynamic pricing, my right eye
Ticketmaster? You gotta be fuckin’ kidding me. What a goddamn shitshow this week has been, right? I haven’t gone to all that many events in arenas and TM-dominated venues in the last 20 years—very underground, and so alt, I know—so I haven’t ever really had to deal with a lot of the headaches that come along with having to engage with the dual ticketing-and-venue behemoth of Ticketmaster and Live Nation; with that said, I’m absolutely familiar enough with a—this will date me—face-value ticket of $20 ending up costing $35. Convenience charges, my right fuckin’ eye. I know enough about that whole racket to know the Concert Overlords do whatever the goddamn hell they can do to get into our pockets in a hundred different ways. Dynamic pricing? Lol, right. DYNAMIC PRICING. What a fuckin’ spin. Capitalist fucking brain poison is what it is. As much as I complain about “stupid people” in this world—and they’re out there, more than we think, too—there really aren’t as many as I think there are, and most people know when they’re getting taken advantage of and getting squeezed, and setting a face value of a product at $50 and an hour later, after seeing the demand for said product, jacking the price 10x to $500 is beyond absurd… and there were more egregious examples, too, I just didn’t get screenshots of them; and, listen, I think we also all understand supply-and-demand, and, guess what? We probably don’t think it’s that big an issue, but the degree to which the idea is being manifested is ludicrous. Like, the show—we’ll get to which one in a minute—was always going to sellout, there wasn’t any worry about that—this is a 20+-year act doing a one-night-only performance (we’ll see about that…) of (arguably) their magnum opus; what I pull from that is that this isn’t a supply-and-demand issue at all, but straight-up Wallet Inspector bullshit. I saw “verified reseller”—more capitalism newspeak jerkoff bullshit—tickets in section 124, row 8, seats 5-8 selling at $386 USD+fees and one ticket direct from Ticketmaster in section 125, row 8, seat 6 for $700+fees. Boy, lemme tell you, I was and am heated over this. Both the micro and macro of this situation are so fucked. What’s even more absurd—and I didn’t think that was possible; stupid me—is the Taylor Swift ticket situation; every ticket sells out during pre-sale so there’s no regular sale? Lol, so the pre-sale is the sale, meaning there wasn’t actually a pre-sale. What the fuck, right? Goddamn, man. What a headache. I legitimately never thought I’d encounter this seeing weird quasi punk/hardcore/goth/new wave superheroes AFI, but here we are.
To my dear late brother—Brendan, I hope I’ve channeled the vitriol you’d have felt seeing this, too.
“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry, Billy.”
My brother, Brendan, passed away in May and, man, it’s fucked me up. Anything I see about brothers or sisters now, doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad or otherwise, just gets the waterworks going. Watching Stranger Things season 4… goddamn, dude. There’s a lot I loved: Eddie’s turn, and Nancy being the fuckin’ boss are two of my favourite pieces of TV ever, but Max’s story with her brother, Billy, is some of the most heartbreaking stuff I’ve ever seen on the screen. I’m a huge Sadie Sink fan now; I loved her performance in season 2 and 3—she just showed up, and did her goddamn thing. My partner and I started watching Stranger Things after my brother passed away, so there were a lot of feelings already, but watching the dynamic between Max and Billy in season 3, and then Max dealing with Billy’s passing in season 4… fuck, man. I just re-watched Max’s monologue at her brother’s grave and I’m a mess. Sadie’s vulnerability, her honesty, her pain, the nuance of the feelings… I don’t know if it’s because of how raw everything is with me still, but Sadie reached through the screen, she was talking to me, she was giving life to the words I didn’t have, the ones I don’t know if I’ll ever have; for however long that monologue is—four-ish minutes, I think—she commands the screen. For the direct spoiler and some exposition, here we are:
“And sometimes I imagine myself running to you, pulling you away. I imagine that if I had, that you would still be here. And everything would be right again. I imagine that we could’ve become friends. Good friends, like a real brother and sister*. And I know that’s stupid. You hated me. I hated you. But I thought that maybe we could try again. But that’s not what happened**.
I just stood there and I watched***. For a while, I tried to be happy. Normal. But I think that maybe a part of me died that day too. And I haven’t told anyone this. I just can’t. But I had to tell you. Before it’s too late. If you can even hear this. I really hope that you can.
I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry, Billy.
Love, your shitty little sister.”****
Like, Jesus Christ, man. I know, obviously, they’re writing for maximum effect and really driving to the hoop here, but there’s a lot of us out there who had weird, strained, distanced, nuanced and estranged relationships with siblings who all feel like Max.
*: I used to get so mad that other people had relationships—good relationships— with their siblings and I didn’t. I think there are probably people in my life who’ve known me for years, a decade maybe, who didn’t know I even had a brother. So, while Max and Billy had a directly contentious relationship, I knew the feeling. I know the feeing of just wanting someone, someone with the same blood and guts in their body, who thought and felt in similar ways, who knew things the way I did. I remember when we were kids we played and laughed and ran around and all that fun kid shit. Then we started to grow up and we started to grow apart and then it’s life in the fast lane.
**: this has been one of the toughest parts of the whole death process. Knowing what could have happened and what could have been will never happen and will never be. The conversation in the pizza joint between Jonathan and Will, man, that fucked me up, too. I said to my partner, “I never got to have that with Brendan.” It’s really fuckin’ hard sometimes to know that things were what they were and they are what they are and that’s that. Maybe I could have tried more, tried harder, tried better. I think a lot about a BANE lyric from Wrong Planet (Don’t Wait Up)—"I failed to protect my only brother”—and I used to think about it in a different, similarly painful context… and, man, it hits so different now.
***It’s really hard to think sometimes about what we could have done differently, about how we could have gone about things differently, about how maybe if we’d said more, felt more, been there more… just done all kinds of shit differently and done it more, maybe it all would have been different. For years, I watched my brother drink himself into the grave. Maybe I wasn’t there directly—I moved away from home when I was 18 and for ten-ish years I sort of orbited my family, and then for the last 12 I’ve lived on the other side of the country—but I was always close enough and I didn’t say or do much. I washed my hands of things. I saw Brendan a few times a year and that was that. I would reach out to him and, generally, he would ignore me… and so I just kind of let it wither on the vine. I wanted something and when I worked for it I was rejected, so I stopped working for it… even though it’s something the kid inside me—the Max inside me—desperately wanted.
****And goddammit, dude, if everything leading up to this last line didn’t fuck me up, this did. I think a part of me is stuck near the MEC at so-called Johnson and Government; that’s where I was when I found out Brendan died. I left work on a Monday afternoon to grab a beer after I finished and called my mom to check up on how my brother was doing; I hadn’t heard from her since he was admitted to hospital on the Saturday morning prior, and she said the doctors pronounced Brendan at 10:00 EST or something and I was like, what? Pronounced him? What the fuck does that mean? I remember walking down the street in a total daze and just tripping, man. I ran into some coworkers on the street and they asked me how I was doing… because I looked fucked up. I was distraught, to say the least, and they were witnesses to my pain in that moment. I’ll never forget that kindness. I know everyone always says hey that’s just what you do, but not everyone does it. They held me when a part of me was dying, and my partner and my dog did the same thing when I got home. My brother collapsed in a bathroom at my mom’s place, was brought back to some kind of quasi life hooked up to breathing machines and machines to pump his heart, he spent his last hours alive-ish in an induced coma with probably enough brain damage that it didn’t matter if he came out or not, and then he died alone in the ICU because things are still so fucked up that visiting people in hospital is all kinds of headaches. Goddamn, man. I know what Max was talking about with part of her dying, and I know what she means when she’s sorry. I know what she means when she calls herself a shitty little sister. Brendan, I’m sorry. I’m so, so, sorry.
Goddamn, man. Jesus Christ. Thank you, Dear Reader, for sticking with me, for letting me get that out and for being witness to my pain again. Know that there’s a lot of us out here who know how you’re feeling if you’re in the same situation I was, that Max was. I hear you and I see you.
