Jam Box Office

It's wonderful to get a clear sign about something I must do. This morning I was finally getting around to reading The Guide from Friday's Dallas Morning News. There are so many fantastic things going on in the metroplex this month that it is hard to decide how to spend my limited entertainment dollars.

DMN dance writer Margaret Putnam quoted choreographer Bruce Wood about his new work, "Dust, Texas":

Either you respond to a sky that's big and land that is flat and it makes you bigger, or else it oppresses you.

When I saw that it was the clencher. I'm the poster child for big, flat land. I was already excited about "Rhapsody in Blue" on the program for Wednesday's Bruce Wood Dance Company performance at Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth. Putnam writes, "Rhapsody in Blue is a romp – lush, jazzy, fluid and infinitely sophisticated, riding on the wave of Gershwin's spirited score."

Still in my PJs at 8:20, I headed to the computer to buy a ticket. After attending Fort Worth Opera's "Dialogues of the Carmelites", I vowed not to ever again sit in the seating sections requiring rapelling equipment to reach. The Bass is so steeply constructed as to set off my very, very rare acrophobia.

Bass Hall online ticketing seemed pretty simple, except that it asked me to log-in as a returning customer. I typed in my email address, then clicked on "Forgot My Password". The computer again asked for my email address, then told me in big red letters that it could not accept my email address. Okay, maybe I didn't buy my ticket online before. One time I won my tickets from ArtsCard in the same way I win most of my movie passes and get other deals for tickets and outings. Maybe the other time I bought my ticket at the box office the day of the opera.

Time to try registering as a new user with the usual name/address/email/phone info so that I could purchase my ticket before my allowed time for completing the the transaction expired. The little time clock was ticking down the seconds. You would think I was taking the SAT or playing in the state basketball tournament! My new user status may have been accepted by the online box office computer kahuna, but I wasn't able to get back to my ticket request, so I went through the whole process again. This time I got the dreaded message:


Not one to give up easily I tried yet again, but to no avail. Still sure of my divine mandate, and thinking I was being tested in my faith, I picked up the phone and called the box office. Like many artists I know, I use the phone as a last resort. We are a group prone to phonophobia.

"How can I help you this morning?," asked the friendly woman. I explained that I tried to buy a ticket online, but I wasn't sure if the transaction worked. "Well let's just see what the computer tells us," she says with the patience and good humor of the sonogram tech at the OB-GYN. Then a gasp. "Why, there are three of them in there!," she says. Great. I'm having triplet tickets. Actually my name and address are in the computer over and over and over, but no tickets have actually been purchased. Whew! By this time I've apologized profusely for jamming and disabling the Bass Performance Hall ticket website, and the friendly woman and I are both laughing so hard tears are running down our cheeks. We agree that I should probably have a third cup of coffee before I ever shop online again. She's going to hold my ticket at Will Call. She probably wants to take my photo for the Most Wanted Poster. It's been six hours, and the online box office is still disabled.

So my plan for Wednesday is to leave work at 3:00 and go to Fort Worth. Go to the National Cowgirl Museum. Go to the Bass Will Call at 6:30. Go to Jail. Go directly to Jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.