Tickets.com "convenience"

Over the past several days, I have had the opportunity to take advantage of the "convenience" of trying to get baseball game tickets through mlb.com, which uses tickets.com as its ticketing agent. Because it does not appear to be easy to provide official feedback about the ticketing, I've decided to instead post a little blog rant about it.

Different baseball teams appear to have slightly different setups when it comes to the ticketing, such as what obscure number or word(s) need to be entered to be able to get tickets to prevent programs from accessing the system and buying lots of tickets to re-sell. I can understand this protective measure and appreciate it as someone who would rather not be paying extra to some middle man.

What irks me is that I'm paying $4 per ticket for the "convenience" of ordering online, and they cannot seem to make the interface easier to find tickets. Why do I use the quotes? Because you cannot put in a price range for what you are willing to pay. Sure, you can select "Best available" and get the $300 seats, but what if you are looking for the best available seats for $35 or less? Or what if you are looking for tickets in particular sections? Why not let people choose the sections where they would be interested in sitting? Because you cannot perform these types of searches, you end up trying different sections individually, which is where the entry of the "secret code" protective measure comes into play. when you have 15 sections in which you would be willing to sit, you could end up going through the system 15 times. Even better? When Michelle and I were looking for tickets in one section on the Brewers website and they weren't available, the search switched to "best available" to give us tickets three times the price we were willing to pay for a single game. Why not give me the best available seats in the sections that cost less than the one selected in the initial search? Can you imagine going out to dinner to find that they are out of the turkey sandwich you want, but then they try to turn around and sell you the prime rib dinner instead of offering you another sandwich?

This is one area where stubhub.com does a nice job... you can filter your view to see what tickets are available in particular sections for a particular price and with a particular number of tickets grouped together. Admittedly, stubhub.com has a different business model, but with AJAX and other technology, they are able to present and change the view without reloading pages, and you do not need to enter in the security code multiple times just to see what tickets are available.

Michelle and I were looking to get tickets for multiple games last night. We went through the search to get our tickets for one game, and then began the process of searching for tickets for another game. Well, the system was not built with enough intelligence to say "this person is looking for more tickets. I need to hold on to these tickets while they search." We apparently took more than the minute and a half it would old the tickets for the first game while looking for tickets for the second game and had to go back through the process again to get the tickets for the first game. Do I want people to put tickets on hold and never buy them? No. Do I want to have a little time to browse and see what tickets are available? Absolutely. Is a minute and a half enough? Not a chance, especially when the process to find tickets is so convoluted.

So... mlb.com, tickets.com, or any ticketing company who may stumble across this post: please take the "convenience" fee you charge, and please make your system actually convenient to use. In the meantime, I will be calling or visiting the box office whenever possible for true convenience when selecting tickets.

Wizard World Chicago 2008

Over the weekend I had the opportunity to attend my second comic con, Wizard World Chicago 2008. This year I did things a little differently than last year. I decided I could shop for comics online or when I travel, so I focused my time at the show in the "Artist's Alley" and at the Publisher booths. I had a great time and thought I would share some of the highlights.

One of my favorite comic artists, Alex Ross, was at the show and signing. Unfortunately, he is also very popular with half the rest of the world because of his gorgeous water colors, so there was a huge line to be able to see him. I opted to skip this and spend some time meeting others. Perhaps if I were at the show for multiple days I might have waited in line to meet him.

As it turns out, that worked just fine for me, as I was able to meet another of my favorite artists, Kenneth Rocafort, at the Top Cow booth. Not only did he sign three issues for me (Madame Mirage First Look sketch variant, Madame Mirage 1 convention variant, and Madame Mirage 2 convention variant), but I had the opportunity to watch him sketch "Dude" (one of the characters from Madame Mirage) for another convention goer. It was a real treat. Kenneth's sister took this nice pic for me after I got my autographs (Thanks!). Next time I will be sure to bring a sketch book.

Later on I attended the Top Cow futures session, for which Kenneth was on the panel. When he arrived though, he tried to sit in the back of the room by me. That would have been pretty cool to comment on the future directions with him.

One of my first stops when I get to the convention is to visit my favorite local creators, the guys from Imaginary Tales Comics. This is the team of Kurt Wood, illustrator (and manager at my favorite local comic shop, Collector's Edge) and Kevin J. Smith. I picked up Kurt's sketch book and (later) a snazzy ITC t-shirt. I already have their full series of comics. Kurt also informed me of the sad news of Michael Turner's passing the night before.

I didn't know Michael Turner in person, or even know a lot about him. What I do know about him is that he has not been well for a while. Mostly though, I know him for his beautiful artwork, and he deserves a paragraph of his own here. I know his variant covers and have seen some of his great work that he did for Top Cow and his own publishing company, Aspen MLT. I signed a card dedicated to him and picked up his sketchbooks from the NYC Comic Con. Marc Silvestri gave a really nice remembrance of him at the beginning of the Top Cow futures session. Michael, you will be missed, but you will forever live on in your work.

I met lots of great artists while I was making my way around the alley, but I would like to highlight some who stood out here.

Greg Horn is an artist who does a lot of great, painted art. I have collected quite a few issues of books for which Greg has done the cover art (most notably She-Hulk and Ms. Marvel). He is also doing some great Skrull work around the Secret Invasion. I enjoyed talking with him at his booth and taking some pics for other fans. I picked up a print of an awesome Wolverine piece he did that he signed for me.

I met a couple who write and illustrate a book together called The Uniques. Comfort Love and Adam Withers are a husband/wife duo from Grand Rapids, MI who were sure to emphasize that the both do the work on their pages. I liked what I was seeing, so I picked up issue #1 of the series (signed at the booth by Comfort and Adam and completed with a "Certificate of Awesometicity") and really enjoyed it. I'm really looking forward to picking up the next couple of completed issues and exploring the 'extras' on their website.

I spent some time talking with artist Mark Sparacio. I enjoyed flipping through his portfolios and talking about his art. He's done some covers for some comics I have. He also does covers for the Comic Book Price Guides. I was very impressed that with the fact that Mark remembered my name when I returned to his booth later. At that time he showed me a commissioned piece he was working on at the show of the ladies from the show Charmed. It was absolutely incredible. In support of Mark's work, I picked up a Batgirl print of a pencil drawing.

I've been going for quite a while here, but a couple other artists I enjoyed meeting (in no particular order):

• Freddie Williams II - Artist of some issues of DC's Robin series that I own. He has been working on The Flash lately, and will be returning to Robin.
• Adi Granov - Artist whose interpretation of Iron Man was used for the movie
• Marat Mychaels - one of the first artists I spoke with during the day. I was still a bit shy about talking with the artists, so I didn't speak with Marat as much as I might have.
  
• C. B. Cebulski - one of the few writers with whom I spoke. He has done an assortment of titles I've read, and I picked up a couple issues of his Wonderlost books.

I had a great time at the show and enjoyed interacting with creators whose work I knew before the show and those I just met at the show. That is enough for now, though... time to call it a night.

Beginnings

Well, I'm going to finally try to break into the blogsphere. I actually don't have much time to write now, but I figure I need to start somewhere if I'm ever going to do this. With my first post, I will let you know what you can expect if you choose to read my blog (or at least what I intend to write about...). Here you will find my comments on books, music, runs, or just observations (and perhaps rants) of the world around me. Perhaps I'll even try to work some themes or puzzles into my titles or writings to see if anyone picks up on them.

Enjoy.

Ben