Hope, Prayers, Miracles and Hamilton

Hamilton
Orpheum Theatre

There really is a God.

I know this for a fact because she’s answered my prayers. Or at least two so far.

1.) She gave me boobies back when I was thirteen and prayed every night for them. I prayed and prayed like a nun in a whore house—so how could she say no.

2.) I got Hamilton tickets. Two of them. For $89 bucks each.

Now, this may feel like a waste of a prayer to those of you who live on planet Earth where shitty stuff happens. But believe me, I pray for world peace, I have since I was little and I’m still waiting to see an improvement.

I pray for children to go to sleep at night with bellies as full as my dog’s, cancer to be eradicated, aging to be reversed and a cure for shortness. I’ve done the legwork and I haven’t seen great results so I don’t feel like a jackass throwing in the nightly ask for a lottery win aka Hamilton tickets.

Now, I know my limits. I’m not gutsy enough to pray for Hamilton tickets on BROADWAY. I have it on good authority that Jesus Christ himself walked on water all the way to NY and even HE couldn’t get tickets when Lin-Manuel Miranda was the star so…I waited until I heard the touring company was going to be in LA before I ramped up the BIG ASK. Every night before I went to sleep I’d just say in very conversational tone so as not to seem too desperate, “Gee, (Gee is a great prayer opener. It makes it seem like it’s God’s idea. She likes that) Gee, wouldn’t it be great if I got some Hamilton tickets?”

See how open-ended that prayer is? It allows God to come up with a myriad of ways to make that happen.
I wasn’t specific about how many, when or the price.

The price. Good Lord, the price. I say, good Lord because he had nothing whatsoever to do with keeping the prices of tickets down where someone without a trust fund or a hedge fund or any other type of fund had a rat’s ass of a chance.

I saw tickets on certain third-party sites going for as much as $12,000 a seat!

Listen, I love Musical Theatre as much as well, more than the next guy (unless the next guy is Nathan Lane) but I like to eat too. And have a roof over my head. So as much as I wanted tickets my fiscal sobriety kept me from overpaying.

Last Thursday my sister Sue and I walked up to the theater box office with great confidence and fanfare. Not really, we were sufficiently terrified. We’d heard an Urban Myth that claimed that tickets for Hamilton could be purchased—at the box office—for (wait for it) FACE VALUE! In other words, a mere $175!

Hazah!

The dude at the window was a millennial hipster. One with a particularly epic eye-roll. I know this because he rolled it in our direction several dozen times.

“We’re here for Hamilton tickets!” I announced.
He rolled his eyes pushing the seating chart toward us.

“We have these,” he said pointing to the middle Orchestra section, “For $650 a seat.”

My sister and I looked at each other and gulped. That’s a lot of Botox, we, I thought.

This time he looked bored while he rolled his eyes.

“You got anything up your sleeve?” my sister asked good-naturedly. He twisted his face like a baby tasting a lemon for the first time or a guy with a wooden arm at a poker game.

“Ha, ha, ha, ha,” I laughed my big, fake snort-laugh. “Like nobody ever asks you that!” I think I slapped Sue’s back.

Yuk, yuk, yuk. We waited. There it was. The eye roll of all eye rolls. I’m surprised the momentum didn’t flip him over.

Remember trying to get into those exclusive clubs and restaurants back in the day when you cared about stuff like that and you had to work the guy at the door? Yeah, me neither, I used to just flash my boobs (thanks again, God). But anyway it felt like that seemed.

We had devolved into a female version of Bevis and Butthead and I’m pretty sure he took pity on us. Or it was getting close to break-time. Nevertheless, he pushed the seating chart forward again.
“We have these over here” he was pointing to a little section of about six seats on the side. “This is usually for wheelchairs but we’re putting folding chairs there…”

“How much?! I interrupted.

“Eighty-nine dollars a seat.”

“Can you see the stage? Is there a pillar in the way? Is the sound obstructed? Is that the night all the understudies go on? Is there an orchestra? Is it sock puppet show? What the fuck is wrong with these tickets?!!!” I was getting slightly hysterical at the prospect of actually seeing the show.

It was not how I expected this to go.

“Nope.” he said with a minimum eye roll, “Just folding chairs.”

My sister looked at me gobsmacked “Those are actually decent seats.”
“I love a good folding chair,” was my reply.

“We’ll take three!” we sang out in unison.

And the heavens opened and the choir of angels sang (Something from the soundtrack) and we walked away with cheap-ass folding chair seats to Hamilton.

So, clearly you guys, there is a God.

The End. And Carry on,
xox