A Christmas Miracle

Z100 Jingle Ball, NYC, December 11th, 2015. I have every credit card that offers a presale, but that couldn't save me this time. The only way in was to win, and I had alarms set on my phone for when to put Z100 on. This Jingle Ball lineup was literally made for me, I mean come on...they had Joe AND Nick! It was weeks of anxiety for me and everyone around me having people call every two hours. A lot of pickups, but no tickets. I wasn't sure if I wanted to go to the Jingle Ball preshow to try and win tickets, until they announced DNCE would be playing and that they were raffling meet & greets for them.

You can bet I was on line well in advance. When we got into Hammerstein Ballroom, it was utter chaos and you didn't know what booth to go to first for what you wanted. Turns out, I could have gotten a DNCE meet & greet for being a Capital One cardholder, but by the time I found out they had no more passes. Not to fear, because I had a Jingle Ball preshow veteran with me who knew where the VIP exit door was. During DNCE's meet & greet, we went outside and waited for them. Things looked hopeful as there were just a few other people waiting, though most of them were waiting for Shawn Mendes. Sure, they say they're waiting for Shawn, but that doesn't stop them from taking a picture with DNCE when they come out. I was almost out of luck for respecting the rules and not hoping over the barricade, but as DNCE recognizes me at this point, they signaled me over and waited for me to walk around the barricade like the law abiding citizen that I am. A group of girls were heckling JinJoo to get her Harajuku on during my picture which forced Joe to crane his neck and be seen because he obv knows I really just want a picture with him (even though I of course love them all).

After our impromptu meet & greet, we went back into the preshow to try to win some tickets! Countless raffles and tweets and it was two hours till show time and nothing. I decided it was time to get dinner and play the StubHub game. But being that we were already in the city and without printing capabilities, we would eventually have to end up at the StubHub office. After nearly draining my phone battery on the StubHub app, we went to StubHub to find a group of other people trying to do the same thing. StubHub told us that because of the demand of the show, they were staying open late and allowing sellers to keep their listings up until an hour into the show. MSG is huge and I wanted to be able to see, and if we were going to pay all this money I wanted good seats.

A half hour before the show, a well dressed woman came into the office. She asked what we were all doing there, and I was the only one to answer saying, "Playing the StubHub game", to which she replied, "Well I don't have time for the StubHub game, does anyone want to buy this pair of tickets for $1,000?" I offered her $500 for the pair, but she was skeptical since $1,000 was face value. She said to give her a minute and see if StubHub would even let her take the listing down and give her her tickets back at this point. Sure enough, she emerged with her tickets and said to me, "$500, you got it. Let's go." Thankfully StubHub was under renovation and temporarily located in the Hilton Hotel so there was an ATM. My guardian angel walked with us to MSG because she was staying at a hotel across the street. She explained to us that she works for a marketing company for iHeartMedia and her company was given the tickets for selling a certain amount of advertising. She lives in Connecticut and got into the city much later than anticipated because of Friday rush hour traffic. Had she found us sooner, she would have even given us preshow meet & greet tickets (now that I would have given her $1,000 for). All of a sudden her phone rang and she disappeared, never to be seen again. I didn't even have time to get her information to do this again in the future. I was also skeptical about the tickets up until they successfully scanned because they had no value on them and they looked different than other people's tickets, but that's because they were sponsored.

I couldn't believe our seats. The first section next to the stage in the first level, just a few rows up from the floor. We were literally right next to a skybox where celebrity presenters came out. When performers came to our side's catwalk, they were definitely close enough to see us. This literally could not have worked out better, sometimes I can't believe my luck. There wasn't one bad act on the bill and it was definitely the concert of a lifetime. During Nick Jonas' set I tweeted, "I can't believe I just saw the ghost of dead gay Boone perform at Z100 Jingle Ball!!! #ScreamQueens @nickjonas @glenpowell @ScreamQueens" Glen Powell who plays Chad Radwell on Scream Queens instantly liked my tweet, I couldn't believe it! I'll always be grateful for the anonymous woman that showed up at StubHub, she was my Christmas wish come true!