Joe McCaffery’s Blog

Jayden, Keegan and I spent Sunday evening rockin’ out to the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus. We didn’t have the greatest of seats, but it was a fun time nonetheless.

Jayden has really been getting into music recently and has been a fan of the Hanna Montana show on the Disney Channel for some time. In fact Jayden figured out how to set up a season pass on our Tivo specifically so she could record Hanna Montana (gotta love technology). So when I heard she was going to be coming to town thought it would be really neat if she could go.

The problem was that I heard about concert by reading an article in the WSJ about how fast tickets were being bought up on-line and then put for sale on eBay and Stub Hub for two and three times the face value of the tickets. That’s great for me as an eBay shareholder, but not so great for me as dad hoping to score some tickets at face value.

Jayden had some classmates that were going to the show in Oakland and a few weeks ago she asked if we’d be able to go. I told her I was sorry and I explained that we probably wouldn’t be able to go because the tickets had all been sold. She took the news like a champ and understood we couldn’t afford to pay hundreds of dollars per ticket to go to the concert.

Then last week I got an email from the HP Pavilion in San Jose. I purchased tickets for events there in the past so I’m on there email list. I usually delete them, but this time I read it for some reason and it’s a good thing I did because I noticed Hanna Montana listed as one of the upcoming events. I wondered why they would include this in their email since the concert was sold out…or was it?

I quickly clicked on the link and much to my surprise they had opened up a couple of extra sections of seats. These seats weren’t the most ideal seats as they were upper deck and directly next to the stage, but I could buy three or four of them for the price of one of the tickets I was seeing on StubHub or eBay.

I got a hold of Toni on Skype and asked, if I could get three tickets would she be able to take the kids to concert. That would have been sweet because I could stay home, hang out with Nolan and watch the Pats-Colts game…it was a long shot, but one could hope, right? Wrong. Toni was scheduled to work during the concert so that meant I was on concert duty and Grandma Marji was on Nolan duty. 

Once I knew how many tickets to buy I went back to the site and bought the three tickets. It’s a good thing I bought them when I did too because (based on where we ended up) our tickets were literally some of the last available. I was still excited though because I knew how much Jayden wanted to be able to go.

When I got  home that night Toni and I called the Jayden and Keegan over to the table and told them we had to tell them something very important…Jayden was convinced we were going to tell her we were having another baby and she really got suspicious when Toni pulled out the video camera. Then we told them and they were really excited. Jayden was shocked and sat there. Keegan jumped around and acted really silly (well sillier that usual).

Sunday finally arrived. I did my best to convince Keegan that day-light savings time was not something I invented to make him have to wait an extra hour for the concert, but I’m not sure believed me. I didn’t realize it at the time, but he really likes the Jonas Brothers and he wanted to make sure he didn’t miss them after I explained that they would play first before Hanna Montana / Miley Cyrus performed.

The concert was scheduled to start at 4:00pm and we left the house around 2:00pm. Plenty of time to get cash, buy earplugs, and drive to the show. On the way down I did my best to explain that our seats weren’t going to be right next to the stage so they wouldn’t be disappointed when we finally got to our seats. To my surprise, even  though they we were in the second to last row from the top of the arena, they really weren’t that bad. Plus being on the side we could see all of the stuff going on backstage.

All in all it was a pretty enjoyable experience. Jayden stood, clapping and dancing for most of the concert. Keegan did too for a while, but mostly when the Jonas brothers were performing. As for me, I left the clapping and dancing to everyone else and enjoyed seeing Jayden enjoy the show. About half way through the show, without missing a beat, she leaned over gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. It was very sweet and it turned out to be my favorite part of the concert.

When it was all said and done we made our way back to my truck, wove through traffic and drove home. We stopped at Starbucks on the way home to tell Toni all about the concert. As I listened to them tell their stories it sounded like they really had a good time. I hope it’s something they remember. I know I will. Especially that kiss on the cheek.