“OH BOY THE GRAMMYS!” said no one, ever.

The disappointment of the Grammys brings to my mind the summer of 2017.

Now, WineWife LOVES Adele. Has all the albums; bought the CDs first day. I’m not a total idiot, so when they announce Adele is going to be performing at Wembley Stadium for four shows, wrapping up her world tour, I figured “what the hell?” and try to get some tickets. To avoid bots & such, they set up a site outside Ticketmaster that only they had the codes for, in order to manage sales better (& likely keep more of the fees). Tickets went on sale at 10:00 AM GMT on December 16, 2016 – which was 2:00AM Vancouver time. I had my personal computer, work laptop & iPad all keyed into the site, each one targeting a different day, and was hyped-up on Orange Pekoe waiting for the sales to go live.

The shows sold out in five minutes, but the strategy worked – I managed to get seats for the opening show on June 28 and the final show on July 2. I hid my victory for 8 days, and for Christmas gave her an envelope with two printouts, which were the ticket dates, and she got to choose one for her present. (My brother was going to take the other set.) She chose the final show, since it was the tour finale & good shit (usually) always happens at the final show of a tour. She told everyone she knew about this gift, and for about a month I was “Husband of the Year” to all her friends, and “You fucking prick” to all their men.

We flew over three days before the show. We planned on spending four days in the UK, and then joining my brother & his wife at the Tuscan villa they rented outside Cortona. His wife emailed from the first show, during and after, to thank us profusely for the tickets, and he even complimented the live experience. We were stoked. We landed in London on June 30th, spent the day lightly touristing, and went to bed that night looking forward to spending Canada’s 150th birthday in Trafalgar Square & the day after attending what sounded like a hell of a show.

We woke up Canada Day morning and turned on the Beeb:

Fuck the Grammys.

Tonight’s sports:

• NHL:
  • Maple Leafs at Rangers – 7:30PM | NBCSN / Sportsnet
• NBA:
  • Heat at Warriors – 8:30PM | TSN / NBATV
• NCAA:
  • Georgia Tech at Notre Dame – 6:00PM | ESPNU
  • Stanford at Oregon – 8:00PM | ESPN2

I’ve told versions of this story a couple of times before, but not with as much depth. We did manage to catch Green Day at the BST, listening to half their set from outside the grounds.

WISH I’D BEEN INSIDE!