A Bi-Polar Week

I know it's been a while since my last post, celebrating the return of Broadway shows, but it has been quite a hectic week and a half or so. To start with, on Friday, November 30th, I did my daily check-in of playbill.com and saw a headline that the Urinetown dispute between the Broadway and Chicago producers that I mentioned in my very first posting, has been settled. I read the story, and for the most part was satisfied with the outcome, except the fact that the Chicago producers paid the Broadway producers extra money to settle the dispute. They absolutely should not have had to do that, that was extortion by the Broadway producing team. There was no proof of wrong-doing, and the show is set in a public urinal, there isn't a lot of potential to do the set differently, the Chicago team did the best they could with the material. However, I was glad that the Chicago team did get it on the record that the production contained their original material, and I think both sides are happy that the case didn't go to court. Neither side would have wanted to risk an adverse judgement. A judgement for the New York producers would have shut down regional theatre across the country out of fears of trigging a lawsuit every time they put on a show that originated on Broadway (and that's most shows), and a judgement for the Chicago team could have encouraged New York producers not to license new shows for regional productions, which would have cut down on the amount of shows available for regional theatres to produce. So, for the most part, I think it worked out well, although the Ohio suit is still pending. Stay tuned, this may not be over yet. . .

After reading this story, I engaged in my daily post-Thanksigiving ritual of visiting certain websites and pricing the new laptop computer I want to buy. Several years ago I bought a Gateway laptop, and it has been nothing but a Piece O' Crap. It is finally close to being paid off, and I have started looking at options for a new one. I want a Toshiba U305-S7477. It is small (13.3"), light (4.5 lbs), fast (2.0 GHz with an Intel processor, 2 GB L2 cache, upgradable memory to 4GB), has a large hard drive (200 GB, although the speed is only 4200, but since I don't game or use multiple applications at one time, I'm not too concerned), and has wireless N and bluetooth capabilities. It is the only machine that has everything I want. Every other laptop on the market, include other Toshiba models has some sort of trade-off. There are 4 computers currently in Toshiba's U305 line, and the S7477 is the top of the line, which means that most stores only make it available online, and some stores, such as CompUSA, Best Buy, and Staples do not carry it at all, they only carry lower models. I found several warehouses in New York that have it (BH Photo Video, where I bought my mp3 player and had a good experience, JR, and Data Vision), but even with my good BH experience, buying a computer is a little different. Tiger Direct also has it, but again, I'm a little wary buying a computer from a store that does not accept returns and instead instructs you to contact the manufacturer. Circuit City has it, but has always had the most expensive price, so I've been leaning towards JR, which has the lowest price out of the New York warehouses, so if it ends up tanking, I'm out the least amount of money. However, on Friday, November 30, Circuit City put the computer on sale for $200 off, making it the cheapest available. I jumped on it and ordered it and a carrying case (the case was for computers 15.4" and up, Circuit City didn't have much of a choice of bags for 13.3" units, but I didn't mind since it was nice and I was getting the computer for so cheap). As they processed the order, they said both items were avilable, however since the computer was only available online, I had to have it shipped, I couldn't do the order online and pick up in the store option. I selected the 3 day shipping so I could get it as quickly as possible and finished the order. I immediately got an email stating that both items were immediately available and would ship by Monday, December 3 (the day after my birthday, a very nice present). That night, I got an email stating that the bag had shipped, and on Monday, it arrived. However, Monday night came and went without any email stating the computer had shipped, and by Tuesday afternoon I was starting to get a bad feeling. Sure enough, at 9:20 pm Tuesday night, I got an email from Circuit City stating that after further review, the computer was no longer available and the order was cancelled. Furious, I called their 1-800 number to complain about being told that it was avilable when I bought it only to get a message 3 days later that it wasn't available, and to arrange to return the carrying case, which was now useless, and demand that they refund the shipping on it since it should have been obvious I was ordering it to go with the computer and even a brain-dead monkey should have known that if the computer wasn't available, they should have at least called me to ask before shipping the bag. Well, their call center does not sound like it is located anywhere on the American continent and I had the worst time getting anyone to understand me. I was transferred to numerous wrong people and eventually had to end the call and start over. This time, the woman kept me on the line to help me, but couldn't give me any more information other than the computer was no longer available (which didn't really satisfy my demand to know why it was no longer available), I could return the bag to any Circuit City store but the shipping was non-refundable, and I could expect a refund on the computer in 3-5 days. So, the next morning when I got to work I went to their site and sent them a vicious email, demanding the same things I asked for on the phone. As of today, I have not received even an acknowledgement that they got the email and are looking into the issues, much less an email resolving the issues. I then went to my credit card's website and logged in and saw that they had not yet issued a refund. I wanted to get the refund first before ordering the computer from JR so that if the JR order went bad, I wouldn't be fighting two bogus charges at the same time. After a couple hours, I whipped off another email (I had saved the text in a Word file for my records) and added a demand for an immediate refund. Still, as of today, no reply. Over the course of the day and all day Thursday, I periodically sent copies of the email, still with no reply as of today. So, on Friday, I wrote them a physical letter and mailed it to their corporate headquarters, and sent a letter to my credit card company disputing the charge for the computer and it's share of the shipping and tax. Also, for fun, I looked up the computer, and it was again listed as available for sale at $200 off, and I mentioned this in the letter. Tomorrow I will be taking the bag back to Circuit City and I'll let you know how I do getting a refund on the shipping from them. I'm expecting quite a fight. So, today, Monday morning, I logged into my credit card website and still no refund. So, I called their 1-800 number again, and again spoke to some guy obviously located on the Indian subcontinent, and when I gave him the order number, he first said "The item is in transit." I asked for a tracking number since it had not yet arrived and he put me on hold and then came back and stated "I'm sorry, the item has been cancelled." Obviously there is something wrong with their system and that's what I'm afraid of, that there's some glitch that caused their system to cancel the order but not to communicate it to their billing department and they're going to think that I got it and I'm going to have to keep fighting. He then asked when I cancelled the order, and I almost blew my lid. I remained calm as best I could and reminded him that they cancelled the order on Tuesday, I had nothing to do with it. He then said I should get a refund 3-5 days from the day the order was cancelled. I pointed out that today made 6 days since they cancelled it and he put me on hold again while he went to research it. He then came back and said something really fast that I couldn't understand, and then said it could take up to another 6 days to get the refund. I said something to the effect that he must be shitting me, and he backpeddled a bit, but only obviously to tell me what he thought I wanted to hear, and he said if I didn't see it posted back to my credit card tomorrow to call them back, wished me happy holidays, and hung up. So, I went to the Virgina (where their corporate headquarters are related) Department of Consumer Affairs' website and the Illinois Attorney General's website and downloaded complaint forms which I have filled out and made more copies of the order confirmation and order cancellation emails and attached. As soon as I get home, those will go into envelopes and get dropped in the mail as I walk to my office to meet with my private practice client tonight. I also went to the FTC's website and filled out their online complaint form but have not yet heard anything from them. We are going to nip this in the bud now, I'm not waiting until after the new year to get my fucking money back. However, the bit of good news out of all of this is that I went to JR's website today and saw that Toshiba is about to introduce an upgraded version of the U305, fixing even the minor quibbles I had, boosting it to 2.1 GHz, 3 MB L2 Cache, and a 250 GB hard drive with a speed of 5300, while only increasing the weight by about 2 ounces). So, I'm going to wait until that comes on the market and then go ahead and buy that. So, as long as I get my money back, this should all end well.

As I mentioned, Sunday was my birthday. I was going to celebrate by meeting my family in Oakbrook Saturday night to have dinner at Braxton's. Well, Friday night Tom Skilling came on TV and forecast a crippling ice storm for the entire weekend. About 15 minutes later my phone rang, and as I expected, it was my mom asking if we could do it the next weekend, which was my one completely unscheduled weekend between now and the end of January. Still, I didn't want to drive in an ice storm, still having PTSD flashbacks to the night before Thanksgiving in 2004, so I agreed, and I'm glad I did. It was a disgusting weekend, but it was nice to spend my birthday lounging in my pajamas watching episode after episode of Melrose Place Season 3.

Earlier in the week, on Thursday, my companion finally got serious about our travel plans to New York and booked our plane tickets. I hopped onto playbill.com to log into their discounts, and the lead story was "Off-Broadway's Frankenstein to close December 9." Boy did that kill my buzz like nothing else. The one show I wanted to see. I knew I should have hopped on a plane during the strike. So, we are going to see War & Peace at the Met on Friday December 28, Rock n Roll on Saturday December 9 at 2, Make Me A Song on the 9th at 9, and The Receptionist on Sunday at 2, and then head back to the airport (although there was more drama ordering the Receptionist tickets, but the City Center box office staff was really great helping me get it straightened out, so we're back on for it). However, pay attention Lance, Cheyenne, Max, Jonathon, Chad, and Curtis (that's Bass, Jackson, Crumm, Groff, Dourett, and Holbrook), the Crowne Plaza was booked, so I will be at the Midtown Holiday Inn on 57th between 8th and 9th (or Amsterdam and Columbus depending on if you're standing on the north or south side of 57th), so we should plan to meet at the 57th St. Starbucks Friday morning. I've got one urgent errand to run to BH Photo, which closes at 1 pm on Friday and remains closed on Saturday and Sunday (I want to get a computer case that doubles as an airplane carryon for my cruise and future trips to Europe, but I want to get a look at it first instead of just ordering it online and then hating it and having to deal with the hassle of sending it back). So, let's meet Friday morning and either have some quick fun or you can accompany me on my trip and we can have some quick fun at your place or head back to the Holiday Inn for some fun. It's all up to you, and if more than one of you shows up, you don't have to fight over me, I'm sure we can figure out something to do together :)

So, after being ecstatic, then disappointment, then happy again about New York, and ecstatic, then disappointed, and now furious about the computer situation, we got to Saturday night. There were rumblings from Mr. Skilling about another ice storm, but they held off and I met my family at Braxton's for a great dinner and belated birthday celebration. My parents gave me Philip Glass's Early Keyboard Music CD which I've been trying to track down, and Valery Gergiev's recording of War & Peace, which I'm listening too right now and loving, can't wait to see it, although we're in row Z, so I'm hoping that's in the middle of the auditorium with ZZ in the back and not the very last row with ZZ in the middle. Then on the way home, I stopped at the Oakbrook Borders to use a Birthday coupon they had sent me for 25% off, and picked up Lovemusik. I had done a search earlier in the day, and they were the only store in the Chicagoland area to have it in stock, so it was very fortunate that my parents wanted to meet there. I haven't listened to it yet b/c War & Peace has taken up my entire afternoon, and I'm not going to finish it in the next 10 minutes before I leave work, but I'll get to it tomorrow.

Lastly, speaking of cast recordings, tomorrow is X day! Ghostlight Records will be officially selling the Xanadu recording from their website and shipping it out in time for Christmas. It won't be in stores or on Amazon or other online retailers until January 8, but you know what site I'm heading to tomorrow. If Cheyenne's out of town while I'm on my trip (and the fear of Holiday Vacations is why I didn't go for Young Frankenstein this time, I don't want to risk Megan being gone since she's the biggest reason why I want to see it. My companion saw Dirty Rotten Scoundrels in mid-December and both Joanna and John were out, so I don't want to risk it), I'll still have his voice and hopefully some pictures (and hopefully he'll get better pictures than Max got in the Grease CD) to keep me warm.