Gimme Fuel, Gimme Fire, Gimme That Which I Desire!

So what's the craziest thing you've ever done? I got a call from my brother last Monday. He said he had won free passes to a Metallica concert in Park City, UT, and he wanted me to go with him. When? That Wednesday, less than 48 hours later. After some discussion that left me feeling amazingly like Cameron from Ferris Buehler's Day Off, I finally decided to go for it. Feh! Not all that crazy, you may say? Well I felt like it was pretty crazy for a 40-something corporate drone.

Now, I've seen Metallica concerts plenty of times. Why would I drop everything and book a $540 flight to Utah on 1 day's notice? This was to be a private concert in a small club with a meet-n-greet afterward as part of the premier of The Darwin Awards at the Sundance Film Festival, in which Metallica is featured. "Once in a lifetime", sez my brother.

The concert was very, very cool; a nice long set, playing all the old hits and almost none of the new stuff that I don't like so much. We were only a handful of feet from the stage, very intimate. The only issue was that the event was somewhat oversold by metclub.com, both literally and figuratively. First, they must have sent the same "you win!" message to nearly all of its members, judging by the crowd who were all "on the list" -- We actually heard there were some "winners" who didn't even get into the concert at all. Second, there was no meet-n-greet at all (at least not for us). Well, I did get into a private Sundance after-party for "free", and it was very fun. No regrets!

The final irony: I called in sick on Thursday, and Friday I came down with a nasty cold. Karma, baby!