How I Accidentally Went to a Bon Jovi Concert

So last night, around 8:00pm, I was sitting in my jammies eating Cheerios out of the box and watching “Intervention” on A&E (drug addicts getting a second chance, yes!), and was basically prepared to spend the night eating Cheerios in my jammies until bedtime, when a friend called me.

“Hey. I can get you into the Bon Jovi concert at Madison Square Garden tonight if you can get down here in 20 minutes.”

I sat on my futon, Cheerios on my knees, hair tied into a messy bun, body exhausted from a typically exhausting Monday, and considered this offer. Am I a big Bon Jovi fan? Not really. But tickets for this thing were going for thousands of dollars, it’s Madison f*cking Square Garden, and breaking up my nightly pattern of Reality TV watching and cereal eating wouldn’t be such a bad idea. Plus, where else could I wear my acid-washed cutoff mom jeans? (Note: this last sentence is not true.)

After putting on my make-up as fast as I could (and hoping the lights would be in full “80’s glow mode” to keep the rest of my post-work face at bay), I slapped on some clothes and tried to tease my hair as high as it would go (Note: this may not be true). I then pushed past the milieu of yuppies on my block and jumped into a cab.

Once en-route, I chatted with the strangely friendly cabbie about where I was going, and he immediately offered $2,000 for my ticket. After telling him I did not indeed have the ticket on my person, he said he would “pull over at the Garden, park the cab, and get my ticket” with me, and then hand over the cash. I doubted he had $2,000 on him, and I can’t imagine how my friend would have reacted to have seen an old cabbie wearing a drug rug in my seat instead of me, so I politely thanked him, tipped him well, and ran inside.

This story could get mighty long if I continued to narrate the entire adventure, so let’s just list some of things I learned / saw once I was surrounded by Jovi mania:

1) Cutoff jeans are the official Bon Jovi fan summer accessory. Shirts with the arms ripped off are also fashion forward for a Jovi fan, as is platinum blond hair with crazy obvious roots.

2) Being a ticket-taker at the Garden during Jovi mania, and denying a few bedazzled teenagers access to the audience will get you a smackdown that sounds like this, “Whatever! We’ll just do whatever! You probably just want to have sex in your ticket booth or whatever! We’re gonna kick the window in! My dad is a lawyer and if he wasn’t vacationing at the Jersey Shore right now he’d kick your ass! F*ck you, you hate Bon Jovi!!“

3) If you stand in front of a woman with radical blonde highlights who is singing / screaming off-tune with John Bon throughout his entire set, your ears will sting real bad the next morning.

4) A guy who dances and moves his arms around exactly like Bon Jovi is weird, and will reveal his weirdness slowly throughout the night, staring at you with increasing intensity.

5) Jovi, as expected, will wear not only a black leather vest with no shirt underneath, but also a flowing red shirt unbuttoned halfway down his chest for his signature song “Bed of Roses” (a song which has the very earnest line, “With an ironclad fist I wake up and French kiss the morning“)

6) There will be people from all walks of life at this concert, but mostly, there will be people who somehow buried themselves in a time capsule dated “1986″ and left it for the sole purpose of seeing Jovi at Madison Square Garden

7) No matter how cool you think you are, it’s impossible not to throw your arms up and scream the chorus of “Living on a Prayer”