The Last Play at Shea - Almost as good as the real thing, but not quite

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By the grace of God, I don't live with a lot of regrets, but last night I spent about 90 minutes regretting one day of practicality.

The story goes like this: I'm kind of a Billy Joel fan. I've written about that before, like here, where I told you why. Or here, where I boldly declared that he would not be getting my money in 2009.

But two posts from 2008 are replaying in my head, causing a little heartache this morning. This one was before, still hopeful, and then this one, where I allowed myself to wallow in youtube despair.

One of my best friends and I share a common Billy geekdom. We each have our favorite Billy experiences - hers is way cooler than mine - but over the last seven years or so, we have shared a few together.

Two years ago, when we heard about The Last Play at Shea, a Billy Joel mega-concert closing down Shea Stadium forever, we conspired for about 24 hours. We entered the game late - the concert was just a few days away - but we weren't daunted. We considered all kinds of options, including skipping the cost of a hotel and spending the night at JFK. There were tickets and flights available, but responsibility got the best of us. Did it really make sense for two young moms to drop everything, leave the kids and husband for the weekend and spend a small pile of money ... for a concert? Even if it would've been a ONCE IN A LIFETIME EXPERIENCE?

Turns out: yeah, for us, it would've.

Wednesday morning Billy sent me an email announcing a one-night only showing of the documentary he made about the show, because we're email buddies. Immediately I located the closest showing (Miami) and alerted my Billy soulmate. No question, we were going. The two of us, getting crazy, going to a movie theater in Miami on a Thursday night.

For a Billy fan, or maybe for a Mets fan, The Last Play at Shea is pretty close to perfection. Not a suitable replacement for actually being there - no, in that regard it was more like lemon juice on a paper cut. Each segment of concert footage stung a little more, wrapping up with Paul McCartney closing the show - a poetic ending to Shea's concert legacy which the Beatles began in 1964. (See, it was a documentary - I learned something!)

"We should've gone" turned into the theme for the night, along with a couple of declarations that never again would we be so practical. I wonder, if I'd been trying to "live a better story" back then - would I have hit "buy tickets"? Is that the kind of experience that would count? It would certainly give me a better story to tell about what I did on July 18, 2008.

Comments

cindy said…
I hope we learned our lesson! The next time Billy is doing some amazing concert...WE ARE GOING! After all Its Still Rock N Roll To Me!
October 30, 2010 at 12:53 PM
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