Saturday night was one of the best nights EVER. I had a ticket for the Face 2 Face concert with Elton John and Billy Joel, and it was absolutely incredible.

Once it got started, that is. Before that, I was dealing with the drama of being sold not a seat, but a step!

You see, my seat didn't actually exist. It was a computer glitch, and the usher was completely cool about it. Seems that it has happened even for baseball games, and there were several other people experiencing the same trouble. So he sat us in the handicapped seating, which was 1) more comfortable, 2) closer to the stage, and 3) further around, giving a better view of the stage. In other words, SO MUCH BETTER!

I even got to see a bit of Elton John temper. His piano was broken at first--the sustain pedal, which holds notes out and doesn't stop them from ringing, got stuck open. If he had played like this, it would have sounded muddy and like complete crap. So he understandably refused to keep playing, but then continued to get angrier as it took longer and longer to fix, eventually stalking off the stage. So they wound up switching up the concert a bit. Normally, the show would go: duets, Elton's solo set, Billy's solo set, more duets. Instead, they did two duets together, Billy did his solo set, and then the piano was fixed, so Elton did his solo set, then they did all their duet pieces together. But when Elton came back on stage, he apologized to the audience, thanked us for our patience and the techs for their work, and got on with the show.

Billy is the better showman (he bantered with the audience, was much more animated with his playing, and allowed his piano to rotate), but Elton is the better player. Elton didn't move around much, and he didn't really interact with the audience much other than getting up and waving to everyone after each piece. But he played extended versions of songs, featuring just him and the piano, with the band jamming behind him. I think that he lost some people in the audience by doing this, but the longer he went, the more excited I got. I've always thought that he should do an album of just him singing and playing the piano, and he totally has the chops to back it up.

All in all, the concert went for 3 1/2 hours, with no stops other than about 10 minutes to try to fix the piano. And still, because their library of hits is so huge, you walked out thinking, "But they didn't do this or that!" I would have been happy for it to have gone on all night, and so would the rest of the crowd. Alas, that wasn't possible. But the final song was "Piano Man," done with just Billy and Elton on pianos, the bands having left the stage already--complete with a chorus sung entirely by the crowd, without piano or even their vocals backing us up. So much fun!

Go here for photographic evidence, including photos of my ticket and step!

Has any judicial nominee been tempted to, when confronted with a statement that judges should only apply the law, not make the law, simply stand up and scream at the top of their lungs, "Bulls--t!"?

Followed by a list of cases when courts were responsible for interpreting completely unclear statutes because Congress couldn't get its act together to create a law without gaping holes and ambiguities.