Craigslist Follies! Or, How I Sold Some Papal Tickets

The Phillies gave this card out to
fans one night recently.

(If you're offended by foul language, you should be warned that towards the end of this post, there are a few nasty words.)

In case you haven't heard, perhaps because you've been visiting relatives on the moon, Pope Francis is coming to Philadelphia this weekend for the World Meeting of Families. It's an event I have no interest in. It's been extremely overhyped, whether because of security plans or just because of things like the item you see on the left. And most of the news coverage is either fluff (mostly ignoring the Philadelphia archbishop's extremist anti-gay bigotry or support for child-molesting priests over their victims) or downright useless. There are three public events at which Francis is appearing: a speech on Independence Mall, a Mass on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway and the "Festival of Families," featuring host Mark Walhberg and performances by Aretha Franklin, among others. After some confusion, it was announced that certain areas closest to the front would require tickets for admission. The tickets would be free, but they would be distributed online.

Although the demand for SEPTA's special weekend passes turned out to be nonexistent, the event tickets were snapped up in minutes. But with lots of clicking on the "refresh" button on my browser window I somehow managed to get four tickets each to the Papal Mass and the Festival of Families.

Having no real desire to be in the crowd for either event or go through security checkpoints, I decided to sell the tickets on Craigslist and see what I could get. Unlike most of the ads, I didn't request a specific price. I just said that people could make an offer and if I accepted, I'd send them my email address for PayPal and email the PDF documents when I received the payment. The first couple of days I got a couple of nibbles but no one followed through. I also had the post flagged for removal a few times by people who either took offense or just wanted to eliminate competition for their own tickets. Naturally, I just re-posted the ad each time.

Today, whoever was flagging them got more intense. At least three times my ad was deleted between overnight and mid-afternoon today. Then one of the people doing the flagging emailed a reply, perhaps by accident, because it seemed to be written to someone else.  He wrote: "Another scam. Will try to shut it down." I decided to reply, and I kind of didn't hold back: "NOT A SCAM, YOU FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT! WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?"

He replied with: "i can flag or we can meet to buy the tickets and then i can show you my badge and take it downtown. what will it be?" Yeah. Like he's a real cop or something. I wrote back: "Right. Who's scamming now?" (Interestingly, while in the middle of this my ad was still active and I was making a sale!)

He wrote again: "Stealing from religious pilgrims. Ask yourself if its worth it." I replied: "Not stealing at all. No one's forcing anyone to pay for them, you sanctimonious prick." He wrote back one more time, saying "You took those ticks from others for your own greed. You can't justify your actions." Instead of going back and forth, I flagged him. Each mail sent through Craigslist's relay system includes a link to "Please flag unwanted messages (spam, scam, other)" -- including mail that is "annoying/inappropriate/abusive." Boom.

First, ticks? Ewwwww. Second, there's no law against selling something you legitimately own. I didn't steal the tickets. I followed the process to get them. It's not my fault I was lucky for two out of three events. Third, as I said, I didn't demand a particular price. One woman said she was willing to pay $100 for two tickets ($50.00 each) to the Mass. I accepted (once she used the right email address in PayPal). The other buyer (the one going on during the email exchange) offered $100 for two Mass tickets and two Festival tickets (or $25.00 each) and I accepted his offer as well. And I'm not a bit sorry. I'm far from being in great financial shape, even before the medical bills from the last three months started rolling in, and even the fact that I go back to work for LIHEAP on Tuesday won't dramatically change that.

Hey, even though I'm not placing any more ads on Craigslist -- well, except one more, see below --there's still time to snap up the last two Festival tickets for Saturday night. :)

Quick Reviews: Four Most Recent

Yeah, I keep procrastinating instead of writing about a movie right after I've seen it. It's a good thing I don't get paid for this. Of course, if someone would like to pay me, I'd be sure to stick to deadline. Anyway, I'll be pretty brief with these. Mostly not bad, but not really worth a ton of analysis.

The real selling point of 2 Guns is the Denzel Washington-Mark Wahlberg pairing, as law enforcement officials (undercover, but each thinks the other is an actual criminal) trying to bring down a drug lord. It gets much more complicated, with double-crosses galore. I just let go of trying to keep up and rode the wave of the two stars' having fun. My grade: B.

Speaking of drug lords, there's one in We're the Millers, and he forces a low-level drug dealer (Jason Sudeikis) to make a pickup of pot in Mexico. To do this successfully, he decides to take family with him in order to avoid suspicion at the border. As he has no family, he recruits a stripper (Jennifer Aniston) and a couple of teenagers, one a latchkey kid and one a runaway, to act as his family. At times raunchy but generally pretty funny. I can't entirely buy Aniston as a stripper, though. She's just too...nice. My grade: B-plus.

Elysium is a sci-fi film and a lesson. In 2154 the world is a real mess, and the wealthiest people have gone to Elysium, a space station/satellite/mini-world where life is perfect and disease is cured instantly with a short lie-down in a machine that looks like a tanning booth. Elysium is visible in the Earth's sky, like the moon, taunting those left behind with no hope of getting up there. So this is all a commentary on current events and the need for universal health care. Poisoned by an industrial accident and with five days to live, Max (Matt Damon) hooks up with a group who smuggles people onto Elysium to get their own diseases cured. Damon's fine, but Jodie Foster as a government official defending Elysium from the illegal immigrants is kind of a misfire. Still, it's watchable and food for thought, although the Tea Party nutjobs might disagree. My grade: B-plus.

And then there's Paranoia, which is pretty much a mess. It's about a guy (Liam Hemsworth, pretty but vapid; I think he has a total of one facial expression) who gets himself entangled in corporate espionage between two tech companies, run by a pair of former friends (Harrison Ford, with head shaved(!) and Gary Oldman). Ridiculous script and plot, and not particularly well-acted. What really got me was how some of it was filmed in Philadelphia but it's set in New York. But there are times when it's so obvious it's Philadelphia. Street signs, local establishments, the concourse under Broad Street that obviously isn't a New York City subway concourse -- and not only did they film inside the Comcast Center, but at one point you actually see the building's name. Really sloppy work. Fortunately, not many people will see it. When I saw it on Friday, it's first day of release, only one other person was in the theater with me. My grade: D-plus.

Quick Reviews: Seeking, Ted, Abe

I managed to see three movies in four days, and none of them was "Magic Mike." How is this possible? Someone needs to remind me that I'm gay.

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World: All attempts to stop an asteroid from crashing into Earth have failed, says the radio at the start of the movie. The world will end in three weeks. We then get Steve Carell in his typical role as lovelorn shlub. We know this immediately because as soon as the radio DJ finishes the news update and resumes playing music, his wife jumps out of their car and runs away, never to be seen again. While some people start partying and having random sex without concern for pregnancy or disease, Carell's character, Dodge, tries going to work as usual, selling insurance. Then he meets Penny (Keira Knightly), and they end up trying to track down his high school sweetheart, the one true love of his life. Since the focus is on their trip and its impact on them, there isn't much focus on the whole world-ending thing. "The Day After Tomorrow" this ain't. So when they're nearly caught up in riots, it comes off as more of a plot device. And the way it ended didn't seem quite right to me. But some stretches of it were quite affecting. My grade: B-minus.

Ted: From the mind of Seth MacFarlane comes the story of a boy who wishes for his teddy bear to come to life, has his wish magically granted, and still lives with the bear 25 years later, both wasting their lives away drinking, getting high, etc. Basically a mediocre episode of "Family Guy" but with more explicit raunch and language, and

Quick Review: The Fighter

It seems sometimes that when you've seen one boxing movie, you've seen them all. The main character has to overcome stuff and then get a shot at redemption in some way. "The Fighter," starring Mark Wahlberg as a real-life fighter, "Irish" Micky Ward, is no different. Ward has to overcome his family. There's his brother Dicky Ecklund (Christian Bale), a former boxer who is now his trainer, but is also a drug addict, and his mother (Melissa Leo), who serves as his manager. Not to mention his seven loud, obnoxious sisters, who apparently travel everywhere in a pack. They're sending his career down the toilet until he stands up for himself with the help of his new girlfriend (Amy Adams). It is well-acted, and I particularly enjoyed Adams' performance. There's some Oscar hype for this movie, but it's not quite at that level. And I hate when a biopic takes liberties with the real story and "The Fighter," according to this article, took quite a few. My grade: B.

Quick Review: The Other Guys

In "The Other Guys," Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg are NYPD detectives Allen Gamble and Terry Hoitz, who don't get to do anything exciting, while other cops (Dwayne Johnson and Samuel L. Jackson) are in wild car chases and shootouts, and get all the hero worship and media fawning over them. Allen doesn't care, but Terry wants the action. (His career derailed after an unfortunate -- at least if you're a Yankees fan -- incident involving Derek Jeter.) Allen and Terry stumble upon a huge financial fraud scheme in progress, and try to prevent the crime before it takes place. Basically, "The Other Guys" is a somewhat smarter version of "Cop Out." It falls into the action-comedy-mismatched partners genre but plays around with the formula a little. It also has Michael Keaton as the precinct captain, whose name is...Gene Mauch (baseball fans will get it); and Eva Mendes as Allen's wife, and a running joke about how she's incredibly hot while he insists she's not. Will Ferrell can be annoying when he goes really gonzo, but he was a good fit here. I'm not quite yet sold on Mark Wahlberg as a comic actor, particularly compared to his small role in "Date Night," but perhaps he'll develop  more comedy chops. My grade: B.

Quick Review: Date Night

Steve Carell and Tina Fey are anchors of NBC's Thursday night lineup...let's rephrase that. After all, when it comes to NBC, anchors are what their lousy ratings must be attached to. So let's just say they're key components of NBC's lineup, and they star in "Date Night" as Phil and Claire Foster, a married couple from New Jersey with two kids and a pretty dull life. After they find out that their friends, a similarly bored couple, plan to divorce, Phil and Claire decide to put some excitement back into their relationship. Instead of the local run-of-the-mill place they normally eat at on their nights out, they head for Manhattan and a hot new seafood restaurant. Without reservations and having no hope of getting seated, Phil claims the reservation of a couple who didn't show up, the Tripplehorns. They get more than they bargained for when a pair of hoods shows up looking for the Tripplehorns. The ensuing action is mostly fast-paced and the comedy flows throughout, including a fun turn by Mark Wahlberg as an acquaintance of Claire's who provides some help to the couple while remaining shirtless throughout. Carell and Fey are excellent together. "Date Night" is a great date movie, and is still great even if you don't have a date and have to go to a morning show for the matinee ticket price to save money...not that I ever have to do that...why are you looking at me with that quizzical look? My grade: A-minus.