Free Information Line Takes a Heavy Toll on Callers to Arts Center

Seems like almost anything you can do for fun costs money.

Want to go to a movie? Six bucks, please. Care to take in a play? Fifteen bucks (at least), thank you. Curl up with the latest best-selling novel? $22.95 plus tax.

Heck, I wanted to pump up my bike tires and the gas station near my house wanted a quarter for the air machine.

The tidings aren’t all bad, though. There’s still some truth in the adage: “The best things in life are free (batteries not included).”

One intriguing, challenging way to while away the better part of an evening is just a toll-free phone call away. It’s the Orange County Performing Arts Center’s 24-hour recorded information line: (714) 556-2787 (556-ARTS, for those who like to play phone-and-spell with their push buttons).

When you dial the number, a pleasant-sounding female voice offers the first of what soon becomes an ever-expanding thicket of taped pathways through a labyrinthine telephonic forest.

“Thank you for calling the Orange County Performing Arts Center’s 24-hour information line. If you know the extension you wish to reach, you may enter it at any time. . . . If you wish to hear from more than one category, you can press 862 after each recording has completed.

“For information on how to purchase tickets, press 1. For program information, press 2. To release subscription tickets, press 3. For general information, including directions, parking and tour information, press 4. For program schedules this month at the Center, press 5. And for season subscriptions and subscription renewals, press 240.”

Got that?

OK. Let’s say you want to know what’s coming up at the Center. Here’s what you get when you press 2 for program information.

“Please have a paper and pencil handy to note the categories of interest to you. If you wish to hear program information on more than one category, press 812 after each recording has finished. For ballet information, press 1. For Broadway musicals, press 2. For symphony concerts, press 3. For opera, press 4. For big band and jazz concerts, press 6.”

Once you give up trying to figure out why there’s a 6 to press but no 5, you might as well start at the top by pressing 1 for the dance schedule.

“The Center is proud to renew the tradition of classic ballet with the 1988-89 Classic Ballet Series, including the return of the Joffrey Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, as well as the privileged first-time residence of the Moscow Classical Ballet. Currently there are no individual performances available. Single performances are expected to be available approximately one month prior to their opening.”

Whereupon, the voice tells you the dates of all those individual performances that tickets aren’t available for.

But, America being the freedom-of-choice capital of the world, there are always more opportunities-- although it was about here I started thinking about the cost of physical therapy for button-pusher’s tendinitis.

Want to know what hot-ticket symphonies are coming to town? First you have to press 862 (or was it 811?) to get back to the program information subdirectory. Then press 3--it was 3, no?--to get the recorded orchestra schedule.

“For information on Orange County Philharmonic Society concerts, press 1. For information on Irvine Symphony and Pacific Symphony concerts, press 2.”

Is all this really cheaper than having a real person answer the phone and politely ask, “What would you like to know?”

I pressed 1 for Philharmonic Society information.

“If you wish to receive a brochure on their upcoming season, please call the Philharmonic Society at (714) 642-8232. For further information on how to purchase tickets, press 811.”

Press 2 and you get phone numbers for the Pacific Symphony and the Irvine Symphony.

Terrific. You spend what seems like three days on the phone only to be told, in essence, that you got the wrong number.

Press 4 for opera and you get a real treat.

“Visiting the Center in January of 1989 is the famed New York City Opera company. If you wish to receive information on this, please press 0 for operator assistance. . . .”

That’s the great thing about living on a spheroid-like planet: Start traveling in any direction and as long as you keep moving, you’ll wind up in the exact same place where you started.

Going back to the master directory to get information on “program schedules this month at the Center,” I pressed 5.

“Extension 5 does not exist.”

Ahh--that must be the number where they list the rock concerts!

Let’s just say, for the sake of expediency--the universe is expanding, you know--that you eventually do find something you want to see. You still have to head back to the main directory and call up the recording for instructions on buying tickets.

“For information on how to purchase tickets by phone, press 1. For information on how to purchase tickets at the Center’s box office, press 2. For information on how to purchase tickets in person at other ticket outlets, press 3.”

That’s it? No button to push for information on how to buy tickets in absentia for orchestras that play neo-Romantic symphonies by refugee composers who fled Eastern European countries in the wake of pre-World War II pogroms?

Well, I realized that I’d better get off the phone or I would never have time to start a family. So I decided to scan just the general information options (“For directions and parking information, press 1; for information on the mailing list, press 2; for information on tours, press 3; for information on neighboring restaurants, press 4.”)

And I clicked my heels three times and closed my eyes while uttering “there’s no place like home; there’s no place like home.”

I also exchanged that long-cherished adage for the wise words of Barrett Strong:

The best things in life are free

But you can keep ‘em for the birds and bees.