eople have been telling me recently, ''Brian, you're hugely talented and better looking than your sketch. Do you have an extra ticket to the presidential debate?''
The unfortunate truth is, I don't. Actually, I don't even have one for myself, which gets me thinking that maybe I should. So I make some calls.
Call number one goes to University of Massachusetts President William Bulger, a longtime friend of the Boston Globe and a tireless champion of a free press. It has been way too long, I plan to tell him when he excitedly takes my call. Way too long.
Ends up, he has a busy day and doesn't have time to talk, though a spokesman does, and that spokesman reads a quote he says the president wants conveyed to me.
''The phones haven't stopped ringing, and that just shows that people continue to be interested in the political process,'' he says. ''I'm just hoping there will be a seat in the hall for me.''
OK, so my next call is directed toward City Hall, to Mayor Thomas Menino, who I recall being flush with Ryder Cup tickets last September. I assume he's in the same cozy position now.
''Are you crazy?'' he asks. ''I have no tickets. I don't have any tickets. Don't anyone call me. People are calling my house, calling my office. I have friends I haven't seen in 25 years.''
He pauses to compose himself, then adds, ''Don't you dare write that I have an allotment. I want to get through this alive. If I get a ticket, I'll go, but I'm telling you, it's awful. I have people calling me at 7 a.m. at home, saying, `Remember me?'''
Then I learn that the Globe is a sponsor, so I call Rick Gulla, my good friend and the paper's spokesman, not to mention an extraordinarily decent human being.
He sounds nervous as I bring the conversation around to the topic of the Globe's sponsorship, outright frightened as I ease into a discussion of tickets.
''I have no idea,'' he says when I ask him about availability. He hangs up before I can say good-bye.
I'm learning that even in a town accustomed to tough tickets this debate is in a entirely different league.
So I tell myself there's no real need to attend. It's uncomfortably cold inside the arena so that the candidates don't sweat under the bright lights, as Richard Nixon did in 1960. The spectators are so removed from the action that you end up missing snippets like George Bush looking at his watch, as he did in 1992.
But who am I kidding? A ticket is, quite simply, the biggest status symbol in a status-obsessed town, and what I wouldn't give to begin a written sentence with the words, ''Doris Kearns Goodwin was telling me inside the debate hall ...''
A little bit of gritty investigative reporting reaps only unfortunate news. First, I learn that the telephone grid around Greater Boston is at risk of exploding because of all the calls being made by prominent people seeking to validate their importance by attending.
I learn that the head of the state's Republican Party says the requests have taken the form of an avalanche since Friday. Adds Steve Grossman, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee: ''My guess is there are going to be a lot of very unhappy people.''
I learn that each campaign will be given one-third of the tickets for the Oct. 3 debate at the Clark Center at UMass-Boston, and those tickets will assuredly go to big contributors. The final third is up for grabs, likely to be distributed through the university to students, a few to the public, some to corporate sponsors such as the Globe, and the rest to so-called dignitaries, including state legislators.
The number of seats is still unknown, though guesses range from 300 to 800, depending on how the gym is configured.
No matter. I have to wash my hair that night, anyway. The debate? It's the furthest thing from my mind.
Brian McGrory's e-mail address
is mcgrory@globe.com.
