April 06, 2008
Charlton Heston was 83 years old. He was great as Moses, but when I was a young boy, that chariot race in Ben Hur was one of the most exciting things I had ever seen.
Still, my favorite Heston movie remains Planet of the Apes.
Maybe because I also read the book by Pierre Boulle, which I remember as being quite wonderful, or perhaps because I was in high school in Wisconsin when this appeared on Lake Mendota in Madison:
UPDATE: I didn't realize that Rod Serling co-wrote the screenplay for Planet of the Apes. Have you seen the movie as a Twilight Zone episode?
April 05, 2008
What's your favorite Hannah Montana song?
Two days ago, I couldn't have told you the name of anything Hannah Montana (Miley Cyrus) sang. But I walked around with a hot-pink wristband for three days this week to get tickets for her July 4th concert in Provo at the Stadium of Fire.
Last summer, we arrived in Utah just before the Stadium of Fire and watched the fireworks from a distant hillside. We decided that this year we would try to attend. We had no idea Hannah Montana would be the featured act, nor would we have cared. Hannah Montana? Seriously, we were more interested in the fireworks than the entertainment.
Then last week, as I was walking to work, my wife called me on my mobile phone. She suggested that I stop by the BYU Ticket Office and get myself a wristband. Hannah Montana was coming to Provo and the wristbands wouldn't last long. She was right.
As it turned out, the wristband didn't guarantee me tickets, and I didn't win the ticket lottery. But my wife did. When they finally got around to selling the tickets, the stadium was sold out in record time. (The online tickets sold out in 10 minutes.) This was the scene outside the BYU ticket office (that fellow with his arms up is telling people that they aren't going to get tickets) ...
A vibrant market has already developed on eBay. The last time Hannah Montana appeared in concert, people were buying tickets for as much as $1,000 apiece, prompting legislators in Minnesota and Tennessee to propose anti-scalping legislation. With yesterday's events, that debate has now hit Utah.
As for those songs ... today one of my 12-year-old sons told me that he had heard of two of her songs. One was called "Best of Both Worlds." Here ...
What do you say? Worth $1,000?
January 18, 2008
Bobby Fischer is dead. Fischer-Spassky was a phenomenon, but Fischer was a sick man. Sad story.
January 14, 2008
Many thanks to Gordon and his colleagues for inviting me to guest blog at Conglomerate. I teach Business Associations, Nonprofit Organizations, and a leadership development course (“Lawyers as Leaders”) at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. So I expect my blog posts will certainly cover a range of issues associated with those subjects over the next few weeks. Today, however, I want to talk about what’s been on my mind lately: the Hollywood Writers Strike.
As my family, friends, and students already know I watch an exorbitant amount of television, especially for a law professor. So this is a difficult time for me. While certainly those in the television/film industry (and those making a living supporting the industry) have been feeling the strike’s effects for months, it seems that regular viewers (like me) are just starting to actually feel the impact.... And, it’s not good. Many of my favorite shows are already out of new episodes, essentially on permanent strike hiatus, and last night’s Golden Globe Awards (hooray for big television drama winner “Mad Men”)--usually the kickoff of what has been dubbed “Awards Season”--was a golden bust (that press conference format was a real snooze) and the first high profile victim of the strike.
I’m hardly an expert in labor relations or labor negotiations, but I find it fascinating that the Writers Guild of America (WGA) has started granting select waivers to certain independent production companies (i.e., David Letterman’s Worldwide Pants, Tom Cruise’s United Artists Entertainment, and the Weinstein Company) with similar deals expected (at least according to the WGA president). I wonder if these waivers will drive the major studios (GE, Disney, Viacom, News Corp. and Time Warner control approximately 75% of television and movie viewing) back to bargaining table. So, here’s my serious business question: does this kind of divide and conquer strategy actually work? The waivers certainly give the "David Letterman Show" and Harvey & Bob Weinstein an advantage over their respective competitors. It seems that this leg up can’t please T.V. executives at NBC (home of the "Tonight Show with Jay Leno") or the major studios which seem to aggressively compete with the Weinstein brothers for the best scripts, movies, and awards. Are these players too small for the rest of the industry to care? Will there be a tipping point with enough independent companies succumbing to the WGA demands and going back into production because of the waivers that the powerful Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) will go back to the table?
Of course, I hope the strike gets resolved soon (especially for all those industry support people out of work), but as I see commercials for the slew of bad reality programming that the networks are sending our way, I REALLY hope the strike ends soon for my sanity! I need my “Mad Men” (if you haven’t seen it, season one encores begin on Mon., Jan. 21 @ 12am/11pm central (Sun.) on AMC), “Friday Night Lights,” and “How I Met Your Mother” fixes. I guess that I can look on the bright side and think that because the writers have put their “pencils down” that I’ll have more time to tackle my ever-growing “To Do” list. Okay, who am I kidding? In the meantime, there’s always my Netflix queue.
December 19, 2007
Today's WaPo has an article about the dilapidated state of the ashram in northern India where the Beatles studied with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and wrote a slew of songs, including "Dear Prudence," which you can hear and see on this very clever flash site. According to the story, "Maggie O'Hara, a former Hollywood actress who has lived in India running schools for the poor for the past 30 years, has submitted a plan to the government to turn the ashram into a home and school for 2,500 street children from New Delhi, about 115 miles away."
Of course, this wouldn't be on the front page of WaPo's website without the Maharishi connection. And that reminded me of my 9th-grade Biology class, in which our teacher ("Mr. Smith" ... no relation) taught the entire class Transcendental Meditation. Each of us had a mantra, which we were supposed to repeat in our heads for an entire class period. This was biology class!
Mr. Smith was one of the cool teachers -- we both liked "Hotel California," which had been released earlier in the year -- but the TM episode was a bit much. A few years later, Mr. Smith was fired for using the coach's office in the girl's locker room during shower time. Which provides some symmetry to this post, at least if you believe the disputed story that the Beatles became disillusioned with the Maharishi after he propositioned a young woman who was part of the Beatles' entourage.
December 07, 2007
Because I see a zillion movies in the theater, and because I assure you that my standards are not high, I'm enjoying reading about the blogosphere's nominees for the worst movies they have seen. Christine nominates a movie from TV, and Matt Bodie, who tagged us both, identifies some jaw-droppingly awful sequels. None of this makes me optimistic for the much delayed second X Files movie.
The only movie I've ever walked out of was the totally disgusting and peversely pleased with itself Doom Generation. It's by a director that people like - Greg Araki. He's like an 8 year old in that he likes gross things and also like a 13 year old in that he's really, really angry, and he has somewhere between an 8 and 13 year old's ability to write plot and dialogue. As a cinematographer, he's all adult, though.
Anyway, the movie features our heroes slaughtering random people and I walked out during the Neo-Nazi gang rape scene on the American flag. I was like: Greg, dude, I'm on a date here! Which I was. I'm happy - but also sorta surprised - to report that it wasn't my last date with the datee in question.
Just to keep things corporate, I'll note that I was no fan of the Enron movie, The Smartest Guys in the Room, made by a bunch of people who had no idea what Enron did wrong, but did know that they were really, really mad about it. It has an inexplicable 97% on the Rotten Tomatometer, which shows you that that usually trustworthy guide doesn't work perfectly well for documentaries. Or that the movie wasn't as bad as I thought.
I tag Scotusblog. Kidding! But perhaps the non-Solove/Desaian Con-Op people would like to take a crack?
November 02, 2007
Having followed the company's goings-on over the past few months (here and here), I finally got a pair of Crocs a few weeks ago. I guess my little vote of confidence didn't do much good. Last Wednesday, Crocs stock lost 36% of its value, slicing about $2.2 BB off its market cap. Ouch! (again). Crocs had reported that
its inventories had quadrupled from a year ago, and it failed to increase its quarterly earnings forecast as it had consistently done in the past. Traders apparently read this as a sign of slowing growth. Sales have grown from $24,000 in 2002 to an expected $820-$830 MM this year. Before Wednesday's bath, Crocs stock had soared to six times its initial offer price from February 2006. Wednesday night, Crocs' board approved a program to buy back as many as a million shares of its common stock (out of 82 million outstanding).
Careful. Crocs bite.
[Clip art licensed from the Clip Art Gallery on DiscoverySchool.com.]
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Every day, thousands of us bloggers give away free stuff over the internet--our "content." Scott Adams of
Dilbert fame had an interesting musing on blogging giveaways in yesterday's WSJ.
He blogs about a third of every work day, and his blog draws what he calls "an army of volunteer editors, and they never sleep." Instead, "the masses told me what they thought of the day's offering without holding anything
back."
After a time, Scott decided that he and his blog minions were in fact writing a book, so he compiled the funniest posts and pitched the idea to a publisher. He got a six-figure advance. The publisher asked him to delete the parts of his blog archive that were to appear in the book. No big deal, right? Traffic there was sparse.
Wrong! Fans were outraged. They were personally offended that he would remove free stuff from the internet so he could sell it in book form. "It was as if I had broken into their homes and ripped the books off their shelves. They felt violated. And boy, I heard about it." The hostile sentiment found its way to Amazon.com, where the book got negative reviews, not for its substance, but for the fact of its once-free content.
Scott recounts another experiment, where he posted an entire book of his--God's Debris--on the web for free, hoping it would spur sales of the already-published but slow selling sequel--The Religion War. Fans loved the first book so much,they couldn't wait to get the sequel--for free, on the internet. By giving away the first book, Scott had "inadvertently set the market value of [the sequel] at zero." Oops again.
Free is complicated.
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September 18, 2007
Before, I said Crocs rock. Now, it turns out, Crocs bite. Looks like kids, Crocs, and escalators don't mix. It's gotten to the point, CNN notes, that:
One of the nation's largest subway systems -- the Washington Metro -- has even posted ads warning riders about wearing such shoes on its moving stairways. The ads feature a photo of a crocodile, though they don't mention Crocs by name.
Ouch!
Crocs says it's working with the Elevator Escalator Safety Foundation on public education initiatives, but that's apparently news to the foundation.
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August 24, 2007
Since Daniel Drezner is Rihanna-blogging, I think it’s worth noting that “Shut Up And Drive” is both my kind of poetry and a somewhat surprising hip hop homage to New Order. The poetry front: metaphors can be confusing. But not Rihanna’s. I think I understood that when she opined about umbrellas, she was talking about a protective form of togetherness. But consider this:
“I'm a fine-tuned supersonic speed machine/With a sunroof top and a gangster lean”
Or this:
“Got all the drive but a whole lot of boom in the back/You look like you can handle what’s under my hood”
I’m pretty sure that in “Shut Up and Drive,” Rihanna is comparing herself to a car, and the rest of the lyrics, I think, vindicate my claim. It has a nice consistency and I rather prefer the directness to sorting through, say, an Ode to a Nightingale:
“I cannot see what flowers are at my feet/Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,/But, in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet/Wherewith the seasonable month endows”
Give it a read, and you tell me what Keats is alluding to. I think he’s sad. But that’s me - “the dull brain perplexes and retards,” as even Keats will tell you.
I’m actually not a big Rihanna fan – first time I heard her
was on a JetBlue flight from San Francisco (love the cable television in every
seat). “Shut Up And Drive” was on, and
I thought: they’re remixing “Blue Monday”
and setting it to a bunch of young people dancing in an AutoZone. Cool though that was, I wondered about the intellectual
property issues. Are Gordon Summer Bernard Sumner and
his aging cronies in New Order profiting from this? Or can they only enjoy the respect they are
getting from this particular Carribean songstress?
Whatever the answer, I’ll hope for a May-September tour – perhaps with “Shut Up and Drive” being the showstopper both acts can play – in 2008.
August 10, 2007
As an academic subscriber to the W$J, I get both the paper version and the online version. I almost never read the paper, but I visit the online site many times a day. Now Rupert Murdoch is talking about bringing down the wall to the online Wall Street Journal. If he does that and FT follows suit, I could save myself a couple a hundred dollars per year.
Earlier this week, Los Angeles Times media critic Tim Rutten suggested on Marketplace that Murdoch might turn the W$J into a "general interest national newspaper" -- even adding a sports section -- in which case The New York Times "had better worry!" Oddly, this speculation followed an introduction in which he observed, "Rupert Murdoch has an almost unbroken line of failures with American newspapers."
Obviously, we don't know the big plan here, but Murdoch must know that he cannot alienate business readers, the core audience for the Journal. I agree with Rutten that the Journal may benefit tremendously from its new affiliation with companies that can provide video. That looks like the low-hanging fruit. Not a sports section.
July 17, 2007
My wife's cousin works for a large regional bookstore, and yesterday she described some of the elaborate security measures taken by Bloomsbury to protect the newest installment of Harry Potter. Today, in an email to the Contracts professors listserv, Elizabeth Winston conveniently linked to a story about the security measures in The Economic Times, which describes the booksellers' contracts near the end:
London-based Bloomsbury,which publishes the Potter books in Britain, has hired secure sites across the country to house the book prior to distribution early this week. Several dozen security teams will protect the sites round the clock. Experts say security staff will earn up to £30 an hour with a guard dog, up to £20 without.
Print factory workers in Britain have been threatened with the sack if they leak any details,while German publishers banned mobiles and even packed lunches in the printing plant. Some employees reportedly had to work in near-darkness to prevent them reading the book. It is from Tuesday, however, when copies begin to be sent out to retailers, that the most crucial part of the security operation will come into effect.
The trucks Bloomsbury will use are fitted with satellite tracking systems costing up to £1,000 pounds,which will reveal whether any of the vehicles deviate from their intended route. The books are on sealed pallets fitted with alarms to prevent tampering. At one of the world’s biggest booksellers, Barnes and Noble in America, the books are being kept in padlocked trucks at the insistence of Scholastic. Amazon, the online retailer, has cordoned off special sections of its warehouse to ensure restricted access.
All retailers have had to sign a legal embargo preventing them from divulging any of the book’s content or selling copies before the release time. A spokesman for Bloomsbury said: “we have a litigation specialist poised 24 hours a day, seven days a week to deal with any breaches. It is our intention to enforce the embargo vigorously and seek an immediate injunction if required.” While experts put the cost of all this at £10 million, the lengths to which publishers have gone are not surprising.
Four years ago, Donald Parfitt, a fork-lift driver from Suffolk, was ordered to do 180 hours community service after he admitted stealing pages from Harry Potter and the Order of The Phoenix from the printing plant where he worked. Last year, one Aaron Lambert was jailed for 4 1/2 years for stealing copies of Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince and trying to sell them. Rowling has reportedly received letters from people asking her to reveal the ending of the seventh book because their terminally-ill relative may not live until Saturday.
If you are that desperate, you may be able to find an advance copy on BitTorrent. I am waiting for Saturday, when I will get my copy at Barnes & Noble. Everyone seems to think that Harry is a goner, but I am not so sure. Rowling is nothing if not surprising.
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July 15, 2007
Are Crocs ugly? There are websites devoted to their derision. The proprietary resin ("NOT plastic NOR
rubber") shoes have even won Ugly Shoe of the
Year awards. The company's stock, OTOH, has had a pretty good run since its IPO
in early '06. It IPO'd at 21; it closed Friday above 47.
Financial pundits have debated the staying power of the company and its Croslite (TM) clogs. Now Crocs have finally made it to my Sunday morning reading via the NYT Magazine. I tend to view this as something of a milestone. Even if Crocs are just a fad, NYT coverage arguably elevates them to bona fide cultural phenomenon status. So I wandered around the company's website for a little bit. The quick history of the company goes like this:
Its (sic) all started when three Boulder, Colorado based founders decided to develop and market an innovative type of footwear called Crocs™ shoes.
Originally, Crocs were intended as a boating/outdoor shoe because of its slip-resistant, non-marking sole. By 2003 Crocs had become a bona-fide phenomenon, universally accepted as an all purpose shoe for comfort and fashion.
I also found out the originals now come in college colors, which for some reason I find endearing. My kids wear the original ugly ones, too, as does just about every kid in their preschool and many of the parents. So far my wife and I haven't succumbed (though for me, it's just been about finding my size in a color I can stand). Probably a shoe and a company to watch.
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July 06, 2007
We finally found the time to see Ratatouille, and I think it's the best animated feature since Toy Story. Well done, Pixar!
April 27, 2007
While Leandra Lederman was here blogging about Second Life, I meant to chime in about a new craze that might be under the radar for those readers without elementary school-age children: Webkinz. The phenomenon begins by buying what seems like a benign stuffed animal that is almost indistinguishable from a beanie baby to the uninformed. In Champaign, the going price is $9.99, although due to shortages, the eBay price seems to be about $20. But the stuffed animal is no ordinary stuffed animal; the tag on the animal is encased in plastic and when opened, reveals a secret code. With this secret code you can log on to www.webkinz.com and register your 
new pet. (The first year of play is free, then you pay a fee to continue. As my husband pointed out, if the fee is more than $10, we'll just buy another pet.) Then, you can begin creating a virtual home for your pet, buying furniture, even adding on to the one room that each pet starts life with. You must also feed your pet, take him to the doctor, bathe him, and do other things to keep his "health" monitors 100%.
When you run out of your original allotment of Kinzcash, you can earn more.
You can do a "job" every 8 hours. My kids' favorite job to do is a matching game where the context is you work in a shoe store and must match all the shoes within a given amount of time. You can also play games in the "arcade" to win Kinzcash. Some of the games are just knock-offs of other video games: there is a game very similar to Nintendo's Bust-a-Move, for example. However, the games that give the most points have some educational value. The quiz games, which might ask math problems or science questions, can earn players a lot of Kinzcash. Another game, which is cross between Scrabble and Boggle, is also good for racking up the Kinzcash. With the cash, you can keep your pet fed, decorate his pad, and buy him toys.
So, what's the big deal? Well, of course there's the group that says that computer use at early ages is bad because kids don't use their imaginations or play outside and run around. See this article. But that's a parenting issue. Most forms of entertainment are addictive, and this is one is too. (I've been known to play a little Quizzy's Word Search by myself just to "get Luke some Kinzcash.") So, you set limits. Big deal. However, there's another criticism that I have heard and that is that kids are being formed into little consumers by pretending to earn money and spend money. My colleague Bob Lawless (after we introduced his kids to the Webkinz craze) asked me if there were payday lenders in Webkinz. Actually, there's sort of a pawn shop! Kids can sell their unused purchases back to the W Store for 1/2 the purchase price. I think it teaches good lessons, though. My seven-year-old daughter learned pretty quickly that being able to sell things back for 1/2 price wasn't a good enough deal and so she chooses her purchases more carefully. My five-year-old son, on the other hand, spends every dollar he has. His pet's room looks like Tom Hank's apartment in Big, only with more kids' stuff. But he's learning that he has to save for things he really wants and that he can't let his monkey starve. These seem like better lessons to learn in a virtual world than in a real one to me.
The only aspect of Webkinz that concerns me at all is that there is the potential for interaction with other users. There is "tournament" play where kids can play against each other. We've banned that just because you never know who is a kid and who isn't. Also, if you have a friend with a Webkinz account and you know that kid's login name, then you can send each other virtual gifts or let your pets go visit each other. We do let our kids visit with other friends we know in the real world (like the Lawless children). We were glad to know that the letters they send to each other are pre-written and un-editable, so someone couldn't send your child an inappropriate letter. (I'm sure there are people who know how to override that, but hopefully we are strict enough about our "friends list" that this poses no problem.)
As far as I can tell, there is no secondary market in Kinzcash and I can't see why one would be created. All Kinzcash can do for you is to allow you to buy virtual decorations and consumables. Kinzcash cannot alter the level of play or take you to new levels. Your Webkinz experience is unaltered by how much Kinzcash you have saved.
April 13, 2007
This photo of Hillary really brought back the memories for me ...
I had a pair of pants just like those!
April 11, 2007
When I was in high school, Kurt Vonnegut was my favorite author, hands down. Cat's Cradle was my favorite Vonnegut novel, and I read it several times. I also read most of his other novels -- at least those written before the end of the 1970s -- before suddenly losing interest.
Honestly, I can't remember why I found Vonnegut so appealing. He was funny, I suppose. And I liked the way that he flouted grammatical conventions.
Vonnegut died today at age 84. So it goes.
December 29, 2006
I hardly ever listen to music anymore. Strange because I was a music junkie as a teenager.
As I romped around my favorite blogs tonight, two music posts caught my eye. First, Brayden lists five albums he "can't wait to buy." (People still buy albums?) I hadn't heard of any of the bands, except Radiohead. But I couldn't name a single one of their songs, even though Brayden touts them as "simply the best band in the world, no question."
Second, Paul Kedrosky lists the ten most-played radio songs of 2006:
Rank Songs Artist on Radio
1 Be Without You Mary J. Blige 395,995
2 Unwritten Natasha Bedingfield 336,276
3 Temperature Sean Paul 324,555
4 Me & U Cassie 312,073
5 Hips Don't Lie Shakira Feat. Wyclef Jean 308,903
6 Promiscuous Nelly Furtado Featuring Timbaland 292,264
7 Bad Day Daniel Powter 291,256
8 Check On It Beyonce Featuring Slim Thug 290,231
9 So Sick Ne-Yo 277,958
10 Over My Head
(Cable Car) Fray 276,601
Source: Nielsen BDS
Um, ok. I have heard three of these songs. Two of them because they were favorites of my daughter.
This year, after being frustrated in her attempts to buy me a Christmas gift, my daughter proclaimed, "you need a hobby!" I have hobbies, of course, but they aren't the sort of hobbies that require a lot of maintenance. (I gave up golf some time ago.) Maybe I should take up listening to music again. That would be good for a few stocking stuffers every year.
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December 28, 2006
No, my holiday break is not all about movies, but my wife and daughters were heading out to see the "ultimate chick flick" (quoting one of them) this afternoon, and I decided to tag along. Anything to avoid grading exams. (My boys stayed home to play Star Wars video games.)
The ratio of women to men in the theatre was at least 20:1. My wife identified only three men, including me, but I am fairly certain a fourth guy slipped in during the coming attractions. Fortunately, I was wearing my pink dress shirt.
The women throughout the theater seemed quite taken by this movie. Lots of knowing laughter and after-movie chatter. I passed some of the time staring at the light fixtures in the theatre. For the most part, however, I was wondering whether I was a bad person because I wished harm on the Cameron Diaz character. Not just that she would have a bad holiday. I was thinking more along the lines of a dread disease.
I will admit that I laughed several times when I was supposed to. Like Dustin Hoffman's cameo in the video store. And a couple of the imagined movie trailers about Cameron Diaz's life. But for the most part, the film was far too predictable to be funny or charming.
Perhaps having a policy of doing anything to avoid grading exams is a bit overbroad.
One of the holiday traditions in our household is that we go to the theater on Christmas Day. The PG pickings were slim this year. After taking account of movies one or more of us had already seen and eliminating options that generated strong objections, we ended up at Ben Stiller's new release: Night at the Museum. Apparently, lots of other people made the same choice. The theater was full, and it was the #1 film at the box office as of December 26.
Superlatives are inappropriate here. If you say this movie is a "blast" or that the writing is "hilarious," I worry about you. On the other hand, if you don't laugh at least a couple of times, you probably need to lighten up a bit.
On the day after Christmas, my oldest son and I returned to the theater to see Rocky Balboa. (The women in the family had no interest, and the younger boys were more interested in playing their new video games.) This is basically a retelling of the original Rocky, but I loved the original Rocky (didn't we all in 1976?), so I didn't mind this stroll down memory lane. I was a bit surprised that my son liked the movie so much, until I realized that he was seeing Rocky in action for the first time. Rocky can't miss with most teenage boys, even when his face and body are wrinkled.
November 27, 2006
Last week the Boston Globe reported that the New England Patriots have filed suit against an on-line ticket reseller, arguing that the reseller encourages ticket holders to violate their state’s anti-scalping laws. Although the practice is rampant, many states regulate ticket scalping in some way from requiring resellers to obtain licenses for reselling tickets to some form of prohibition. Under Massachusetts law, a person cannot resell a ticket for more than $2 over its face value, plus certain service charges. Interestingly, because a service charge may include a reseller’s costs of advertising and certain payments to employees the service charge can be up to $80 or $100. Thus, the service charge is really the hidden gotcha because many cites will advertise one price and then when you go to purchase the ticket, the cite will tack on a large service charge.
Apparently, while the service charge may be valid, some of the reselling practices employed by ticket cites may violate state laws. As you can imagine, however, ticket scalping is difficult to patrol and the Internet has only exacerbated the problem. If the Patriots are victorious, therefore, their suit could send a strong message. But it raises an interesting question—is there something wrong with ticket scalping? In fact, there are some states that are either doing away with or relaxing their scalping laws, I believe based on a theory that resells are inevitable and that we should simply allow the resale market to play out.
Yet I think there are some good reasons for some kind of regulation in this area. First, scalping appears to encourage the selling of counterfeit tickets, a concern for both the organizing body and the ticket purchaser.A Patriots’ spokesperson indicated that the number of people who show up at the stadium with tickets that have been invalidated has increased because of ticket resells through the Internet. Second, scalping obviously drives up ticket prices. This is the problem that you hear many entertainers complain about. The idea is that their true fans are locked out of the market for their tickets. Of course there is always that nagging suspicion that entertainers are not worried about the fact that additional profit is being made, but rather that it is not being made by them. Indeed, why begrudge the individual ticket holder from making some profit on their resell? Yet, the problem is not really the individual ticket holder, but rather the industry wide facilitators. Indeed, it appears that resells are not isolated incidences—but rather standard practice with some events. This not only means that ticket prices at certain events have become so high that only certain segments of the population can afford to attend such events, but also that some have made a business out of purchasing tickets quickly so that events become artificially sold out. This kind of practice suggest that many people end up paying inflated prices for their tickets, even when they make an effort to get them early. Hence, even though I recognize that the problem of scalping can never really be resolved, I applaud the efforts of those trying to do something about it.
September 05, 2006
I taught my first class today and started out with a movie clip. I like to show at least one movie or portion of a movie in class. Just because its fun and it reminds students that issues related to corporations are all around them. I also find that students tend to remember issues better when I can contextualize them with a movie or TV show. My old stand-by for Corporations is Barbarians at the Gate, but I also show a clip of Trading Places in my Securities Regulation course (the scene invovlving trading in frozen concentrated orange juice). However, I am always looking for new movies to show. Does anyone have any ideas on some good movies, portions of movies, or TV shows with good corporate themes?
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August 08, 2006
Fred Wilson is hyping The Hype Machine: "It just proves that aggregating music blogs (letting the people create a music service) is better than trying to work with the record labels to create one."
Fred convinced me to take a look. I searched "Garfunkel" and found a short list of songs by my favorite singing duo, and Hype Machine streams all of them to my computer seamlessly!
You can get much longer playlists by searching "Beatles" or "U2" or any recent flavor of the month. For example, here is the playlist for Nelly Furtado:
You can't download the tracks from The Hype Machine, but with a site that is this easy to use, that will be only a minor annoyance for most users. Plus, if you really want a track, just go to the blog where it was originally posted.
Oh, perhaps you are worried about copyright? No worries. From The Hype Machine:
The Hype Machine supports and respects the artists, writers, editors and producers who create original content available on the web.
The Hype Machine site users are encouraged to enjoy legitimate downloadable media and support artists by purchasing music after sampling it online. We provide full acknowledgement of the source and author for all audio that provides it - and we recommend that blog publishers include appropriate metadata when making audio available on the web. We also provide links to purchase music from Amazon.com, iTunes Music Store and the eMusic digital music store, where possible.
Additionally, authors of all postings that we index are clearly identified whenever they appear on the Hype Machine website or in the search results. All such mentions have a link to more information about the specific blog and a link directly to where the post appears on the Internet.
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Ok, my "no worries" comment obviously was tic. As far as I can tell, the Recording Industry Association of America has not launched an offensive against The Hype Machine, Elbo.ws, G2P, and other sites that link to copyrighted music, but that can't be far away. Last month a Dutch court shut down Zoekmp3.nl (more here), which seemed to offer a similar service. The underlying legal rules are different, but the common theme is that the sites are linking to infringing materials.
The DCMA provides some safe harbors for linking by service providers, but those safe harbors require that the service providers not have actual or constructive knowledge of copyright infringement. Could The Hype Machine make that argument with a straight face? I would be interested to hear from the copyright gurus on this issue.
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July 15, 2006
Why are executives so enamored of quoting Chinese proverbs? Daniel Gross over at Slate has the answer. In a nutshell:
[E]xecutives quote Sun Tzu and Lao Tzu for the same reason they started exchanging their bespoke suits for business-casual khakis: They have to show that they're with it. China represents the future and is the locus of immense growth. Casually tossing Chinese proverbs into conversation shows that you're down with the latest trends, even if you haven't (yet) relocated your manufacturing capacity to Shenzhen.
Read the full story for some amusing uses and misuses.
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July 09, 2006
Monte Henderson discusses Napoleon Dynamite with a New York Times reporter in the Happiness Is Scrapbooking store in Preston, Idaho:
"I have to admit I related to it, though. I mean, I was part of the F.F.A."
Ms. Henderson added: "I drive a school bus and I can't tell you how many times we've had to tell the kids to reel their little rubber men in from out the window."
As I have noted before, I loved that movie, but I am not this guy mentioned in the NYT story: "Gordon Smith, a fire sprinkler salesman, drove an hour and a half from his home in Utah to attend the festival with his daughter, Mariah."
June 16, 2006
Napoleon Dynamite was one of the funniest movies I have ever seen. Nacho Libre was not.
Several hours after leaving the theater, I still am trying to figure out whether this was a horrible movie made tolerable by Jack Black, or a potentially funny movie ruined by excessive focus on its star. But one thing is clear to me: Jack Black is not one of those rare people (like John Belushi) who makes me laugh just to look at him. This movie had too many shots where the audience was supposed to laugh just because Jack Black's face was filling the screen. Most of the time, we didn't.
Audience reaction was mixed. My 12-year-old daughter, not one to mince words, just told me, "Nacho Libre stunk." (She is a big Napoleon Dynamite fan, by the way.) On the other hand, three thirtysomething guys sat behind us, and one of them commented afterwards, "That was one of the best movies ever!" But listening to their comments during the movie, it was pretty clear that there was a high school thing going on there. I am fairly certain that he would change his mind at any hint of dissent from his buddies.
One of my 10-year-old sons summed up my feelings pretty well: "It was funny in parts, but I didn't bust a gut laughing."
June 15, 2006
Last week it was Hedgestock (Bobo finance having its finest moment), now it's a play - as in a theatrical production - about hedge funds. (Thanks to JJ Prescott for the heads up.)
Actually, I think if Shakespeare were alive, he'd write about hedge fund managers and CEOs. Kings and princes don't really have much wealth or power these days, comparatively speaking.
May 23, 2006
Have I ever seen a finale of American Idol before? If I have, it's long forgotten.
Anyway, I noticed from Ann's blog that the finale was tonight, so I turned on the television while I was working on some research. What the ...?
These are the two finalists?!? With the exception of Kat's rendition of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," I felt like I was watching a high school talent show. She managed to start that song on key despite the fact that she was singing a cappella and the ear phone that was supposed to give her a note malfunctioned. (Actually, it's a shame they ever brought in the music on that number; the a cappella segment was best part of the whole night.) But her last song was a disaster, and not just because it was horribly written.
Taylor is simply inexplicable to me. He seems nice enough, and I assume that he is one of these guys who grows on people with his southern charm. Ann links to Judy Rosen's description on Slate, and this pretty much nails the fellow I saw performing tonight:
[Taylor is a] prematurely gray-haired doofus who has spent the past several weeks jerking across the Idol stage like a spaz while belting out classic R&B covers. There's something vaguely unsettling about his shtick: Although he's not black, he calls his fans "The Soul Patrol," and although he's neither black nor blind, he insists on lurching backward when he sings like his idol Ray Charles.
Vaguely unsettling? Nothing vague about it. This was karaoke on national television.
Ann claims that she has figured out why she likes American Idol:
I don't like the music very much. I like the criticism in action and the chance to hear an honest slam -- startlingly delivered right to the face of an optimistic, ambitious young person.
Sort of sadistic, no?
Truth be told, however, in the handful of times that I have seen the show, Simon was the main attraction. Usually, he is refreshingly honest, and I suspect (without knowing) that the contestants really benefit from that.
Tonight, in the finale, the opportunity for constructive criticism had passed. Simon played nice. Which meant that there was no reason to watch that show.
Good thing I was multi-tasking!
May 19, 2006
My wife and I read The Da Vinci Code two years ago. Describing the book, I used "clumsy," "tedious," and "implausible" in one sentence. When I saw that the film was getting panned by the critics, I was not very excited about seeing it, but Friday is "date day" for my wife and me, and we decided to judge for ourselves. I thought the movie was better than the book. Much better.
Here are some quick impressions of where most of the critics went wrong:
McCarthy: "The irony in the film's inadequacy is that the novel was widely found to be so cinematic. Although pretty dismal as prose, the tome fairly rips along, courtesy of a strong story hook, very short chapters that seem like movie scenes, constant movement by the principal characters in a series of conveyances, periodic eruptions of violent action and a compressed 24-hour time frame."
Did you read the entire book? It rips along for the first few chapters, then melts down. The movie is much tighter and more compelling. I notice that a number of critcs refer to the book as a "page turner," "labaryntine thriller," or similar descriptions. I wonder if there will be an inverse correlation between liking the book and liking the movie?
Beifuss: "De-emphasizing the visually un-cinematic puzzles, anagrams and codes that are key to the plot-heavy book proves to be a mistake ... the movie doesn't give viewers much of a chance to participate in the problem-solving."
This is largely true. For example, if you read the book, you might guess the "apple" clue, but you would never get that from the movie alone. Still, it seems a small price to pay for disposing of some of Brown's hint-dropping.
Groucho: "Crammed into a 153-minute frame, the densely detailed The Da Vinci Code does begin to inspire heretical chuckles in the way it plays a connect-the-historical-dots game to reveal a sketch of a pregnant Mary Magdalene. Murder in the Louvre, Da Vinci-painted clues, Sir Isaac Newton, the Knights Templar, evil Swiss bankers, and Fibonacci numbers. Forget Holy Blood, Holy Grail—I think Dan Brown might've picked up his designs from a raving street-corner conspiracy theorist (not that there's anything wrong with that)."
Yes, the plot is ridiculous, but you should have known that going in. Roger Ebert rightly observes, "Yes, the plot is absurd, but then most movie plots are absurd. That's what we pay to see."
Bernard: "The movie is so nervous about offending anyone that it's hardly any fun. Hanks delivers a few solemn speeches meant to deflect criticism. Meanwhile, he and Tautou barely hit it off. At least Mr. and Mrs. Smith got hot while doing their jobs."
As far as I can tell, Jami Bernard is not in high school, so I am not sure how to explain her disappointment at the absence of romance between Hank and Tautou. Why lament the fact that the film doesn't turn to a cliche?
And as for the notion that the film plays down the religious controversy (a theme in several reviews), I am not sure what people were expecting. The film suggests that Jesus is not divine and blames the Catholic Church for most of the world's ills, including the murder of "free-thinking women" throughout the ages.
The critic who gets it right is Roger Ebert:
"While the book is a potboiler written with little grace and style, it does supply an intriguing plot. Luckily, Ron Howard is a better filmmaker than Dan Brown is a novelist; he follows Brown's formula (exotic location, startling revelation, desperate chase scene, repeat as needed) and elevates it into a superior entertainment, with Tom Hanks as a theo-intellectual Indiana Jones."
The rest of his review is spot on, too.
By the way, Ian McKellen is great in this movie.
May 17, 2006
Two years ago, over on Times and Seasons, I wrote this about The Da Vinci Code: "While this book has occasional moments of suspense, Dan Brown is a clumsy writer who makes the story as tedious as it is implausible." So I laughed while reading A.O. Scott's new review of the movie in the NYT: "'The Da Vinci Code,' Ron Howard's adaptation of Dan Brown's best-selling primer on how not to write an English sentence, arrives trailing more than its share of theological and historical disputation."
Looking at other early reviews, I find it hard to believe that this movie will sustain the controversy that has preceded its release. With such a badly written book as a starting point, the movie probably didn't have a chance.
April 12, 2006
I almost never watch American Idol, but I was fixing my computer last night and the television was playing in the background. I immediately picked up on the fact that the contestants were singing Queen songs, which transported me back to the 1970s. As a high school student, I memorized all of Queen's songs through News of the World.
Frankly, that album never grabbed me, and the fact that it contained "We Will Rock You" and "We Are the Champions" made things worse, not better. The next album -- Jazz -- was silly. By the time The Game was released in 1980, I had lost interest. Queen was using synthesizers and playing stadiums, and I chose to wear out my vinyls of Queen, Queen II, Sheer Heart Attack, Night at the Opera and Day at the Races.
At the time, my favorite Queen song was "Bohemian Rhapsody," of course. Partly because of its pathbreaking video. In my old age, however, I remember another song quite fondly. You probably have never heard it, unless you are a hard-core Queen fan. It's called "Fairy Feller's Master Stroke," which describes the Richard Dadd painting by the same name. (Find a clip here.) The lyrics:
He's a fairy feller
Ah ah the fairy folk have gathered
Round the new moon's shine
To see the feller crack a nut
At night's noon time
To swing his axe he swears
As he climbs he dares
To deliver the master stroke
Ploughman wagoner will' and types
Politician with senatorial pipe
He's a dilly dally oh
Pedagogue squinting wears a frown
And a satyr peers under lady's gown
He's a dirty fellow
What a dirty laddie-oh
Tatterdemalion and the junketer
There's a thief and a dragonfly trumpeter
He's my hero ah
Fairy dandy tickling the fancy
Of his lady friend
The nymph in yellow (can we see the master stroke)
What a quaere fellow
Ah ah ah ah ah ah
Ah ah ah ah ah ah
Soldier sailor tinker tailor ploughboy
Waiting to hear the sound
And the arch magician presides
He is the leader
Oberon and Titania watched by a harridan
Mab is the queen and there's a good apothecary man
Come to say hello
Fairy dandy tickling the fancy
Of his lady friend
The nymph in yellow
What a quaere fellow
The ostler stares with hands on his knees
Come on mister feller
Crack it open of you please
That song sent me to the art history books (and the dictionary!) in my high school library. Of course, none of the American Idol contestants sang "Fairy Feller's Master Stroke." That would have been career suicide. Actually, I didn't care much for any of the performances (see Ann if you want a more balanced assessment), but it was fun to see Brian May and Roger Taylor again.
January 18, 2006
If he sold his kidney, he might need legal representation, but this was only a kidney stone, so I guess he won't need to turn to James Spader for help. I wonder if Cpt. Kirk realizes or cares that he just generated $25,000 of taxable income for himself--a drop in the bucket, I suppose. But too bad that charitable deduction is below the line and subject to limitations... What I really wonder is, what the heck is an online casino planning to do with the thing?! This is the same casino that paid a woman to tattoo their name on her forehead--and she only got $15,000 for it. Curioser and curioser.
December 28, 2005
The first installment in the Narnia Chronicles has been a surprise success for its strength in battling King Kong. In this case, Narnia's success is probably a combination of Kong's tediousness and Narnia's appeal to religious groups. Plus enchanting special effects.
The CGI creatures in Narnia were excellently rendered. Fauns, talking beavers, wolves and foxes, centaurs, and, of course, Aslan the Lion, all play central roles in the tale, and I was surprised that I could watch them without much distraction. (I am usually not a big fan of talking animals.) The best special effects are reserved for the war scenes in Narnia, which are reminiscent of Lord of the Rings, though without blood. Massive armies of odd creatures charge violently at each other. Winged creatures drop boulder bombs. Lots of arrows, swords, and shields. If you love medieval battle scenes, you will be disappointed only by the brevity of the Narnia clash.
I was not enamored with the child actors. At several points, I found myself comparing Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy to Harry, Hermione, and Ron -- and the comparison was not flattering for the Narnia bunch. Nevertheless, Skandar Keynes, who played Edmund, did a fine job of making himself despicable. And Lucy is cute, especially in the early scenes with the Mr. Tumnus.
The story is more interesting than Kong, though not very suspenseful. As one critic observed, "The story does what it can to introduce some doubt into the possibility that Aslan and the outnumbered forces of righteousness – a mythological mélange of brightly arrayed creatures – will triumph, but there’s about as much suspense as in the New Testament."
In the end, my favorite part of the movie may have been near the beginning, when Lucy first discovers Narnia. Her passage through the wardrobe, from furs to pine needles, is magical.
December 24, 2005
Almost every critic seems to think that King Kong is too long, but most feel that it is simply too much of a good thing. I, on the other hand, couldn't wait for it to end.
The special effects are magnificent, and I stayed with the film for a long time just marveling at everything on the screen. This is a beautiful movie, but let's face it: the story is silly. I have seen all three versions of Kong, and the plot in this version is richer than in the others, but it is still silly. And it doesn't become any less silly by dragging it out over three hours.
I read a bunch of reviews of the movie (after seeing it myself and forming my own impressions), and here are some thoughts with which I agree:
Paul Arendt: "If anything, there is too much action in Kong. The relentless chases and smackdowns start to grind after a while."
A.O. Scott: "At times, the blending of computer-generated imagery and live action is pushed to a point where the seams begin to show, as in a Pamplona-style running of the brontosauruses, with various human actors darting between the legs of rampaging lizards."
Amy Biancolli: "This Kong is long: three hours. It's overacted: In scene after scene, Naomi Watts and Jack Black stare gape-mouthed at the camera. It's under-edited: Were I holding an X-Acto knife, I would have lopped 45 minutes, maybe even an hour, off the front of the movie, slashing whole scenes and several characters out of existence."
Josh Bell: "For all of the astounding spectacle he achieves, Jackson is guilty of rampant overindulgence, and as with Tim Burton's recent Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, his film has a certain 'so what?' feel. He spends three hours letting us know that King Kong is his favorite movie. His version is made with consummate imagination and skill, but it's still largely superfluous."
David Denby: "This 'Kong' is high-powered entertainment, but Jackson pushes too hard and loses momentum over the more than three hours of the movie. The story was always a goofy fable—that was its charm—and a well-told fable knows when to stop."
Finally, in a review that makes me think, "What the ...?"
Roger Ebert: "I think the film even has a message, and it isn't that beauty killed the beast. It's that we feel threatened by beauty, especially when it overwhelms us, and we pay a terrible price when we try to deny its essential nature and turn it into a product, or a target."
November 21, 2005
This is the best Potter film yet, in my opinion. If you are a fan of the books, you may lament the missing scenes -- lots of them! -- but if you can abide less-than-slavish adherence to the original story, you should enjoy this show.
The Tri-Wizard Tournament changes everything about Hogwarts, and that's all to the benefit of the film. The only classroom scenes are in the Defense Against the Dark Arts, where Brendan Gleeson rules as Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody. He is terrific, by the way.
The Tournament offers a high-speed chase, an underwater battle, and a deathly maze, but the most surprising thing about this film is that it is so funny. Most of the humor emanates from teenage angst, but it is (almost) all well done. Harry, Ron, and Hermione have grown not only physically, but as actors. Indeed, Emma Watson is turning Hermione into the star of this series.
Voldemort is outstandingly rendered by Ralph Fiennes. The scene of his rebirth is the only part of the film that is frightening enough to keep my youngest children (age nine) from seeing the film.
This summer's release of Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince combines with this movie to re-energize a brand that was flagging. For the first time, I am looking forward to the next installments of both the book and the movie.
November 16, 2005
Roger Ebert and I usually have similar tastes in movies, but he misled me about Flightplan. He rated the movie four and a half stars. On a scale of five, not ten. He wrote:
How can a little girl simply disappear from an airplane at 37,000 feet? By asking this question and not cheating on the answer, "Flightplan" delivers a frightening thriller with an airtight plot. It's like a classic Locked Room Murder, in which the killer could not possibly enter or leave, but the victim is nevertheless dead. Such mysteries always have solutions, and so does "Flightplan," but not one you will easily anticipate. After the movie is over and you are on your way home, some questions may occur to you, but the film proceeds with implacable logic after establishing that the little girl does not seem to be on board.
My wife and I decided to go on a midweek date, and we were the only people in the theater, which meant that we could talk about the movie as it progressed. About halfway through, Sue said, "I know how this is going to end. Jodie Foster will be vidicated and she will look smarter than everyone. She always comes out looking like the smartest person in the movie." Good call.
This is not a bad movie, but it is not a great movie. Foster's violent intensity is overwhelming, and the plot is highly implausible. The questions did not occur to me on the way home, but constantly during the show. At least my wife and I were able to pick it apart together.
October 31, 2005
To riff on the title of Vic's hilarious post about the young urban party scene on Hallowe'en, I have been thinking today about the sociology of trick-o'-treating and the cultural norms that surround it. Here in Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, Hallowe'en is the Sunday closest to the 31st of October, from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. If you would like to close off your block, please contact the Village. This superstructure for trick-o'-treating struck us as artificial at first, but we have grown to like having the festivities on a day and hour when both parents can be involved.
But the topic that is really haunting me today is the immigrant trick-o'-treater. TOT'ing is essentially a neighborhood pastime, yet in most of the neighborhoods that I have lived in as an adult, much TOT'ing seems to be done by groups of people in cars who have come from a different neighborhood.