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The company producing Michael Jackson’s concert tour has announced those who have purchased tickets can get a refund or receive “souvenir tickets.” In the old days, before electronic ticket ordering, the tickets would have been issued upon purchase. I assume the “souvenir tickets” are going to be printed up and authenticated in some way to add a measure of validity to any claim they are “limited” and thus, have some value as a collectible. I assume also they’ll be marketed in the same way a collectible dish or “special minted” gold coin will be — except with a significant twist: the marketer is attempting to convert someone who is already a fan and who has already parted with their money — just not for what the promoter is selling. The promoter — if they act quickly — can convince that potential buyers to “act immediately” to exercise their right to take special delivery of this once-in-a-life-time item they’ve already purchased. The message (which is a natural for those who attend concerts) is that they belong to a private club that no one else is going to be given membership into.
When I saw this announcement, I wondered if, other than sentimental value, the “collectible” ticket might have any value in the future. Some extremely quick (two-clicks) research and unscientific back of the envelop calculations lead me to think that the tickets could possibly increase in value by up to 5% annually (compounded) based on the current retail price ($75) of a $15 unused ticket to an August, 1977 Elvis concert. Of course, that’s the retail price. It’s probably worth a lot less.
Bottomline: If the idea is to hold the ticket for a long time and then sell it, I’d take the money now. (However, I would have never purchased the ticket in the first place.) I’m guessing that a lot of people will take the tickets, however. I think they’d be better off flipping the ticket quickly — while those outside the exclusive group may want in — rather than wait for 32 years to sell it on eBay.
Michael Jackson,
the year I graduated
from high school.
It’s a little before 6:00 a.m. CST as I write this and I’ve been listening to the BBC World News stream on WPLN.org.
I’ve been struck by how the world is reacting to the news that Michael Jackson died. Not only is it the dominate story on the BBC broadcast, the report includes news of how TV networks in countries around the world broke into their regular programming to report the news. The flood of queries to Google from around the world led the service to interpret what was taking place as a malware attack. (Doc Searls, as a “live web” record, took a “snapshot” of a Google and Twitter search mashup at time the news of Jackson’s death was announced.)
There’s a big part of me that wants to ask, “What’s wrong with people?” Don’t they know Michael Jackson is bizarre?
But then, I think back to before Michael Jackson became so bizarre and the statement I heard someone make years before the fall of the Iron Curtain. They said, “If we want to defeat communism, we should forget nuclear weapons and load up cargo planes full of Levi jeans and Michael Jackson tapes (this was a pre-CD era) and drop them over eastern-bloc countries.”
Michael Jackson’s music, like it or not, is part of the essence of American culture (at least, the “pop-” kind of culture) that people all over the world find appealing, even when they’ve been programmed all their lives to believe America is the Great Satan.
It’s the music and incredible talent of Michael Jackson, not that bizarre person he became, that people are mourning today. That, and something a little more personal.
I was in high school when the Jackson Five hit the big time. You know what that means: Michael Jackson was a big part of the soundtrack of those years of my life. And the soundtrack of that part of your life sticks with you for the rest of your life. That soundtrack is engrained into you brain as a part of way too many important things in your life, you can never completely flip it off. It’s like a permanent playlist in your mind that starts playing whenever you encounter something that makes you think of anything related to that era.
I think we all get crazy in our obsession with the deaths of someone like Michael Jackson because he was there, singing in the background, when we experienced so many things we hold dear.
The music is still there. The memories are still there. But if Michael Jackson can die, does that mean a part of us dies with him?
I think that’s what we mourn.
Via Google Reader, I just noticed two headlines that seemed to report conflicting news. A click to the actual stories revealed a rather significant variation in the headline spin on stories reporting numbers released a few moments ago by the Department of Labor. This is either good news or bad. Take your pick — the headline writers have.
There are some interesting links contained in this short post on the NYTimes.com’s Freakonomics blog about why certain (i.e., most) economists have been so wrong about so much lately — and why we continue to listen to (or even care) what they say despite such proven ineptitude.
One link goes to an article about a recent study on why we continue to believe that failed-pundits (like all the economists who missed the economic downturn) know what the hell they are talking about (i.e., when they continue to predict the future despite being wrong continuously). According to the study, “humans prefer cockiness to expertise.”
Quote:
“Ever wondered why the pundits who failed to predict the current economic crisis are still being paid for their opinions? It’s a consequence of the way human psychology works in a free market, according to a study of how people’s self-confidence affects the way others respond to their advice.The research, by Don Moore of Carnegie Mellon University…shows that we prefer advice from a confident source, even to the point that we are willing to forgive a poor track record. Moore argues that in competitive situations, this can drive those offering advice to increasingly exaggerate how sure they are. And it spells bad news for scientists who try to be honest about gaps in their knowledge.
OK. So we listen to the loudest cocky voices who sound like they know what they are talking about, despite being wrong a lot of the time?
I don’t know why, but that reminds me of the technology blogosphere.
(Sidenote: This makes me recall a post from a few years ago that pointed to this Wall Street Journal column by Carl Bialik about why “the prognostications of political pundits are about as accurate as a chimp throwing darts.” Despite their sub-chimp performance, we still listen to failed political pundits, also. I feel certain the “cockiness rule” plays well on that field, also.)
When I first saw the photo of people hugging in celebration of getting their TV digital converter box connected, I felt the threshold for joy has fallen rather considerably. If only three million people are left who haven’t gotten their rabbit ears ready for the conversion in six days, what’s the problem? Then I read the story.
Most of those remaining people are the folks who are least able to understand what is taking place and the least able to figure out how to do the conversion for themselves — the elderly poor. They don’t have cable — and, likely, their TV is an important connection to the world for them. With that thought, the photo of AmeriCorps volunteers sharing an embrace with someone they’ve helped connect a conversion box seems appropriately joyful.
According to the article, volunteer organizations, civil rights groups and even firefighters have joined in the effort to get the last people connected to converter boxes.
I’m thinking that church congregations tomorrow should ask around to see if any of their older, less fortunate members are connected. If not, perhaps a quick and informal volunteer “faith-based” effort to help out some older church members might be in order.
The government site set up to provide information is DTV.gov.
That site links to a page where you can get local resources.
I’m confused by an article on the Editor & Publisher website that says the New York Times “is cutting its size by 9% according to a Times spokeswoman.”
As the phrase “cutting its size” can mean lots of things, the article should have been more precisely written to indicate it’s the magazine’s “trim size” that is being reduced. However, that’s not what confuses me.
I understand where the 9% figure came from: the total square inches in the new magazine trim size is 9% less than the total square inches of the old trim size. However, there is another way to view this: each edge of the magazine is being reduced approximately 6%.
However, that’s not what confuses me, either.
I’m confused by how 8 15/16 inches by 10 7/8 inches will be a shape “more square” (as discerned by the human eye) than 9 1/2 inches by 11 1/2 inches.
Despite the commonly held belief that I live somewhere on the internet, I actually reside in Nashville, Tennessee. However, each year for business reasons, I travel several times to most of these following places: New York, Washington D.C., Chicago and the San Francisco Bay area. Those are the places that are “home” to the intersecting industries of my work: media, associations, marketing and technology.
As much as I’d like to think I could stay in one place and do everything I want to do virtually, I know that I must travel to those cities that are the centers of those industries. Those places are where I meet — face-to-face — with clients, with development and creative partners, attend board meetings, speak at or attend conferences and, as often as I can but not often enough, do that off-line, hanging-out thing that’s called everything from “meetup” to “camp.”
But Nashville is my home. It’s where I live and to where I always “return.”
It’s been with some irony that the thing for which Nashville is known around the world, the music business, is something I’ve never been involved with professionally. I’ve followed it (often “booing”) from the bleachers. And I’ve certainly ranted about it on this blog. But until recently, the only thing I’ve done regularly with music business insiders is ride the elevators in the office building where Hammock Inc. is on the 7th Floor and Capitol Records Nashville is on the 11th.
I have lived in Nashville for 30 years, so I can recall a time when local business, civic and social leaders actively distanced themselves from any association with “those hillbillies” in the music business. “Athens of the South” was the Chamber of Commerce-preferred sobriquet back then. All “official” city and chamber marketing and business-development efforts focused on education (with Vanderbilt serving as the marquee player), the healthcare “business” (it’s still the epicenter of the “for-profit” healthcare management industry), insurance and finance (where are they now?), travel and tourism (related to that hillbilly music thing) and religious-oriented publishing and printing.
About 25 years ago, some wise business people commissioned some marketing research that discovered something obvious, but unbelievable to “the powers that be.” I imagine when the researchers presented their findings to the Chamber of Commerce, they said something like this: The only people in the world who call Nashville “Athens of the South” and not “Music City” are the people in this room.
The people who ran Nashville back then had their world turned upside down. Their perception of their home as a genteel, progressive and intellectual center for education, commerce and the arts was mythology believed only by themselves. To the world, Nashville had become the mythological center of the redneck music universe.
At that point, those business and civic leaders could have dug in their heels and held onto their pasts, but an amazing thing happened. I’m sure with their noses pinched at first, the local business, civic and social leaders of Nashville began to accept the reality of what the world already new: Nashville is known for music and not all those many reasons everyone who lives here know it for.
During the past 25 years, a slowly developing love-fest has evolved between the “legacy” Nashville and the music Nashville. Banks, law firms, accountants, universities and philanthropic organizations have discovered mutually beneficial ways in which to serve the interests of the music industry and a little understood or appreciated, but extremely important “ecosystem” has emerged that has slowly made Nashville a unique music center and an unparalleled music business center.
Recently, the demographer, economist and author Richard Florida wrote on The Atlantic’s website (a follow-up to a cover story) that, over the past three decades, Nashville has gone through a process related to the “music business” much like Silicon Valley did in technology.
Florida writes:
“While Nashville may not possess the size and scale of New York City, the celebrity-making allure of L.A., the top-40 hit-making appeal of Atlanta, or even the critical cachet of Austin or Montreal, across many genres it possesses the world’s best writing and studio talent and the best recording infrastructure. Today, it’s home to over 180 recording studios, 130 music publishers, 100 live music clubs, and 80 record labels. It’s turned into the Silicon Valley of the music business, combining the best institutions, the best infrastructure, and the best talent. And, like Silicon Valley’s broad reach across many high-tech fields from hardware to software, biotech to green energy, Nashville has become the center for multiple musical genres from country and gospel to rock and pop, attracting top talent from across the United States and the globe.”
As I said, despite knowing some “music people,” I have never done any work related to that industry. Yet over the past few months, I have discovered that my interests are finally intersecting with some people in the music industry — primarily people who have realized what the Chamber of Commerce people in Nashville learned long ago: You can cling to what you want to believe your world is, or embrace what the rest of the world has decided your world actually is.
Over the past few months, some very creative and connected individuals have asked me to, well, “just talk with them.” And I have. I’ve listened. And I’ve shared my thoughts. Nothing formal. I’ve loved what I’ve heard and I’ve come to realize that the bridge across which the music industry must pass to “get to the other side” is likely here in Nashville. Not because this is where the legacy industry is and certainly not because this is where the “executives” are.
Nashville is the place because of what Richard Florida observes: it’s where the creative talent — the equivalent of Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurs and programmers — have decided to meetup.
Just like when I look at the media business and observe that it’s a wonderful time for those not burdened with the death-inducing weight that is dragging down the legacy giants (i.e., massive debt and the need to run those printing presses everyday), I look at the music business and think, except for the record labels and the industry-dominating legacy giants, this is a lovely time to blow up the music industry from the trenches of Nashville.
[Thanks to David Shaw for the TheAtlantic.com link.]
I’m bothered when I read that some schools are banning students from hugging and (via danah boyd - and be sure to read the comments) other schools are banning any contact between students and teachers during “off-hours,” including any contact via non-school-hosted online forums (i.e., Facebook).
The assumption that hugging is aggressive behavior and the presumption of deviant motives of any teacher who would make themselves available to answer questions from students on Facebook are just two more examples of how fear-based regulations and rules that are instant responses to “crises” — real or imagined — often crush opportunities and positive results that could be achieved if cooler, more reasoned heads prevailed.
Are those schools trying to protect students who don’t want to be hugged? Are those schools trying to protect teachers who don’t want to be bothered by students outside the classroom? If so, they’ve chosen a rather ham-fisted solution.
Let me get this straight: I’m in no way suggesting that real issues — real deviant adults and real aggressive teenagers — did not create situations thatled to the specific hugging and friending bans reported in these two accounts. What I’m saying is this: I believe that bans on all hugging and all teacher-student “off-hours” collaboration will result in far more harm than good.
When your business name is Hammock and your web address is hammock.com, here is the kind of e-mail you sometimes receive:
Good days .we can supply you hammock and hanging chair,our factory was located in China.we can give you good price with high quality.our products were well revieved in the overseas market,own to low price ,high quality ,attractive packing,good serivce!hope we can start our business. waiting your reply at your most free time
I guess Google’s Chinese to English translator was acting up that day.
The last time I posted a dad blogging item, a few folks claimed it made them cry. It was about my daughter. This one won’t. It’s about my son, the 18-year old — the person heretofore known on this blog only by his age. (I’ve done that over the years because I didn’t want my children to one day google their names and discover lots of posts from this blog.)
My wife took that photograph of my son and me on the left (if you are reading this on my blog). He was about four-years-old at the time. As any father would, I love that photo as it captures so much of what I’d like to think being a dad is about. My son, obviously worn out, on my back — and the joy that it brings me. To me, it’s a photo that says love more purely than the word conveys it. (I must say, however, in my household, the word “love” is said regularly. We don’t take for-granted that someone knows — without saying — that we love them.)
That photo was taken, in children-growing-up-time, about two weeks ago. Translated into real time, that’s about 14 years. Yesterday, my son (like his sister, three years ago) graduated from Deerfield Academy in Deerfield, Mass. I wrote about the school two years ago after the sudden death of one of the fondest members of its faculty. It is hard to describe the emotional bond my children — and through them, my wife and I — have with Deerfield.* It is a special place and community. My children’s minds and lives have been expanded greatly by the privilege they had to attend Deerfield and to live and study with some of the most gifted, talented students and teachers I can imagine.
High school graduation is one of those events that not only mark the milestones of a person’s life journey, it’s one of those pinch-yourself parent moments, as well. My daughter, the organized and focused one, was already on top of things when she started high school. Our son, well, let’s just say, he did a lot of growing up over the past four years. He grew about ten inches from the time he entered the ninth grade until the time he finished the tenth. The frontal lobe of his brain grew a similar amount during that period.
As my brain’s frontal lobe is probably similar to that of a tenth grader, I’ve easily related to the whole “teenage boy” thing. My wife, on the other hand, is too rational to appreciate the challenge presented by the disconnect between a teenage boy’s brain and his actions. Fortunately, on those things that matter in the long run, our son exhibited temporary sanity and was fortunate to be at the right places when the wrong times came along.
More importantly, he’s a guy people turn to in both times of trouble and joy — he is the definition of the word friend. His rapid wit is disarming — and charming. His encyclopedic knowledge of totally random stuff never ceases to amaze me. The way he can be both the cool guy and the sensitive guy baffles me, as well. His musical ability — which he displays too infrequently these days — is a testament to both his talent and years of hard work.
Can you tell I’m proud? Relieved, yes. And proud.
*The second book (he’s about to have #28 published) written by Pulitzer Prize Winning author John McPhee was The Headmaster, published in 1966, a profile of the Frank Boyden, Deerfield’s legendary head of school who over the course of a 60-year career, transformed the 18th century village school into one of the nation’s premier prepatory schools. Forty years after his death, the influence of Boyden still permeates the campus community. Despite radical changes in the school, most notably, it has been co-ed for nearly two decades, Boyden’s name and thoughts are still evoked constantly, a testament to his life, character, leadership and ideals. (Coincidentally, on my flight to Deerfield last week, I was delighted to read an article by McPhee in the New Yorker. )
(Note to Lost fans: This is a spoiler-free post.)
My wife and I finally fired up the DVR last night to watch the season finale of Lost. Lost is about the only drama on network TV that actually engages me. In about season three, it began to drift, but then something unique happened: The network and the producers announced in 2007 that the series would end 48 episodes later, spread over three 16-episode seaons.
Knowing there is a definite “end” is an amazing thing. For works of fiction (as well as in business and real-life), it provides the focus necessary to stop padding the narrative with back stories and sub-texts. While I’m not personally familiar with how contracts work on network TV series, I assume that having and endpoint allows the creators the opportunity to lock down contracts with actors so that the story arc is not influenced by extraneous factors like side-gigs in movies and salary negotiations. Likewise, it provides the actors and other creative staff the opportunity to plan their next steps.
But having an endpoint that was three seasons and 48 episodes long has also provided the writers and directors enough creative flexibility to respond to things that “work” and those that don’t. Without getting too into the plot of Lost, it is clear the writers have discovered along the way that some characters and plot-points are more important to the story than they probably believed when the character or story line was introduced.
Such reaction likely led to a plot line where there is one character who is both alive and dead, and another who exists at the same age — 30 years apart.
So yes, I’m extremely happy with Lost on several levels: It’s over in 16 episodes. That means everything counts. Every string must be tied up. Every question answered. But the gap between this season’s end and those 16 episodes means there will be millions of words written by fans of the show, exploring every character and every scene from every episode.
But for me, the greatest thing it means is that Lost fans will have the next nine months to discuss the work of one of my favorite authors, Flannery O’Connor. That’s because during the season-ending finale, a heretofore never seen mystery god-like character is finally revealed and in one scene, he is sitting on a bus bench reading a collection of O’Connor short stories called, Everything That Rises Must Converge.
I don’t know if Jacob will do for theological-influenced southern gothic what Don Draper did for 1950s beat poetry, but I enjoy seeing TV writers do product placement for challenging literature — even if it’s only because the book has a title that describes nicely what Lost must do in the next 16 episodes.
Links:
Everything that Rises Must Converge, Google Books page.
“Everything That Rises Must Converge,” text of the short story. (Note: this link may not last long.)
Flannery O’Connor, Wikipedia entry.
Bloggers discussing “Everything that Rises Must Converge” (via Google Blog Search)
LostPedia The fan-managed Lost wiki<
Sidenote: If anyone reading this is a student at Belmont University or knows a student at Belmont University, the English professor Susan Tully has got to be the most enlightening and entertaining interpreter of Flannery O’Connor I have ever known — or hope to know. When I saw the episode of Lost last night, all I could think was, “I sure hope Sue Tully is a Lost fan so she can explain this to me.”
In March, when I suggested ways to determine if the “economic narrative” has shifted from recession to recovery, one of my markers to look for was this: “Stories that challenge the premise that this is the worst recession since the Great Depression.”
If you want to read what I now consider to be the definitive essay in the emerging “you-can’t-imagine-how-much-this-is-not-the-Great-Depression” category, check out this post on the NYTimes.com’s Freakonomics Blog. It’s part one of a three-part post titled, “The is not another Great Depression,” by the economics historian Price V. Fishback.
Quote:
“In 1930, Americans produced 8.6 percent fewer final goods and services than in 1929, in 1931 15 percent less, and in 1932 and 1933 roughly 26 percent less than in 1929. It is hard to conceptualize such a drop in G.D.P. Consider this: the 1932 and 1933 figures would have been the equivalent of shutting down all production of goods and services west of the Mississippi River. Annual real G.D.P. did not reach its 1929 level again until 1936. We are experiencing pain now, but the problems of the Great Depression were several magnitudes greater.”
A highly-recommended read.
Last week, I was talking with someone who runs a company with a service primarily sold through an out-bound phone sales effort targeting decision makers at small and medium size wholesale businesses. He told me he thought the economy turned-around on March 10. “Why such a precise date?” I asked. “Because that’s when our salespeople started being told, “yes,” instead of, “no.”
I’m sure I could ask someone who runs a business in another field and get another opinion, but such are the anecdotes that lead one to believe an economy the size and complexity of the U.S.’s can shift from apocalypse to growth with precision.
This morning, a Reuters story reports that a “survey of top forecasters” (Do economists do something other than respond to surveys?) reveals that economic growth will resume in the third quarter of this year, which, according to the calendar on my iPhone, starts in about three weeks. According to the economists, “The economic downturn is expected to ease in the second quarter of this year.” (The economists didn’t give a precise date for when the easing began, but I’m guessing it was March 10.)
If “blue ribbon panels” of economists and the person I know who declared March 10th as the end of the recession are correct, you can expect me to declare sometime in the future that I am correct in suggesting that the only economist ever worth listening to is Chauncey Gardiner.
There are several reasons I love what photographer Peter Norby did on his Flickr account the other day. If you are viewing it as I am seeing it (on the morning of April 29) all 12 photos appearing on the front page of his account make up a mosaic celebrating a major accomplishment in the lives of his two children.
The first reason I love this: I’m a long time, avid user of Flickr and enjoy the way in which people are constantly coming up with ways to use its features and functions in new and unique ways. I not only find myself being awed by the beauty or skill displayed in the photography people share, but by the way in which they tag them, group them or find ways to build communities around different types of photos. But then, someone like Peter comes along and does something totally different (or, at least to me, totally different — others have done it) and I am awed in a completely new way. On the page, there are layers of artistic expression that perhaps only a geek into photography might appreciate about what Peter has done, but since that describes me, well, that’s the first reason I love it.
The second reason I love this: In my family, we have celebrated the exact same events many years ago (about 12, if my math is correct). “Suzuki” families appreciate the significance of what “a book recital” means — many months of practice, typically a year in the early books, can go into it. I know the pride (and relief) that a parent (and Suzuki “coach”) feels — and that are uniquely expressed on Peter’s Flickr page today. That it brought back such pleasant memories is the second reason I love it.
There is an interesting piece in the New York Times today about the historical chart that shows it took 25 years for the Dow Jones Industrial Average to recover after the 1929 crash. However, because the DJIA is merely a basket of 30 stocks that are supposed to reflect the industrial sector of the market, the index is only as good as the choices of companies included in the basket. For example, IBM was removed from the index between 1939 and 1979, a decision some have estimated caused the index to perform 1/2 of its potential had IBM remained in.
According to Mark Hulbert, the author of the piece, if you look at overall market performance after the 1929 crash, rather than at the 30 stocks in the DJIA, the chart tells another story: “An investor who invested a lump sum in the average stock at the market’s 1929 high would have been back to a break-even by late 1936 — less than four and a half years after the mid-1932 market low.”
Hulbert’s explanation of how this can be, underscores something I believe — and have experienced personally: The movement of the 30 stocks that comprise the Dow Jones Industrial Average does not necessarily reflect the ups and downs of the entire economy, much less the ups and downs of a specific geographic area, industry or individual.
The Great Depression was a period of economic deflation and massive unemployment, but it was not evenly distributed across the entire nation and entire economy. Furthermore, industries, regions and specific businesses and individuals can be wiped out in times of economic prosperity. In Florida, for example, orange growers can tell you the years that freezes occurred and how many growing seasons it took for them to recover. The textile industry of the south collapsed in the 1970s and has never recovered — and perhaps the domestic automotive industry may never, also. But regional depressions like Central Florida freezes and cheap foreign labor taking over the manufacture of socks do not bring down the entire economy at once.
I will never be able to debate the people who crunch numbers and select the set of crunched graphs that enable them to make claims that the entire U.S. economy will never recover from where it is today because of some systemic reason related to the way a butterfly flapped its wings in 1997. Home mortgages and bank consolidation and unregulated credit swaps made on the backs of napkins or any number of other factors can be used to argue that this downturn is unlike all others.
But this, also is fact: When you use statistics that measure something as massive and complex as the U.S. or world economy, you can never understand the prosperity or pain that is occurring with specific individuals at any one moment. The economy is down, but not everyone is feeling it like those in certain cities or industries. Likewise, when the economy recovers, there will be pain and suffering among individuals and groups who experience set-backs and tragedies unique to them.
Each of us has our own basket of reality that serves as the index charting our ups and downs.
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