Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Assorted thoughts

- Madonna is doing her best to avoid the inevitable public uproar that comes with selling tickets in an auction format. Given how much people dislike ticket scalping, you'd think at some point an artist would come out and say "Since my fans dislike scalping so much, I'm auctioning tickets to get rid of it." It's almost like ticket scalping and auctioning are viewed as the same thing-- maybe it's not the scalping that people dislike but the high prices. Fighting scarcity is probably a battle that you're not going to win.

- Since I've seemed to become a Jeopardy! commenter, the last two nights have witnessed an impressive display by a graduate student who, prior to Final Jeopardy, has had $42,000+ and $30,000+, respectively. I recommend tuning in; she is as aggressive of a Daily Double better that the show has seen in a while. In her first night, she had a chance to beat the Jeopardy high score, set by (who else?) Ken Jennings at a robust $75,000, but neglected her chance at Cliff Claven fame.

- I wrote last week about the problems the NBA has with unexciting teams seeming to have the most success in recent seasons; San Antonio and Detroit are the usual examples. Both teams are in the conference finals, and I'd imagine that David Stern shudders at the thought of the lower seeded Spurs and/or Pistons winning another series. I think Detroit has a very fair chance at winning against Boston and San Antonio a puncher's chance against Los Angeles; don't expect tonight's Game 1 of the latter to be indicative of the entire series, the Spurs didn't have a nice trip to L.A.

1 comment:

Justin M Ross said...

It's about time they do this auctioning off of tickets. The whole Hanna Montana Fiasco revealed this much. Although it seems ticket scalpers smooth the revenues for many venues, so I bet it is not extremely widespread at first.