War on Work

Mike Rowe is an everyman.

I've never been one to embrace the glorious merits of manual labor, but he's convinced me.

Hot Air

Here's a fun quip I found on the whole Internet machine thingy:

A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She lowered her altitude and spotted a man in a boat below. She shouted to him, "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am."

The man consulted his portable GPS and replied, "You're in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above ground elevation of 2,346 feet above sea level. You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude.”

"She rolled her eyes and said, "You must be an Obama Democrat."

"I am," replied the man. "How did you know?"

"Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is technically correct. But I have no idea what to do with your information and I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help to me."

The man smiled and responded, "You must be a Republican."

"I am," replied the balloonist. "How did you know?"

"Well," said the man, "you don't know where you are or where you are going. You've risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. You're in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but somehow, now it's my fault."

The Crescendo on Concert Prices

Enjoy the $3 tickets for Owl City; tickets elsewhere will now become even more expensive.

For the past year, the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission have been deliberating on the merger between Ticketmaster and Live Nation Entertainment. Ticketmaster already controls roughly 80 percent of all concert ticket sales - imagine if we add data from other events like sports or theater. This merger would give Ticketmaster a virtual monopoly on all aspects of music concerts and festivals.

Live Nation exclusively owns or operates 139 of the nation’s largest venues and promotes nearly 150 top musical artists. Since record sales are about half of what they were in 2000 and the vast majority of online music is stolen (according to The New Yorker), artists rely on performances as their primary stream of revenue. Live Nation and the very few other promoters gain little from actual ticket sales; on average, 90 percent of ticket sales go to the artist. Revenue for Live Nation primarily comes from ancillary services of a concert - namely parking, concessions and merchandise.

So when combined, Ticketmaster and Live Nation form a behemoth conglomeration that controls all aspects of the concert experience. A single authoritarian corporation providing the consumer with the performer, the venue, the parking, the food and drinks, the T-shirts, the posters, everything. Ticketmaster provides the last piece of the puzzle for Live Nation: Ticket sales.

The actions of Ticketmaster are what economists and businessmen call “vertical integration.” This is the process in which companies, consumers and suppliers will consolidate into a few or single entity, therefore controlling all aspects of an industry. This is a style of business that Ticketmaster has truly embraced. Before deciding to merge with Live Nation, Ticketmaster acquired Front Line Management - a promoting group that works with over 200 artists.

We should not be so comfortable with these business practices. As a Feb. 8 New York Times editorial points out, there are “perils that arise from the emergence of a company that will operate on every level of its business.”

Though this case of vertical integration doesn’t perfectly match the textbook definition of monopoly, the effects on the consumer are the same - exorbitant prices. There are crucial examples in other industries where anti-competitive business practices have strangled a market and led to increases in price.

In a similar antitrust case, the Supreme Court will review a case involving the National Football League; American sports leagues have always proved fickle for antitrust regulators. After the NFL licensed Reebok to make all team-branded clothing, “The Economist” reports that the price of team jerseys promptly rose 40 percent and, team hats rose 50 percent.

Rival merchandiser to Reebok, American Needle filed an antitrust suit because they were getting squeezed out of their market. The NFL contends that they’re not a single entity but instead 32 separate clubs acting as one. Though licensing merchandise itself may not be an act of monopolization, the NFL has asked the Supreme Court to expand the ruling of previous courts to allow them to vertically integrate all aspects of their business.

The NFL scenario is one of many instances where anti-competitive behavior resulted in unnecessary price hikes. Our markets are rife with non-competitive business practices. For example, the health insurance industry is notorious for overwhelming market shares. To their credit, Republicans have been very critical of anti-competitive health insurance practices, arguing for legislation that would allow companies to sell insurance across state lines. According to the Center for American Progress, Blue Cross Blue Shield controls 83 percent of the market share in Alabama; the next largest competitor has only five percent. Maine, Rhode Island and Hawaii have companies that control over 78 percent of their respective market shares.

The price of health care is so extortionate that, according to a 2007 study by the “American Journal of Medicine,” nearly 70 percent of those who filed for medical bankruptcy were paying off insurance premiums.

In both of these cases - the NFL and health care - we can almost surely expect the result to be similar with the Ticketmaster and Live Nation consolidation.

The Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice are setting a dangerous precedent by allowing Ticketmaster and Live Nation to merge - even if they are just vertically integrating. Understandably, they do not have an easy decision to make, and the arguments in favor of vertical integration are strong ones. Though vertical integration can be seen as monopolistic behavior - like this writer contends - many proponents argue that it makes businesses more efficient and it keeps costs down. The result, they claim, will be lower prices for the consumer. I would only point to the two previous cases where, clearly, this result did not happen.

Besides, it is not the place of the government to protect the business practices of corporations; instead, government must protect the interests and general welfare of its people - we the consumers. Rising ticket prices, and the slew of fees that come with buying them through Ticketmaster, will ultimately make music more exclusive. This exclusivity will only perpetuate the existing problem of music piracy, as consumers will feel the pressure to find the music they enjoy as cheap as possible.

In its already desperate and fragile health, the music industry, specifically the realm of live performance, has taken a huge blow. Congress should challenge these anticompetitive practices of Ticketmaster and Live Nation to preserve the sanctity of music for the fans - as I hope it would in all cases of noncompetition in all industries.

Somewhat Large Fish in a Big Pond

This is an assignment from my creative nonfiction class. It's the first time I've every put substantial in a creative work and I thought I'd share it. Tell me what you think.

“Oh dear, this won’t do at all,” my uncle said as I approached him. “We will have to get you a New York outfit.”

Apparently, he was unimpressed with my midwestern hippie motif. Undoubtedly, I felt a little hurt; I chose my favorite t-shirt for the trip to visit my Manhattan uncle. A natural green color, the shirt depicted the jovial, travelling version of Buddha meditating in front of a fig tree. The fat and happy Buddha smiles at you with wide grin. He’s happy in the moment and unconcerned with the next moment, undaunted with the chaos of the world around him.

I knew I was visiting my infamous uncle, so I accessorized with a beaded hemp necklace and a pair of tie-dye hemp flip-flops. My hair was rebellious and curly, fashioning itself more along the lines of a Hobbit rather than New York hipster. My jeans were naturally frayed from wear and abuse, thus they naturally stood out from the pre-beaten and pre-blasted jeans that scattered the crowded avenue. I looked like I belonged elsewhere, a music festival perhaps. None of this was appropriate; none of this was acceptable. I stood out in the chic, trendy SoHo neighborhood of New York.

A veteran of the urban jungle, my uncle stood a menacing five foot six with all the physical features of his tropical homeland, the Philippines. He had rich cinnamon skin punctuated with dark, coffee brown hair. He donned slim dark wash jeans with an almost glossy finish. Sleek, black leather boots rose just above the ankle. His confident, charismatic character proved to be charming and natural. There was swagger there, an attitude of appealing elitism and style. It was a kind of classy that could only emanate from a man who chose to forsake Brown University for the Fashion Institute of Technology. What sophistication, what panache. He was a first class New Yorker.

But my uncle – a former employee of Barney’s New York, the crème de la crème retailer of New York fashion – had plans. Tonight he and I would venture into the underground world of New York nightclubs.

I trembled with fear.

It was an intimidating task; I knew nothing of the laws of fashion. Mixing and matching, patterns and texture, the concepts of style eluded me. What’s more, the notion that I would accompany him to a gay club was as foreign as it was terrifying. Even though I hailed from New York’s little brother, Chicago, I thought myself ill prepared to handle such revelry tonight. There had to be something in the laws of nature to prevent this from happening, some court before which I could argue. Maybe there was someone I could convince, some authority vested with the power to keep midwestern, sartorially inept teenagers from entering gay clubs. Something. As it turns out, the traditional authorities (the NYPD) were of no concern to my uncle. Not even the laws of men could save me now.

He was determined. Standing in front of abnormally large mirror in his apartment, he began to reveal his master plan for me. He snubbed his the remains of his cigarette and promptly lit another before giving his analysis, which, was amazingly methodical and scientific.

“The first two things any girl sees on a man is his shoes and his hair,” he advised. For a man who had no interest in women, he sure knew a lot about what they wanted. “No matter anything else, if the hair and the shoes are not good, then everything else is worthless. Since you have to spend about $300 dollars for a good pair of shoes, instead of buying new ones, I’ll lend you a pair of mine. I’m envisioning something monochrome. As for that hair, hmmm.”

He squinted at me with one arm folded under his opposite elbow, pensively staring at my scalp like a painter stares at an empty canvas. No, more like a sculptor gazing at a stubborn block of marble.

“I’m thinking Matthew McConaughey. We’ll slick it back.”

I was mortified.

“Step two: Jeans,” he said. “Then we move onto shirts and accessories.”

As we sped out of his apartment, we picked up two shots of espresso (each) at the Cuban café down the street. Everything happened at an unnatural speed in New York. Like a shark cutting through the water, he weaved through a naturally crowded fifth avenue stopping sporadically between cigarettes to examine storefront after storefront. We jetted in and out of clothing stores in search of the perfect pair of jeans for the evening. It seemed silly to me this notion that we were questing for clothes to wear for a single night out. But there was no time for questioning, no time for deliberation, but just enough time for me to conjure up an adequate amount of dwindling willingness to participate matched with a fragile trust in his judgment.

Finally we came across a pair he liked - a dark grey denim with a slim fit and glossy sheen, both of which my uncle approved. They were uncomfortable and tight and $160 and he was paying for them. I had no complaints, or I wasn’t allowed to have any; to this day I’m not sure which. After finding the jeans, the crux of the ensemble, the rest of the outfit fell into place.

The motif called for a monochromatic selection of clothes and accessories. I borrowed his $360 Italian leather motorcycle boots, which were decorated with the roar of a Harley Davidson engine. He gave me his knit jacket, black with black epaulets; the strange thing about this jacket was that it zipped from the bottom center up to the top right shoulder. Not straight, curved. We completed the whole set with a large, chrome, lion’s head belt buckle. Subtlety was never my uncle’s prerogative.

But I chose the shirt. Black and gray, it depicted the skinnier, more orthodox Siddhartha Buddha. He sat in front of black space dotted with a chaotic swirl of red dots orbiting his smile. The smile was different though; it was smug. This Siddhartha Buddha held one hand in his lap and raised the other, poised to take a drag of a cigarette.

We sped back to his apartment where I let my uncle slick my hair back into a tangled mess of Matthew McConaughey mimicry. In full costume, I stood back and looked at what we had managed to put together. From Italian leather to slick, greasy hair, I was supposed to be in awe of my uncle’s genius – and make no mistake, this was genius.

But in the mirror I saw someone else behind me; he was uncle, yet different. In this eternal moment, a brief lapse where time forgot to move, he had a captivating depth. I could see slowly and in detail. In a vacuum of cigarette smoke and fluorescent light, his look reminded me of something. My uncle sat with one hand in his lap and raised his other, poised to take a drag from his cigarette. He gave me smile. This smile was different though; it was smug. I smiled at him with a wide grin. I felt happy in the moment and unconcerned with the next moment, undaunted by the chaos of the world around me. I was at peace and feared no more.

The Short Take: The Importance of Grammar

Originally published in the Valparaiso University student newspaper, The Torch, on February 5, 2010.

Last Monday, I sat through a Student Senate meeting listening to various senators debate grammar. As inane and dull as this experience was, I understood the importance of proper grammar and accurate diction.

I fear that we are forsaking the study of our own language and instead are complacently accepting a compromise of hasty, barely acceptable writing. In a culture that demands rapid-fire communication, there is no place left for appropriate language.

But we are not only neglecting the beauty of language, but its own efficacy. The subtle nuances of words are in place for reasons. How often do people mistake “conservation” with “preservation?”

We also lose tone in our ignorance of language. Think back to the last time someone misunderstood a text message because there was no smiley.

Take the time to understand the language you speak. It’ll make life easier.

The Short Take: State of the Union and the state of discourse.

Originally published in the January 29th edition of The Torch, Valparaiso University's student newspaper.

Like a responsible newsman, I watched President Obama’s State of the Union address last Wednesday; like a responsible college student, I watched it streaming live on YouTube while tweeting and debating with a friend about the substance of Obama’s speech via Facebook. This is all happening, of course, in multiple tabs of Google Chrome, shifting between these sites with the dexterity of an Italian cab driver.

The speed with which our technology is evolving and the ability of the masses to harness it, is truly astounding. YouTube had more than four million live viewers of the State of the Union. Twitter threads bearing the hash tag “SOTU” received nearly 300 tweets per minute during the address and Facebook’s live feed was rife with Obama-talk. Social media brought about massive public discourse on a scale that no town meeting, no newspaper column could match.

Considering the demographics of social media users, we are given even more reason for encouragement. Nearly half of all Twitter users are between the ages of 18 and 35 years of age. It’s clear that social media is catalyzing political socialization among young people. All this technology and all this software must be tended to properly and immediately. It will be must easier to groom and nurture this infant of social media as it grows. For when it hits its adolescence, we must be prepared for more turbulent times, ones that may put today’s media to shame.