Wise Ideas

Let's Put on a Show!

Global economic crisis. Who cares.

The Dow is tanking.....again.  Yawn.

The most important presidential election of our lifetime.  Big deal.

High School Musical 3 opens in theaters today.  OMG!  THIS IS THE DAY I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR ALL MY LIFE!

Well, not really.  But if you are a tween or pre-tween (yes, pre-tween) girl, this is where your still-developing-and-very-impressionable-mind is at today.  And in my household, the excitement is beyond fever pitch because my daughter's birthday is just four days away and we are taking all her giggly girlfriends to a Sunday matinee of HSM3.

Say what you will about the Disney phenomenon that is the High School Musical franchise -- but when you think about it, it couldn't have come at a better time.

Kids today are growing up in a scary, uncertain world.  And although you could probably say that about every generation, the main difference is that it has become nearly impossible in today's 24/7 connected and networked environment to shield children from the scary things out there.

What better time, then, to "put on a show" as Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney always did back in the 40's, when things were pretty darn scary, too.

Only now, "the show" is in living color and HD, well financed, dressed real spiffy, and deals with much more complex issues than the Judy and Mickey movies did back in the 40's.  Issues like inter-racial relationships (Troy and Gabriella), the class system (the whole plot of HSM2), and whether the high school basketball star will still be accepted (and popular!) if he chooses to sing and dance instead (not that there's anything wrong with that..).

Still, the HSM movies are all squeaky clean, have really catchy music, and some hot dance moves that even an eight year old can mimic. And for adults, there's an element of nostalgia.  When I saw the video for the hit HSM3 song "Now or Never," I was immediately whisked back to my high school days as a cheerleader (yes, really) during the state basketball championships.  I can almost smell the gym and the hormones!

So after another week of watching the Dow dive, jobs disappear and all sorts of unsavory things happening around the world and around the corner...who couldn't use "a little honest jolt of feel-good fizz."

That, and a stiff drink.

Have a good weekend.

The Death (and Life) of an iPod

It finally happened.  My six-year old second generation 20GH iPod died this week.  It went into complete battery and hard drive failure at the gym during my cardio routine.  To much exercise, I guess.

At least, I'm assuming it's a total goner.  It's had battery failures before, but I've always been able to resurrect it by following Apple's instructions of resetting it or "restoring" its factory settings.  Not this time.  Like a ghost from the grave, it communicated with me from "the beyond" by sending me cryptic messages on its old-fashioned black-and-white screen:  5TO1 HELP USBFAIL RESET WOMEN&CHILDRENFIRST THISISGOINGTOCO$TYOU.  Of course, because it was dead, I couldn't scroll to any of these messages to unlock my iPod's secrets. 

Because it's an Apple product, and Apple customers are notoriously chatty, there's ample information on the Internet as to my iPod's death.  Countless Mac forums like this one recount the passings of iPods...some by "natural causes" and others from mysterious battery failures some users believe are conspiracies by Apple to get people to buy new iPods every few years - or less.

Many of these forum-types are often mad about the death of their iPods and blame Apple directly.  Some have every right - for instance if their iPod crashed within a year of its purchase.  I'm not mad, however - but sad.

My iPod has been my steady companion ever since 2003, when I finally started transferring music onto my computer and building up my iTunes library.  Once the trendiest accessory in the gym, my bulky white iPod with the black-and-white screen grew old-fashioned among its more colorful Nano and Shuffle friends.  It has traveled with our family and provided familiar music my kids could fall asleep to when staying in strange places, calmed my daughter when she was having a "moment" on an airplane, busted my son's boredom while waiting for his sister at ballet, accompanied me on bike rides and hikes, and given me a needed "cone of silence" when bickering erupts in the back seat.

I'll miss my old friend, but not apparently as much as Micah.  Micah is a Silicon Valley teenager and a self-described "blogger extraordinaire" at Micahville.  She experienced such grief at the death of her iPod that she buried it and (of course) posted pictures of the ceremony on her blog.  Micah, however, is a modern teenager who not only gets over things quickly, but who is also suspect of Apple and it's "battery failure" problems. 

Back in adult-ville, while I mourned my iPod in my own way, my husband had a completely different reaction when I told him the news.  Inexplicably, a big smile crossed his face.  And just a few hours later, while I was out taxi-ing the kids around, my husband dashed off to the Apple store.  When I got home, he excitedly surprised me with a fancy-schmancy iTouch.  I was touched.

The soundtrack of my life will continue - when I finally figure out how to load it and work it.  

The Hottest Ticket in Town

Forget Springsteen and his reunited E Street Band.  Or The Police, Bon Jovi, Annie Lennox, Van Halen, Rascal Flatts and Garth Brooks - all of whom are on tour right now.

The hottest ticket in the country right now gets you into the nearest arena to see a 14-year old girl named Miley Cyrus.  And if you have to ask "who?", then you obviously don't have, know of, or come in contact with anyone under the age of 16.

Miley Cyrus, daughter of the formerly famous country-western singer Billy Ray Cyrus, is better known among her fan base as Hannah Montana - star of her own Disney Channel series and now a concert tour sensation among the tweener set.

Snicker you may.  But while rock legends like Bruce Springsteen, who has 30 years worth of material, plus new stuff to perform, are s-l-o-w-l-y selling out arenas with ticket prices ranging from $57 cheap seats to $900+ boxes ---the exuberant 14-year old Disney upstart with one CD under her belt has created a fan frenzy for her "Best of Both Worlds" tour that has taken the concert ticketing and promotion world by storm. 

From coast to coast, Hannah Montana tickets ranging in price from $125 to $1000+ are being snatched up only minutes after going on sale.  Many of them are being bought by brokers or scalpers using sophisticated software to scoop up thousands of tickets at a time, thus cutting out the average person just looking to buy a couple of seats.  And according to The LATimes, those scalpers are praying on desperate parents by charging as much as $3,000 a ticket. 

"Hell hath no fury like the parent of a child throwing a tantrum," Joe Freeman, vice president of Ticketmaster told The Times.  "People who have been in this business for a long time are watching what's happening, and they say there hasn't been a demand of this level or intensity since the Beatles or Elvis."

In fact, Hannah Montana-mania and the resulting scalper scams so infuriated Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon, that he sued three ticket brokers for allegedly scalping Hannah Montana tickets.  Then he went after Ticketmaster and pressured it to release thousands of "promotional" tickets it was holding to upcoming Hannah Montana shows in Kansas City and St. Louis.  '“We wanted to make sure that a lot of frustrated moms and dads, with their disappointed kids, had the opportunity to purchase tickets to these concerts at face value," AG Nixon says on ConsumerAffairs.com.

Now, from state to state as the Hannah Montana concert juggernaut rolls through, an increasing number of attorneys general and other authorities are on the look-out for scalper scams and putting pressure on Ticketmaster to stop the madness. 

This in turn, forced Ticketmaster to put the squeeze on a Pennsylvania technology company that develops and distributes the software that allows brokers and scalpers to get around its security systems to buy thousands of tickets at a time.   As you can read here at CNNMoney.com, a federal judge has now barred the company from further creating or distributing those programs.

And all this -- because countless parents are trying to score seats for their pre-teen kids to see a Disney phenom perform her "catalog" of 10 songs. 

But for all you parents who have no intention of giving in to tween pressure by paying hundreds of dollars for tickets -- or by participating in some lame radio station promotion to win tickets (like these "dads in drag" that ABC's World News Sunday  reported on) - there is hope.  Disney (not one to let this opportunity slip by) is planning a special Disney Digital 3D movie presentation of the concert for release one week only, February 1st through 7th.

I can't imagine that young Ms. Cyrus has a career in front of her like a Springsteen or a Sting --- but I certainly hope she learns something from the spectacular failures of her Disney predecessors Britney Spears and Lindsey Lohan...and keeps her wits about her as she grows up.  As Miley Cyrus-as-Hannah Montana sings in one of her three hits:

Nobody's Perfect!
I gotta work it!
Again and again till I get it right
Nobody's Perfect!
You live and you learn it!
And if I mess it up sometimes.
Nobody's perfect.......

Music to Whose Ears?

Amazon is taking on iTunes.

Starting today, you can download more than 2 million songs from more than 180,000 artists while you shop for books, toys, DVDs, power tools, electronics, etc., etc., etc...  As the Silicon Valley Insider reports this morning, "the key selling point is that all of the files are in unencrypted MP3 format, which means they'll work on Apple's iPods, iTunes, and every other music player and service as well."

The other thing that sets Amazon digital music store apart from iTunes is that it plans to offer a la carte prices on music.  "Most songs are priced between 89 cents and 99 cents, with more than 1 million songs priced at 89 cents," the company tells BusinessWeek.  Most albums are priced between $5.99 and $9.99.

But price isn't the only difference.  Only two of the four major music labels are (so far) participating with Amazon.  Which broken down to numbers, means that Amazon has 2 million songs, while Apple has 5 million.  Not that you have that much time and money to download that much music - but chances are 50-50 that your favorite artists might not be available at Amazon (yet).

Another big difference, according to the Insider, is that the Amazon store doesn't work as quickly or as smoothly as iTunes because it's "browser based." You can listen to a thorough story about Amazon's attempt to cut into Apple's music biz from NPR's Morning Edition this morning.  And I'm sure this will be bigger news as the day wears on.

The battle for your music bucks heats up even more next week when Starbucks hooks up with Apple an starts giving away free iTunes downloads...a promotion which will go on for 37 straight days. As the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports, "up to 1.5 million daily giveaways will begin Oct. 2 and run through Nov. 7 at more than 10,000 company-owned and licensed U.S. stores.  When the promotion ends, Starbucks expects to have given away more than 50 million songs."

I'm sure they'll sell plenty of pumpkin spice lattes, as well. 

In my family, I am in charge of downloading music for everyone.  I'm sure that will change once my kids get a little older and I give them the "keys" to the computer, but until then I'm in charge of our listening libraries.  That's why I found my reaction to news of Amazon's new digital music adventure interesting:  it's not enough to lure me away from iTunes - yet.

I comparison shop for nearly everything - so why not music?   Is it just because I'm used to iTunes and it's an easy and pleasant experience?   Is it because I have this desire to go to one place that features only media ---- and stay out of the mega-store unless I need books, toys or power tools? 

What are your thoughts?  Will you be clicking over to Amazon and giving its music download service a whirl?  Click below on "Comments" and tell me why, or why not.