Thursday, March 30, 2006

Shop 'til You Drop

Here's one more place to get discounted tickets for a few Las Vegas shows...and they have some for shows on Broadway, as well. It's my favorite store in the world for everything from peanuts to Picassos...Costco!

• Posted at 7:29 PM · LINK

Exit Laughing

As reported here and elsewhere, columnist Art Buchwald is in a hospice where he is expected to die before much more time has passed. He seems to be going with enormous courage and good humor, which I guess is how we all want to go as we approach the end credits of our lives. Last night, there was a nice little interview with him on Newshour With Jim Lehrer and you can view it on the 'net by going to this page. If you have the eleven minutes, you might find it somewhat inspiring.

• Posted at 3:15 PM · LINK

Showtime in Sin City

I've taken down my Las Vegas Guide section so I oughta recommend The Las Vegas Advisor site as a source of tips and info on that fair city. The best part of the site is subscription-only but there's plenty of valuable info in the free portions, including a guide to every hotel and casino and its website, plus reader ratings of much of what they offer. The Advisor is just about the only entity that reports on what's happening in Vegas without accepting advertising revenue from the businesses on which they're reporting. They're totally impartial and honest, and if a show or hotel stinks, they'll tell you. They also have a strong sense of overview, taking a wide picture of how the business there is evolving.

In the "pay" section right now is an item of some interest. Each year, they track the increases in the ticket prices of Vegas shows, which have been going up and up at alarming rates. Currently, there are 77 different shows in town and the average admission fee is $62.02, which is a 15.58% increase from last year. That's 62 bucks per person. In July of '92 when they began this annual survey, the average price of a show was $27.05. What's more, there are now ten shows with a top ticket price of $100 or more — in many cases, the bottom ticket price is that much — plus two more that are only a buck or two under a hundred. Not figured into the survey is that there are also a number of headliners (Celine Dion, Barry Manilow, Elton John and Reba McEntire, to name four) for whom premium seating will run $200-$225 a seat.

There are probably — this is me talking now, not The Advisor — several reasons for the increase. One is that a number of the seedier hotels in Vegas have closed down to be replaced by fancier ones. This has meant many of the seedier shows have closed, as well, skewing the average upwards. Another is that there's been a trend towards four-walling, as discussed here. This means that the producers of a show are independent from the hotel and not as interested in using entertainment as a loss-leader to get you in to gamble. But the biggest reason is simply that people are willing to pay the new, higher prices. A number of shows simply decided, "Let's start inching ticket prices up and see how it affects business." The answer is that it hasn't affected it much. I'm told that one show went from around $50 a ticket to around $70 with no noticeable impact in the number of seats they were selling. If your business could get away with that, they would.

Fortunately, there are discounts available. There are two outlets in Vegas — Tix4Tonight and Tickets2Nite — which have what are usually half-price tickets for whatever isn't selling out. Once in a while (though not on Friday or Saturday nights), they even have a few ducats for the mega-shows. You cannot purchase tickets or even find out what they have by phone or on the web. You have to go to one of their outlets in the afternoon and see what they have for that evening. Another company, Goldstar Events, does do business online and in advance, and sometimes has nice discounts for Vegas shows and also for events in many other cities.

Going to the ticket outlets — which, depending on where you're staying, may not be conveniently located and which will probably always involve waiting in a line — is a pain and a waste of your vacation time. I suspect that we will soon see more discount outlets springing up across the city plus, to the extent the shows will allow it, services that will go get you half-price tickets for a small fee. In the meantime, it's a far cry from the day, not so long ago, when a bunch of my friends and I flew to Vegas one morning, saw three shows in one evening and caught a 1 AM flight home. Roundtrip airfare from LAX, which hasn't gone up that much since then, was $99 and the three shows plus cabfare and two meals (one of which was all-you-can-eat) collectively cost about another hundred per person. In fact, I won enough in twenty minutes of Blackjack to more than cover my expenses. Hard to do that these days.

• Posted at 12:02 PM · LINK

Follow-Up

Hey, is that Barry Newman — best known as the star of the TV series Petrocelli and for a recurring role on the current hit, O.C. — in the Adams Sour Gum commercial of today's Video Link? It doesn't look like him to me but six of you so far have written in to either ask if it's him or say you're certain. I don't suppose there's any easy way to verify this, nor is it that important. I think Mr. Newman used to live in my area as I used to see him around often. But I haven't spotted him in years and even if I did, I don't think I'd approach the guy to ask him that.

• Posted at 9:28 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

As I explained here, the only chewing gum I ever liked was Adams Sour Orange Gum. A few months ago, the company that acquired the company that acquired the company that used to make it put out what they called a "limited availability" of Adams Sour Cherry Gum and Adams Sour Apple Gum — two of the other flavors that were part of the same line. We've been hoping they'll get around to whipping up some of the orange kind too, and we will not abandon that hope. Until, of course, it looks pretty certain they're not going to do it.

Yesterday afternoon, I called the Cadbury Adams company and asked a nice lady in the Consumer Relations Office if they had any plans to bring it back. She said, "We never know until the folks upstairs announce those things. I haven't heard anything but I'll be glad to submit your request." I asked her if while she was at it, she could do something to get Souplantation to keep the Creamy Tomato Soup around and also get someone to release Skidoo on DVD. I figured it couldn't hurt.

I'm not sure if I want to chew Adams Sour Orange Gum again or if I just like the idea of some lost relic of my childhood making a comeback. What I think I'd really like is for them to start airing this commercial again...

• Posted at 12:18 AM · LINK

Here's Howie

Let me direct you to a short but nice article on Howie Mandel in The Canadian Jewish News. Howie's one of the good guys in the business and if you've never seen him do stand-up, you're missing something. He improvises on stage more than any other comedian I've ever seen. What he does up there is not for kids and now that he has a hit with Deal or No Deal, he'll probably have the problem Redd Foxx had, which was people who came to see him, thinking he was going to be as clean and lovable as ol' Fred Sanford. Still, it's a small price to pay for fame and fortune.

• Posted at 12:16 AM · LINK

March 31, 2006 • Current • March 29, 2006