Lewis Black is doing a one night performance out in Thousand Oaks on August 20 at the Fred Kavli Center. It's a very nice theater but it's pretty big. I wanted to get a batch of friends together and go but not if we were going to have to sit in the back row of the ninth balcony up where the air is thin.
Well, it turns out all the good seats were snatched up about eleven seconds after they went on sale. Since then, the only tix available for purchase have been way overpriced or way up in the stratosphere, usually the latter. In fact, even the overpriced good seats seem to have disappeared.
I just browsed a bunch of online ticket agencies and discovered, much to my amazement, that most of the seats they're offering are in Row H in the balcony. That is the absolute last row they have at the Kavli. Any farther back and you have to sit in the attic. For these, they're asking $175 (plus various fees) per seat. Which is especially outrageous when you go over to the Ticketmaster site and notice that they still have seats in Row D of that same balcony for the printed price of $47.50 plus fees.
What can we learn from this? That there are a lot of people on the Internet who are too dense to comparison-shop a bit? Does someone actually go to a ticket broker and pay four hundred smackers for a pair of seats without checking the main source first? Or is the broker just assuming that by mid-August, the $47.50 tickets will be long gone and he'll get the inflated price?
Row D of the balcony is still too far from Mr. Black to suit me. I think from now on when I see him, it'll be in Las Vegas. He's playing a number of dates there in the next few months and they all have good seats available...at a top price of $60 each.
Among the habits I've broken over the years is a curiosity that once led me to try almost every new non-taco fast food chain outlet I encountered. I'm not sure why I did this as long as I did. Apart from In-n-Out Burger and Koo Koo Roo, I never found much that was that interesting or even that different. The burgers and fries were never significantly better than McDonald's and often notably worse...and I can't recall sampling or even seeing many items on any menu that caused me to say, "Wow, I have to come back here for that." At best, I'd come away from a visit thinking something like, "Okay...if I'm ever stuck somewhere and the only option is a Wendy's, I can survive." Eventually, I got over even that reason.
If I were still doing that, I'd probably make (the pun is unavoidable) a bee-line for Jollibee, a popular fast food chain from the Phillipines which is now arriving on our shores. There are eleven of them sprinkled across California with other states to follow...and every time I drive by the one at Beverly Boulevard and Vermont, I'm curious — not about how I might like the food but about how my homeland will. Some of the food is pretty standard for a place like this but you also have your Palabok Fiesta, which is a serving of high quality bihon noodles topped with a special pork-shrimp sauce, garnished with pork strips, shrimps, toasted garlic, flaked smoked fish, pork cracklings and sliced eggs. That doesn't sound bad to me but, you know, it's not exactly a Big Mac. And a lot of Americans are scared off by something that feels a little foreign to them.
Which may not matter to the Jollibee people. They're opening primarily in neighborhoods that have a high Filipino population and apparently think they can make a go of it, just on that demographic. I'm just wondering to what extent, if any, they fantasize about luring a wider audience into their drive-thrus. The company website seems to have no such wish-dream. They even say, "Jollibee has grown to be so well loved that every time a new store is opened, especially overseas, Filipinos form long queues to the store without fail. It is not just a place where they feel at home; it is a stronghold of heritage, a monument of Filipino victory." So maybe they don't even want a lot of non-Filipinos coming in, diluting that sense of Filipino victory...or maybe they'd regard it as a greater victory if we did all flock to our neighborhood Jollibee.
I honestly don't know, nor do I know if a wider audience will go to a Filipino fast food stand or if they'll regard it as an alien presence. Obviously, everyone accepts a Chinese restaurant or a Japanese restaurant or even a traditional Filipino eatery without any issues...but there's something about the "fast food" format that may seem invasive to some people, especially since a Jollibee outlet looks like your basic American burger/fries establishment. I'd like to think a chain like this could be accepted and could thrive and could even blur a few of the sillier ethnic divisions. I just wonder if some people can bring themselves to patronize a stronghold of Filipino heritage. The fries will have to be pretty damn good.
Jacob Weisberg on why it's ridiculous to prohibit Internet-based gambling. I'm not sure any restrictions that are ever placed on adults gambling have a reason other than that those who are already in that business don't want the competition.
I've been plugging a one-man show that's currently running in Hollywood...and which has been, I'm informed, extended through August 27. It's called Zero Hour and it was written by my old pal Jim Brochu, who's also the one man in the cast. He plays Zero Mostel, discoursing for two hours about art, acting, marriage, Judaism and many other topics. A big subject is the blacklist, which torpedoed the careers of Mostel and some of his closest friends.
So here we have about three minutes of that section of the play. If it makes you want to go see it, all the info you need can be found on this page. (And here's a tip: You may be able to score cheaper tix on this page.)
July 30, 2006
