Is Any One Else ...

... a little creeped out by the new Quaker Oats ads, with their ominous tagline "Go Humans Go." When I see this ad go buy on the back of buses, I shiver a bit. Although the company is trying to have him portrayed as some sort of benevolent capitalist version of the old Marvel character The Watcher, instead the quaker man has become a sort of creepy non human entity that gives us fuel for his own sick twisted amusement, and perhaps some darker for evil experiment.

The strange thing, though, is I really like the Burger King ads with "The King." Maybe it's because Burger King seems in on the joke - here is a strange character who is coming to either kill you or stuff you full of hamburgers, or do one by repeated doing the other until you die. The creepiness is the whole point.

Ticketmaster Fail

Talking smack about how terrible Ticketmaster is feels like shooting fish in a barrel, but as I'm standing next to this barrel with a loaded weapon, here goes.

There's nothing on the face of it wrong with either high service charges or just hiding charges in tickets, but a few details revealed when I buy tickets from ticketmaster drive me nuts.

Facilities Charges - Okay, let's break down what the money for a ticket to a performance goes to. The performer gets some money, certainly. Also, ticketmaster gets their cut either on the ticket or in their ridiculous add on charges. Then the rest goes to the venue. This is fine, it's how capitalism works, I give them money and they use it to pay their staff and buy supplies/food/booze/equipment/etc and pay rent and taxes. So why do they get to charge an extra buck as a facilities charge. Shouldn't that be part of the money going to the damn venue. That is the facilities charge already. Maybe I should just pay a subset of the money directly to a band and they could play in the street.

PDF Printing Charge - Ticketmaster does not charge you to mail the ticket, but does charge you to pick it up at will call or most bafflingly, for you to print it yourself. This is like a phone company charging for every text message. Oh wait they do. Well okay, it's like a company charging you to send email. The tickets are in an automated pdf. They already exist. Mission tix doesn't charge me anything to print my tickets, so you can't claim that it's some intellectual BS. Instead ticketmaster charged me a few bucks to do their job for you. And yet getting tickets in the mail, which costs ticketmaster money the envelope, ticket paper, ink and the postage, is free. Oy!