YOU RAN RIGHT INTO THAT ONE

Come on President Obama. I'm no political strategist, but with the November midterm election right around the corner, I would never have handed the Republicans a meaty bone the size of OK-ing a mosque being built near Ground Zero. Like the Roadrunner, Republicans painted a tunnel on the side of a rock. The Roadrunning Republicans ran right through the tunnel. And President Obama ended up like Wil E. Coyote - instead of zooming through the tunnel, you ran right into the rock wall. Who is running strategy at the White House? Politics 101 students at GWU?

How a Manhattan based zoning issue turned into a national referendum is beyond me, but this is the polarizing political climate we live in today. I'm not sure I understand why is this even a discussion? If a Christian or Jewish terrorist group had committed a terrorist act, would we stop building temples or churches in the United States? No. So why hurt an entire religious group of Americans and punish them for something they had no part of?

90% of the people upset around the country have never even been to New York City. Or seen Ground Zero recently and then walked 2 long blocks away where the Muslim Center is being built. The Muslim Center (that has a mosque inside) will completely rejuvenate that neighborhood. This is a private citizen issue, not a federal political issue. The government has no business or justification to do anything. And that's written into the U.S. Constitution. For those worried about national security, come on. You think the Department of Homeland Security isn't all over that center already? The CIA & FBI will pick up any terrorist who heads to New York City to see the "glory of the mosque."

Everyone please calm down. Building on the World Trade Center site is one thing. Building "near" it is a complete non-issue.

ZAC EFRON IS GOING TO BE A HUGE MOVIE STAR

But not if he keeps making movies like Charlie St. Cloud. What a terrible film. It was like a bad Lifetime movie on a 3rd rate cable channel. You expect me to believe that everyone in this small little town is stunningly beautiful (including the never explained annoying 20 year old Russell Brand clone) and they all work in a graveyard? Everything about the movie was bad. It was like a kid version of Ghost. The movie was just pointless, but damn, the camera does love Zac Efron.

Mr. Efron has it all, the expression, the look, he eats up the screen when he's on camera, and he definitely has the soulful eyes acting down. And that's really all you need to be a movie star. Soulful eyes.

Fortunately I have to give Mr. Efron's management team credit for signing and overall deal for Zac Efron with Warner Bros. Studios. He's trying to transition his career from teen star into serious adult actor. And while I get where he's going with this, a few more misstep like Charlie St. Cloud and this could be the has been who never was story.

In my opinion what Zac Efron really needs is a film where he has a gun in his hand. Look, the kid is in his prime. The scenes where he was fake water-sliding in CSC showed off his well known dancing physique. He's got his late 30's and 40's to be "Mr. Pretty But Serious Academy Award Contender" Until then, pick a superhero picture or something with you killing bad guys and getting hot girls. Bang out a few worldwide $200 million dollar pictures and then you can take your pick of directors and art house films.

While Leonardo DiCaprio is one of my favorite actors of all time, Zac Efron should be taking a page from Brad Pitt's book. Work the whole matinée idol in action pics, and then later do your Benjamin Buttons while your with whoever the next Angelina Jolie is. (And after Jonah Hex flopped and she got fired from Transformers 3, Meghan Fox is definitely not the next Angelina Jolie. Meghan Fox cooled down quick).

Warner Bros. will make you a huge movie star Mr. Efron. You heard it here first.

ANGIE JO ROCKED IN SALT!

Tom Cruise made a HUGE mistake not making SALT his next film. I don't know what he was thinking or who advised him when he passed on the movie to make one of Summer 2010's many movie bombs, Knight & Day. Tom Cruise's career had just been resurrected after he had a worldwide hit with Valkyrie. His career was back on track and he could have his pick of films with 5 different scripts from 3 different studios. Mr. Cruise chose most unwisely.

When Tom Cruise passed on SALT and Phillip Noyce (who directed Ms. Jolie in 1999's Bone Collector) was signed to direct, Ms. Jolie made a great selection for her next feature film. Sony made a very smart move retooling the script for her. The script is tight, the directing is fast paced, and once SALT starts up it never slows down. In effect, it's the perfect summer popcorn action thriller.

And Angelina Jolie is great in it. She's sexy, fierce and doing most of her own stunts. In effect, you're watching a movie star shine as bright as a supernova. And I have to give Angelina Jolie a ton of credit for being such a talented actress. People forget that behind her large family, famous husband is a young woman with an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and the only actress working in Hollywood today who can 1. Open a movie on her own and 2. go from showy, sexy action star roles to Academy Award nominated performances playing a frail, weak mother in 1920's Los Angeles (The Changling). Her talent, sexiness, looks, beauty, inner strengths and weaknesses are all on full display in SALT. Seriously, she's worth the $20 million Columbia paid her to make the movie.

And while I'm gushing about Angie Jo, Christmas comes early for me this year. Sony just announced that her next Tom Cruise passed on script, The Tourist will be released on December 10, 2010 with Johnny Depp. Awesome! It's just like 2008 when we were treated to Angie Jo in Wanted and in December, The Changling.

A BUSIER SUMMER?

Last summer I was moving from Miami Beach to Los Angeles. I had to pack up all my clothes, put my car on a flatbed for transportation across the country, shut down my Miami work and start up my LA work, find a broker to find a tenant to rent my condo (I found the broker, but not the tenant), pack for 2 weeks while my life was shipped across the country, coordinate my move out of Miami, coordinate my move to Los Angeles, shut down my utilities in Miami, make an appointment with the real estate agent in LA, say goodbye to my Miami friends, pack the bird and prep. for 2 weeks in New York City & Fire Island, fly up to NYC from Miami and then after my vacation from New York City to LA. Needless to say, it was a lot of coordinating, scheduling, planning and preparation.

This summer I moved apartments in LA, flew to NYC and onto Tuscany (travelling to Florence, Pisa, Siena and Cinque Terre), back to LA for a week of work, then back to NYC to spend the 4th of July on Fire Island. I went back to NYC for work at the end of July, flew to San Francisco for a wedding and then Brandon moved into our new apartment at the beginning of August. PHEW!

So which summer was busier?

FACEBOOK IS OVER

That's right, I'm calling it right here, right now in the Summer of 2010. With 500 million users and growing, Facebook is likely to face the same fate as Friendster and MySpace before it, which is underground cool site, followed by mass adoption and then mass exodus as everyone moves onto the next "big" social networking site. Why? Because youth is always in search of the next big cultural computerized craze. Facebook's DNA will be the cause of its demise. Facebook started out as a college site that grew as a way to communicate with your college friends. But now it's everyone's social networking site....your Mom's, your Dad's, your Aunt's that distant cousin, your former high school sweetheart....

Today's teens are looking for a place where they can have their social network without worrying about what their Mom saw on their wall this morning. What will that next big social networking site be? I don't know, but if you know call me so we can get rich with it.

And it never ceases to amaze me given the history of these social networking sites, that the company doesn't go public, cash in and then cash out as the social network business matures. I don't know what made Facebook think that it could avoid the fate of its social networking progenitors, but they are wrong.

The choice now for consumers is the stickiness factor. Too much of your current life is embedded in FB. Porting it all over to the next site will be a massively time consuming process. What's likely to happen is an easier mobile based social networking platform will emerge and consumers will simply start over on this new site and devote less time to FB.

LOTS OF BUNKER BUSTERS IN HOLLYWOOD THIS SUMMER

With the high profile Ashton Kutcher/Katherine Heigl Killers already bombing at the box office, Hollywood may experience a record number of other high profile films that will also tank this summer. My early predictions are for Disney's Sorcerer's Apprentice, Warner Bros. Jonah Hex, and FOX's double bomb with the Tom Cruise/Cameron Diaz vehicle Knight & Day and FOX's A Team, it is likely the Summer of 2010 will go down in Hollywood history as a summer to forget.

Also, 2 other high profile films, Shrek 4 and Sex and the City 2 also underperformed compared to their predecessors. This will inevitably lead to every national magazine that covers Hollywood to say, "The U.S. audience has grown tired of sequels." They will mention some sequels that grossed more money than their previous films and some that grossed less - all the in name of "objectivity," when it really just filling column inches. Look, it's very simple, the global audience does not care if there is a number after a film title, they just want to see a good movie.

The real problem with sequels was brought up to me by my friend Tom DeSanto. Tom is the second highest grossing producer in Hollywood with the X-Men & Transformers films under his belt. Tom had this built up fan bases for Transformers 2 that was totally squandered when the film was more loud that interesting. Tom tells me that it is his and Michael Bay's job to make Transformers 3 much better than 2 to get the fans from Transformers back into cinemas again. That's the only real risk with sequels, underdeliver for your audience and you have to make a better film to win them back. Better to make great sequels than uneven ones.

CEO POLITICIANS?

Last night's electoral primary battles in major states had 2 very important results: 1. It proved that my previous blog from September 30, 2009 was accurate in predicting that women will save the G.O.P. and 2. It set up the former CEO of Hewlett Packard, Carly Fiorina for a Senate seat run versus incumbent Barbara Boxer and the former CEO of EBay, Meg Whitman's to run the State of California as governor.

As the son of a Republican mother, I am proud to see 2 women running for major offices in a major state. While I disagree with most of their stances on issues, I disagree even more with CEO politicians.

Without a doubt, it takes incredible amount of intelligence and business acumen for both women to have obtained the CEO position of 2 of the world's leading technology companies. There accomplishments as business women are unparalleled. And both candidates are promising to bring a "business mentality" to the running California. But the skill sets required to successfully run a corporation and to govern a state are very different. Companies are run like dictatorships, while states are run by consensus.

As the CEO of a company, you hire a staff of trusted lieutenants who are experts in their respective divisions and as CEO you give them the task of making your "vision" for the company come to life. Yes, of course you have a Board of Directors that you report to, but as long as the Board is making money and the stock is going up, Boards don't directly mess with the specifics as to how a company is run. Look at BP CEO Tony Hayward. He's a huge liability for BP and should have been fired over a month ago. As of today BP has lost 50% of its value (a staggering $90 billion dollars), and the BP Board still hasn't woken up, fired Mr. Hayward and stopped the stock price from falling. Businesses, by necessity, are run like dictatorship. I'm the CEO and I say and you're the workers and you do.

However, a state is run by consensus. As Governor Schwarzenegger found out, once the movie star appeal wears off, you need to work WITH the California legislature to get laws passed in the state. As governor you simply cannot expound on your "vision" for the state and say to the Assembly, "Now go do it." The pushback can and is fierce by politicians who are under no pressure to comply with your vision while being told what to do. Oh, if only politics were that easy. As a politicians you have to execute the 3 "C's" of politics - Consensus, Compromise, and Convince.

What I am not hearing from either CEO candidate is that they look forward to working together with the California legislature to fix the states problems. Both Ms. Whitman and Ms. Fiorina are busy attacking their incumbent rivals, but not telling me as a voter how they would would work together with the legislature to run the state.

As someone who runs his own department, I know that if work was a democracy, then our work would suffer. If we had to "vote" on who gets what project and break ties and use procedural rules, I doubt very much would get done. Unlike my present work situation, where I ask for buy in, but ultimately, I'm the boss and here's what needs to get done.

I also don't understand why anyone with as much money as Ms. Fiorina and Ms. Whitman would ever want to do with the low paying, press cringing political game, but I welcome the debate they bring to the world's 8th largest economy.

GLEE THE MOVIE

This TV season Glee has become the #1 new hit show of this year's TV season. And it's a hit by any measure: ratings, music downloads, touring, press, star making and the list goes on. But is FOX leaving money on the table by not green lighting a Glee theatrical feature for Summer 2011? It should not be a continuation of or the season finale of the TV series. It should be its own stand alone feature. And don't do something contrived like send them all to the same summer music camp. I can't help but think that FOX isn't monetizing this asset and the difference in the business models between FOX and Disney.

As the Disney Channel has clearly demonstrated, a studio can make a lot of money taking a successful TV show and transferring it to the big screen. High School Musical started out as the highest rated TV movie on the cable. HSM had a more successful sequel and then the 3rd film made $252 million dollars in worldwide box office. That's not counting DVD's, music sales, consumer products....High School Musical is a textbook HBR Disney synergy case for why its the only entertainment blue chip stock and a member of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. High School Musical also helped elevate new Disney studio chief Rich Ross into his current job under the even more brilliant Bob Iger as the CEO of Disney. I didn't think it would be possible to outdo the business acumen and savvy of Michael Eisner, but Bob Iger has clearly become the teacher.

Wake up FOX, Glee is a global hit on TV. You can make a Glee movie for $25 million that will end up grossing $200 million worldwide. Now that's revenue to sing about.

A SERIAL KILLER IN SLOW MOTION?

Today, Joran van der Sloot was arrested in Chile for the killing of another young woman in Peru. I remember watching the shocking documentary on Dutch television where a skillful reporter worked for months on a story about getting van der Sloot to admit to the killing of Nathalee Holloway. And now, almost 5 years ago to the day, van der Sloot took another life.

While I am not sure he can be considered a serial killer with only 2 murders, it does draw strange parallels with the O.J. Simpson case. Both O.J. and van der Sloot literally got away with cold blooded murder. It must effect the psyche of the murderer to realize they have gotten away with their crime. O.J. wrote a "fictional" account of the murder of his wife, that was largely true and van der Sloot unknowingly confessed to murder on international television. If you can get away with it once, why not twice? O.J. is now in jail for breaking and entering a casino with a loaded weapon (a big No, No in Nevada), and van der Sloot took another life in Peru.

No justice system is perfect, but let's hope fewer and fewer people literally get way with murder: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/06/08/world/AP-LT-Peru-Van-der-Sloot.html?_r=1&hp

NEVER WASTE (ANOTHER) GOOD CRISIS

The Obama Administration needs to take a page from its own playbook and not waste the horrible ecological disaster that the Gulf Oil Spill has become. The Administration should quickly pass financial reform and take the rest of summer to push cap and trade legislation through Congress. Like the Great Recession before it, this crisis should not be wasted.

I dare any major energy company this summer to go before Congress and testify that they do not want a cleaner environment. I love the ocean so much and living on a beach was never ending set of happy experiences for me. I loved swimming in the ocean every day and every weekend that I could in Miami Beach. I love the ocean water, the waves, the tides, the sea life, the calm beauty and ferocity of the waves. To see that spoiled is painful. My parents house in Florida is a 5 minute walk from the Gulf of Mexico. And the oil is so ugly, that to see it on the beach would cause anyone physical revulsion.

With all the damage we have done to the ocean, we should look upon this opportunity to pay Mother Nature back for all that we have and make concrete legislative steps to help heal the Earth. We did it before with acid rain in the 1980's, and we can do it again now with cap & trade. Let's all make the right choice for our country, the environment and globally for our collective future.

WHAT ABOUT THE LIVES LOST AND THE RIG?

So where are all the Republicans now with their cheerful, "Drill Baby, Drill" slogan. Mr. McCain? Mrs. Palin? Anyone?

Never in my life have I witnessed an ecological disaster of this magnitude before. And there is the very real possibility that I will be personally effected by it since I own property on Miami Beach, which is wholly dependent on an international beach-going population for its revenue and livelihood.

But there are 3 major stories that I feel are being glossed over by the media. First, what about the 11 lives that were tragically lost with the rig catching on fire and sinking? We should all say a little prayer for those poor souls who perished that night. Where are the write ups on their lives? Second, what about the recovery operation on the rig? Hundreds of tons of burnt steel sitting on the ocean floor and that cannot be good for the already heavily damaged environment in the Gulf of Mexico.

The 3rd unnoticed but good story that no one is reporting on are the Gulf State residents whose lives are being ruined by this disaster standing up to BP and the government. After listening to all of the help "government" was going to "give" them after Hurricane Katrina, no one is signing waivers for the right to seek redress through the court system for this disaster. The Gulf States may be Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, but good for the residents of those states. "Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice, shame on you."

DEUX EX MACHINA & 121 EPISODES OF LOST

Last night was the series finale of a groundbreaking television show that I have watched since I first saw the pilot in September 2004. There's a lot that I liked and will miss about LOST. I really like the characters, the acting, the Hawaii setting, the mystery, the twists and all the turns that kept me and the world guessing for 6 years. However, the series finale of LOST was a big cop out. It reminded me of my Greek playwriting class.....

In Greecian times they called it the "deux ex machina", which loosely translates into "the God machine." Basically in Grecian tragedies, the mother would sleep with the son, the father would kill the mother, the famine would destroy the city-state, the people of the village would burn, the priest would defy the gods, etc. All hell would break lose and after 3 hours of sitting on stones with no backing in an amphitheater at night with no air conditioning, the playwright couldn't leave the audience with an ending like that, so the deux ex machina was born. At the very end of the play, a god (usually Zeus, but any of the other major gods would do) would descend from Mount Olympus and magically fix everything, restore order, make everyone alive again as if the past 3 hours of misery had never happened, and POOF! Happily Ever After. It was a cop out in 2000 B.C. and it's still a cop out in the 21st century.

Here's why: http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/05/one_hundred_unanswered_lost_qu.html

Also, is it me, or does ever great TV show not know how to end? LOST joins great television shows such as Seinfeld, and The Sopranos with not knowing how to end a great television series.

UPDATE YOUR WEBSITES!

As the United States and the world economically continue to act like a sick patient (recovering, relapsing, rinse and repeat....), and with all the drama of the Great Recession, it's easy to forget the previous economic crash in 2000 from the Dot Com Bubble bursting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble

I was thinking about the early days of the internet and how from 1995-2000 how much businesses constantly evolved and updated their websites. I have also been spending a lot of time on over 10 major airline sites, and the most consistent thing I realized about the airline websites is that none of them have changed in over 5 years. Now, almost every corporation has settled on their website design and they almost never change. And I think that's a bad business decision.

As a business in the 21st century your website should be update yearly with the latest web enhancements to make your business stand out. Consumers directly relate to your company and your brand online. It's their own personal experience with your business. What are you saying to consumers if you don't update your website for 5 or 10 years? What would you think as a consumer if you walked into a retail store and it hadn't been changed, updated or dusted in 5 or 10 years? You'd walk out.

And the airline industry is not alone in this. Most companies are not updating their websites yearly. At Warner Bros. International Television we update our business to business website every year for the LA Screenings. For some of our clients, this is the only time of year that they interact with our website. And each time they do, we want them to see that as a company, we are as new and fresh as the programming we are selling them each TV season.

On the internet, even Google is getting a little too comfortable with itself. Microsoft is building a smarter search home page than Google's. Google has recently made some improvements to its search, but there's much more it can do to stay easy, but be updated in consumers' mind.

DVR COMMERCIAL SKIPPING SOLVED

For years, the DVR has been unfairly portrayed as the enemy of TV advertising. When Tivo was invented, the television industry was caught completely unaware. There was a palatable shutter as the very foundation of the TV advertising revenue business model was under attack from a box consumers could buy online or in any electronics retailer nationwide.

The DVR is basically the next evolution in the VCR. Instead of using tapes to record your favorite TV series and movies for personal use, someone at Tivo got the brilliant idea to put a hard drive into a VCR box and record TV & movies that way. Of course, the trade off was that you couldn't just give a videotape to your friend to watch in their VCR, but who really did that in the 80's and 90's anyway? In fact, to solve the tradeoff problem, early Tivo's allowed recording to videotapes, but I digress once again....By putting a hard drive in a box and an easy menuing systems, BANG! You have a "renewable" VCR with no need to buy expensive, costly and messy piles of tapes. Tivo faced strong headwinds from a business perspective to answer the multi-billion dollar question that is largely the same businesses risks that Apple faces today, (only Apple currently does it better than any technology company currently), which is "How do you create consumer demand for a device no consumer is demanding?"

Tivo was a poorly mismanaged company that immediately came under attack from both the TV & Advertising industries. And like all small, undercapitalized technology companies, the majors attacked them with lawsuits. And to make matters worse for Tivo, the cable and satellite companies figured out how to build their own boxes to have the same DVR functionality of Tivo with none of those messy patent infringement claims. Tivo also sold its intellectual property to the cable companies for a fee, which they were then cut out of. The gospel according to Tivo with its ability to fast forward through commercials, pause, stop, replay would spell the end of the free, advertiser supported television in the United States. Or would it?

The VCR first hit mass consumer adoption in 1980 and within 10 years had gone global. In the United States VCR penetration was up to 95% in just 1 decade. DVR's went mass market in 2000 and now, 10 years later, it's only in 35% of American homes, and plateauing. What does this tell me? DVR's are a transitional technology. There's an opening for another device with 95% penetration. (Another blog on this later.....)

First, some myth busting: Big hint Advertising industry - no one was really watching your commercials before the DVR came along! Most consumers used the standard non-skippable television commercial as an excuse to grab a snack or a bite to eat, go to the restroom, make a phone call, run a quick errand, turn something off that was on, doing dishes, basically anything you could do quickly in the 2 minutes or more of commercial breaks, you did. That's what commercial breaks were for - feeling active while you were being lazy watching TV. So consumers were already "skipping" commercials.

Second, a little insight into consumer DVR habits. Studies have shown that consumers that have DVRs love them, but utilize them in largely the same way that they did before: an excuse to grab a snack or a bite to eat, go to the restroom, make a phone call, run a quick errand, turn something off that was on, doing dishes, only now, you could do it for longer. In fact, most consumers with DVRs now use them to run errands for longer than 2 minutes because they know they can just rewind what they missed. I would postulate that consumers with DVR are MORE exposed to commercials than they were before. Commercials are start/stop points in your TV viewing. As a consumer, when you want to come back to your TV program, you rewind back to the commercial to start your show, which is then your 2nd exposure to the commercial, because your first exposure is when you got up, you have already heard the brand at the start of the commercial. In fact, studies have shown that people with DVRs will watch commercials that appeal to them. If a man is shopping for a car or a woman for a phone, male or female, people will watch commercials that interest them. So the "ad avoidance" factor that everyone was worried about is largely irrelevant.

Leave it to Hollywood to figure out a way around the DVR commercial skipping problem. Consumers with HD televisions are already expecting to watch programming in the letterbox format. That leave a black blank space above and below the TV picture. And what better place to put the name of your movie and the opening date than in that blank space? So now, even if you fast forward past a Sex & City 2 TV commercial, you do see the name of the movie and the opening date, whether you fast forward through the entire commercial or not. Actually, as a viewer you see it in a much simpler form with a much more direct and simple message that you can visually process easier. See? DVR commercial skipping has been solved.

I CAN'T TELL YOU MUCH YET, BUT.....

.....here's what shaping up for next year's TV season. I can't reveal any details, only that I haven't seen any of the new series pilots yet. I will see all of Warner Bros. new pilots by the end of the month and our all of the competitive pilots by mid June. At this point I can only speak to either what's already been announced and picked up or what trends I forsee developing.

With almost its usual coincidental economic timing, with the U.S. and world trying to pull itself out of the Great Recession, the sitcom is back, baby! The #1 new one hour, Glee, is a musical comedy, and the sitcom genre was recently revived this season with the hilarious Modern Family. The whole genre seems to be reinvigorated with fresh ideas and bold concepts.

The bad news for next season, the dramas all seem safe and boring. It's another season with a "different take" on the cop show, the doctor show, the lawyer show, or the ever reliable "family drama". After the failure of Flashforward and with Lost going off the air, any show with a heavily mythologized storyline that you need to see every single episode of, is out. It seems the networks are saying the viewer engagement is not a successful ratings story. Which is sad, because I really like shows with heavily mythologized storylines. I like getting into the lives of the characters each week. For instance, one of my favorite shows of this season was Vampire Diaries and I watched all 22 hours of that show.

I also think that in a digital world, none of the networks will be making any radical time period changes with their new or existing shows. The only network in a position to move strong shows to be more competitive is CBS. And CBS should make some radical changes. I would move The Mentalist or NCIS into CSI's Thursday 21:00 time period. CSI is on the way out, and rather than allow it to die on the vine, CBS should move a stronger show into one of the most profitable time periods in television.

I will write more once I've seen the pilots and make some predictions of what shows I think will be hits.

EUROPE'S 21ST CENTURY CHALLENGE

For a continent that has been a pillar of human civilization for thousands of years and 2 World Wars, the century that seems to be causing Europe the most trouble is the 21st. First there was the volcanic ash cloud from Iceland, then the sovereign debt crisis that started in Greece and will continue to play itself out throughout this year in the rest of the PIIGS countries, and now a hung Parliament in Britain, the continent of Europe is under some stress, no doubt. But I think all Europeans would be a huge disadvantage worldwide if they decided to dissassemble the European Union and adoption of a single currency.

Despite the vast economic and cultural differences, in a globalized economy, the only way Europe even has the faintest chance of having a voice in the world is as a unified continent. Europeans are too interconnected to start the process of disentangling themselves. Rather, they should resist the easy way out and not disbanding their common currency or break themselves up into their respective nations.

The world is a mess right now. The world greatest economy collapsed and the ripple effects of that collapse will continue to be felt for years. The United States is having its own problems growing into the 21st century, but so far only Texans are considering ceding from the union. Europe should look at long term global solutions rather than the short term economic benefits.

Ultimately, the world will need to have 3 currencies to trade in: the euro for Europe, the renumbi from China as the defacto Asian currency, and the U.S. dollar for North and South America (and England). Introducing new currencies only further delays a larger global economic issue of how trade will be conducted in the 22nd century.

(Sorry I just watched Steven Hawkins Into The Universe on the Discovery Channel and I'm thinking on a universal scale: http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/stephen-hawking/ )

2,816 MILES FOR A TACO BELL??!!?!?!!

Manhattanites are truly one of kind Americans. Despite having absolutely everything you could ever possibly need in the United States on an 11 mile long island, it is amazing to me the lengths New Yorkers will go when everything is literally in your own back yard.

For example, I know this New Yorker, let's call him Brandon (since that's his name). Now Brandon LOVES Taco Bell. There are at least 6 Taco Bell's in Manhattan, but Brandon refuses to get on a train (or walk - heaven forbid!) to any of those Taco Bell's. No, no. Instead, Brandon gets on a plane at JFK Airport in New York and flies almost 3,000 miles, has me pick him up at the airport and immediately take him to the Taco Bell near LAX. Brandon loves Taco Bell, but definitely not enough to leave his neighborhood in Hell's Kitchen and travel south to Chelsea to make a "run for the border".

There HAS to be an TV Advertising campaign in here somewhere. Are you listening corporate marketing executives at YUM Brands?

THEN I REALIZED, THIS WILL HELP ME WITH MY DOCTORATE....

This week, I've been directly working on the culmination of 2 research studies I commissioned for the studio. The first study is a Media Landscape overview of 1 European country and the other is a platform, consumer behavior, and channel profile study of an emerging technology in 5 European countries. Cumulatively, I've spent over 70 hours working on the first study and 100 hours working on the other study. The results of both studies are very encouraging.

1. We're getting good, actionable information for both studies. 2. Ultimately, my boss is pleased, and that makes me very happy. 3. All of this data should be ready for presentation during LA Screenings, which is perfect timing. 4. I feel strongly enough about the data to present to corporate management at the studio.

I like utilizing research to give actionable sales data, it only makes the research more valuable. But then it hit me on my way home from the gym last week....the relationships I'm cultivating now in the research community will definitely help me when it comes time to write my doctoral thesis. I made a promise to myself that as soon as I paid off all my student loan debt from getting my MBA, I would immediately start applying for my PhD. I need to find a PhD program that allows me to work full time while spending a few years writing my thesis. My thesis will definitely be rooted in the international media/television industry. Actually, what I would like to do is prod both of my parents into all of us working on getting our doctorates at the same time. Now that would be incredible. I know both of my parents want a doctorate.

I'm excited to get started, now I need to pay off this debt faster.

THE POWER OF MADONNA

I have to agree with my boyfriend on this one, The Power of Madonna Glee episode definitely deserves an Emmy Award. Director/Writer Ryan Murphy really pulled it off with this episode. The structure of Glee is to find the songs that match the characters "inner voice," like all good musicals should. As a series, Glee succeeds on many levels. I personally think of it as a satiric comedy with some musical numbers. I laugh more than I sing during each episode. Regardless, from a production standpoint, this has to be one of the hardest working casts in TV production today. They have to learn their lines, choreography, songs, and record all at the same time. Also, the producers of the show have no small task basically staging an hour long musical every episode.

Mr Murphy's episode succeed on many levels. It would have been the easy way out to just take some Madonna songs and have the actors just sing through them, but Ryan took the entire message of Madonna and wrote it into the episode. The women were to be empowered. Madonna's songs are all about being strong and independent no matter your gender. And from there, the theme of Madonna, the songs of Madonna all moved the story of the characters forward. The staging of the musical numbers was great. And every song consistently worked throughout the show. It was a great Glee episode first, and an homage second. I'm sure Madonna loved it. And Mr. Murphy also gets credit for faithfully recreating the Vogue music video almost shot by shot, and shooting it in the middle of an episode already packed with 3 big production numbers. Mr. Murphy should get the Emmy Award for Best Directing. Mr. Murphy should get a matching Emmy for Best Written Episode. He used his script and the music to make the episode better with the 2 combined rather than using great writing or a great song and give one more weight that the other. Ryan is also doing a great job balancing a large cast and fully utilizing all of their talents.

I think if you can write a CSI episode, you can pretty much write almost any criminal procedural show. And writing for TV is hard. But not every TV writer can successfully write an episode of Glee. I was glad I pre-downloaded the entire album.

I'LL MISS YOU GRANDPA

Sadly today, my grandfather passed away. At 86 years old, he was born in 1921. My grandfather was your typical hard working son of an immigrant who literally help build the United States of America on the blood and sweat on the back of his entire generation.

Like many men in the early days of the 20th century, my grandfather worked 2 full time jobs for most of his life to raise his family of 6 children. My grandfather worked for the Department of Water & Power for the City of Boston and for General Dynamics building military ships for the Navy (Boston has always been a port city and the one of the birthplaces of the U.S. Navy). My grandfather was a very smart man, but he support his family through hard, grueling manual labor. Like every generation, he didn't want his children to go through their lives performing hard manual labor like he did. And in those days, the only ticket out of labor was the dream of every American - a college education. A college education was a direct road out the middle class and into the upper class of society. My grandfather basically handed my grandmother the task of making sure her children got all A's throughout ones entire academic career. A "B" or a "C" in any subject was absolutely unacceptable. And not just for 1 child, all 6 children "A's" in every subject.

My grandfather and his generation believed in the sanctity of marriage. My grandfather met my grandmother, they got married and they were expected to, and did stay married and together for over 60 years.

I always knew him as my Grandpa. Nana was the one I always communicated with, but Grandpa was always there, listening, watching, and reading the Boston Herald. What's so funny is that all of the women who married into our family were intimidated by him. To me, since I was born into this family, so I always knew Grandpa as Grandpa. I was never intimidated by him, and I was too young to understand why anyone else would be. But he was a fearsome man who's approval you wanted. And everybody loved Grandpa.

I have a lot of great memories of my grandfather from when I was a kid. I remember him singing at the top of his voice in Italian to the songs on the radio driving around Boston. I remember him making me eggs and bacon for breakfast when I would come over to visit. I was his first grandchild, so I always had a special place in his heart. I remember him attending a special mass when I was an alter boy for the Archbishop in Amesbury at Sacred Heart Church. I remember him coming to both my high school and college graduations. I remember him at my First Communion and my Confirmation. I know he was there for my baptism. My Grandpa was there for me at all the important moments in my life.

I'm so happy that I got to see him one last time last weekend for Easter. I love and respect him so much. A lot of the gifts and pleasures of the life I get to lead are built on the back of the foundation and values he laid out for his family. He determined the high standards and work ethic that leads us, the Puopolo family, to succeed today.

There are 2 favorite stories about my Grandpa. The first one happened last Wednesday when my Dad & Mom were staying overnight at my grandparents house. My Dad told me the story about how he was there and my Dad was helping my grandfather into his chair and he looked at my Dad and said, in one of his lucid moments, "I love you." My Dad was very touched by what his father had said to him and what's so great is that moment is a memory that my Dad will always treasure.

The second story was happening during one of the famous Puopolo family Christmas parties when we were all in Boston and would get together to open family Christmas presents on Christmas night. This was an especially good time for me because I would get both my Christmas and birthday presents on the same night, which was always a bonus for me. (Everyone says having your birthday and Christmas so close together sucks, but come on - double presents? Sweet!) The family started coming into our Uncle Stevie's house slowly as everyone was travelling in from different parts of the state to all come together as a family for Christmas. While many of us were sitting around the table waiting someone asked when our Uncle Joey would show up. And without putting down his Boston Herald, Grandpa said, "He'll be here. Just like death and taxes." It was just so funny that this man of very few words actually made a joke. We laughed around the dining room table that night before enjoying another Christmas together.

I will miss my Grandpa. He was a great man. God Bless you Papa.

HOW IS THIS A SCIENCE?

I really liked the economics courses I took for my MBA. Both the micro and the macro economics parts of the class I found very interesting. But I have never in my life come across a scientific and mathematic discipline that is so wrong so often.

As a science, it seems odd to me that economists use 19th century formulations to measure a 21st century globalized world. What other science is constantly revised, can only be looked at every 3 months and cannot be accurately measured?

As a researcher whose entire career is based on correct numbers, if I was wrong and revised as often as economists are, I would never be read or believed by my senior management.

Economists need to get together and get some consensus on how to properly and accurately measure in REAL TIME, exactly what's going on with the global economy. Come on, if astronomers can measure galaxies, why can't economist accurate measure 1 planets net inputs and outputs?

IS PENMANSHIP DEAD?

Is writing about to go the way of the cassette tape? I imagine if I had a child today, he would be using an IPad from a very young age, maybe at age 3 or 4 playing with games, music, interactivity and no internet connection. At 7 or 8 I would likely give Little Michael III his first smartphone. And really, almost everything he learned from a very young age would be done on a computer.

Would I ever need to teach him how to write or should I just start him off learning exclusively how to type. It's 2010, in 15 years, when he would be a sophomore in high school, will he ever be writing anything? Notes will be on laptops or IPads. Projects done entirely on computers, electronic grading of homework.....

If you had a child today, would you teach them how to physically write? Is a child considered illiterate if they have a perfect understand and can type anything in English (incredibly fast I would think), sentence structure, grammar, everything, but he would be considered illiterate because he doesn't know penmanship?

THE REAL REVOLUTION IS THE APP STORE

The Applications Store by Apple is an unparalleled daily revenue generator and truly a game changing concept from Apple. When the App Store first launched just 2 years ago in 2008, no one could have predicted just how successful it would become. Now it doesn't matter whether you're Sprint, AT&T, Verizon, TMobile, or any other telecom company in the world, if you sell a smartphone today, you have to have applications to run on the smartphone.

For smartphones (a concept pioneered by Apple with the launch of the IPhone), I give Apple a lot of credit for out of the box thinking on the business model for Apps. Apple knew they had neither the resources nor the personnel to devote to keeping applications within Apple's walled garden environment (ITunes Store). Rather than keep it as an internal software division, Apple agreed to a 70/30 (the developer gets 70%, Apple gets 30%) of the revenue from what is basically micropayments on a software license. Apple has created a business boom in the middle of a recession. There are now a lot of mini-applications start up companies whose business model is entirely built around ecommerce and not advertising. (Hey, that's how Bill Gates and Steve Jobs started their company's). And Apps are wildly successful. With over a 1 billion downloads, I wonder how much money Apps contribute to Apple's total revenue.

Now with the launch of the IPad, Apple will be charging more money for the apps and people will pay it. I was IMing a friend of mine who works for Apple, and he said that the Apps will really make the IPad standout from its competitive netbook devices, and he's right. In fact, with Apps going from IPhones to the IPad, what consumers are really signalling is that Apps could be the new way consumers interact with the web itself. Currently consumers interact with the web by typing an address into a browser, but more and more consumers are pressing an app, inputting information and getting a customized software response. As Tim Reilly put it, "cheap sensors are ushering in an era of user interface innovation."

Personally, I still have not paid for any of the apps on my IPhone, but I would if there was one I really liked or wanted. Who would have thought 2 years ago that apps would be the rage that they are today in the technology industry? Like my IPhone and the DVR, I can't imagine digital life without them.

THE NIKE CHANNEL

My early prediction for the 2012 and 2014 Summer & Winter Olympics is that ABC/ESPN (Disney) is going to make a bid to televise the Games. ESPN is such a money maker for the Walt Disney Corporation, that they are almost completely autonomous within the conglomerate and the head of ESPN reports to the chairman, Bob Iger, not the head of Television (Anne Sweeney).

And there's no doubt about it, no sports network does it better than ESPN. I was just thinking the other day how from 2005 when Monday Night Football went off the air on ABC to 2010 when Dancing With The Stars and Castle with all 3 shows bringing equally large audiences to ABC's Monday night, that no other network had transitioned a from an all male to all female demographic so successfully. Now on Monday nights, ABC has all the Women, ESPN has all the Men and Disney captures huge amounts of revenue from the CPMs for advertising on both broadcast & cable, cable subscriber fees, online revenue, and makes all that money from just 1 evening a week on television - Monday night. ESPN's Monday Night Football brought the largest audiences that have ever been to any cable network anywhere in the United States with over 21 million for some of its top games.

Needless to say, if the Walt Disney Company buys the Olympic rights, they'll have the Olympics in theme parks all over the world and the Olympic Committee can't buy that kind of publicity. The Walt Disney Company can use that leverage to keep the Olympic rights costs down to a reasonable level for Wall Street and still make a healthy return on the rights investment.

ESPN has to be leading the charge internally and tempting Bob Iger, who has already grown out of the shadow of Michael Eisner to be a worthy successor to run the only blue chip entertainment company.

While there is no clear current competitor to ESPN, only FOX comes close with its U.S. regional networks and the FOX Soccer Channel. So what other company could challenge ESPN with a rival sports cable channel? Only NIKE has the global brand recognition to do it. The Nike Channel can challenge ESPN. They have the money, can use the brand extension to grow the company and basically have a barker channel to sell all their sports equipment and apparel.

Anyone else think this is good idea? If Portland wants me to head up this venture, I'm looking at all reasonable job offers.

ORIGINAL THOUGHT

Besides successfully transferring to LA from Miami, and building a strong International TV Research Department, my best professional accomplishment has been becoming a Visiting Assistant Professor at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. Having recently completed my MBA in December 2007, going from student to teacher was a good transition for me. The graduate students impressed me with the directness of their questions and what their thoughts and opinions were on issues in media today.

Of course with all teaching goes grading. And while no one failed the 4 short answers section of the final (in fact everyone got over a B at least, deservedly), I couldn't help but notice that the 1 distinct characteristic about 95% of the answers is that they were pure regurgitation, no original thought. In the age of Googling and note taking, I wonder most about student is who can have an original thought? Repeating what you heard isn't learning, it's just repeating. The professional who is most able to have an original thought and self generate working solutions is the person who will succeed the most in any business, not just show business.

DVR'S & COMMERCIAL SKIPPING

When Tivo first launched in 2000, the TV business panicked. Tivo was heralded as the next step in the evolution of the VCR, the DVR - the Digital Video Recorder. DVR's required no tapes to either save or watch, but allowed you the same functionality as a VCR - saving your programs, rewinding and re-wathcing, and of course, fast forwarding. (Remember setting the time on your VCR to record shows? Worrying about how much space you had left on a tape? Setting the tape for 2, 4 or 6 hours of recording? Using magic markers to label your tapes with the contents? Ah the 80's & 90's - good times).

And the real problem was with the fast forwarding. If you can fast forward, of course what you are fast forwarding past is the very unpinning of the entire business model of the television industry - the commercials. You're not fast forwarding past the show, but you do fast forward past the commercial. The studios couldn't stop the technology from being released, and consumers liked DVR's better than VCRs. So if consumers aren't watching the advertising, this undercuts the entire television industry. And with Tivo gaining in popularity, both the cable and satellite industries jumped into the mix so their revenues didn't get eroded by consumers switching to Tivo altogether for the DVR technology. If you spoke to anyone in the TV industry at the time, the sky was falling.

Flash forward to 10 years later and we now know considerably more about DVR (or PVR's - Personal Video Recorders, as they're called internationally). First of all, the sky didn't fall. The TV industry is still funded largely by advertisers. What is happening in the TV industry now is that broadcast networks are now adopting the cable business model where a network is funded by both advertiser revenue and with carriage subscriber revenue. Certainly a dual revenue stream is better than a single revenue stream. But it wasn't the DVR that blew up the broadcast industry, it was the decline in advertising revenue from the recession that did it.

And now we know considerably more about DVRs that we did 10 years ago. So let's look at some of the myths:

1. Viewers skip all the commercials. Not really. Sure, most people skip past most of the commercials, but really, viewers always skipped commercials. Viewers used commercials to go to the bathroom, return a phone call, make dinner, check their email, and a million other things. Turns out that people use their DVRs in the same way. They skip commercials that they don't care about, but people will watch commercials that appeal to them. Personally, I watch movie trailers and network promos and skip everything else. Women I know watch commercials that appeal to them, fashion, music, movies. Men watch sports promos for upcoming games, beer ads with pretty girls in them. Kids watch ads for toys, games, and Disney World/Land. My point is that consumers will and do watch commercials that appeal to them and consumers have always had the option of "skipping" commercials, even before the DVR.

2. Everyone viewer will have a DVR. We're doomed. Well, it's been a decade and only 35% of U.S. homes have a DVR. (it's about 25% in the UK and most other advanced television countries). I know alot about consumer adoption of new technology. Whereas VCRs had 80-85% penetration, DVR's only have 35% after 10 years and availability on every platform (satellite, cable, telcos)? That's not mass consumer adoption, that's a transitional technology. In fact, if cable companies technology wasn't so poor, VOD would have (and will have) mass consumer adoption. DVR's will be a thing of the past in about 5 years.

Also, the latest consumer research shows that consumers are using the DVR the exact same way they did before DVRs. Now most consumers pause on a commercial while they go to the rest room, cook dinner or return a call (so they see the ad). Also, people leave their TV's on, go to the rest room, likely hear the commercial, return to the rest room to find their TV is on and then rewind to where they left off - at the commercial (largely seeing the ad multiple times). Viewers are seeing more commercials than they used to, and the DVR has added to that, not subtracted from it.

3. We can't stop consumers from skipping the ads. You're right, you can't, but you don't have to. My #1 example here is the Super Bowl. Consumers watch every commercial during the Super Bowl. Which leads me to my point Madison Avenue, if it's a good commercials viewers will watch it. Whether it's a movie trailer, a soft drink ad, a beer commercial, or an internet company, if it's a good ad, people will watch it. Also, broadcast networks have figured out how to combat skipping with an old internet advertising standard, the banner ad. If you watch promotions for movies and TV shows now, you'll notice a black box above and below the screen that says either the name of the movie and when it opens or for TV the name of the show and day and time it airs. The banner ad stays on throughout the entire commercial. So even if you fast forward past the ad, you see the name, day, and date whether you like it or not. Smart.

The #1 way the DVR has changed my TV habits is "video snacking." Video snacking is only watching the parts of a TV show that you want to see. For example, I almost never watch live TV. Even for an awards show (the Academy Awards, Golden Globes), I skip right past the nominees and fast forward right to the winner's speech. It takes me about 1 hour to get through a 3 hour awards show. And for me, that's the best thing about my DVR, skipping boring programming, not the commercials.

ART VS. COMMERCE

After the gigantic success of Avatar and then the massive success of Alice In Wonderland, audiences and movie studios are in love with 3D. Studios love it because they can charge higher ticket prices (price elasticity is about to be tested beginning this weekend with Dreamworks' How To Train Your Dragon) as the cost of a 3D movie ticket gets over $15 and close to $20 depending on your city. (Now movies join concerts in charging higher prices - see my blog below). Higher ticket prices boost revenue and studios love anything generates large amounts of quarterly revenue. Audiences love it because they can only see it in cinemas, making it a unique experience. And unique experiences have been missing in cinema since everyone bought a large screen TV and home theater sound system. It's a different visual experience, and frankly after seeing Avatar, I totally agree with the audiences' perspective. 3D is just a brilliant way to see a film.

With 3D revenue filling in for blood in the proverbial cinema waters, every studio is looking at every theatrical film they have to see if they can 3D it. And my studio, Warner Bros. is jumping into 3D with both feet. We have at least 5 films this year that are in 3D. And WB isn't the only studio. Sony announced that the new Spider Man (technically Spider Man 4, but there will be no numbers in the title since it's a relaunching of the franchise). And right there is the problem. Film is a directors medium, and now Sony is telling whomever they hire to make the new Spider Man film that it HAS to be in 3D. 3D requires the right 3D camera equipment, a different shooting style, different editing, sounds, etc. It's a different way of shooting a film, visualizing it in 3D.

No less than 2 titans of directing, James Cameron and Michael Bay, want to put the brakes on every film being released in 3D. Right now there are 2 ways to shoot a 3D film. 1. Are films that are already completed and can be retrofitted with 3D for a price and 2. The rarer (and less rarer as we go along) is the film CONCEIVED in 3D. And therein lies the rub.

The age old battle between art and commerce is being waged even to this day. Studios want more money, and more money means more 3D. Directors are more savvy, with their films and therefore their reputations on the line, they don't want to be forced to make a 3D film and risk it bombing. If audiences are being charged a premium and they don't feel like they are getting their money's worth, they will not go to a 3D film.

And that point was driven home for me this week. I saw Avatar twice and each time I totally felt like it was worth paying almost $20 for my ticket. And then this week I saw Alice In Wonderland in 3D and it was terrible. Other than tea cups getting thrown at my head, there was no reason for that film to be in 3D. I felt robbed and I wanted my $3 3D "premium" money back and I'll be perfectly happy seeing it at the regular "bargain" ticket price of $12 in 2D. And I won't be alone.

If studios like mine are not careful, we'll overdo it and kill the golden goose before we've even gotten a chance to mine that revenue stream of golden eggs. And directors, while I applaud your astounding creativity, Mr. Cameron set the bar pretty high for all of you. I remember thinking while watching Avatar that Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson must be watching Avatar and thinking to themselves, "Uh Oh.....how do we top this?" Mr. Cameron has thrown down the gauntlet and directors are too egomanical to not try to out do each other. See the battle unfold this year at your local cinema....who will win - art or commerce?

CONCERT TICKET PRICES ARE OUT OF CONTROL

I love going to concerts. In my heyday in LA (because every single musical act in the world comes through LA), I would attend at least 1 concert a month, and sometimes several in concerts in a week. I love a live concert experience. The Lady Gaga concert on New Year's Eve was my last concert of 2009 and I remember thinking that I wasn't seeing another concert again until the end of March (actually later tonight) when I'm seeing the John Mayer concert at the Staples Center in downtown LA.

3 months and only 1 concert? And then Paul McCartney, Sting, the cast of Glee, and Lady Gaga all announced upcoming concerts. Excellent! Paul McCartney & Sting are living musical legends and Gaga & Glee are the gayest concerts I could ever go to - I was SO EXCITED!!! And then I looked at the ticket prices....WTF?!?!?

It's as if we weren't still living through a recession. For Paul McCartney, the good seats start at $750!!! Are you f-ing kidding me?! I know Sir Paul is a legend, but for close to a $1000 I would expect a personal concert in my home at that price. The $250 seats are the NOSEBLEED seats. Really for $250 all I get is the nosebleed seats?! That's a lot of money to watch a spotlight follow a dot around a stage while singing famous 60's tunes. Sting's prices are a bit more reasonable, but he's doing an orchestral tour. Lady Gaga's tickets are $250 and those are just the decent seats. The good seats are $400 and Gaga just became famous and started touring last year. Glee was no better. If you wanted good seats, you would have to pay $200? Really? $200 for a glorified celebrity high school glee club concert?! Hell, even Conan O'Brien, who isn't a stand up comedian, and just made $32 million for NOT doing The Tonight Show is charging his fans $695 to meet him $500 for the close seats and $250 for the nosebleed. And yes, most of these artists (except Sir Paul) have seats for under $100, but they're super nosebleed from a very high altitude seats and there aren't that many of those seats available at all. And you know who started all this overpriced concert tickets (and got it) was U2 with their environmentally unfriendly, but amazing concert (see my previous blog - I watched it for free on You Tube).

Listen, I'm all for musical artists making as much money as they can. Lord knows their radio play and digital track sales aren't exactly paying for the private jet, but I'm out as those prices. And it's not just the ticket price, it's the facility fee, and the "convenience" fee and the taxes and the parking fee (at least $20) and the nightmare getting in and out of the concert and the $12 beers and $15 dollar drink - each.

I tell ya, when I can just sit in the privacy and comfort in my own home and watch a digital concert with digital sound on my TV watching either HD Net's Sunday Concert series or Palladia (MTV's HD concert channel - notice how tarnished the MTV brand is that even MTV isn't branding their own channel MTV any more?) why the hell would I want to pay outrageous prices for an inconvenient experience to witness 2 hours of music when all I see are little glowing specs saying, "Thank you" after finishing a song and asking, "Are you all right ________ (insert you city name here)"? And after complaining about this recently one of the comments I heard back was, "Well, just watch the concert on the monitors." What? I didn't pay $500+ to be a live concert and basically watch it on someone else's massive TV. I can watch a concert on my big screen TV at home for free where my cable company is already ripping me off for $150 plus a month.

First I was too old to stand in the General Admission pit with the kids, but now I'm too rich to overpay for a minimally satisfying music experience. I don't mind spending a lot of money for a great musical experience if I feel I'm getting my monies worth, but a lot of money for nosebleed seats sound like a bad deal to me. Rather than enjoy the music, I would spend the whole time at the concert angry because I overpaid and I'm having a bad time for a lot of money.

As for John Mayer, I got great seats for under $100. Thank you John!

(Full Disclosure - I did overpay for the Gaga tickets, but they were for a great cause - my boyfriend's birthday, and we did get nosebleed seats for Glee, and I MIGHT, MIGHT be spontaneous and see Paul McCartney and Sting - but if the prices are out of control for bad seats, I definitely won't).

UPDATE: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/31/arts/music/31concerts.html?_r=1

THE PASSPORT I'VE ALWAYS WANTED

I remember when I was a teenager being fascinated by passports. I didn't have one, and no one in my immediate family had one. But I knew early on that I wanted one. My family and I did a lot of vacationing around the United States from a very young age. We traveled to Washington D.C., Orlando Florida, Lake Placid New York (after the 1980 Winter Olympics), Mount Washington and Lake Winnisesaukee in New Hampshire, and every Christmas we would all fly down to Florida to spend the holidays on the beach together as a family.

Almost every weekend we drove from our home in Everett Massachusetts to our cottage in Amesbury Massachusetts. I remember it being a long 2 hour drive where my parents hoped both my brother and I would sleep on the drive up.

We traveled a lot as a family, but never overseas. I remember when I was 21 and had just moved to Los Angeles. One of my first priorities was to get my very first passport. I went to a photo mart to get my passport photo taken and then I sent in all my paperwork to the State Department. My first passport sat on the shelf for years until my first business trip overseas to London, Paris, and Amsterdam. The very first time I used my passport, I remember loving the stamps from each country inside. It was like my very own travelogue. Whenever I would see someone's passport at a party or on a plane I would always ask to see the stamps and ask people where they had been and what their favorite places in the world are. I dreamed that one day I would have a passport full of stamps from all over the world.

After travelling all over the world for more than 15 years now, I now have passport stamps from England, Italy, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates, France, Canada, the Netherlands, Spain, and the Czech Republic. Every stamp has a date and every city in every country has a fond memory attached to it.

Although it seemed like very far away at the time, my passport is up for renewal in 2012. I'm curious to see where my travels will take me with my new passport. One thing is for sure though, I have to passport I've always wanted since I was a little kid. But its not the passport that's important to me, or even the vacations. What stands out most in my mind is the friend's I have been lucky enough to make all over the world. I would go to these countries and know no one and make good friends in foreign lands. Those friendships have meant the most to me. My passport is just colored paper and ink, but the memories and friendships it holds has more value to me than anything else. I treasure it.

CREDIT CARDS COMPANIES ARE THE NEW EVIL EMPIRE!

Just having returned from Canada, and after all the new legislation I had read about with credit card companies looking for new ways to generate revenue, I was shocked to experience higher credit card fees firsthand.

The exchange rate between the U.S. and Canada used to be very appealing. Only 3 years ago, it was 75 U.S. cents for every Canadian dollar. The exchange rate made traveling to Canada almost as inexpensive as Mexico. Flash forward 3 years and 1 massive recession later and the U.S. dollar is doing poorly up against the Loonie (We call a U.S. dollar a "buck" the Canadians call the Canadian dollar the "loonie" - I'm not making this up). Right now it's 95 U.S. cents for every Canadian dollar or nearly a 1:1 valuation.

So off to Canada I go happily charging hotel rooms, transportation, lift tickets, ski rentals, and dinners on my Chase Visa card. Now I understand that transactions done between banks between foreign countries comes with a cost. And I do think that given a 5% differential between the U.S. and Canadian exchange rates that the bank is entitled to take a modest 2% in fees and leave me the minor illusion of "saving money" with a 3% gain on the dollar versus the loonie. But imagine my surprise when I came home and added up all my "foreign transaction fees" (a nebulous enough line item) to find out that even with a favorable exchange rate between the U.S. and Canada, it cost me more money to vacation in Canada than it did in the U.S.! My $989.03 Canadian dollar vacation cost me $960.27 in U.S. dollars, but with the foreign transaction fees, my real expenditure was $965.22 USD. Granted that's only a $5 dollar difference, but with a 5% exchange rate, shouldn't those numbers be reversed?

I love travelling overseas, but when it costs more to go to Canada than the U.S., what is my credit card bill going to look like travelling to Germany with the Euro? Or the worse, England where the pound/dollar exchange rate is definitely not in my favor? It will be hugely expensive, which leads me to my next point about future overseas travelling, I will have to try to pay for as much up front as possible. The days of just charging everything overseas is over.

FOR AMERICA, BROADBAND IS THE FUTURE

Last week, the United States made a major announcement about the future of telecommunications for the country. On March 16th, the Federal Communications Commission released the National Broadband Plan. For the country that created and nurtured the development and deployment of the internet worldwide, the United States is wisely making a big bet on broadband as the future of this country's communications. Just like the telephone before it, the United States is mandating universal access to broadband for its citizens. To the U.S., the internet is more important than a landline, a cell phone, a television, or a radio. And I couldn't agree more.

I have blogged before about how important it is for faster broadband speeds, but no less then the future economy of the world will depend on which country most effectively utilizes broadband internet speeds and access for its citizens. Since the United States nurtures small businesses more than any other country, it is U.S. small businesses that have the most to gain from this.

Where goes the government, goes private investment in infrastructure. And where there's broadband, there's entertainment content. I said it over 10 years ago, but its worth saying again, with all of its hopes and promises and dreams, it turns out the internet is just a massive delivery system.

Read the National Broadband Plan here: http://www.broadband.gov/