Discuss Tickets

The Grammy Award winners are interesting people. The big winners last night were Alison Krauss and Robert Plant, who are not what you would have expected in a normal combo group. Krauss is less known than some of the other winners and nominees last night. She is from Illinois and learned the Bluegrass violin style when she was a kid and became a really good player during the time. She is probably most known for her work in the “O Brother Where Art Thou” soundtrack. She has working on several other soundtracks and some other albums have been very well received. Congrats to her!

TicketMaster got into trouble this week when they were trying to fill people’s desires for Bruce Springsteen tickets. Apparently, when the primary market got flooded, and there weren’t anymore tickets available, customers got sent off to TicketsNow, Ticketmaster’s main connection in the secondary market. It is kind of a problem for them, because suddenly some customers were able to get the original prices, and then others were getting them on the secondary market, which includes a bit of a markup. They issued an apology to Springsteen and Co. this week after the situation had happened. An investigation by the New Jersey Attorney General continues.

The Swedish group ABBA’s show Mamma Mia! has been playing all over the place for nearly a decade. It opened in New York right after the 9/11 attacks and seemed to fit in just the right way for everyone at the time. They needed something hokey and fun to take their minds out of the stress of that time. Now, the show is still going on. It’s nothing really special. The group itself was made to be hokey and silly. Let’s not be picky about that now; it’s been several decades since they were really in the music world. But it’s a fun show, with choreography that seems easy, a rather silly script. Nothing special, but definitely fun.

The Super Bowl only happens once a year, so I think it’s important to embrace that and write some more about it. This weekend is going to be a really impressive game. Two teams that aren’t very flashy, but very much down at the small-ball level of play. It’s always fun to see such teams playing well and taking each other on in a game that’s big. The big-bomber teams, like the Titans and Colts and Giants (now) are sometimes less interesting to watch, in our opinion, so it’s even better when we can actually see some teams that have to rely on strategy rather than brute force to win the game. And even moreso in the Super Bowl where anything can happen. It’s going to be an impressive game, so you better tune in!

I heard an interesting discussion on the radio this morning about how the economy has affected sports. In some ways, it seems like it hasn’t been affected at all. After all, you don’t hear about players or coaches getting laid off in large numbers, like you had last week at Microsoft and other places. But it is a little more subtle in the sports world. Sponsorship is down. And tickets sellers have a bit less flexibility in terms of their prices now. Even on the non-primary market levels of the ticket business, the prices are dropping a bit more than usual. Not that they are going to be $10 to see the big game, but still, decent for such a high-profile event.

How about a show in London that is about Michael Jackson? It is a show featuring talented singers and outstanding dancers. It is a tough show to review though. Let’s be clear about this: Michael Jackson is not in the show. Thriller Live as the show is called, is not such a great show. Yes, it’s thrilling, but it isn’t anything really exciting besides in terms of the music. Yes, we can enjoy it on that point. But there is no decent plot, or even a script. The reviewer says that all the dialogue could fit on two pages of A4 paper, which is the standard paper size over there. For a West End show, you’d think they could at least get a decent script out of it. But if you can enjoy the music and relive some of those great song, and learn a little in between, that’s probably enough.

The War of the Roses Part One just finished its run in the Sydney Theater. The show was supposed to be one of the really good ones to come out in the last decade. But for the reviewer, it is one of the more difficult shows for an audience to understand. The audience has to concentrate hard for a full 4 hours in order to get anything out of it. There is a cool moment where the players are showered with gold pieces for a full hour of the production, but even this they don’t pull of completely. It’s kind of too bad, really. The actors are good, they do exactly as they should. The reviewer really just didn’t like the show. It’s too showy and doesn’t give you anything really to chew upon.

Just like in Burt Reynolds’ classic “The Longest Yard,” a former pro quarterback is now playing football in prison. Michael Vick, the former Falcons quarterback arrested on federal charges for illegal dogfighting, has been keeping his arm loose while playing football in prison; just in case he has plans of returning to the NFL once his time is up. He may be eligible for parole as early as sometime this spring.

Plaxico Burress has been out of NFL for several weeks now, having missed out on a chunk of the NY Giants’ great season as well as an unfortunate loss this last weekend to the Philadelphia Eagles. So now what? Apparently they say that they are interested in getting Burress back onto the team. This guy shot himself with a gun that he wasn’t allowed to have and then was found to have many more such weapons in his home, after a police raid made it happen. It’s too bad that the Giants think that their best bet it to have Burress come back and then we’ll see what happens. The team obviously needs to work on some things, but I don’t know how much new players might help.

The feelings between Marian Gaborik and the Minnesota Wild Staff are tense to say the least. While his play on the ice is nothing short of fantastic, that point is now irrelevant. His severe groin injury, that was supposed to keep him from a substantial amount of ice time, has now developed into a problem that requires surgery and more time off the ice. Not only will this hinder the Gaborik’s immediate success, it will also affect the his future, seeing as how he will become a free agent at the end of the season, and most teams will balk at an injury prone player. This is all after he snubbed the $8 million for 1 year deal that the Wild previously offered him.