Unfocused Content

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about baseball and music. The two seem to go together like baseball and apple pie, except that no one is stealing apple pie.

I don’t know if you’ve heard, but the Colorado Rockies, my home team, are doing really well this year. Well, their doing really well for the past 6-8 weeks, which was enough to get them into a best of 5 series with the somebodies – which they won – and also now a playoff type thingy with another team whom they should also beat probably. My point is not that I love baseball, but that our local news is in a tizzy about baseball-related stories. First, today they have a guide to the players – Matt Holliday and all the other guys that play for the Rockies – with pictures and stats and stuff – so you can know who you are rooting for. We don’t have any Gallaragas or Weisses or Jayhawk Owenses anymore, so the guide is helpful to recognize the folks that, heretofore, we wouldn’t be able to identify in a lineup of mostly bums and music stealers.

Also, some of the games last week were during the day – which apparently caused mass productivity losses all around town, and possibly as far away as Arvada. According to a story posted on 9news.com, investment bankers were unable to concentrate because of the game.

“How can I concentrate on doing work when they keep scoring runs?” said Taylor, associate vice president of the A.G. Edwards public finance division. “What we do is public finance investment banking.”

I like the last piece of the quote — “what we do here is public finance investment banking.” Oh, I see. Who cares? Here is another fun quote.

“When asked if his productivity will go down, Taylor initially said, “Productivity won’t go down, maybe just during the lunch hours that the Rockies are playing like today.” When asked again, “I definitely think productivity will go down, there’s no question about it,” said Taylor. “But, we’ll get our work done – maybe on the weekends. What we do is public finance investment banking.”

OK, so I added the last line. But that’s what makes quoting people so much fun. Plus, geez man, if you are worried about your lunchtime productivity, and have to make it up on the weekend, maybe you should seek out other employment. Maybe the public finance investment banking game is just a little too competitive at the moment.

Speaking of stealing music, I spent some time on freejammie.com, the site created seemingly in an hour or two by Jammie Thomas – the current poster child for music piracy, and one of 26,000 people sued by the music industry for illegally downloading music, according to the AP. Jammie lost her suit and now owes $22,000 for the 24 songs she claims not to have downloaded and shared – songs which apparently included Sarah McLaughlin and did not include Hannah Montana. A little math tells us that, at that rate, the music industry stands to make $572 million from suing people just like you and me. Well, people like us who also steal music. The site provides a humorous if not insightful view into the minds of folks on both sides of the music sharing debate. The comments on the site quickly degrade into name-calling because, as with most debatable topics, neither side can easily sway the other, so they just defame each other’s character.

I am of two minds about the whole thing. The oft used comparison is that downloading music is akin to stealing books from a bookstore. As someone who hopes to one day sell my writing, I’d like it if people would pay for it instead of reading it for free. But, if I wrote a book and people were breaking into stores to steal my book, I’d sort of feel flattered. Plus, I imagine that would get me on a talk show or two. Would it bother me that all the thieving means the difference between being a millionaire and being what I am now? Not really. I’m pretty happy how I am right now.

I guess my point is that I could argue either side all day long, and I’d still never understand how making this woman pay the RIAA $22,000 is going to stop my neighbor from listening to my music when he comes over to borrow a rake. People share music. The internet makes it really easy. Adapt.

Speaking of Hanna Montana – we were going to go to the concert — well, the kids and my wife were going to go – but we couldn’t get tickets. Turns out there is an investigation underway by the Arkansas Attorney General (not an oxymoron) into why we couldn’t get tickets. According to the AP, (did you know you can just paste in crap verbatim as long as you say that?) the 54-date tour by 14-year-old Miley Cyrus, the star of the Disney Channel show, sold out in as little as four minutes and scalpers are getting four to five times the face value, creating a torrent of complaints from frustrated parents. A single ticket for the show in Charlotte, N.C., sold for $2,565. (You can tell I pasted, because I would not use the word “torrent.”)

Just think – just a few years ago, for $2,565, you could have had Billy Ray Cyrus and his entire family come directly to your living room, and still have money left over for season tickets to the Rockies. Things change. You would think that, what with the controversy surrounding the show (according to the AP, someone pitched it a few years ago and Disney said “no thanks,” then viola, there it was,) that they’d be a little gun shy about additional controversy. Apparently not. A spokeswoman for ticketliquidator.com, one of the Web sites targeted, said the company had no comment. “She should have said “What we do is public finance investment banking.” That would have been funnier.

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