Re: Madonna is 50. Five-oh.
 

I saw a picture of him in a scarf with donkeys on it. I don't know if the donkeys, or the scarf, were French, though.

I think that was a fair paraphrase of his argument from the article you posted.

Re: Madonna is 50. Five-oh.
 

That scarf is popular with welfare-staters, I hear.

Ummm...
 

I've watched this clip many times and I just don't see how it's not the referee tackling the quarterback.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFhJGPf8j14

TM

Re: Madonna is 50. Five-oh.
 

Exactly, Guv'ner! Point well taken and please accept my humblest foregiveness.

New topic, of the worlds are colliding varietale. Scratch that, new querry of a sort. So a client sends me an email today.....let me clarify, in reality the client is a corporation, a quasi-fictional person at law, if you will, and those "persons" don't have opposable thumbs or other accentuating digits to allow them to hit the "send" button to dispurse the email. The source of the email was actually a flesh and blood human employee of the client aka corporate entity. Full disclosure: middle level employee to be exact, and I say this, because I know what you are thinking, that this person, employee, must be the CEO of the client aka corporate entity, given my corner office statii, but, in fairness, out of a sense of social justice and equity, which is what I am all about, on special occassions, for a premium billing rate adjustment, I deal with the hoi polloi ("proles" in Paigowworld, sniff), if you will. Anywhom, in short, as I digress, the email read:

"Last nite, I dreamted that you shaved your head, and the look was off the hizzle. Everyone in the dream loved it."

Two questions:

A. Is this a come on?

II. If so, does the implicit reference to others in the dream indicate group sex could be at hand (and foot, and other apendage)?

Serious advice appreciated!

Re: Madonna is 50. Five-oh.
 

Well, it also makes little sense that AC/DC wouldn't explore other online avenues. iTunes isn't the only place that you can buy music online. Amazon is pretty competitive and doesn't have the restrictive software. And Radiohead, noted by Sebby to be more album oriented than singles oriented, doesn't sell on iTunes, but their most recent album was released on their website and did really well.

I think AC/DC is just stuck in the past, but they can get away with it because their fans are used to buying CDs.

Re: Madonna is 50. Five-oh.
 

I thought that was called negotiation. You want my product. I know your business model. If you want my product, it will cost you x% of your spread. If you don't want to give up a piece of that spread, you don't get my product.

TM

Re: Madonna is 50. Five-oh.
 

No advice, just a prediction - you're gonna be hitting some corporate-entity skinz, old skool style, IYKWIMAITTYD.

Re: Madonna is 50. Five-oh.
 

Sounds like a recipe for getting sued to me. Both by the acts that don't get over the bar, and by some crusading plaintiffs lawyer who doesn't like bundling.

Re: Ummm...
 

Looks like he was trying to get out of the way and trying to protect himself, and bungled the move and knocked over the guy.

Re: Madonna is 50. Five-oh.
 

I suppose, but if he knows apple's business model, then he knows that apple's model is that it has a deal and it doesn't cut special deals (at least not for Kid Rock). Kid Rock's position seems to be "because they're making a bigger spread, they should share some with me and everyone else." If you want to call that a negotiating position, go ahead.

Re: Madonna is 50. Five-oh.
 

I'll do that. You go ahead and call him a socialist. Makes much more sense since I'm sure Kid Rock wouldn't agree to give them access to his music if Apple agreed to pay him a piece without making the same deal for every other artist.

TM

Re: Madonna is 50. Five-oh.
 

I do. Righteous!

I'd hi-5 you, if we were more proximate......cyber hi5?

Re: Madonna is 50. Five-oh.
 

ch-5, indeed. Word!

Re: Madonna is 50. Five-oh.
 

Maybe he would, and then he'd be selling himself out for the principles he purports to be taking a stand on. His (or your) choice.

Re: Madonna is 50. Five-oh.
 

Kid Rock's boycott is quite clearly an effort to put pressure on Apple to pay him more money based on their business model. If it works and he gets more money, he's a sell-out (not a smart negotiator). If it doesn't, he's a socialist trying to force Apple to give up their profit margins. Ridiculous.

How is this any different than Walmart's negotiations with Sony to sell TVs? If Sony says, "Since you want so many tvs because you're in such a unique position, we'll sell to you for $x," and Walmart says, "This is true. And because we do, you'll sell to us for $y," and Sony says, "Uh, no. If we sell to you for $y, you're making more than we think you should and we want a cut of that margin." It's a negotiation and the price is set based on what is acceptable to both parties or there's no deal. Same shit.

TM

Re: Madonna is 50. Five-oh.
 

Word, indeed! It's bourne!

Seriously though, Monsieur Fleur,

Prior to my attentions turning entirely to the shaving of my head in preparation for "client contact", I just wanted to say a heartfelt thanks. It has been an incredible day. A true beginning to what may amount to a life changing event for me or at the least, a decent one-nighter (or at the leastest a so-so nothing-special one-nighter, but good enough that's it better than sitting home and watching Bravo all night and fantasizing that I could one day meet Jonathan Adler, somehow, and he would decorate my pied-a-terre, at a discount, and we would celebrate with some tea and scones and clotting cream). Anywhom, merci beaucoup for your spot on analysis, kind words and encouragement.

Also, to RT and the whole lot of you buggers, molto grazie for letting me drop by your chit-chat board and share intimate details of my quasi-professional life.

I am truly feeling the love. And I know, "love" sounds like a strong term, but, in reality it has so many nuances and stratifications. I mean it's really positive and affirming but also has grey areas, and perhaps is separated from hate by a thin line. But, notwithstanding that, let's add new connotation to love, the Lawtalkin' Love. As the imitation sock of one of the original posters on the penultimate progenitor of this Board, I declare this new variant of love, because I can. Its my prerogative.

There it is. Peace. Out.

Re: Madonna is 50. Five-oh.
 

Sirs,

I have read this thread and want to weigh in with an endoursement of Thurgreed on this one. I wikipedia'd "socialism" and, as I suspected, it requires some government involvement in the process.

The negotiations in question sound more like a marketplace give and take, capitalism, perhaps, if you will.

Re: Madonna is 50. Five-oh.
 

Plus, you get a free Dr Pepper

Re: Madonna is 50. Five-oh.
 

It sounds like they are exploring other avenues -- you can buy Black Ice on AC/DC's own website without having to set foot in a Wal-Mart:
http://www.acdc.com/index_album.html

Thanks everyone for the well-wishes! If Slave and I can just make it through the next 13 days, this marriage thing may work out . . . .

Re: Madonna is 50. Five-oh.
 

And a fine imitation, indeed, if I may say so, and I believe I may. Spot on.

Good luck with your Tete Rase caper. Don't forget to report back all the gory details! ;)

P. O.

Re: Madonna is 50. Five-oh.
 

AC/DC gets away with it for the same reason the Beatles do it. Because they can.

AC/DC sells over a million records a year even when they don't do a new album. They're one of the top selling bands in the world and they make staggering cash by forcing fans to buy whole cds on the pretext that they want their albums to be bought as "whole items." Bullshit. AC/DC is a singles group if there ever was one. They know if they went on Itunes their records would be cannibalized the same way people buy the one or two decent Stones' songs from that band's lamentable 70s and 80s releases.

If AC/DC went online people would only buy the hits and the band would lose money. So they don't. It's just smart business.

Re: Madonna is 50. Five-oh.
 

And I suppose Apple has decided that it would rather not sell AC/DC than have to deal with the backlash of letting one band dictate terms.

It is all just business, but now I have to drive home without AC/DC's new album instead of with.

Sucks.

Re: Madonna is 50. Five-oh.
 

not to be a timmy, but one does not need opposable thumbs to send email. emakl can be sent equally well after a thumb-ectomy.

however, a lack of thumb will limit the sex acts em can perform.

Re: Madonna is 50. Five-oh.
 

Again, they could sell the whole album online without having the songs piecemealed out on their own website or one of iTune's competitors.

Re: Madonna is 50. Five-oh.
 

There is no way Chinese Democracy cannot be a let down. The band hit the ball so far with its first three records I can't imagine any way they could put out a better song selection. Say what you will about the band, "Appetite" is one of the best hard rock records of all time. And the "Use Your Illusion" records have some songs that rival the best of Jagger/Richards. The only problem with all of these records is they are horribly overproduced. If G&R stripped the production down and went for an "Exile on Main Stream" sound, tunes like "14 Years," "Dead Horse" and "Yesterdays" would be all time rock radio classics. They're every bit as well crafted as classics like "Tumbling Dice."

Re: Madonna is 50. Five-oh.
 

That's baffling to me. I can only assume they got a killer deal with Wal Mart or the mragin on selling whole cds on Itunes isn't as good as it is selling actual cds.

It's kind of odd for these guys to be greedy, really. They've got more money than God.

I rather enjoyed my trip to Wal Mart, by the way. It's huge and there's tons of stuff to see. The television selection was impressive.

Re: Madonna is 50. Five-oh.
 

There's a song in the middle that sounds like Creedence. Shocked me a bit. Then I thought, "Who better to screech like Fogerty than Brian Johnson?" They might be the only two voices in rock who have a high and low range and absolutely nothing in the middle.

By the way, that Fogerty disc you can buy in Starbucks... Buy it. It's really, really good.

Re: Madonna is 50. Five-oh.
 

The iTunes Music Store doesn't exist to make money selling music. It exists in order to continue making Apple hardware necessary in people's lives. The DRM makes it absolutely necessary that your next MP3 player is an iPod. I'm not going to shit-can 4,000 songs for which I paid good money because SanDisk makes a slightly better player this year.

The artists are pissed because Apple isn't incentivized to make money per transaction like they are. Sure, Apple could charge a buck-fitty for Kid Rock's latest excretion, but that won't sell any more iPods, so why risk pissing off the hardware customer base just to make another four cents a song?

ETA and that's why Apple introduced iTunes Plus with premium pricing, only to return to 99 cents either with DRM or without. It's no longer necessary for all the songs to be DRMed -- just enough in everyone's libraries that you wouldn't even think to buy a Sansa because some indefinitely large portion of your music library would be unplayable. Apple has achieved the goal of making the other guy's hardware seem like too much of a pain in the ass. You could offer Sansas and Zunes at cost, and Apple will still sell more iPods.

Re: Madonna is 50. Five-oh.
 

Off a blackberry? its all i use these days.

What's happening all over? I'll tell you what's happening all over.
 

Ah, Wonk, I love you like the dope-addled, Zeppelin-addicted older brother I never ha . . uh, Not Nick? Is that you?

eta: I hit 4500 while wonking a wonk post? Jesus H. Christ on a popsicle stick!

Re: Madonna is 50. Five-oh.
 

What's different is Kid Rock isn't simply saying that Apple's getting too much of the pie from him. He's saying that everyone else should get more of the pie too, and until they do he's not going to sell to them (this, even though a whole bunch of other musicians apparently are satisfied with their piece of pie).

So in your hypo, Sony would be saying "We think you're getting too good a deal from everyone you deal with--Panasonic, Alpo, Hanes, whoever--so we're not going to sell to you at the price you want. In fact, we resent the fact that you're doing that so successfully, so we're not going to sell to you at all." Sure, that's negotiation, but then so would be "I'm going to burn down your store if you don't give me the deal you want."

Re: Madonna is 50. Five-oh.
 

While I won't quibble with your analysis, I think it is equally fair to say that the other guys, for the most part, did an even better job of making their hardware seem like too much of a pain in the ass.

Re: Madonna is 50. Five-oh.
 

And at that point the State probably comes in and effects some resolutions that, for better or worse, distort the normal give and take in the marketplace. Is that the socialism aspect you were referencing?

Re: Madonna is 50. Five-oh.
 

True. I had one of the old brick mp3 players -- the sonic rio. Made me pull my hair out.

In contrast, when I first tried an ipod, I was ready to suck Steve Jobs' dick.

Re: Madonna is 50. Five-oh.
 

Not me! Almost all my music is ripped from my own CDs. And a fat lot of good it does me, since everyone else is completely fucked by Apple's DRM.

Re: Madonna is 50. Five-oh.
 

Untrue. Icky's got a Rio he'll sell you cheap. Win-win.

Re: Madonna is 50. Five-oh.
 

Well, Kid's not getting anything done on his own (other than advocating for Napster). So I'm not sure which he wants--the government to intervene or for all the other musicians to join him and get an exemption from the antitrust laws for a group boycott.

Re: Madonna is 50. Five-oh.
 

Not to hear him talk.

Re: What's happening all over? I'll tell you what's happening all over.
 

Dope-addled, yes. Zeppelin-addicted, no way. I like Zep for about 1 week in HS and then had no use for them until I turned about 40. It's only in the last few years that I've come to appreciate that their whole catalog wasn't utter shit. They did have some great songs. They just buried them in so much dreck the gems got lost.

Re: Congratulations Slave and Catrin!!!
 

My question related to Betty's motivation to arrange a lunch with Sarah Beth and Arthur and then not to show up. My three hypotheses were (1) Betty wanted to make Sarah Beth feel attractive and was trying to do something nice; (2) Betty wanted to see if she could use a man's attraction to her to manipulate him, but she had no interest beyond seeing if she could yank Arthur's chain; or (3) she was in such pain over Don that she wanted to make Sarah Beth feel miserable by inducing her to succumb to tempation with Arthur so that she wouldn't be the only one with a broken home.

That was an open question until the last episode. SPOILER ALERT. What we learned in the Mountain King episode was that it was 3, with a bit of scientific curiosity about Why People Cheat. I interpret her phone call with Sarah Beth to mean she wanted to find out whether people cheat on nice spouses that they love, and the answer she got was yes. And that cheaters suffer too, which is what she needs to know to forgive Don -- at the expense of her own innocence.

ETA that the story arc is The Great Gatsby reset in Midcentury Modern and with Peggy playing the Sam Waterston character. Which is nice because it's never been well adapted for the screen, but bad because it means Don Will Have To Die.