Thank you House of Blues!

From: Monkey, Coco
Sent: Wednesday, November 29, 2006 2:59 PM
To: House of Blues
Subject: Thank you!

To whom it may concern:

I wanted to extend hearty congratulations to House of Blues (HOB Entertainment Inc, a subsidiary of LA-based Live Nation) on achieving your corporate mission to create a ‘profitable principled global entertainment company’, mainly through your groundbreaking method of egregious overcharging of your customers.

You have determined that a customer who reduces demand on your call center by using your website to purchase tickets should be charged the meager sum of $6 in service charges (a 32% markup on the $18.50 ticket I purchased). You’ve also determined that the convenience of having the ticket I ordered mailed directly to my house calls for a charge of $18 (a 3500% markup on the Canadian domestic $0.51 postage cost). HOB provides me, the customer, the opportunity to spend more on service and shipping than the actual musician or venue. If I look up ‘value’ in the dictionary, beside a giant tub of mayonnaise, I’m pretty sure I’ll see the HOB logo.

When ordering tickets for House of Blues through Ticketmaster Canada, it’s evident that the customer gouging philosophy extends to your business partner and only competitor. In addition to the $6 service charge, Ticketmaster adds a value-added ‘facility charge’ of $1 per ticket to the invoice (I think this charge is for the bathrooms?), as well as a measly $30 shipping fee.

Through my ticket purchase, it’s not the band or local venue that I want to support – the real goal is supporting value-added ticketing monopolies like yours. Without your organization, the whole live music industry would collapse into than hands of local promoters, who would most certainly lead the music scene into an abyss of affordable venues and increased audiences.

Whether it’s gasoline, prescription drugs or concert tickets, it’s organizations like yours that make these industries work by promoting a completely free-market economy through ensuring the entire market is controlled by a few large players.

Thanks for making America beautiful.

JTC Inc. Customer Survey

An open letter to JTC Inc.'s readers:

That's right, both of you. We've gone through the long, expensive process of creating a simple 10 question survey on a free survey site. We would ask that all of our readers please take the time to quickly respond to it. All you need to do is click this link:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=95712903618

Be sure to click 'Done' when you are finished. When you respond you will be automatically placed in a draw for JTC mechandise. When you respond more than once to improve your chances, you will be automatically placed in a draw for a knee to the crotch.

0-to-60 in 10,000,000 seconds

The Condom Conundrum

This past weekend one of my friends asked to borrow my car, not owning a car himself and needing to drive his girlfriend to her relative’s home out of town. At the time, this request seemed routine and low risk, so I had no hesitation in letting him use the car.

Last night was the first time I used the car since it was borrowed. As I opened the top of the arm rest compartment to find a lighter, I saw something I didn't expect; A condom was just sitting there, in its wrapper, unused, ready and waiting.

Condoms are a funny thing. Attached to these little packages of contraceptive joy is latent intent: a condom isn’t a passive device. Its presence anywhere implies the possibility that sex will, or has occurred within the immediate proximity. For instance, they hand them out at university residences, nightclubs and swingers parties (so I’ve heard), and they don’t hand them out at work, at the gym or at church.

The key difference between these two groups of locales is the level of sexual activity. I consider this fact, along with past experience, supporting of a correlation between sexual activity and condom availability. My main concern is this: what group of locale does my car fit into when my friend is driving it.

The incident leaves me with a lot of residual questions. Regardless of what could be hypothesized to have occurred in the reclined seat of my hatchback, I’m a little confused as to why anything would have occurred. Said friend lives with his girlfriend, which would provide them ample opportunities for being in the vicinity of condoms. Was it some kind sexual fantasy throwback to summer nights in high school? And finally, I find it a little disrespectful that he would have done this in my car. I mean, it’s not like when I borrowed his bike during the summer, I pulled over into the park and masturbated on it.

It was a difficult situation too, finding that condom. I was headed out to pick up two teammates for hockey when I found it. Often said teammates will go into the same arm rest to get a lighter. I was concerned that they would suffer from a similar confusion to which I’ve expressed above, and perhaps lead them to think I was as odd as my friend, who enjoys a little tilt steering with his coitus. However, as mentioned earlier, the condom conundrum is that it’s appearance implies sex, so I was fearful of how to dispose of it. For example, putting it in my pocket might work, but what if the worst happened, I forgot it there, and my girlfriend (who doesn’t use condoms) found it in the wash?

My final conundrum is what to do. Do I approach my friend honestly and ask him why he fucked his girlfriend in my car? And if he didn’t, ask him why in his mind does my car double as contraceptive storage? Or do I just let it rest, don’t say anything. Either way, it’s not going to be easy.

JTC Christmas Greetings

I don't know if you're like me, but sometimes I find it hard to buy Christmas cards that really express how I feel. They seem to either be overly Churchy like my friend to the left, or totally generic.






I'm not sure about you, but neither option really "turns my crank", if you know what I'm saying. Never being ones to leave an identified gap unfilled, the JTC Board of Directors leapt into action (and by "leapt into action", I mean "went for beers") and created the following line of JTC Christmas Greeting Cards. You're welcome. Feel free to give them to those special people in your life that you really need to understand your feelings.

It's GO TIME, Mr. Mandelbaum

As many of you know, I have recently moved to the suburbs of a large North American city and now take the inter-regional transit system known as the GO Train to work. Has anyone seen Train 48? Anyone willing to admit to having watched Train 48? It's exactly the same, except in real life the background scenery in the windows doesn't repeat like the background in Flintstones episodes. Anyway, here are my grievances with the GO culture:

1) People who believe they have ownership rights to a seat. The other day I got on a train and sat down in one of the many readily available seats (note: these trains do not have assigned seating). A few mins later, I see this women standing in front of me - giving me the 'evil-eye' (or it could've been the 'cut-eye') for taking her seat. She ended up sitting a few seats away. I'm sure I totally ruined her day, but I felt pretty good about myself.

2) People who jump off the train and do the 100-meter dash to their cars in full piece suits and briefcases in hand just so they're the first ones out of the parking lot. For some of these people this is the only exercise they get in a given day, but are you really saving that much time? So far, I've WALKED to my car everyday and haven't experienced any parking lot gridlock whatsoever.

3) Train operators who believe that announcing train stops is a public broadcasting forum for them to tell jokes and making unnecessary comments about weather like "looks like the rain is making everyone late this morning, I see a few less people than normal." I'm all for free speech, but I'm really looking forward to the day when they automate the stop announcements (like every train system in Europe) and thereby eliminate this job.

I'm sure more things will annoy me as time goes on (it's pretty easy to do) and you'll be the first to know about it.

Deer are Dangerous

On a different note, I found this article while researching this eMoron:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-10-04-drivers-deer_x.htm

Yet another new JTC product!

Over the next few days, JTC will be unveiling our latest product. A car that runs on garbage? Ketchup and mustard in the same bottle? A CD case that shocks whoever's holding it if they try to put the wrong CD in the case?

No. (But these are all spectacular ideas. Especially that last one.)

Let's just say if you haven't sent out your Christmas cards yet (and seriously - if you have, there's something wrong with you), you may want to wait until after the weekend...

Wash your hands

JTC Inc. Notebook - Found!

Phew, thank god. The incredibly reliable and organized JohnnyM has once again proven his immense value to this corporation, and has located the notebook. Honestly, having people like Johnny on your team just makes life that much easier. I want to congratulate Johnny for continuing his streak of excellence, and extend overall recognition for his rock solid contibution. We all love you Johnny.

JTC Inc. Notebook - Lost!

Holy shit. So as you all know, during JTC Pub Crawls / Board Meetings, we have a small moleskin notebook that we take notes in (as an aside, we at JTC still have an opening for 'stenographer' at these events). These notes capture jokes, ideas and general ramblings. Obviously, given it's packed with our brilliance, the monetery value, as stated, is 'more than you can ever imagine'. However, the useless JohnnyM has lost it. We mistakenly put our trust in that dumbass, and now he's gone and lost the foundation of JTC Inc, and about a year's worth of work. I'm totally going to tear that sonofabitch a new asshole, if you know what I mean.

Toronto Municipal Elections

I’m a little irate at the prospect of voting in our municipal elections this coming Monday. While it’s great that we get to elect representatives for our wards, school trustees, and mayor, that will make decisions around public transit, garbage, policing, affordable housing and development, the process itself is not without insanity.

1. Why the hell do I go to a local high school to vote? Not only does holding the vote in schools close down the Gymnasium for the day (which can only harm those little fast-fed fat bastards who could use a little physical activity), but this means we all have to rush home from work to make the poll closings. We’ve even gone so far as to pass legislation making it mandatory for employers to allow sufficient time off work for people to make it home in time. Here’s an idea – let me vote anywhere in the city, like say, close to work where I spend most of the day! Just throwing that out there, morons.

2. What the hell is with all the old volunteers on voting day? It’s like the local Gym is transformed into a senior’s event or something. Why are ancient people, who I should be helping cross the street, helping me practice one of the basic tenets of my democratic freedom? It’s a little odd.

3. The choice of candidates – I mean, come on. Usually we have one or two main candidates for Mayor, and the selection beyond these stiffs are the delusional, the insane and those with obvious hygiene issues. The choice is so poor that a man who, in his past life as a discount furniture peddler wearing a mock prison uniform, ran the City of North York for 25 years, and then immediately following ran the amalgamated City of Toronto, comprising of 2.5 Million people, for two 3 year terms. During his 6 years running one of the largest cities in North America, his gaffes included shaking hands with the leader of the Hell’s Angels, the Canadian equivalent of the mob, and in the most multicultural city in North America, asked "[why] the hell do I want to go to a place like Mombasa...I just see myself in a pot of boiling water with all these natives dancing around me." Holy fucking shit, that is just nuts.

Anyways, if you come out to vote you’ll see me and the other 32% of Torontonians that actually get off their ass and rush home to the local school gymnasium to check the box for their least objectionable choice (or fill in the arrow, or whatever skill-testing geometry-based quiz they are running now). Long live democracy, or whatever the fuck this crap is called.