New poem: THE CIGAR, THE HOLLYWOOD PALLADIUM AND ME.

so I'm in a big big room

where music will be played

and there's an obnoxious someone

who thinks he's a defiant hero

clutching a fat cigar in his right hand

then he tilts his head back

and blows gray smoke

looking like car exhaust

into the upper Palladium atmosphere

I wonder if it's worth it 

to find one of the yellow-shirt security people

until I remember

that a security person

confiscated my friend's Tic-Tac container

because Mr. Security

thought the Tic-Tacs might be

smuggled-in drugs

that happen to be shaped like Tic-Tacs

and it's not worth it either

to confront Mr. Cigar

and knock his treasured smoke

from his right hand

since I know from experience

that hitting and being hit

isn't the right way

to solve problems

so I move away from the compromised air,

making sure that I stand behind

the tape separating audience

from Palladium walkways

as I hear loud chatter

and smell the more familiar concert aroma

of a freshly-lit joint

London GUARDIAN: publicist and shrink debate over the continuing Charlie Sheen puablic debacle.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/13/charlie-sheen-media-mental-health

You're not likely to see this kind of discussion in American media.  Instead, most of its practitioners
think of Charlie Sheen in terms of  big TV ratings and magazine/website audience "gets"--and this will continue for the duration of Charlie's spoken-rant tour and lawsuit over the likely end of TWO AND A HALF MEN (really likely for all cast and crew besides him).

Re the music industry's cruel summer of underattended and cancelled concerts.

I posted this to someone else's blog in his comments section.  Reposting it here in its entirety:
As a concertgoer, I'd say that Irving Azoff and his Ticketmaster/Live Nation empire--with little room for other promoters excepting AEG--has been a big factor in this year's touring kerfluffles.



Ticket prices [at least the before-fees face value] are going to have to shrink to a range of $25-$75 to re-interest those who have been priced out of attendance over the last decade (and, yes, it has been a decade since SFX and then Clear Channel helped ignite today's forest fire of empty seats and gig cancellations).


TicketNation (a nice soubriquet) and many A-and-B-list artists also need to join together, face reality and voluntarily take cuts on the too-huge artist advances which have been paid in recent years.


Having written the above, the cynic in me believes that if the latest leg of the U2 360 tour had gone on as scheduled this summer, the number of articles in the US/European media about poor sales wouldn't have attracted as much attention.

So, if ticket prices do come down, we have Bono (and his untimely back injury) to thank.