Adam Jewell - Search & Affiliate Marketing

Leno is better than Letterman - everyone knows it! If you thought Jay Leno was good on The Tonight Show, the you MUST see him live at the Mirage Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas! When going to the show, I only expected to see Jay but there was an opening act that was absolutely fantastic. It was the band called The Alley Cats. They had quite a humorous act and sang a number of oldies that really got the crowd into the show. They had a great stage presence, great voices and a great sense of humor. While seeing them was unexpected, it was a great surprise and if you get the chance to go see them, definitely jump on the chance. They seemed like a really great group of guys and Jay Leno is a great guy on and off the stage so you would expect no less from one of his opening acts.

Jay had the crowd howling from the get-go. He touched on everything from politics and the current financial mess to women and their cats and guys and their dogs. Was the lady in the audience with 5 cats sincel or married? Take a wild guess! In Jay’s standup routine just as on The Tonight Show, he doesn’t hold much back. He’s not raunchy like Andrew Dice Clay but he does delve into politically incorrect territory with the “how fat are we getting in this country” line of jokes and touches the edges of sexist and ethnic humor as did The Alley Cats.

While Conan isn’t to bad, Jay is a million times better. It’ll be a sad day when he leaves The Tonight Show but hopefully he’ll end up on another show and continue to perform live. He really seemed to enjoy performing as he always does and everyone in the crowd loved the show. The Alley Cats and Leno went for about 2 hours total which is much better than David Copperfield at the MGM which went for about an hour and fifteen minutes with lots of filler (video) in the show.

Tickets to see Leno in Vegas are about $100 and I was able to snag a second row seat a about 6pm the day of the show. The theater was just about full but one of the benefits of going to a show solo is that you can get a great seat to a great show at the last minute. Since tickets to see Leno are one of the more popular tickets on the Las Vegas Strip, you probably won’t find them at Tix4Tonight which offers discounted same day tickets for a variety of Vegas shows but it will still be the best $100 you spend while you are in Vegas!

On the way back from CJU in Santa Barbara, I decided to swing through Vegas. A deal on Petitie Suite at Treasure Island was secured on Orbitz for around $100/night and since I’m not much of a gambler, I usualy try to see a few shows. I have always LOVED David Copperfield. He’s an amazing magician and I ws thrilled to see him way back int the day, maybe 20 years ago with my dad. That shows was probably at Heinze Hall in Pittsburgh.

If you are interested in going to see David Copperfield live at the MGM Grand, you can buy David Copperfield tickets at the MGM grand box office or you can get them the day of the show at Tix4Tonight which is an “outlet” of sorts that sells discounted tickets to various shows in Vegas.

So anyway, the David Copperfield show wasn’t even close to being sold out for the 10pm show on a Friday night. It might have been 50% - 60% sold. The show opened with a video highlighting the wide popularity and recognition of David Copperfield and there was a lot of video filler throughout the show. Some of it was interesting and it did add some to the show but there was to much of it or the show was to short.

He did a good job of involving the audience but the show laster an hour and fifteen minutes and maybe 15% of it was simply watching videos of David Copperfield’s past performances. There were a few card tricks, a little sleight of hand magic and he made some people vanish, some things appear and created the illusion of somehow going through a big metal plate. The stuff he did wasn’t trivial and it did take somewhat of a setup to make it all happen. He had the sidekick Quackers the duck in the routine for a little humor but that was a very small part of it. The duck peed on the audience members a few times and added a little to the show.

Overall the show wasn’t bad, there were a few neat tricks but it wasn’t good either and it is not worth $100 to go see the show. If you REALLY love David Copperfield then you might want to go see it if you are in Vegas but don’t go to far out of your way to go to see David Copperfield at the MGM Grand in Vegas.

Tonight I managed to get tickets for Jay Leno playing at the MGM Mirage right here next to the Treasure Island Resort and Casino. Hopefully Leno will be better than Copperfield and maybe the show will even go for more than an hour. I’m a huge Leno fan and hope he is even better on stage than he is on late night TV. Dave, if ya read this, you are an awesome performer but the show in Vegas was a bit of a dissapointment and not your best work.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Bank of America has agreed to buy Merril Lynch for 44 billion dollars. Is it just me or does absolutely none of this financial mess make any sense. First Bear Stearns gets a bailout of sorts and gets folded into JP Morgan Chase, then Lehman Bros. seems to be on the brink and somehow Bank of America comes out purchasing Merril Lynch at $29 a share or 44 BILLION. That is quite a hefty 70% premium over the $17.05 per share Merril was trading at the market close on Friday, Sept 12th.

At least it is not our tax money bailing out Merril but we still have to see what happens to Lehman Bros. on Monday. What happens if they crash and burn? Who knows, have we ever seen anything that big crash before? Looking further down the road, what happens when we have 2 global financial firms (Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase) with such a huge concentration of weath and financial power over the financial markets? Is there any way this can be a good thing over the long term?

It also begs the question of the stability of BAC. They’ve bought a ton of stuff over the recent months including Countrywide and now Merril. How much toxic shit are each of those two on the hook for that BAC will now be on the hook for? Better hope it is not to much because it seems like BAC is going to be to big to stop from failing if all that stuff blows up. If Merril wanted to sell before they went the way of Bear & Lehman, then why the hell would BAC want to pony up a 70% premium for something that might be selling for chump change a few months down the road?

This isn’t my area of expertise by any strenth of the imagination but it seems like the way things are going, the bubble is getting bigger and bigger and bigger and more and more stuff is getting pushed under the rug. We still have to face the biggest wave yet of Alt-A and Option Arm resets that will probably come crashing down as the “prime” borrowers” discover they can’t pay. See the chart below from Credit Suisse that shows the upcoming round of mortgage resets.

Tsunami of Upcoming Mortgage Resets Through 2012

Monday will be another wild ride on Wall Street as the Bank of America acquisition of Merril Lynch gets digested by the market. Is it good or bad news? Who knows? The market has been so crazy lately as the financial system crumbles it is anyones guess what will happen.

The day started bright and early with a 7am flight departure out of Philadelphia that left on time, got to Salt Lake City about 25 minutes early and the connecting flight landed in Santa Barbara right on time. You’d think an affiliate marekting conference in Santa Barbara would be be crawling with early arrivals since the hotel rate is good tonight but so far there don’t seem to be any familiar faces.

The hotel is just about sold out except for some outrageously expensive suites. CJ is still showing registration is available for CJU 2008 which is unusual since it usually sells out as much as two months before the conference kicks off. You’d think the down economy would boost attendance at a performance marketing conference but maybe budget custbacks are keeping people back home at the office.

In any case, it is beautiful Santa Barbara weather, maybe 70 degrees and sun. The beach is right across the street with some kite surfers taking advantage of the sun and wind. As usual there are tons of sailboats out in the harbor, bikes and a number of variations out on the beach and the sidewalks. The hotel is great as always, definitely one of the best places I’ve stayed over the years.

The Stelers are set to take on the Browns tonight starting in a few minutes so I’ll probably go get dinner and maybe a few beers and watch the game. Tomorow should be AWESOME. Since the conference doesn’t start till Tuesday, tomorrow is a free day and I’ll be doing some horse back riding, going to some wineries (which has never been a big thing for me but it sounds like this might be prety cool) and then out on a sailboat. There is supposed to be some Danish villiage that there will be time to go through and misc other sights to see. The tour will be with Captain Jacks Santa Barabara Adventure Tours and the specific tour will be the “Captain Jacks Top Deck Tour” that should provide a pretty good sampling of a nice chunk of the cool stuff to do around here. Since CJU doesn’t really get going till the welcome reception on Tuesday at 6pm, I may line up some other adventure stuff on Tuesday as well, maybe head out the Channel Islands for a little kayaking. Well, it looks like the Steeler game is starting so it’s time to sign off and go watch the game. Tomorrow should be an awesome day.

Tea, a nice cup of loose leaf tea is always a great way to kick back and relax. My personal favorites thus far come from Adagio teas. They’ve got great green and white teas with the Jamine pearls being among the best I’ve ever had.

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If you are a big tea fan, be sure to take advantage of this awesome Amazon special on Tao of Tea products. When you are ready to checkout, just put the coupon code CLRNCFTY in the shopping cart and you’ll get 55% off all product in the promotion.