Lucky

Thanks @Kevin Slater I have $820 in interest!

My account shows no interest earned at all, 15 months after purchase.

The odds that I would return with more than 10k in cash are beyond ludicrous! I am thinking 1k to 1.5k...

With ATMs the big thing now, I know that travelers checks are mostly a thing of the past, but it there a reason why you shouldn't take US cash? Just in case the ATM card fails or is stolen or locked...

Happy Anniversary!

That reminds me of an Asian escort I hired who gave me a great time and then took me out for an expensive dinner...the latter cost almost as much as the session.

The NY Times tried to answer my question today. The article is behind a paywall and I don't know how to "gift" it here, so some excerpts; The pop superstar’s tour, which is now finishing its initial North American leg with six nights at SoFi Stadium outside Los Angeles, has been both a business and a cultural juggernaut. Swift’s catalog of generation-defining hits and canny marketing sense have helped her achieve a level of white-hot demand and media saturation not seen since the 1980s heyday of Michael Jackson and Madonna — a dominance that the entertainment business had largely accepted as impossible to replicate in the fragmented 21st century. “The only thing I can compare it to is the phenomenon of Beatlemania,” said Billy Joel, who attended Swift’s show in Tampa, Fla., with his wife and young daughters. Although Swift, 33, and her promoters do not publicly report box-office figures, the trade publication Pollstar estimated that she has been selling about $14 million in tickets each night. By the end of the full world tour, which is booked with 146 stadium dates well into 2024, Swift’s sales could reach $1.4 billion or more — exceeding Elton John’s $939 million for his multiyear farewell tour, the current record-holder. Swift has now had more No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200 over the course of her career than any other woman, surpassing Barbra Streisand. With the tour lifting Swift’s entire body of work, she has placed 10 albums on that chart this year and is the first living artist since the trumpeter and bandleader Herb Alpert in 1966 to have four titles in the Top 10 at the same time. But how did a concert tour become so much more: fodder for gossip columns, the subject of weather reports, a boon for friendship-bracelet beads — the unofficial currency of Swiftie fandom — and the reason nobody could get a hotel room in Cincinnati at the end of June? “She is the best C.E.O., and best chief marketing officer, in the history of music,” said Nathan Hubbard, a longtime music and ticketing executive who co-hosts a Swift podcast. “She is following people like Bono, Jay-Z and Madonna, who were acutely aware of their brands. But of all of them, Taylor is the first one to be natively online.” The Taylorpalooza extends to every level of the news media, which began the coverage cycle by chronicling Swift’s ticketing fiasco last November, when fans — and scalpers’ bots — crushed Ticketmaster’s systems, leading to a heated Senate Judiciary hearing. Since then, seemingly no nugget of Swift news has escaped coverage, from the stars in the stands to oddities like a Seattle concert that, according to one researcher, shook the ground with an intensity equivalent to a 2.3-magnitude earthquake. Music critics have portrayed the Eras Tour as showing Swift at the top of her game as a media-savvy, big-tent talent, a pop star with a knack for grand spectacle as well as the polished artistry of a classic songwriter. Shania Twain, the country-pop star whose career in some ways prefigured Swift’s, caught the Las Vegas stop of the Eras Tour, a 44-plus song production that goes as long as three and a half hours. She praised Swift’s “beautiful balance” of high-tech stagecraft and intimate performance segments. “I have to applaud her,” Twain said in a telephone interview. “As a performer, I know that work that goes into it.” The power of Swift’s fan army — and fear of crossing the star, or even appearing to — has kept nearly all of the press about the tour sunny. Though some fans (and parents) balked at the ticket prices and challenges of securing seats, most frustration was directed squarely at Ticketmaster, not Swift. After a few weeks of headlines romantically linking Swift with a frontman some fans considered to be problematic, reports spread in the celebrity pages that they had split. (Swift’s representatives declined to comment for this article.) For fans, the shows are a pilgrimage, and a rediscovery of the joys of mass gatherings. Flights are packed with Swifties, and travelers trade stories and compare outfits — drawn from looks associated with Swift “eras” — in stadium corridors and parking lots. In Kansas City, the comedian Nikki Glaser was attending her eighth show, a commitment that she estimated has cost her $25,000. “This year I decided not to freeze my eggs,” Glaser said. “I’m going to put that money toward the thing I love most in the world, which is Taylor Swift.” More: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/05/arts/music/taylor-swift-eras-tour.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Music Personally, I'd rather watch Harry Styles.

RIP @jackhammer91406 I am glad that the Friday Funnies thread he started has been such a success. He was a good guy going through tough times and started the thread to focus on the positive. Kudos.

BUT WHY?

To me, she looks like a teen-aged girl prancing about a stage in her underwear. Why pay hundreds of dollars to see that?

I have no idea who Ben Shapiro is or why this thread is even here.

From today's wsj.com: Put ‘Great Sex’ on Your Vacation To-Do List The Wall Street Journal?

Why are you guys so absolutely critical? It doesn't make this site look very pro-provider.

August 1st is here, and it's @Cooper's birthday. May you have a glorious day!

Do you ever have a single nice thing to say about a person who has died?

Sad and tragic news. RIP-Wee

Well, I don't claim the intellectual heft of someone like @Charlie but I do HIGHLY recommend the novel that I just finished- Killing Moon by Jo Nesbo. He's a famous Norwegian author and this novel is quite long, which is good because it is so good that you don't want it to end. It involves odd killings and washed-out Inspector Harry Hole, recently retired to Los Angeles is given a compelling reason to return to Oslo to help prove the innocence of the main suspect. Cleverness abounds. There are gay characters, including an Asian cop who neglects his partner for work, and bad gays who rape young men. Author Nesbo takes us to a gay club that you probably wouldn't want your relatives reading about...are we all really so horny? Anyway, it is not a gay novel as such, but if you enjoy murder mysteries as much as I do, then this is one you won't want to miss.

I'd hire this guy:

He's beautiful. I got to notice that for free!

+1

I would still like to have an ATM card with no foreign fees and no fees by the local bank. The First Republic card that I have is a debit card, but it does meet those things...I think. I guess that I should double check! It's now a Chase bank.

I was surprised at the verdicts, but it was a strong win for Spacey. Now the question is "Where do I go to get my reputation back?"

Maybe he is busy taking spelling lessons.

Good article, but to be clear, there is not a new version of Rentboy in the works, but better organized help for male or trans sex workers. At least that's how I read it.

Kevin Spacey in case he hasn't been mentioned. But I went to a Joan Rivers concert and laughed my ass off. She was a favorite! Then I saw a play that John Ritter was in off-Broadway with Fran Drescher. We all waited for them to come out after the show. Fran was sweet but Ritter literally ran away. Asshole.