The Terrorists Won

The Daily Beast: A Long Island woman has been charged with allegedly calling in a phony bomb threat on Sept. 10th—reportedly because she did not want her family to fly on the tenth anniversary on the terrorist attacks. Airport police in Tucson, Arizona, said they received an anonymous call from a woman on Sept. 10th who claimed she had heard her boyfriend and others discussing a plot to bomb Southwest Airlines Flight 2475 to Long Island that day. Police called bomb squad officials and notified the FBI, who tracked the call to Mary Purcell, 37, who said she was worried about her mother and brother flying that day. She is set to be arraigned in federal court, but the exact charges are unknown.

Yes, when someone calls in a bomb threat in order to cancel the flight for fear of her family flying on the anniversary of 9/11, the terrorists have won.

I'll add my two cents: there were plenty of tickets available for Broadway shows this weekend, mostly due to the fact that this was the first week back to school in New York City. I wouldn't doubt that at least a small part of the reason was because it was the tenth anniversary of 9/11 and some were leery of traveling into Manhattan either because of fear or they just didn't want the hassle of security checkpoints on the highways.

Since it was a light week, many of us in the industry were offered complimentary tickets to the Sunday shows. On more than one occasion, I heard colleagues who couldn't give Broadway tickets away worth hundreds of dollars because either people were frightened to be in the city that day, or they had initially accepted the tickets, but then reneged after someone else talked them out of it.

The terrorists have won.

You're Welcome, America

Just got home from Will Ferrell's limited run on Broadway with his show, "You're Welcome America. A Final Night With George W. Bush."

I'm not going to attempt to review it (it opens Thursday and there will be enough of those) but I must say that I loved it and still have a headache from laughing so hard.

I certainly hope they plan on filming this show for a cable or DVD release.


UPDATE (12:22am): Thanks to commenter DCH for this info:

LIVE on HBO March 14th at 9pm.

Guess I spent $60 a ticket for nothing. Just kidding - it was pretty cool to see it live.

Will Ferrell On Broadway

(Click on logo for a Will Ferrell video)

We just purchased our tickets to go! And although I'm glad the wifey and I are going, I'm kind of pissed off about the ticket buying procedure.

She found tickets online available for February 2nd in the balcony. We didn't want to spend a fortune for a 90 minute show, so we opted for balcony seats - it's not like there's going to be some magnificent set we'd be missing sitting toward the side of the balcony. So they were $61.50 each.

$123.00, right? Wrong. They tacked on these mysterious ticket fees, which unfortunately is expected from the thieves at Telecharge. But I guess the middle man has to make a buck, right? A Service Fee of $7 per ticket and (this is the kicker) and Handling Charge of $2.50. But they give you the option of printing your tickets at home... for a fee of $2.50. Or you can pick them up at Will Call... for a fee of $2.50. WHAT. THE. FUCK?!

In any case, we get to see a show that I'm hoping will be a laugh riot.