pub notes The Price Is Right Is it too much to hope that while the auto industry is getting straightened out some attention will be paid to the whole Arabian bazaar sales scheme that drives it? If you go to Sears to buy a refrigerator, you see the price plainly marked, sometimes with a discount for Memorial Day or whatever, and that’s that. If you walk into an auto showroom, you are, to put it politely, like a rube at the circus. The salesman’s job is to wring as much out of you as he can to pay for an automobile loaded with extras. There’s a price tag on it, but that’s just to tell you what ballpark you’re playing in. Even buying a house is more straightforward than buying a car. The salesman is under pressure from his manager to load you up with the biggest car you can stand, and the dealership is under pressure from the manufacturer to move the higher-ticket items because they have the higher profit margins. The whole house of cards is built on the delicate proposition that gasoline prices won’t go up before your check clears the bank. And by the time you seal the deal, you’re paying Maybe it would help thousands for frills that have nothing to do with getting the whole proposition you to the grocery store and back. if at least the price American consumers (and tags were real. how) have shown time and again that they want giant automobiles, which are actually trucks, and that they simply do not care about gas mileage and don’t believe gas will ever go back to $4 a gallon. From time to time the auto manufacturers have tried smaller, more fuel-efficient cars, but those have been knocked off the showroom floors by the mega-SUVs. The manufacturers have given the people what they want, even though this whole giant section of our economy depends for its continuation on the mercy of oil sheiks. Maybe it would help the whole proposition if at least the price tags were real. Just taking all the mumbo-jumbo out of buying a car would have to introduce a healthy dose of reality into the process. The four-cylinder, stick-shift model that gets 35 miles to the gallon is $20,000 plus tax, tag and title, period. The eight-cylinder turbo with automatic transmission that gets 18 miles to the gallon is $40,000. You can sit right there in the showroom and do the math yourself. That’s got to help you make a rational choice about what you’re doing with your money. That same rationality might also help another troubled industry. Airline ticket pricing is even more arcane than automobiles. The price you pay for your ticket is determined by when you buy it, where you sit, how many stops, etc. My friend Joe Causey says that when he flies he is tempted to stand up in the airplane and say, “Hey, everybody: how much did you pay for your ticket?” The range of prices would be incredible on that one airplane. And, of course, those tickets are basically non-refundable. Once you buy it, you’ve bought it. Why is it that you can make a reservation at a hotel weeks ahead of time and then if your plans change, you can cancel it at any time up to the day before arrival with absolutely no penalty? Hotels make their money on occupancy just like airlines, yet you’re not getting your money back from Delta. Why can’t a one-way ticket from Atlanta to LaGuardia be $200, regardless of whether you buy it three weeks ahead of time or the day before? Wouldn’t Delta sell more tickets at that price instead of on a sliding scale up to a thousand? The rationale has been, partly, that business flyers have to go on the spur of the moment and will pay whatever is charged. That always seemed spurious. One would think that business people, above all, would be careful about slinging money around, but, then, we’ve come to find out a lot about business people lately, too. The prices of cars, houses, airplane tickets and items in Moroccan markets are so confusing that we lose sight of what we’re buying. We need to be not consumers but buyers, looking for the worth in things, learning how to spend wisely, understanding the value behind the price. Mr. Po Boy Jenkins, of Danielsville, had been a mule trader, and I asked him once, “How could you know what a mule was worth, with no price tag on it?” “Shoot,” Po Boy said, “the price was on that mule. You just had to know how to read it.” Pete McCommons editor@flagpole.com
THIS WEEK’S ISSUE: News & Features City Dope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Special Edition: Oak Grove, 2009
A strip-mall shopping center on Jefferson Road just inside the county line? Commissioners vote June 2.
Comment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Torture and the Tablets of Eternity
Legal? Moral? Right? Professor Wilkes weighs in on the question of torture.
Arts & Events Grub Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Where’s the Beef?
Hillary lists the best burger joints in town.
Movie Pick . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Back from the Future
The ultra-grim fourth installment of the franchise, Terminator Salvation, makes minor improvements.
COVER DESIGN by Kelly Ruberto featuring a painting by Dan Smith at Red Eye Coffee
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Music Only the Names Have Changed . . . . . . . . . 16 Atlanta’s Legendary VieTNam
New-wave-influenced, sax-wielding band returns for another five minutes of fame.
Casper and the Cookies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 New Record Modern Silence Out Now
Celebrated local pop band debuts an experimental new release.
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22 CITY DOPE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 CITY PAGES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 CAPITOL IMPACT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 BETTY SARGENT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 ATHENS RISING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 COMMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 GRUB NOTES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 MOVIE DOPE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 MOVIE PICK. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 THREATS & PROMISES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
RECORD REVIEWS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM . . . . . . 15 VIETNAM. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 CASPER AND THE COOKIES. . . . . . . . . . 17 THE CALENDAR!. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 BULLETIN BOARD. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 ART AROUND TOWN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 COMICS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 REALITY CHECK. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 CLASSIFIEDS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 EVERYDAY PEOPLE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
EDITOR & PUBLISHER Pete McCommons ADVERTISING DIRECTOR & PUBLISHER Alicia Nickles PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Larry Tenner MANAGING EDITOR Christina Cotter ADVERTISING SALES Anita Aubrey, Melinda Edwards, Jessica Pritchard MUSIC EDITOR Michelle Gilzenrat CITY EDITOR Ben Emanuel CLASSIFIEDS, DISTRIBUTION & OFFICE MANAGER Paul Karjian AD DESIGNERS Ian Rickert, Kelly Ruberto ILLUSTRATOR Inkbomber CARTOONISTS James Allen, Josh Bass, Cameron Bogue, Matthew Doxtad, Joe Havasy, Missy Kulik ADOPT ME Special Agent Cindy Jerrell CONTRIBUTORS Christopher Benton, Hillary Brown, Tom Crawford, John English, Tony Floyd, Jennifer Gibson, Jeff Gore, Chris Hassiotis, John Huie, Gordon Lamb, Bao Le-Huu, Drew Wheeler, Donald E. Wilkes, Kevan Williams CIRCULATION Charles Greenleaf, Jimmy Courson, Swen Froemke, Eric Mullins WEB DESIGNER Ian Rickert ADVERTISING ASSISTANT Maggie Summers, Aisha Washington EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Jennifer Bryant EDITORIAL INTERN Christina Downs MUSIC INTERN Tiago Moura ADVERTISING INTERNS Kristin Ballard, Rebecca Elmquist
VOLUME 23 ISSUE NUMBER 21
Flagpole, Inc. publishes Flagpole Magazine weekly and distributes 17,000 copies free at over 275 locations around Athens, Georgia. Subscriptions cost $55 a year, $35 for six months. © 2009 Flagpole, Inc. All rights reserved.
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MAY 27, 2009 · FLAGPOLE.COM
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