By Chris Blais, Print Specialist at Ticket Alternative Ticket Printing.
Fungus has been discovered in South America that can digest and live solely on plastic which could mean a tremendous breakthrough for recycling the billions of tons of landfill material around the world. If an enzyme can be isolated from the fungus we could use it to slow the buildup of plastic that is clogging our landfills. Read the full story here:
Today we were in an extra-specially good Friday mood. There’s a certain big game on this weekend, and to celebrate, we built our first ever Snack Stadium – and it was epic! We present a short video documenting this momentous task, with a excellent soundtrack to boot, courtesy of Journey. Enjoy!
Our graphic designer Angela Scarola takes you on a tour around our office and Ticket Alternative goodies. Here’s your VIP ticket inside our brand and headquarters!
AWESOME GEAR
AWESOME HEADQUARTERS
CREATING THE AWESOME
We think ticketing is awesome and we love what we do.
By Noel Wurst, Client Services Manager
In my junior year of college, I took the most difficult course I’d ever taken in my life up to that point. It was plainly called “British Poetry” and it was taught by Bishop Hunt, a legendary “breaker of children,” someone to be truly feared. It was in his class that I was first required to practice “explications” – where we were required to convince Professor Hunt that we understood each and every line of an absurdly long and stuffy “classic” British poem by providing in great detail to him, the importance of each one of those lines to the poem as a whole. Not one line could be left out of your explication, no matter how short it was, or unimportant that it seemed.
I hated poetry explications, not because of the work required, but because of the poems on which they had to be performed. These were painfully dull (especially to a 20-year-old) poems by Keats, and Yeats, and Shelley, and Eliot, and so on – though the work itself was challenging, and in a grammar nerd sort of way – kinda fun.
Since I’ll probably never read another poem by any of those guys ever again in my lifetime, but I want to keep my brain nimble, I’ve completed my first poetry explication in 12 years…on the song “Hairdresser” by Lucille Cataldo and made famous on the New York City cable access show Stairway to Stardom…oh, and on Youtube.
Before reading my interpretation (aka SPOT ON nailing of the message in this now classic song) please view Cataldo’s performance, even if you’ve already seen it a thousand times before.
Enjoy!
-Noel
(P.S. – While this was fun, I’ll probably never do it again.)
“Stairway to Stardom” – by Lucille Cataldo
Hairdresser, hairdresser, whoh-oh
Hairdresser, hairdresser, Ohhhh ohh
Hairdresser, hairdresser
Hairdresser, hairdresser
Cataldo sings adoringly of her hairdresser, the tone in her voice is light and gives the impression that she could be singing this as she walks into her regular hairdresser’s business. She smiles and dances from side to side, playfully.
By Taylor Garner, Client Services Representative
It’s no secret that we are big fans of Whirlyball. It has been our holiday party destination for three years running and we were just there a month ago. Turns out our holiday games were just practice for an even bigger contest – a night of competitive Whirlyball matches with our good friends from The EARL in East Atlanta. It seems that somebody over at The EARL caught wind of our Whirlyball antics and decided (foolishly) to issue a challenge to Ticket Alternative.
Pleasantries were exchanged before we got started and were quickly forgotten as we took the court. The first match set the stage for the rest of the night. TA and The EARL were locked in an endurance test as the match went into triple overtime only to end in a tie game. Bragging rights were on the line and competition was fierce for the rest of the night, but Ticket Alternative won out in the end! Not only did we take more matches overall that night, but we also took down The EARL in the official and decisive match!
Any future challengers should take heed… better make sure you’ve had plenty of practice before you take the Whirlyball court against TA!
If your office is anything like ours, at least once a day someone comes across a picture of an animal doing something adorable. It’s not uncommon to find animals being awesome; especially considering cats make up, something like, 80% of the internet. (It’s possible this fact has been exaggerated.) We’re constantly discussing what animal would make a great office pet. There are a lot of things to consider: Clean-up, food consumption and habitat being the most important. There have been many suggestions, some practical and some not, but ultimately we think we’ve come to a pretty responsible and popular decision.
10. Bald Bear – Hey, bald animals need love too!
9. Tiny Owl – Whooooo couldn’t love an owl?
8. Baby Giraffe – When it gets too tall for the office, we’ll just have to open the skylights.
7. Bear Cubs – Sure they could kill us with one claw, but when they get really big we can just donate them to the zoo!
6. Tiny Snake – There’s nothing creepy about a tiny snake slithering around an office, is there?
5. Otters – It’s waving hello!!!!
4. Sugar Gliders – A little buddy who would just hang out on our shoulders, or in our pockets while we worked!
3. Turtles – We just want to teach them karate.
2. Office Cat – They’d obviously help us get work done.
1. Hermit Crabs – Easy to maintain and we’re really excited about painting their shells!
Look at the possibilities:
(via our sister blog, www.wristband-it.com)
It’s fun to have dreams and hope for something greater regardless of what it might be and here at TATP headquarters we’re no different. Well, actually we are a little different and that’s because the things we hope and dream for are a little absurd. One popular and sillier topics of conversation around the office include the great potential for our office to become something more reminiscent of a fun house. Rather than ball pits and crawl-through tunnels we were thinking of some things better suited to our needs here. So we’ve come up with a list of some amazing and super fun ideas for some office renovations.
1. A Slide!
…and in with the new.
(Rather than the conventional desk set up, we’d have sprial staircases and the works)
3. WhirlyBall on the roof
4. Soundproof print room
5. Those sleep-chamber things in The Fifth Element, where you lay down, press a button and you’re OUT.
6. TA Café – Where “Boca Bucks” can be earned for free lattes, cappuccinos, etc. (Complete with in-house barista.)
7. Omelet Bar/Prime Rib Bar.
9. A vending machine. Just a simple, vending machine.
Pretty sweet, eh? I mean, am I right or am I right?
As we close out another great year, we’re already looking forward to 2012 and some new features we’ll be unveiling.
2011 saw Ticket Alternative grow yet again and we’re especially proud of some of our new clients, most notably the Atlanta Botanical Garden, the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival, Eddie’s Attic, Kennesaw State University, Vermont Brewers Festival, AEG Southeast and Jannus Landing.
We’re also proud that venues like The EARL, the Rock and Roll Hotel, Juanita’s and Black Cat all renewed their partnerships with us after being heavily courted by the competition. We know the competition is buzzing (pun intended) in the small club space, and so we’re even-more enthused about those venues that renewed. It’s a testament to my amazing staff and a company backed by passion and music fans, not just millions of dollars of VC waiting for a pay day.
Among other things, Q1 2012 will see the launch of:
We know that the arts facilities are really looking forward to Pick-A-Seat and the clubs love the mobile ticketing solution that ties in nicely with our custom iPhone apps (of which we now have 4!)
On behalf of all the staff at Ticket Alternative, have a great holiday & Happy New Year.
Iain Bluett – President and co-founder.
We are very excited to have Decatur, Ga.’s legendary Eddie’s Attic on board with Ticket Alternative! The famed club has been the starting point of many a brilliant singer-songwriter, from The Indigo Girls to John Mayer to Sugarland to Shawn Mullins. Recently the club was bought by concert promoter giant Alex Cooley and his business partner Dave Mattingly, and we’re happy to be joining them in this new venture at a stalwart music venue.
We have a ton of Eddie’s shows already up for sale on www.ticketalternative.com and we’re hard at work getting everything put up as soon as possible, so head on over to their venue page and have a perusal. Or, if you’ve been longing to buy your tickets at an outlet, now you can support another local business by getting your tickets at Ticket Alternative outlets like Decatur CD.
We flourish at major events just as much as we do at small clubs and theaters. Festivals like Taste of Atlanta, The Great Decatur Beer Festival, Mass Brewers Fest, Atlanta Food & Wine Festival, American Craft Beer Fest and many more rely on Ticket Alternative to provide the staff and technology to get people through those gates fast and to their event with a smile.
We can provide you with state of the art scanning equipment that links directly to the list of barcodes for each ticket (so you can scan print-at-home tickets or hard tickets mailed from Ticket Alternative or bought at an outlet). We can get you staff from our very own hallowed halls to set up equipment, sell tickets at the door, scan tickets and more. We can handle everything from set up to break down so all your hard-earned dollars are accounted for and every ticket is tallied up. You’ll love our coherent and streamlined running of your event, and the simplified results that you will be left with when we are done.
Find out more of what we have to offer HERE.
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