The wait is over. 🍕🐢
The first-ever official TMNT Pizzeria is opening in Los Angeles on June 20th, 2026 at 11AM — and the Turtles will be there in person to celebrate with us!
📍 TMNT Pizzeria Los Angeles
1444 3rd Street, Santa Monica, CA
Inflation would have taken a $35 concert ticket to about $50 today. The jump to $350 came from a change in how the music business makes its money.
Fifteen years ago, the concert was an ad. Artists made their money selling albums, and the tour was there to sell more CDs. Then streaming showed up and wrecked that. Spotify pays about $0.003 to $0.005 per play, so an artist with 10 million plays in a year makes around $30,000. Money from recorded music fell so far it hit bottom in 2014 at $13.1 billion, down from $22 billion in the CD days. The album stopped paying the bills.
So the tour became the paycheck instead of the ad. For many working musicians it now brings in up to 80% of their income. Even Taylor Swift, the biggest streaming artist alive, made 91% of her 2018 money on tour and under 6% from streaming. When the live show is the only thing left to sell, it gets priced that way.
Then there is who controls the tickets. Live Nation and Ticketmaster merged in 2010 and never let go. Ticketmaster now handles about 80% of tickets when they first go on sale at major venues, and Live Nation owns or runs close to 78% of the big outdoor amphitheaters. In April 2026, a jury in New York found the company ran an illegal monopoly that overcharged fans. Live Nation made a record $23 billion in 2024.
Fees pile on top. A 2018 government report found fees add about 27% to a ticket's price, and a look at 40 recent concerts put it closer to 28%. That turns two $100 tickets into a $256 bill. To be fair, the venue keeps most of that fee, not Ticketmaster, whose own share is only a few percent.
The biggest jump came from something newer. After the pandemic, promoters saw that fans would pay almost anything, so they turned on dynamic pricing, the same way airline seats cost more as a flight fills up. Bruce Springsteen's $400 seats shot up to $4,000 and $5,000 the moment they went on sale. Live Nation's own finance chief said it plainly: stadium tickets are now priced to scare off scalpers. That means setting the official price at whatever a scalper would charge, so the extra money goes to the artist and Ticketmaster instead of a reseller.
The $35 ticket made sense when a concert sold a $15 album. The $350 ticket makes sense when the concert is the product, the streaming money barely counts, and one company controls almost the whole path to the stage.
Welcome to the greatest city on Earth.
Here are some tips and tricks for how to get around and make the most of your time here.
Learn more at https://t.co/mki8gOyIED.
Things the recovery industry will not tell you:
1. The drug worked. That is why people use it. Not weakness. Not moral failure.
A neurological event so complete and persuasive that any honest account of addiction has to start there.
The problem is not that the drug fails. The problem is that what it does is unrepeatable, and you will burn your entire life to the ground trying to get back to a place that no longer exists.
2. Shame is not guilt. Guilt says I did something bad. Shame says I am something bad. Guilt is appropriate. Shame is a cell with no windows. Most people use the words interchangeably. That mistake is lethal.
3. You cannot shame someone who has already named the thing you are holding over them. Say it first. Say it in plain light. The weapon drops.
4. Guilt can coexist with self-respect. Shame cannot. You can hold the damage and the dignity at the same time. I know because I live there.
5. Radical honesty does not give you back who you were. It hands you the clean slate of who you always wanted to be. The mask comes off. The cartoon other people drew of you stays on the page.
6. Nobody gets clean on a winning streak.
7. You have to be almost self-delusional in your forgiveness of yourself. (Go watch Chase Hughes)
8. The greatest sin was not the chaos. It was the absence. Being unavailable to the people who needed you.
9. Sustainable recovery starts with one thing: honesty with yourself. If you love an addict and want to help, that is the only door in.
10. I am only an expert on my recovery. Nobody is an expert on anyone else’s.
🚀 The only career advice you need:
The actor Glen Powell auditioned to play Rooster in Top Gun: Maverick.
When the role was given to Miles Teller, Powell was devastated. He was offered a smaller role, but declined.
Tom Cruise summoned Powell to his house and asked him:
“What kind of career do you want?”
Powell responded:
“I want to be like you—an iconic movie star. You always choose great roles.”
Cruise shook his head.
“You’re wrong. I choose great movies, then I make the role great.”
Powell got the message. He accepted the role of Hangman—and nailed it.
Now Powell says:
“It changed the trajectory of my career.”
When young people ask me for career advice, I tell them something similar:
🚀 Attach yourself to a rocketship.
Join companies that are growing quickly. Work with people who are going places. Be part of something great.
Play your role—no matter how minor—exceptionally well.
The rest will take care of itself.
P.S. I don't write engagement bait, so I need your help to spread the word. If you enjoyed this post, would you like, comment, and repost?
Major cheat code in life: Understanding you can reinvent yourself at any time. New habits, new standards, new friend group, new career, etc. There's no rule that says you have to stay the person you've always been. You're allowed to decide... "I'm done being this version of me."
In case you forgot:
The 4% rule has survived:
- The Great Depression
- Black Monday
- The dot-com crash
- 2008 -
COVID
100 years of data says take your expenses, multiply by 25x.
Get there & you're free forever.
I see your profile picture. That’s Johnny Cash. My hero too. Arrested seven times. Smuggled 668 amphetamines across the Mexican border in 1965. Took every drug there was and drank like I did. Cheated on his first wife. Slept with more woman than I ever did. Hit bottom in a cave in Tennessee in 1968 trying to crawl off and die. And then he got up. He got clean. He spent the rest of his life singing for prisoners and addicts and the people the country threw away because he knew he was one of them.
That was the whole point of the Man in Black. He wore it for the poor and the beaten down. He wore it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime. He wore it for the ones who never heard a word of Jesus. He wore it for the addicted and the dying. He wore it as a standing witness that no one is past saving.
You picked his picture. You did not pick his message. Try listening to the words.
Kobe Bryant once said:
“I have nothing in common with lazy people who blame others for their lack of success. Great things come from hard work and perseverance. No excuses.”