rangelife

Los Angeles Negros vs. SalesGenie

These days, I'm listening to most of my music on Rhapsody, which is pretty much a non-stop pop-gasm. You want to listen to anything ever recorded? Jack in.

Yet I still find myself wandering back to Amoeba Records in the Haight every few months. Why? Because unlike an online jukebox, Amoeba still fuckin' gets it.

For example, they have a whole section of Mexican rock, pop, and hip-hop. Here's a band called the Black Angels:

Oh, if only they'd tour with Turbonegro. Hey, at least that would be less racist than SalesGenie's Super Bowl ads. Honestly, WTF was up with those? An Indian man with seven children? A Chinese panda doing a "me so solly" bit? Were they co-written by Carlos Mencia and Michael Richards? We kept waiting for one with Orthodox Jews. "Oy! No way am I paying $3,000 for 35-54 Caucasian mothers in zip code 91080! I'll give you $1,000, final offer!"

Where was I? Oh yes, Amoeba. Even in drenching rain, it was still a heartening mob scene. I picked up some Vampire Weekend, some MGMT, and some Future of the Left. Giddyap.

The Dumbest Moment in Business Journalism

Time Warner kept "The 101 Dumbest Moments in Business" alive in the pages of Fortune instead of burying it with Business 2.0. Damn shame. Dumb shame.

According to Fortune, here are some of business's most dumbest moments of 2007:

#5: In August and September, as his company is racking up the largest quarterly loss in its 93-year history, Merrill Lynch CEO Stanley O'Neal squeezes in 20 rounds of golf, including three rounds on three different courses in a single day.

On at least 20 occasions over the summer, Merrill's CEO did not work for a couple hours. DUMB!

#6: Citigroup CEO Chuck Prince resigns after the company takes an $11 billion write-down.

Citi's CEO quit just because his company lost billions of dollars. What an idiot! Accountability is DUMB!

#9: The French daily Le Monde calls Ratatouille, Pixar's movie about a rat in a kitchen, "one of the greatest gastronomic films in the history of cinema."

A French film reviewer loved one of the best-reviewed movies ever. What a DUMB frog asshole!

#24: HBO President Chris Albrecht allegedly punches and chokes his girlfriend while drunk at 3 A.M. in a Las Vegas parking lot.

Violence against women isn't reprehensible or evil. It's just DUMB!

You get the idea.

Rough Day for Mr. Jobs

The stock drops 5% during his big MacWorld speech, and he has to sit on the floor for his big interview with KTVU? Steve Jobs, take a vacation.

Have Yourself a Financially, Spiritually, Emotionally, Mentally, Socially, Physically Wealthy Little Christmas

OK, suckers. I'm off for Xmas in the southern-fried hinterlands. NASCAR country. Burned out textile mills. Pork fat in everything. I don't believe the Internet has made it to this part of the country, so this may be the last you hear from me in 2007.

One last thing before I go. Look at this special gift I got in the mail:

(As always, click anything to engorge it.)

FREE MONEY and a whole lotta adverbs can be yours...

And who can help you achieve this kind of real wealth? Well, no one other than Vince Lombardi! Junior!

Does your father have a New Jersey turnpike rest stop named after him? No? Then stop laughing and get yourself to wherever the hell this seminar is!

FREE MONEY!

Merry Xmas, y'all.

The 102nd Dumbest Moment in Business

Let us now gather to mourn Business 2.0, a terminal patient who lived way beyond all professional predictions before meeting her inevitable end.

Usually when you see your magazine wrapped in paper that says "This is your last issue," it's because you failed to pay the bill, whether by negligence or apathy. In this case, B2.0 obviously failed to pay their bills.

--

This is your last issue of Business 2.0 magazine.

We're writing to inform you that Business 2.0 magazine will no longer be published in print form.

--

And on it goes. Since Time Warner had assumed publication of B2.0 following the dot-bomb apocalypse, we'll be getting an issue of Fortune for every 2 issues of B2.0 left on our subscriptions, which is ass-backwards since Fortune is a bi-weekly. But whatcha gonna do?

Survivors of the Web 1.0 Bubble remember B2.0 as one of the great purveyors of dot-com bullshit. Each issue was packed with visual explanations of profitless business models, vivid descriptions of serial or concurrent entrepreneurship with six-month exit strategies, unaccountable projections and speculative charts, and columnists who declared that the whole Fortune 500 of 1998 would be dead and gone by 2005. In other words, it was essential reading. And it was fucking great.

Oy, and the ads! At its late-'90s peak, B2.0 would literally crash your inbox with 400+ pages of four-color ads for web services. It was like Modern Bride for nerds with VC funding.

The magazine had some good issues after the Time Warner revival, but it had lost its way the past few years, with fluffy repeating cover features like "The 101 Dumbest Moments in Business," which primarily consisted of random criminality and Fark like a kindergarten teacher moonlighting as a stripper. In 2005, B2.0 also ran a cover feature on "The CEOs' secret handbook," which actually turned out to be pure plagiarism of a book published in 1944. More recently, B2.0 celebrated domain-parking and spam-blogging as great businesses to get in on.

So it was clearly time for B2.0 to go. And perhaps nothing said it better than the cover of their anorexic final issue, now available on newsstands and my upstairs bathroom. (Click below to see it.)

LOL CEO, Jew Gets Kicked, and Watch Out for the Omni-Dakota

Semel out, Yang back in.

If the USA operated anything like Silicon Valley, Dubya would have been replaced by Bill Clinton some time in 2005. Also, the Dakotas would have merged to be more competitive with Nebraska.

To the left is another high-larius riff on the whole LOL-Catz/I Can Has Cheezburger meme that is taking the Innernets by storm. This one is apparently making the rounds inside Yahoo!

***

Even funnier have been the LOL Ed Jew riffs. For those unfamiliar, Ed Jew is a family man from Burlingame -- a suburb many miles from San Francisco -- who claimed he lived in the Sunset, ran for the SF Board of Supervisors, won, and immediately shook down a local business for $40k. But the $40k was supplied by the FBI, who promptly raided his office.

How Floridesque! And just to assure maximum Floridesqueness, he lied and lied and lied (Actual claims: "The money was for a public playground!" "That house in Burlingame is an extra house I keep for my in-laws to have parties in!" "I take all my showers at the Chinatown flower shop!"). And then, after his indictment, he rallied his allies to play the race card.

Ed Jew is going to jail.

Ed Jew is also Chinese-American, but his last name has caused some interesting issues. The Chron has struggled with writing headlines that don't appear ripped from an Islamist pamphlet. Here are some recent headlines with his first name removed:

"City attorney moves to remove Jew from office"

"Jew in hot water. Again"

"Supporters say Jew is victim of racism"

"FBI's cash paid Jew, source said"

"Jew tries to give $10,000 to playground, but it's given right back"

Six thousand years of persecution, and no way out of the desert.

***

France we come from France.

If you'd like to appreciate fully the disproportionate size and prosperity of these United States compared with the rest of the known universe, peep this map of states renamed after countries with similar GDPs. And you thought Alabama and Iran only had their penchants for theocracy in common...

And yes, North Dakota (Ecuador) + South Dakota (Croatia) = Omni-Dakota = Bangladesh, but with holsteins instead of monsoons. Watch out, Czech Cornhuskers!

Word to the indispensible AdamRiff for the discovery.

***

Finally, is Web 2.0 making us dumber? Are the Deal or No Deal crowds really wiser than people with fancy diplomas and expertise? Andrew Keen says, nyet, user-generated content is making us dumber.

Can we all agree that open systems are full of chaos and risk? Last Friday, I deleted the following paragraph from the Wikipedia entry for Bea Arthur (don't ask): "Arthur died in a plane crash on June 15th, 2007. Trace amounts of LSD, cocaine, and PCP were found in her system. She likes dildos and her favorite color is yellow."

I can has wizdum?

Brown, Cough Up Some Green

That's about 200 bucks worth of fines stuck to that UPS truck. Is this really just their cost of doing business in SF? Yes, it is.

International courier UPS receives an average of more than one San Francisco parking ticket every hour, giving the company the unenviable distinction of being the city's No. 1 parking violator. 

Last year, United Parcel Service paid $673,334 in fines for 11,788 tickets --  an average of one ticket every 45 minutes throughout the year.

Just imagine how bad it will get for them when SF begins "congestion pricing."

***

Meanwhile, across town Andronico's is making some damn good munchies, including scrumptious Brownie Bites:

And they're no mere chocolaty mini-cakes...

...they're "Adult" Brownie Bites, unleashing your most powerful carnal desires. Send the kids to grandma's before consuming.

Fight the Secularist Hollywood Cabal for Only $9.00

We all love spam. If it weren't for spam, how would we have achieved this utopia of 11-inch wangs and universal penny stock prosperity?

But every now and then, a spam comes that transcends the missives from Nigerian royalty in exile.

Subject: Great way to stand up for Christmas

Special message from Concerned Friends For Christmas

Seamus,

The secularists and the media have once again ramped up their aggressive assault on Christmas. But even worse... The media and entertainment elites are trying to ignore the one effort from Hollywood in the past 50 years to bring the Christmas story to the theatres!

Of course, you already know about the War On Christmas, the silent assault being funded by an international cabal of Jewish financiers who hate Christianity.

The Nativity Story (now playing across the nation) marks the first time in 50 years that a Christian Bible story has been turned into a major motion picture by a major movie studio -- New Line Cinema (which gave us the Lord of the Rings trilogy).

...and also The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. Devout Christians, those New Liners.

This week, take a personal stand against the secularists and the media elite -- and more importantly, FOR the Christmas story -- by taking your family to see The Nativity Story. The Nativity Story represents a dramatic departure from Hollywood's usual despicable treatment of Bible-believing Christians.

Again -- those who want to strip any sign of Christmas from our communities do not want this movie to succeed. Please take your family to see The Nativity Story this week.

Concerned Friends For Christmas

Who are Concerned Friends for Christmas? Nobody.

And in case you can't make it to the multiplex this weekend, you can always stick it to the Hollywood Homosexua-cracy by answering the U.S. Taxpayer Census. Hint: This census reveals the shocking truth about the gay-loving AARP.

***

Speaking of international Jewish financiers trying to destroy America, George Soros demands you worship his villainous and stunningly-rendered visage in Freedom In Peril: Guarding the 2nd Amendment in the 21st Century, a graphic novel commissioned by the heroes at the National Rifle Association.

Also righteously demonized -- Michael Moore, Rosie, and the all-powerful Ray Nagin.

***

Dryel allows you to clean dry-clean-only clothes in your home dryer. And who could provide a theme song for such a powerful domestic consumer product? Go the Dryel website, and listen to the ad that starts running on the homepage. Hint: Sharif won't like it.

***

Word up to my man Dalton for his "Hello My Name Is" project. Brooklyn never looked so good.

 

It's Beginning to Suck a Bit Like Xmas

Looking for that special gift for the unreformed otaku in your life? Well, then you need to take a little bus ride to Japantown. Don't forget your AmEx (or JCB).

$1,250 for a PS3 from the motherland. What could possibly go wrong?

And if your otaku "friend" finds his brain crashing after 32 consecutive hours of Worlds of Warcraft, but he doesn't want to recharge with an American-made energy drink, then this Final Fantasy XII Potion should do the trick. It's a Suntory product, so you know it's better than all the sleep, exercise, and nutrition he can cram into 45 minutes between quests.

Yes, the delights of J-Town are all you require for your Geek Xmas shopping. But what if you're looking for a wider assortment of made-in-Asia consumer products? Then you couldn't do better than your local Target store, especially one that has the hilariously redundant "Products from Around the World" department.

But do yourself a favor and avoid the zoo-like Target(s) at Serramonte. This was the side of the store away from the toys and electronics. The "quiet side."

Expect to get the sniffles or the H5N1 virus within three minutes of entering the store. We could label this teeming mass of consumers "Germs from Around the World." And, I cannot emphasize this enough, stay away from the toy section.

But 'tis the Season, baby! 'Tis time to suffer to the wah-wah sounds of Mannheim Steamroller, and to puzzle over why The Man still insists on ruining the last month of every year with that dreck. Merry Xmas, my fellow plebs!

HUMMER Cares About Your Genitalia

Every now and then, a public event occurs that takes a savage toll on everyone who sees it. Whether or not this event touches your personal life, it will brutalize your psyche and change you forever.

I am, of course, speaking of last summer's HUMMER campaign. You know, the one that revived the "I was a 98-pound-weakling" theme, with a supermarket checkout line playing the beach, and tofu playing the sand kicked in the face. "Restore your manhood," the spot exhorted its audience, with all the subtlety of a gigantic, bright yellow box on wheels. (For some reason, this was later changed to "Restore the balance." Maybe the TV Nazis thought "manhood" was code for "dick.") In the female version of the ad, the beach is a playground, and the bully a Macchiavellian soccer mom who will get her kid on the slide NOW.

The indispensible Ruben Bolling has this cogent if belated response. It's Tom the Dancing Bug.

It's a little subtler than Lewis Black's "Look at me! I'm a dick!" campaign, but I think it works.

Meanwhile, a Mitsubishi dealership in Columbus is preparing for its jihad on the automotive market with its "Fatwa Fridays." If our unstoppable purchasing of oil is any indication, America loves nothing more than Islamic fundamentalism. Why did it take so long for someone to tie their product to Al Qaeda? "There's Osama BIG SAVINGS at Wal-Mart!"

***

In other corporate news, the Baja Fresh menu is pretty much locked down, from a legal standpoint.

• Burrito Ultimo(R)
• Burrito Dos Manos(R)
• Tres Tacos!(TM): That's right, if you think you're going to sell three tacos at the same time, you better kick a little green to the Baja.
• Side-by-Side (TM)

The trademark on "Quesadilla" is still pending.

***

Does anybody remember a commercial for Nobody Beats the Wiz that ran in the early '90s? Boomer Esiason, QBing the Jets, is looking for a good play call. (Because, you know, Kotite is coaching.) So whom does Boomer call from his in-huddle cellular phone? The New York Knicks of course, five of them practicing in their unlicensed generic orange-n-blue unies. They all answer their phones simultaneously and suggest various offensive plays, or at least we presume that the likes of "fake leff, throw righ then" was a play. I'm pretty sure Namath makes an appearance at the end. Jets win. Nobody beats the muthafuckin' Wiz.