Posted 7:39 PM by Gene

ARCHDaily!



Restaurant? How about an ultra-hip funeral parlor?

And this in New York, which has as much of a problem with these unneeded projects as Vegas.

Posted 7:30 PM by Gene

Take THAT, Little Malcolm! JonBoy has invented THE SMART LIST -- a new supercharged version of the LISTICLE, forcing you to click twenty or thirty or fifty times to get at the point. We thought at first from the home-page squib the point was to stick some of our PC in a pile where the turni -- readers wouldn't want to take the time to notice ("ET is almost certainly out there. Bipartisanship is bad. And the environment has never been better"), but the result is such an overwhelming muddle as to make us think JonBoy did it just for the sake of being "new", which may not even impress whatever readers he's leaving behind.

Posted 5:50 PM by Gene

BREAKING NEWS!

'Pointless Babble' Tops Twitter Use

Posted 1:07 PM by Gene

Terry Teachout boasted for months in his blog about the opera he was writing, and it finally premiered three weeks ago -- to unanimous pans. As Vietnam and Wall Street demonstrate credentials will not inoculate people from their incompetence. But then critics may be beyond creative work because their knowledge of nuts and bolts robs them of inspiration. (We do not exclude Shaw, whose plays are often little more than glorified debates.) We further say English is not meant for opera, being a blunt declarative language; the music needs the rolling R's and the luscious L's and the accent graves to pump up the passion. As for the work proper, the most damning comment wasn't about the laughter from the audience greeting Terry's bald lines; it was that Paul Moravec's music was content to lurk in the background, as it often does with modern operas. This is a fate worse than oblivion. As if to underline this adaptation was less than necessary one critic noted that the 1940 Warners production of the Somerset Maugham source matter had music by Max Steiner, who quite ably wrote opera without words.

I'm not sure what "one of the least filled houses in my experience at Santa Fe" means except its author is very capable of being a blogger, and possibly more so of writing in a newspaper. (He freelances for The Daily Kaplan.)

Posted 7:06 PM by Gene

ARCHDaily!



How many future maintenance problems can you spot?

Posted 5:24 PM by Gene

We have not commented on a certain friend of dogs as his story has similarities to a certain friend of metal poles; that said, the Favorite League of CEOs already has a DUI manslaughter plea facing it, not to mention a vicious murder-suicide, and you wonder how long the isolation of their hermetically sealed luxury boxes can keep the CEOs away from the cretins they help finance.

Posted 5:08 PM by Gene

And in his second installment of "How to Improve the News Biz in 9,116 WORDS" our media cri-TIC says the news biz should go local. That is what local news Web sites without a newspaper sugar daddy do. How can the news biz save its hide doing the same things dozens of other news sites do for free? We must note, especially in light of the last post, that his scorn for movie ad-blurbists and his blistering fusillades on "promotion" should take up such a good chunk of all those words says something about the nature of today's news biz.

Posted 4:59 PM by Gene

We'd rather not intensify the practically total trend of people coming from Google Images but what struck us about this Daily Mail photo of the supposedly "gorgeous" progeny of the Geritol Rocker and his airhead Former Significant Other was the almost unanimously catty comments. You wonder if there's a parallel here with the health-care riots; people are told to think from above, and they resent it. This promotion contains a typical PEOPLE WARNER-like sell-it analogy, and the folks aren't buying it. We don't know who reads DailyMail.co.uk but obviously they know who Brigitte was. We were moved by those who mentioned her eyes; one said they "look dead, like a drug addict! There's no spark behind them, like the beautiful Brigitte's eyes. That makes all the difference, doesn't it?" Not if you're trying to sell a new Starlet of the Week. Yes, she is attractive, at least in this photo, but given the aping of and aching over BB we may wonder how.

Posted 1:59 PM by Gene

Thanks To Rush [Jonah Goldberg]

I'm hearing he had some very kind words about my book today. Much appreciated.

08/14 01:49 PM Share

It pays to have half your staff on as contributors.

Posted 1:45 PM by Gene

Yep, you guessed it -- today is FDIC FRIDAY...in SPADES!

Posted 10:51 AM by Gene

OOPS:

"The banks will be in charge," one insider said, adding that they are growing impatient with Zell's stewardship. [Emphasis added]

AND:

"This was a textbook case of a leverage buyout gone bad," said Brandt, president of Development Specialists Inc. "These were imbeciles who had no idea what they were doing."

AND:

Tribune debt recently traded for about 7 cents on the dollar, meaning investors think a lottery ticket is just as likely to pay off.

AND:

Brandt said the Tribune deal has become such a "reputational disaster" for Zell that's he's probably not involved much in management other than creditor negotiations.

SO LONG, PVT. ZELL! Hope you get to keep your military pension.

(Via the usual Romy)

Posted 10:09 AM by Gene

Whole Foods -- the con-SER-va-tive price-gouging obsessive-compulsive "all-natural" grocery chain!

Posted 9:59 AM by Gene

Jim Webb is visiting Bur -- Myanmar, which raises a question: When does His Omnipotence put it on his most-favored-nation list?

Posted 9:46 AM by Gene

This should be fun: Which Pennsylvania Democratic senatorial candidate can promise more to the loony left? And can anyone do a better job of selling his soul than Arlen?

Posted 9:33 AM by Gene

We can hope this works, but given how American high-tech firms have so thoroughly infiltrated China (and, shall we say, vice versa?) we suspect it can't work that long.

Posted 9:15 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: Vice-President Alexander P. Throttlebottom is no longer the administration's sole source of stupid words.

Posted 8:38 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: For SARAH!!!!! to come back she'll have to become part of the establishment. Good thinking, Newt.

Posted 8:28 AM by Gene

There seems to be an annoying forced revisionism over Woodstock, the greatest cultural achievement of man. Part of it may be that people do tire of hearing culture-war stories from boomers; part of it may be the hacks have this vague notion that people are tired of the CW; part of it may be their supersalesmanship of the GENIUS of rock; part of it may be mere idle Kinsleyism. Whatever, it seems a little hypocritical that the industry that finds cancer-curing powers in anything show biz is suddenly beating up on a LEGENDARY forty-year-old.

And the revisionists are saying the movie was "great", meaning they're still on the right side.

Posted 8:17 AM by Gene

A NEW DEFINITION OF ANNOYING: Is it me or are the BUGMEISTERS working for DAILY UPDATES of XP?

Posted 8:12 AM by Gene

Elsewhere from the Bloomy, a senior JPMorganChase (or however they spell it) economist not only says GOLDILOCKS is back, she's STRONGER THAN EVER!

And of COURSE the guy must share a name with DOW 36,000.

Posted 8:10 AM by Gene

Toxic Loans Topping 5% May Push 150 Banks to Point of No Return

DOW 18,000!

Posted 1:16 PM by Gene

The Sport of CEO Kings may get a place in THE GAMES -- but not SELIGISM:

Baseball, which joined the Olympic program in 1992, also was expelled after Beijing, and the sport has not always been a good Olympic fit: It is not a popular game in Europe, where the I.O.C. is headquartered, and Olympic leaders have little interest in keeping another sport with chronic doping issues. (PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT!)

Posted 1:02 PM by Gene

Les Paul, the guitar wizard whose true innovation (with Mary Ford) was to bring overdubbing to recorded music, with unfortunate results, has died. RIP.

Posted 1:00 PM by Gene

So if machines are managing investments, what happens when the machines break down?

(Via Seeking Alpha)

Posted 12:57 PM by Gene

Here's one way the recorded...SOUND biz could stop copying: put its...content on DVDs!

Pfffffffffffffffffffffft!

Posted 9:26 AM by Gene

If the Democratic Party's this well organized, think how well-organized health care reform will be!

Posted 9:17 AM by Gene

Word of the Week:

Gibbs-erish

Posted 9:08 AM by Gene

More gen-IUS from Hollywood:

In the film, Heder will play Oliver Vale, an average geek whose uneventful life changes when Buddy Holly [link SIC!!!!!] turns up on every TV channel and declares that Vale is the only one who understands why this is happening -- which causes Vale to be pursued by a mob of disguised aliens.

...who are really stupid movee producers?

By the way, does Buddy sing in this movee or did the rights cost too much?

Posted 9:02 AM by Gene

Much-worse-than-expected retail sales -- even with the clunkers thrown in?

DOW 15,000!!!!!

Posted 9:45 PM by Gene

PVT. ZELL, without warning, has made his LALA.com Web site look like his other Web sites. I'm sure that will make many VERY happy. When does the PVT. get hustled out of the service?

Posted 6:53 PM by Gene

Our media cri-TIC was so busy typing 4,306 WORDS he obscured a few pointed points (and do pardon the verbiage):

[S]ure, an average newspaper did print some serious journalism. But is that most of what they did, or even anything more than a tiny part? Did newspapers crusade from early in the morning to late at night to right wrongs? Did the typical reporter spend the majority of her or her time ferreting out information that the local powers-that-be kept hidden? Did their critics focus a gimlet eye on all manner or art and pop culture, shoot from the hip, provoke dialogs about its meaning and import? Did the papers really afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted? Did each department, each day, have at least one story that took an extra step to find out some information that others didn’t want public, that didn’t come from a press release or a government official, that didn’t merely repeat warmed-over developments that had happened the day before?

No on all counts. My experience lies more with arts and features; I’d guess that the average paper’s coverage of arts and entertainment, for example, runs at least 80-plus percent promotional (meaning that it was “coverage” tied to the release of some product), with the remainder split between the rare other-than-upbeat critical review and some fairly minuscule percentage of actual original reporting.

I once analyzed two weeks of the arts and features sections of a well-known American newspaper and found exactly one feature published over that period that contained original reporting. Even good papers’ arts coverage is largely promotional; look at the cute little features that dot the inside of The Wall Street Journal’s Friday feature section; it offers pages of fluff, each bit of it pegged to some product release. Even a top-tier critic like Joe Morgenstern will fill out his columns with random little plugs for new DVDs—with no information about special features, say, or the quality of the restoration of a classic film. Whose interest, other than that of the home video departments of the movie studios, do those squibs serve? [Emphasis added]

He says newspapers are an ad-delivery device where the news is mere filler and they're failing because the advertisers don't want to pay to cushion the filler. Obviously he hasn't seen papers from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But with technology newspapers were bound to devolve, until they have become ad-delivery devices in more ways than one, and that is why (for an example) the newly resurgent MNI at $2.00 is still at least $1.99 too much.

(Via the usual Romy)

Posted 5:36 PM by Gene

Hmmm, you don't suppose His Omnipotence the Professor-in-Chief could sneak terr -- MILITANTS into Leavenworth and such-like under cover of Presidential darkness, do you?

A president hasn't lived until he's done screwy things to the Constitution.

Posted 4:57 PM by Gene

What is extraordinarily irritating about this PR stunt is that many years ago our pop stars didn't have to GROW UP. Consider Judy Garland, or Doris Day: they started in their teens singing the same songs for adults they always did, songs and singers sharing a common grace and style. Of course Judy played youth roles, but she didn't have to dumb herself down for them; she was a cute teenager and a worthy adult at once. Their successors, however, don't sing, they whine through their noses; and they extrude not songs but anonymous material, a cross between aerobics "music" and Strawberry Shortcake, with the obligatory [C]RAP shtick to make them HIP. When said extruders GROW UP they merely add F-words and an attitude. And because many are already programmed to look like Bratz dolls they can easily graduate to sluttery. One reason they must GROW UP is that scum like SUMNER believes that whory old line any publicity is good publicity -- and if one takes such news expectorants at face value that may not always be so. We doubt the current recipient of this fingernail-on-blackboard-scratching press agentry would know a good song if UB IGER clonked her on the head with it (not that UB would know a good song either), and she and her too many handlers are fools enough to worship the scum; at least Judy developed a healthy disrespect for Louie Mayer (although he fed her pills enough to inspire it). All the other reasons this is irritating won't do as this one is at the heart of the nuisance, and as long as pop -- NOISE occupies a level between the earth's crust and its molten core we will have still more PR.

Posted 10:23 AM by Gene

When stocks go up, crude goes up. That's exhibit A in why we fume at the Wall Street Casino.

Posted 10:01 AM by Gene

Real Estate: The Eye Of The Storm Has Passed

Meaning it must be fiercely windy and torrentially rainy again. Amazing -- these hacks don't seem to know all is calm in the hurricane's eye. Who cares when GEKKO KUDLOW and GOLDILOCKS are BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!!!!!

Posted 9:52 AM by Gene

Professional college coaching is a pact with the devil, and the devil makes you the big bucks. Rick Pitino seems to have consorted with him a bit too freely.

Posted 9:04 AM by Gene

Speaking of moms, the media idiots who could use supervision from consultants breathing down their necks full-time launched a "drinking mommy" fad, but goshdarnit if reality didn't have to barge in, and now it's not so funny anymore. That's all right; you folks will find something else despicable to laugh at -- like your customers.

Posted 8:56 AM by Gene

Another reason to vortex the movee biz to the nearest black hole: The TWXSTERS are devising a LEGO movie.

Given how Great Internationalist Joe or whatever the simps in Pawtucket call him now has run into the heavy artillery of indifference at the B. O. we can only hope for more "hits".

Posted 8:47 AM by Gene

Shucks, we were hoping Spidey would get all tangled up in his $45 million web, but clearly Vegas is the spot for this. Heck we could put all Branson East down in Veg and no one would notice, except the tour companies. What's Vegas but Branson West with desert heat anyway?

Posted 8:37 AM by Gene

We find it very difficult to feel sorry for the pampered effete snobs at SI Magazines -- pardon, COHN-day NAHHST -- because they built such a superexpensive rep out of cutting-edge piffle. While one cringes at first at the notion of consultants running a rag company in truth they've been running the media for ages. It's just now all those nose-in-the-airs can't have their bottled water anymore. It will be a bit more difficult for Gray-DON and crew to cater to their vast inner phonies, but somehow, they will persevere. And David Remnick will remain history's most overrated editor.

(Via the usual Romy)

Posted 7:05 PM by Gene

ARCHDaily!



Hey! I think the clowns put up the circus tent!

Posted 2:13 PM by Gene

Hank Williams biopic on track

TRANSLATION: Drinkin' and dopin' and cussin' and syncin'.

Posted 1:50 PM by Gene

If you watch this video of a man confronting Arlen Specter and his "damn cronies," what you're seeing is the return a Ross Perot-style revolt against all of Washington.

Just what we need -- eight more years of Slick.

Posted 9:43 AM by Gene

If this early and widely-distributed PR for the Chevy Volt is close to the truth this could have a profound impact on our energy use, but let us remember, this IS OBAMAMOTORS, and this is American reliability, and the Edsel led us down the path to paradise before it.

Posted 9:26 AM by Gene

Several months ago we posted how the Cryonic Mayor wanted to lure THE GAMES to his town by building stuff in some park that would invite sexual assaults or else fall from its own weight. Happily we were wrong about the first but his pavilions (he built two of them) were so flimsily made as to be virtually torn apart by parkgoers, so we count ourselves half-right -- or as this typist must sigh,

It's easy to point fingers at Van Berkel and Hadid for creating dazzling pieces of sculpture that failed to anticipate how people would behave. Yet it is also true that star architects need tough clients to say no, when they come up with designs that are beautiful but impractical.

I think that means YOU, Cryonic.

(Via the usual AhtsJournal)

Posted 9:20 AM by Gene

PepsiCo has done to Gatorade what it did to Tropicana, and some exec's attempt to be the LEGENDARY WELCH of soft drinks has led to a lot of resignations, as in:

Dave Burwick, Chief Marketing Officer-North America Beverages; Cie Nicholson, senior VP-CMO, Pepsi-Cola North America; Rick Gomez, CMO-hydration brands; Russell Weiner, VP-colas marketing; Jim McGinnis, VP-marketing, Tropicana; Todd Magazine, president-Gatorade; Jeff Urban, senior VP-sports marketing, Gatorade; Matt Knott, VP-marketing, Gatorade; Susan Wagner, VP-Pepsi-Cola North America; Meena Mansharamani, senior VP-innovation and insights, Pepsi-Cola North America; Chuck Maniscalco, CEO, Quaker, Tropicana and Gatorade.

Pardon us, but what did most of these people do for a living?

Posted 8:31 AM by Gene

Speaking of money and hyperpartisans, here's another one of those debates where both sides are right and neither side is wrong, and only the public gets the shaft. Or to quote from one side of the argument:

"Suppose you made a million dollars last year and put all but $50,000 of it in a shoebox," he writes. (He must have enormous feet.)

We have not seen a $100 bill in a while but we'd guess $950,000 in Benjamin Franklins would fit very snugly in a shoebox. Where the other side is right is in imagining someone who's earned a million a year would put $950,000 of it in a shoebox. Where both sides are right is in imagining there are better things to do with money, namely redistributing it to their friends.

A PLAGUE O' BOTH YOUR HOUSES!

P. S. Well ALL RIGHT, they might not fit in one shoe box, but they might fit in two.

Posted 7:10 AM by Gene

Okay, we take back what we very stupidly said about George Soros not giving away his money, but something about table-pounding zillionaire hyperpartisans always makes us assume the worst.

Posted 5:28 AM by Gene

May we assume Suu Kyi is under permanent house arrest and be done with it?

And we may further assume the most preternaturally advanced president in history will do for our latest hostage what he has done for the others -- nothing, without a photogenic intervention.

Posted 5:25 AM by Gene

Do-it-yourself genome decoding may seem almost like a joke, but it is a mere extra step in the eventual transformation of the human race into indeterminate beings.

Posted 5:05 AM by Gene

I detest knee-jerk liberals as they combine easy iconoclasm with squishy piety. They are droolingly eager to cause politically-correct offense but if Sharia descended upon America their every knee would bow and their every tongue would confess. They would also be among the first to be executed.

We have not really heard that much of knee-jerk conservatives since the self-inflicted disaster of 2006, the SARAH!!!!! episode excepted, but they will be back, and when so more flatulent than ever.

Posted 7:49 PM by Gene

One argument against ridiculing 20-UK-Top-Ten singles disgorgers like this (who got a big photo here to justify a thumbsucker about feminism) is that most people aren't 21. When Audrey posed with her telephone you can bet a lot of the Life fans were young -- and other ages too. So our pop tart's been a favorite of Maxim. That is dubious enough without knowing movie stars once made the cover of newsrags when it was an honor. (This peculiar Johnny Mercer-Bernie Hanighen song shows just how strong that allure was. And yes, there was a Look magazine, and yes, it was almost as popular as Life.) True sex symbols warrant a publicity apparatus, and all today's fly-by-night sensations deserve is the Wiki and MTV, and a recording contract, and that's only one reason they won't last.

P. S. I have that cover in my hard drive, but this is better.

Posted 7:38 PM by Gene

Here is a sad story about working class Californians having to live in motels. We should remember though that the Great Depression bequeathed far worse hardships. A people who can survive the Dust Bowl can survive anything.

Posted 5:13 PM by Gene

How would Detroit be more disadvantaged bankrupt than it is now?

(Via Bloomberg.com)

Posted 5:10 PM by Gene

Say, maybe if we can work THIS up as an excuse....

Any Iranian dissidents out there besides?

Posted 5:08 PM by Gene

Okay, three guesses which side you're on:

Obama continues to have maintained his own credibility with most of the nation, and his team is committed to exploiting it. (A recent New York Times poll said Americans prefer his health reform ideas to Republicans by a margin of 55 percent to 26 percent.) One of the videos actually shows Rep. Virginia Foxx, a Republican from Virginia North Carolina [SIC!!!!!], alleging that Obama's plan will "put seniors in a position of being put to death by their government"--an extremely misleading distortion of what the bill entails.

News hacks clearly intend to fall down on the job again. With them it will be dueling spins -- or dueling factoids. Either way, we lose.

Posted 1:41 PM by Gene

ST. WARRENDOM? OVERVALUED?!? God forbid!

Posted 1:02 PM by Gene

"I think they should have done this a long time ago."

If ever there was a time to ditch the wasteful, discomfort-making, annoyingly-advertising auto dealers, it's now.

(See also here [via Seeking Alpha -- but note that comment])

Posted 9:55 AM by Gene

"If you went to (Mattel Chairman and CEO) Bob Eckert, he'd say, 'Wait a minute, we've been creating a 'Barbie' DVD every Christmas for the last 10 years,'" Johnson said. "It's still creating content around your brands, but an annual DVD at Christmas time isn't driving $700 million at the box office. They might be saying, 'We're a toy company, and we're gonna focus on what we do best. What do I know about running a TV network?'"

Hey Bob, the folks in Rhode Island run a movee studio. Go for it!

Posted 9:45 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: Some birds are more intelligent than some people.

Posted 9:03 AM by Gene

I don't think we should expect leadership from a president who supposes he can lead through the example of his vast superiority.

Posted 9:00 AM by Gene

Yes it's declined, but $8 billion is still a LOT of junk television.

Posted 8:56 AM by Gene

Jeez, I wish I could get The Daily Kaplan to plug my blog -- almost.

Posted 8:28 AM by Gene

Astounding Hed of the Week:

Sanctions Unlikely to Stop Iran's Nuclear Quest

Posted 8:23 AM by Gene

Ben Frankenstein says he was fired from The Paper of Re-CORD by INTOLERANT EVOLUTIONISTS!!!!!

Look Frank, just because they're a bunch of bigoted ninnies doesn't make TRICKY DICK'S BEST FRIEND any better.

And it doesn't make that CREDIT REPORTING SERVICE you shilled for any less sleazy.

Posted 5:06 PM by Gene

Patriotism is the last refuge of a...financier.

Posted 3:51 PM by Gene

STOP KURT ANDERSEN BEFORE HE WRITES AGAIN!!!!!

(Via the usual AhtsJournal)

Posted 12:55 PM by Gene

A certain overaged overweight studio-employed fanboy is doing his victory lap today, but given how this latest TENTPOLE chased even the geeks from the popcorn restaurants we suspect he'll have slowed to a turtle crawl by next weekend.

Posted 12:51 PM by Gene

Elsewhere in The Daily Kaplan, DAN BLATHER is still mad that he wasn't able to get at the root of Dubya's evil. Would better superscripts have helped?

Posted 12:34 PM by Gene

In his latest high-profile consulting job, Henry the K says Slick shouldn't have negotiated with the North Koreans. We say Henry the K shouldn't have negotiated "peace" with the North Vietnamese. What's the diff?

Posted 9:42 AM by Gene

Legal types are realizing what many people who aren't Jim BOOM! BOOM! Cramer already know: there's no more tobacco juice to squeeze out of DOOOOOOOOOOD.