Visiting the folks…

Opera tonight! Thanks Fred!

Ricky’s Quickies: BOOK REVIEW!

Hit & Run: I’m a sucker for narrative business nonfiction, especially of the showbiz variety. So this was a pageturner, despite its size of around 500 pages. It’s the unbelievable story of “the most public screwing in the history of the business.”

Two guys with little experience (one of them was Barbara Streisand’s hair dresser) were put in charge of Columbia Pictures when the Japanese-run Sony acquired it in 1989. They ran it into the ground in all of the glorious and ridiculous ways you can imagine (million dollar birthday parties, renovating the studio lot, daily fresh flowers in every office, etc).

By the time Sony had caught on and they both were let go (Q2 of 2004), Sony was forced to take a $3.2 billion loss on Columbia. The guys, of course, made off with millions upon millions.

I’d recommend this book if you liked Disney Wars. If you haven’t read Disney Wars yet, read that first.

Simple yet effective.

Red Mango is way better.

For lunch today, super-intern Jeff Rosenberg snuck a bunch of CV’ers into NYU’s all-you-can-eat-for-nine-dollars dining hall on 14th and 3rd. I looked down at all the food on my tray before I started eating and remembered why I weighed more in college.

Me, Anna, and our friends Dan and Rachel are going to Tokyo and Vietnam over the summer. If anybody has any advice for traveling in those two locations, please let me know.

Or, if anybody knows people who currently live there that could show us around, that would be helpful too.

ricky at collegehumor is my address. thx!