Jeff Rubin, our Managing Editor, just sent this e-mail to the BustedTees and CH Editorial team:
I was walking down 19th St and a construction worker noticed my Pizza is the Best shirt, nodded, and gave me an approving, “Hey man, pizza IS the best!” I’m really bad in these situations, so I just said ‘Yup’ and kept walking.
I was already a few steps past him when he got my attention with a, “Yo!” I turned around and he said, “Replace that i-z-z-a with u-s-s-y and you got yourself a shirt!”
How soon can we have this mocked up?
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The number on the left, X, is how many times Kevin Corrigan would see The Love Guru in a row if I paid him $Y, on the right.
If anybody feels like chipping in, let me know. I also have to pay for the tickets.
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Dan hits on girls that clearly are with their boyfriends in Central Park. This was so uncomfortable to watch for me. #
Wow. Love the quotes around the word “comedy.”
(via an email from Dan G)
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Over the course of a riveting 75-minute discussion of the birth of Gandhian non-violent activism, I found myself becoming increasingly distressed as I watched students cruising Facebook, checking out the NY Times, editing photo collections, texting, reading People Magazine, shopping for jeans, dresses, sweaters, and shoes on Ebay, Urban Outfitters and J. Crew, reorganizing their social calendars, emailing on Gmail and AOL, playing solitaire, doing homework for other classes, chatting on AIM, and buying tickets on Expedia (I made a list because of my disbelief). From my perspective in the back of the room, while Dalton vividly described desperate Indian mothers throwing their children into a deep well to escape the barrage of bullets, I noticed that a girl in front of me was putting her credit card information into Urban Outfitters.com. She had finally found her shoes!
When the class was over I rode the train home heartbroken, composing a letter to the students, which Dalton distributed the next day. Then I started investigating. Unfortunately, what I observed was not an isolated incident. Classrooms across America have been overrun by the multi-tasking virus. Teachers are bereft. This is the year that Facebook has taken residence in the national classroom. Students defend this trend by citing their generation’s enhanced ability to multi-task. Unfortunately, the human mind cannot, in fact, multi-task without drastically reducing the quality of our processing.
from this article.
Ricky’s Quickies: Book Review
The Operator by Tom King
Another page-turning business non-fiction book easily under my belt. This one, a biography of David Geffen, was terrific.
Geffen’s “win at all costs” attitude makes for an action-packed story of his life. The hardest thing about reading this book was keeping track of whether he was best friends or total enemies with people he knew his whole life. It would go back and forth time after time, depending on a variety of factors, but mostly whether the person had given him what he wanted in their most recent business deal.
Geffen isn’t afraid to lie, cheat, and steal to get what he wants. This has always been the way for him, from when he first forged a graduation letter from UCLA to get a job in the William Morris mail room (he had never attended). The most extreme example of that attitude was what eventually made him rich…
In 1984, when Geffen was negotiating his new contract with Warner Bros Records, he decided he was going to ask for something even he knew was outrageous: that after the five year contract was up, Warner would give him back a 50% stake it had in Geffen Records. Geffen was smart enough to know that Mo Ostin, the head of the label and a friend of Geffen’s, would never give in on such an absurd request. But Geffen knew that he had a chance of getting the demand from Mo’s boss, who he believed he could persuade. Geffen told his friends “If I have to deal with Mo, I will fail.” Thus, Geffen decided the only way to not have to deal with Mo would be to make it so the two of them went from close friends to no longer being on speaking terms. To accomplish this, Geffen devised a plan — he took Ostin’s wife out for lunch and told her that her husband didn’t love her anymore. Of course, when word got back to Ostin, he was furious. The two men didn’t speak for a year and a half. In that time, David Geffen was able to negotiate directly with Ostin’s boss and get what he wanted.
I’d label Geffen with a new term I’ve been using a lot lately: a “likable asshole.” A likeable asshole is, as you can probably guess, somebody who everybody pretty much acknowledges has asshole qualities but people can’t help liking anyway. These people usually are super interesting, have big personalities and are often found in the media and entertainment industries. The term itself is very Dentonian — a positive adjective mixed with a negative verb, or vise versa. Come to think of it, Nick would probably qualify as one.
Anyway, I’d highly recommend the book to anybody who likes showbiz anecdotes and stories about rich men fighting with each other.
My takeaway from this book is that I’d probably rather be a millionaire with a good group of steady lifelong friends than a billionaire who constantly feuds with those closest to me.
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