Awesome Typo

Did anyone see this slideshow on the NYTimes web site this morning? This screen capture is a bit too fuzzy to read, but here is the text:

"Former President Al Gore, the founder of the media company that employs the journalists, hugged Ms. Lee. The two women who were stopped on March 17 by soldiers near North Korea's border with China while researching a report about women and human trafficking. They faced years of imprisonment in the gulag-like confines of a North Korean prison camp."

Ahhh, the New York Times. It doesn't matter how much you WANT it to be true, Al Gore was never the President.

Incidentally, did anyone else think that Euna Lee was much cuter in these photos than she appeared in that one picture the press has been showing of her since she was captured? Maybe she should write a book: Lose Weight and Look Great with the North Korean Hard Labor Gulag Diet.

Sparks Goes to NYC

I spent four days and four nights in NYC last week. Here’s the detailed recap:

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Day 1 – Napped off my redeye sleepiness.

Night 1 – Had a drinking contest with xTian, Le Troisieme, and Our Black Friend. Pulled a respectable tie with Le Trois. Crushed xTian, who actually ordered water at one point. Stayed out past 3am for the first time since…well, since last time I was in NYC.

Day 2 – Fought and won a gallant struggle to prevent my stomach from leaping out of my mouth. Made it in to work at 4pm.

Day 3 – Spent a beautiful NYC Saturday visiting old friends, wandering the Upper West Side, and wondering why KB1 wasn’t returning my calls (ah yes, Ecuador).

Night 3 – Late night at a Koreatown karaoke bar, just days before the NYTimes deemed it cool.

Day 4 – Became a Godfather! Tried to meet up with xTian, who informed me at 4pm that he was too hung over to consider meeting me. Went to a secret cocktail lounge speakeasy that THE VERY NEXT DAY appeared in a NYTimes article about secret cocktail lounge speakeasies.

Not a bad trip, all in all. A few general observations:

1. This is the first time I’ve felt generationally older than most of the people roaming the streets in Manhattan. Everyone is in their mid-20’s, just like Catjjy and I were when we lived there.

2. I spent quality walk-around time in probably 10 distinct neighborhoods. The demographics in every neighborhood were nearly identical: white and Asian people in their mid 20’s. But the styles changed at every subway stop. Columbia was all college gear and Urban Outfitters. UWS was Gap/BR. UES was swimming in Lilly Pulitzer. K-town was keeping LV and Gucci in business. The LES was a large-format American Apparel ad. It was just like The Warriors.

3. I didn’t see Evil once. Hadn’t realized he was back from China. This is all xTian’s fault, since he is the only person who knew we were both in town.

4. NYC doesn’t feel as economically depressed as I thought it would, but I was still able to go do pretty much whatever I wanted to do on short notice.

5. The trip would have been much more fun with Catjjy and The Cha.

6. I probably saw more human beings in four days than I have in the last six months combined. NYC has an incredible energy to it that even other major cities, like San Francisco, cannot match.

7. I used to live in NYC and still love it, but I sure was happy to come home to the Bay Area.

Manolo Reads The Paper

A few days ago, xTian posted the front page of the New York Post.

Today, I give you the NY Times online version that greeted me this morning (perhaps I should clear the cookies in my browser cache).

Since we are done with American Idol, I think one of our analysts should start working on the Mark Sanchez bracket...

Everyone should look at the Jets calendar (minicamp, exhibition games, regular games) and guess when one of the NY tabloids will actually run out of single entendres and splash the back page (or front page) with "Dirty Sanchez." The actual reason doesn't matter. It could be something he does in a game or it could be something like impregnating a 16-year old American Apparel model at his next photo shoot...

Under the Gun

I know most of you think Nicholas Kirstof is a bore. I agree but I am also starting to feel for him. I mean his last two facebook status messages alone tell us a lot about his current state of mind.



Sure, there is some new competition but dude, chillax! It will be alright.

Look at Tom Friedman, he doesn't care. He just makes sh*t up. Here is one example of what I mean. This article looks like something he thought up while looking for naked pictures of Meredith Baxter Birney on google.

His books are no better. They are the epitome of lazy writing. "I'm sorry, you say I owe you three more chapters on my book before you publish it. That's fine, I'll just mix the order of several paragraphs from the first three chapters and send something to you tonight. Ok, I'm off to swim in my vault full of money"

Hey Friedman - F you!

We [heart] Paul Krugman!

I usually think that posting music videos is lazy, but this different for two reasons. First, it is about everyone's favorite bearded Nobel laureate economist, NYTimes columnist, and George Clooney uncle impersonator Paul Krugman. Second, it's really pretty catchy.

Quick Hits on a Sunday

Battlestar Galactica is over. This has probably been the most emotionally exhausting television viewing experience of my life. Here is a Sunday NY Times article about the ending and questions explored throughout the series. This article will either make you cringe or run out and buy the DVDs. I recommend the latter.

I just watched "I Love you, Man". I will post an outdated movie review next week, but it got me thinking about something. Yesterday, I mentioned to Killer B #1 that I was interested in seeing Ra Ra Riot in concert in 2 weeks and asked if he was interested. He made some comment about the awkwardness of seeing a concert with another man. The response did not make much sense to me. We can go to a concert together, right? I mean I go to concerts by myself all the time. Usually, I buy two tickets, offering the other to friends liberally if that does not work I offload on Craigslist. Let me know if I am off base here.

This is a great Ra Ra Riot song "Too Too Too Fast"


Finally, I went for a drink with a girl right before she went on holiday. She is due back sometime this week I think. If I don't hold her hand soon I may cry.

Have a great week, Hosers!

Stop the Presses

The news has been busy reporting on how the news is going under. Newspapers, specifically. People are consuming more news than ever, but they are getting it online (often times from newspaper-run sites) which kills the economic model. I don’t understand this.

Someone on NPR last week did an interesting analysis. I’ll spare you the details, but the conclusion was that hard copy sales (subscription + newsstand) don’t quite cover the costs of the blank cut paper that newspapers use. Just the paper here…no content, no editing, no reporting, no headquarters building, etc. Everything else is paid for by ad revenue.

In theory, going online should be great. Papers don’t make money on subscriptions anyway, since that portion of their revenue doesn’t quite cover the paper costs. But they are all still having trouble with the online switch because they can’t make as much with online ad sales as they do with hard copy ad sales. This is apparently because online ads sell for a very small fraction of the price of hard copy ads.

For me, the Macy’s ad next to the wedding announcements in the hard-copy NYTimes is just as effective as the Orbitz ad next to the same section in the online version; I pay very little attention to either. In fact, the online one is probably more effective because there is some chance that I’ll throw out my hard copy NYTimes before I even get to that section, whereas if I’m on the weddings section online, I’m certainly looking at it. I thus find the price differential surprising.

Question for Evil and KillerB and anyone else working in the marketing world: are advertisers paying too much for hard copy newspaper ads, or are they paying too little for online newspaper ads? Why is there such a huge difference? I know online ads have miniscule click-through rates, but hard copy ads have no click-throughs at all. Why do advertisers assume one is more effective than the other?

Booooo, Young People

I have real trouble accepting the success of people younger than I (b. 1976) am. I still recall vividly the first time it ever happened. I tuned into the 1996 World Series hoping to watch Derek Jeter (b. 1974) and the Yankees beat up on the Atlanta Braves. Suddenly the coverage turned from Jeter to some punk-ass 19 year old phenom named Andruw Jones (b. 1977) playing for the Braves. I was 19 at the time, too, but I was turning 20 the following month, and he wasn’t turning 20 for another 6 months. “Holy crap,” I thought, “that guy is younger than me, and he’s kicking ass on TV.”

I’ve had to get over this in a few subsets of life’s situations. Sports, obviously, is dominated by men 5-10 years my junior (hola, Nadal, b. 1986). It’s also now acceptable for someone in the post-1976 crowd to star in a TV show or a movie. But in the serious and thoughtful world, I am still too young to have accomplished anything noteworthy, which is the only reason why I haven’t. I’m still learning the ropes. Of course, once I’m Jeffrey Immelt’s age (b. 1956), I’ll be running a huge company. By the time I’m Michael Lewis’ age (b. 1960), I’ll be writing awesome works of non-fiction. By the time I’m Barak Obama’s age (b. 1961), I may well be president.

Imagine my disgust when I read today that the newest NY Times Op-Ed columnist will be some 29-year-old douche. Twice a week this clown is going to share space with Nobel Laureate economist Paul Krugman (b. 1953), smartest-man-in-the-GOP David Brooks (b. 1961), and everyone’s favorite alarmist Thomas Friedman (b. 1953). There are only two interpretations:

1. I am plenty old enough to have gathered the life experience and thoughtful, nuanced policy opinions necessary to command a bi-weekly article in the world’s largest opinion platform. I’ve failed to do so for some other reason entirely: perhaps a failure of intellect or drive. I should resign myself to this fact, as I have resigned myself to the fact that I will never win the French Open.

2. The NY Times has made an egregious mistake. This is nothing more than some focus-group-tested scheme to harness the “youth market” so they can sell online ad space to J. Crew (sorry, KB1, b. 1975). Reading the political opinions of a Gen-Yer will quickly becoming tedious. His contract will not be renewed next year and he will be replaced by disgraced Bush-era frontman Ari Fleischer (b. 1960).

Let’s all hope it’s #2. One good sign: the Times article announcing the change is titled “A 29-Year Old Joins Times Op-Ed Lineup.” HA! If it were Fleischer, I doubt the title would be “A 48-Year Old Joins Times Op-Ed Lineup.”