Indiana Jones, Not Samantha Jones

The “Sex & The City” PR machine is working so hard on promoting their film that it almost makes you forget how much of a shitty show it was, especially towards the end. And who has time to watch four middle-age women, strutting around acting like shallow and vacuous teenage girls, chasing 20-year-old dudes? Haven’t we had enough? Why won’t you watch “Indiana Jones” instead? At least Harrison Ford ages with grace…

There’s a new M Night Shyamalan movie coming out mid June called “The Happening,” with Mark Wahlberg. Looks promising, we’ll check it out soon.

Blue-Ray Wins All Fronts

OK, so here is the story: About a year ago we got robbed. That’s a long and sad story, involving an insurance company that gladly took our money when we got the policy, but for various reasons would not pay for our stolen stuff. But let’s not talk about it now. The kind thief who visited our apartment that night did not steal our DVD, but in order to make sure he has the right equipment for the things he did stole, he took away our remote controls, all of them.
So after a few months of running to the TV stand to pause, stop, or fast forward (and after we moved from that place thank God,) and since the device wasn’t doing a great job playing movies, we decided it’s time to get a new one. When we got to the store we had three options: To get a standard DVD (a known brand cost about $50 back then,) a Blue Ray machine (About $350,) or for $75 we could get an HD-DVD device. We got the last one. Both were new technologies, both offered amazing quality. Back then we couldn’t tell which one will dominate the market. Now we know. A couple of days ago, Toshiba announced that it will abandon its HD-DVD format. Now we learn that Amazon.com will stop selling HD-DVD and will side with Blue-Ray. Cnet News reports that Peter Faricy, Amazon’s vice president of movies and music, said in a statement from the company: “The high-definition landscape is rapidly changing, and consumers are looking for guidance on how to make the best high-definition buying decisions, our customers have clearly voiced their support for the Blue-ray format.”
Also, the presence of the format in the popular Sony Playstation 3 game console, and Blockbuster early siding with it, put a lot of weight on the preference to go Blue.
I’m not too sorry for buying the DVD I have now, I prefer it this way on buying a Blue-Ray and then the HD-DVD would come on top. Then I would have lost a lot more… I will buy a Blue-Ray DVD, but not today.

Debunking Post-Holiday Shopping Myths

After finally getting my Wii and spending the past few days manically hooked on Wii Tennis and upping my all-time score to “professional,” I’ve decided that I now need to focus my energies on something a bit more tangible and likely to give equal amounts of attainable bliss: Shopping.

But…For those of you who know me, I hate shopping. I hate spending money. I hate crowds and I hate holidays that feed off of consumer greed and guilt. Now that the holiday season is officially over (well, the songs are off the radio anyways), and people are rushing back to stores to return and exchange gifts, I’ve decided to let a few days blow over, have some of the carte madness disperse a bit, and slowly get back out there and take advantage of some of these sales. In order to be successfully proactive in my shopping, I’ve decided to start with the essentials so as to eliminate all the unnecessary headache I usually attach to malls and people. Hopefully by me revealing the most common myths, you too can be enlightened and on your way to an even jollier 2008.

1) Myth # 1: Holiday season is over post-Christmas.
I lied in the previous paragraph when I said the holiday season was in fact officially over. If big name dept. stores like Kohl’s and Macy’s can be burning the midnight oil and opening at 6 AM the day after Christmas, you know there has to be an audience for this. Yeah and that audience would be the very same people that actually spend the day after Thanksgiving at strip malls, revving up on Starbucks lattes at 4 AM just to kick them out of that Tryptophan-state and anointing holiday-like status to a day of shopping. Canucks aside, who does that?

2) Myth # 2: Exhibit Kindness & Goodwill to Thy Neighbor
Ok, so this rule might apply to your literal neighbor, but don’t start getting all figurative on this one. If you see a Wii in Target or Best Buy, grab that puppy. Don’t do that polite thing when it comes to the things you want or you’ll never get anything in return - besides a lot of bitching and moaning when you come home empty-handed or realize you should have fought a little harder to stay in line to return that damn vase you have no use for but didn’t want to start rough-housing it with the old lady with the walker. Does she really need that walker is what you should really be asking yourself…

3) Myth # 3: People don’t like to Shop Online
Bullocks! Did you know that in England and Scotland, online sales pre-empted retail sales? Did you care?

4) Myth # 4: Giftcards are the Natural Remedy for a Fledgling Economy
Retailers are banking on giftcards pulling them out of this season’s sales slump? Yeah, good luck with that..

5) Myth # 5: Wii is Purely a State of Mii
And the most sought after product of the greed-fueled, consumer driven holiday season?

The Nintendo Wii was the most sought-after product, with the Transformers Ultimate Bumblebee a close second, according to Yahoo Shopping.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I got some Wii ass to cook.

In Search of (The) Wii: Week 1

After a week of holding out hope of buying a Wii anytime in the near future, I’m spent. I know from my quest that I am not alone. Hell, I’ve run into a lot of the same moms desperately hoping to appease their whiny kids by waking up at ungodly hours and schlepping out to the nearest Best Buy, Target, Walmart, Circuit City and any other promised mecca just to secure within their tiny, tight grips a new Nintendo Wii bundle for a mere $250. Having wasted my Sunday morning high-tailing it to every electronics/technology superstore around and being met with the same bemused reaction ad infinitum from every salesperson, I’ve started to catch a bit of the anti-Wii. There’s only so much flaunting and teasing one company and one product, for that matter, should be allowed. With the new Playstation 3 valued anywhere from $400-$500 and XBox 360 at $350, game consoles are the hottest ticket around this holiday season and they don’t come cheap.

But not coming at all?

Conspiracy theorists and other people with way too much time on their hands aside, I’m not of the mindset that Nintendo is holding out on us, more that they simply haven’t manufactured enough Wiis to fill the supply end of their high demand. The fact that the search for the Wii has borne the brunt of every late night talk show (if there wasn’t a writer’s strike) and DJ’s AM joke doesn’t discourage me. If anything, it compels me to push on in my search. The reality being no one relishes healthy competition more than myself. I get that glazed, demonic look in my eyes and march to the possessed beat of a win-at-all-cost drum. But there is no winning with the Wii.

I’m self-defeated at the moment. Angry at Wii, at Bill Gates for his damn Xbox 360 (completely unrelated). Incapable to discerning if I even want the Wii so much anymore, or I just can’t stand to not finish something once I set my mind to it. I may be feeling anti-Wiiish at present, but much like the initial hurdle of running from mile 7 to mile 8 when training for a marathon, this might be more of a mental obstacle than anything else. I might wake up tomorrow with renewed hope, but for now I’ll stick with the odds of the Patriots beating the Steelers this evening. Those are odds which will more likely play out in my favor.

Is YouTube Really A Web 2.0 Site?

As if social networking sites weren’t over-populated enough (hint of sarcasm) in the webosphere, TechCrunch just posted an insightful piece on the lesser-known, but deep-pocketed Web 2.0 sites that are worth noting. Among those profiled, the Palo Alto-based Ning, which visually reads a lot like Vox, but with a less hipster targeted demographic and helps members with guided instruction make their way through the sinuous road of social networking, and New York City’s KickApps, which plays for the more seasoned web guru i.e. developer and supplies users with applications to build communities/networking platforms on their own sites. Absent from the list was Spock, a cleverly named social networking site, which Irina Slutsky of PodTech invited me to see the other day. Read More…

The Gorbachev Wears Vuitton

 

Top models, beware. It’s nothing out of the ordinary when we see a movie star or an athlete  advertising a product. But it’s not every day that a former leader and a Nobel Peace Prize winner becomes a model. In a campaign to promote the company’s luggage and travel accessories, Luis Vuitton, hired former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev, the man and the map-like birthmark. Gorbachev will join Scarlett Johanssen, Catherine Deneuve  Andre Agassi, and Steffi Graf who also model for the luxurious French company. Gorbachev’s first gig as a model was in a Pizza Hut commercial.

 Johanssen awaits Mikhail.

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David Beckham, Hollywood Style

By ariel in Uncategorized, Entertainment, News, Jay Leno, sports, Hollywood, British, Advertising, Female Empowerment, business, relationships, soccer, Posh, media, America, reality TV, celebrity, gossip, Beckham on July 14 2007

How to promote an unpopular sport, step by step, by the Los Angeles Galaxy. You got to hand it to the Los Angeles Galaxy. They sure know how to rock the world, literally. So how do you do it?

Step 1: Location! Location! Location!  Hollywood is the only place to bring the Beckhams to, money, spotlight, cellebrities. We’ll get to that later.

Step 2: Find your man. Find the most famous soccer player in the world, who is also good at what he does, meaning a real fighter on the pitch with natural talent and proven experience.

Step 3: Open your pockets.When Real Madrid bought David Beckham from Manchester United they paid $33 million Euro for him. It took them only six months to cover this expense. So when the Galaxy pay him $250 millions for five years, they know what they are doing.

Step Four: Cherchez La Femme. One of the most important steps of all. You can love or hate Victoria Beckham, but she is an icon. You must not ignore her and her every caprice. Actually, she is the one you have to talk to even before you talk to David Beckham himself. I mean, it’s quit obvious who call the shots  right? So how do you do it? First you hook her up with the hottest and most paparazzi-stalked couple around, and if Brangelina are not around Tom and Katie Cruise will do just fine. Then you put her in the spotlight. But remember it has to be in the middle of the spotlight. You make an NBC Victoria Beckham- Coming to America special, you put her in the Morning show, The Tonight Show, The Whatever show, and she is happy. And if Victoria is happy, everybody is happy.

The Fifth and last step is the introduction: I have seen many soccer players being introduced to the public by their new clubs. But I have to admit, I have never seen something like what I saw at the Home Depot Center, home of the Los Angeles Galaxy. It was as if David Beckham was getting a lifetime achievement award for something he hasn’t really done yet. Amazing.

And even before King David even touched a soccer ball in America, marketing wise, he already does to soccer what his idol Michael Jordan (That’s why he is wearing the number 23, not because of the Jim Carrey movie…) did to Basketball. Now everyone in America knows what the rest of the world knows for years, Who is David Beckham.

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