Gawker
Before and after
Posts Tagged “
Business
”
Before and after
advertising
Gary Busey Would Like To Bounce A Few Ideas Off You
Here's what you've been waiting for, if you're an eccentric millionaire looking to invest a fortune in off-the-wall, possibly crack-inspired schemes: 40 business ideas from actor Gary Busey! These come in the form of 40 different ads for some obscure business phone company (whatever). The point is, Gary Busey really appears to just be riffing all of these off the top of his head so he can leave and get a drink. Bear hair dye? Oh Gary, you are an incorrigible national treasure! Two clips of his wacky wisdom, below: More »
investigations
The Magazine Industry's Dirty Little Secret
The business of selling magazine subscriptions door-to-door is surprisingly shady. It consists largely of crews of young people—some under 18—recruited by (often) criminal characters who haul them around the country in vans, releasing them only to make their way through neighborhoods, using any lies necessary to tug the heartstrings of people enough to get them to buy something. Then all the kids are rounded up again, given their meager cut of the profits, and they all go do drugs. Sometimes they rape people, or drive off cliffs. The Houston Press just put out a monster investigation of the industry, and it shows a long but clear path from the offices of Conde Nast out to the wild kids hustling in the hinterlands. And there are some true horror stories: More »
deathwatch
Harvey's Tumble
Could 2008 be the year that Hollywood has waited for so long, when that "indestructible cockroach" of independent movies—New York's Harvey Weinstein—finally runs out of luck? Forget about disappointing revenues from movies such as Quentin Tarantino's Grindhouse; one should be looking at the plight of a boring home video distributor which was supposed to be the Weinsteins' salvation. More »
finance
The Jinx Of Roger Ailes
Hold for a second the vitriol that Roger Ailes usually inspires. The Fox News boss is worth watching—not so much for his abuse-inviting impersonation of a corpulent former Nixonite but as a financial indicator of a market top. The cable news network Ailes started for Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch—though a remarkable ratings success—marked the high-water-mark of the Republican ascendancy. A month after the launch of Fox News in October 1996, Bill Clinton came back from the political dead and ascendant Congressional Republicans under Newt Gingrich suffered their first big reverse. So is there an Ailes jinx? Well, take a look at the stock market. Ailes' Fox Business News was supposed to be a news channel with less of the gloom and doom of competitors such as CNBC. Since the start of broadcasting in October last year—right at the peak of the market—the S&P stockmarket index is down more than 15% (click to enlarge graph). If Ailes threatens to launch any new channels, sell!
Television
Fox Biz Helps Newswoman Realize Dream Of Shaking Booty
Rebecca Gomez knew way back in the heady '90s that she wanted to get into the important field of business journalism. So she worked hard, paid her dues, and now her dream has come true! She co-hosts Happy Hour on the Fox Business Network, a show described as "easy to understand for those of us who are not financial gurus." Ha, yes, well Gomez helps bring complicated finance stories down to earth for even us simpletons. Like she does in this clip, by strutting her stuff in a dress made for "girls with well developed booties." Living the dream! [Hispanic Magazine via Talking Biz News]
games people play
Obama Plays Password on Fox Business
U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama appeared on the Fox Business Channel yesterday, apparently trying to reach the four depressed masturbators who make up the Fox Business audience. The blonde the modeling agency sent in to interview Obama decided to "have a little fun" with Barry by playing a word-association game. Yes, a word-association game! Hooray for journalism! Hooray for democracy! It's kind of the worst possible way for Obama to be interviewed because, yes, he's into 'the nuance thing.' So watch for yourself and cringe along at home. More »
economy
Trust No One On Oil Prices
Oil was $140 a barrel on Monday, now it's below $133 a barrel either because Vladimir Putin farted or the U.S. released its fuel stock figures — we're not sure. Is Peak Oil real, or is the myth driving investors to get nutty with an otherwise healthy market? A decade ago, when oil was cheap, it was a "controversial theory," reported in the San Francisco Examiner, that predicted the party wouldn't last very much longer. So why was the conventional wisdom of OPEC fantasists, who warned of "$5 oil," so laughably bogus? (The Economist devoted a cover story to it; see left.) Who made false predictions then, and who's really talking sense about the state of the industry now? More »
juggernauts
Brand Perez
The Perez Hilton brand is becoming an empire! Well, sort of. The off-putting celebrity blogger has been stamping his name on shitty clothing, he might be getting his own record label, and now he's had a damn musical written about him. Is he really becoming an unstoppable juggernaut corporation, or is it just hooey? We'll take a closer look at the corpulent stain-artist's side projects after the jump. More »
the rich
Class Warfare Over Starbucks Seats
Starbucks just unveiled a special rewards program, offering free refills and wireless internet for its most loyal addicts. But this isn't enough for Times columnist Ron Lieber, who considers himself a very special, lucrative customer and who has a list of demands. He would like his own special, shorter lines and a special VIP seating section with Aeron chairs and reserved electrical outlets. He would like to be invited to exclusive parties. And everyone else would like his head on a platter. Again. More »
lady business
Sex and the City Actress To Continue Having Sex
Sex and the City star and perpetually naked old lady Kim Cattrall will continue her illustrious career of pretend-fucking on camera for HBO. The positively ancient fiftysomething coital acrobat has signed on to play the lead in a new series, copied of course from a British show, about a middle-aged woman who has a sexual reawakening, leading to major life changes. It's essentially about fucking to terms with things. No word yet on whether she'll have three shrill, shoe-worshiping friends, but you can bet there will be puns. So very many puns. [EW.com] More »
lady business
Shocking Statistics: Mostly Women Plan to See Sex and the City
Friends, we are just four short days away from the Sex and the City movie. The most important film ever shot in New York (and the most important film about women, ever) is getting huge buzz and, as it turns out, advance ticket sales. Fandango, the largest of the online-ticketing sites (think: annoying paper bag pre-movie ads) says that 94% of polled ticket buyers are ladies, and that 67% of pre-orderers are planning to go in a large group. My Chinatown bus straw poll yielded the same results: this gawker overheard a woman loudly talking on her cell phone saying that "I want it to be a whole night, we'll go to the movie, then get apple martinis. You, me, Jeannie, Donna, Tina. All the girls. Apple martinis, yeah. A whole Sex and the City theme." (She then yapped for an hour more about God knows what). Like The Devil Wears Prada before it, the SATC movie could prove that movies with a near-exclusive female audience can still be box office hits. For the few non-gay men in the audience it's a good thing that Miranda inexplicably shoots two handguns at once and then Samantha blows up about halfway through. [AP]
corporate america
Saving Starbucks Through Micromanagement
Howard Schultz, the founder of Death Star coffee chain and religious icon Starbucks, built the company up from nothing with pure grit, energy, and a visionary outlook. Then he went too far, aiming to open 40-freaking-thousand stores (more than McDonald's), and the company's stock price cratered over the past year. Schultz brought himself back as CEO earlier this year, and the dynamic caffeine pusher has now revealed how he plans to revive his floundering company: by micromanaging the shit out of every god damn thing: More »
arguments
The Five Charges Against 'Sex and the City'
The Sex and the City backlash is in full swing! Isn't it just awful, with its squawking, sideways attacks on feminism, its materialistic hedonism, its Brooklyn-bashing, and its general New York-ruining? Recent articles in the Post and in Time Out New York certainly seem to think so. Though, with two weeks remaining until the big movie sashays into theaters, we suspect that the backlash will earn its own backlash. What will people say? And who's right, the pros or the cons? After the jump find five of the biggest arguments against Sex and the City, how its fans might respond, and who we think is right (and fabulous). More »
image
Your Brand Is Crap
BrandTags.net is a website with a deceptively simple idea: it shows you a brand's logo, and you enter the first word that comes to mind. Then it combines all the thousands of responses into a tag cloud, showing the overall consumer perception of each brand. Smart! So what great truths do these responses show, besides the fact that many people associate Adidas with "shoes?" They show that your brand is crap, stupid, and sucks! Corporate image gurus, take note: More »
flackery
Was Mischa Barton's '80-Year-Old' Cellulite Faked By Paparazzo?
As a matter of policy we leave celebrity cellulite photos to sites such as the Daily Mail's, which specializes in premature wrinkles, embarrassing guts and other physical evidence that decrepitude is inevitable—even for stars. But Mischa Barton's idiotic publicist has decided to turn an embarrassing photograph of the actress' rumpled behind into a fully-fledged photoshop scandal—which gives every gossip site the excuse to run the otherwise stale photographs. And Team Barton can't even get its story straight. More »
feuds
Star Jones Calls Barbara Walters An Old Slut
While promoting her new memoir Audition, famous interviewer and Dick Van Patten impersonator Barbara Walters went on the Oprah show and dished about affairs with senators, adultery, and formerly obese woman Star Jones. She said that Star was "so obese she could barely walk onto The View set." Ouch! And, true! Barbara then went on to confess that, yes, everyone was lying about Star's gastric bypass, respecting her wishes to pass off her sudden, enormous weight loss as the happy result of Pilates and dieting. Fair enough! The truth comes out! But, ruh roh, Star is of course a crazy person and very angry about this. Her nasty "shut up, old lady" response (from Us), plus video of the Barbara/Oprah interview, after the jump. More »
blog wars
