Every high school athlete remembers their coaches sputtering motivational quotes at them. These quotes seemed only mildly relevant at the time and are downright worthless once you’re old enough to realize that those coaches were just adults who were not particularly popular in high school and not particularly successful in their lives afterwards. One such quote that I can remember from my short-lived high school football days (before I re-purposed my efforts to a much better use of my skills: announcing games for the local TV station) was: “Don’t be …

This one speaks for itself. Solange Magnano, a former Miss Argentina (and mother of two), died of complications from gluteoplasty…or in other words, butt implants. You really can’t make this stuff up. Nice that every once in a while a cause celebre comes around to remind us that vanity is a sin. Why do I envision all this ending up with Brad Pitt’s wife’s head in a box???

An ex-model who was obsessed with maintaining her youthful looks has died  following surgery to make her buttocks firmer. Former Miss Argentina Solange Magnano, 38, …

One salient aspect of America’s collective anxiety over the financial crisis is, of course, the deficit. The nascent “Tea Party” movement has tapped into this anxiety and made it a central thesis of their supposed revolution. Leaving aside for a second the Tea Partiers’ refusal to acknowledge the $5 trillion increase in the Federal debt that occurred under George W. Bush and the fact that they seem hopelessly incapable of suggesting a single rational solution to a problem they consider so devastating, the national debt is a potentially catastrophic problem …

Content creators have no shortage of troubling questions to answer, but media entrepreneur Edo Segal poses yet another one to them:
Media scarcity is dead. In the future my son will have a flash drive that he will pay $29 for that will have the capacity to hold all movies and music ever released by a major label, studio or tv/cable network. It will take 30 seconds to clone the data over the network to a friend who will pay $14.99 for a device with double capacity a year later. How …

Whoever you are reading this blog, I don’t know you. Well, maybe I do know you, but whether I know you or I don’t, I bet that you knew someone like Jon Caren during your adolescent days. Let me tell you a few things about Jon Caren. Life in the relatively upper-middle class hamlet of southwest Beverly Hills was cruising along pretty steadily until one day in 1991 when all of a sudden the powers that be got together and decided who was cool, who was popular, and who the …

Big Dodger victory tonight. To beat the opposing team’s ace in Game 1 with Randy Wolfe scrubbing by…it’s huge. This win is pretty evident of the 2009 Dodgers overall. They are solid all around. Since Manny (and his biceps) have returned back to earth, nothing particularly exciting sticks out about these Dodgers, but they are incredibly complete as a team. They eeked their way towards the finish line and didn’t inspire much confidence heading into the post-season. The hitters weren’t hitting and their lack of a true ace (despite a …

I always get a tingle when something happens that gives people a reason to have opinions and the Roman Polanski saga qualifies. The saga of the Holocaust orphan/philandering auteur/Manson victim/international fugitive has inflamed passions over the past 48 hours and forced us to confront concepts of right, wrong,  justice, and punishment.  Celebrity scandals always dip into the collective consciousness and Polanski’s inhabits a unique place there due to its many contrasting dynamics.
Nearly impossible to simplify the issue, but this is the best I can boil it down to: Should a …

Most anamolies eventually become commonplace and accepted. One of these is the fact that Los Angeles (the 2nd largest media market in the United States) does not have a pro football team. It takes a whole helluva a lot for the city of Los Angeles to be collectively conscious about anything, and our lack of an NFL franchise is no exception. The knee-jerk explanation is that LA is too shi-shi, foo-foo, and whatever other Zsa Zsa Gabor-inspired slang term for “vanity” you want to use for a rough and tumble …

Chirping seagulls, PCH and Sunset, pina coladas with neon umbrella straws, sawdust floors, leftovers wrapped in tinfoil sculptures. Ahhh the cheesy splendor that is Gladstones. The seaside eatery has been a cultural landmark and the venue of every secondary holiday (i.e., mother’s day) family get together of mine since the mid-80’s. If your question is, Matt, did you happen to get up on the loudspeaker at Gladstones and sing your grandma happy birthday when you were 4, my answer would have to be, yes.
This tourist trap was once the busiest …

Yesterday witnessed the most high-profile M & A action in quite some time as Disney made yet a further admission that it has no capacity to actually create appealing content and decided to purchase Marvel to do it for them. Disney CEO Bob Iger realized that a business model reliant solely on the purchasing power of 13 year old girls is no longer sustainable, so he decided to add 13 year old boys (and those who think like 13 year old boys, i.e., every American male born within 10 years …