With today’s news confirming InBev’s acquistion of Anheuser-Busch St. Louis has lost another business headquarters and one of the defining icons of the city as well. At $70 a share the stockholders will reap a tidy profit but at what cost? As little as a year ago AB was trading at $45 a share which means that had you purchased at that time you would have realized a nearly 60% return on investment today. But is it worth it? InBev has announced that it plans to slash $1.5 billion in operating costs over the next 3 years which probably means that many of St. Louis’s 6000 AB employees will lose their jobs. Efficiency is the name of the game though and this is not the only time this has happened in St. Louis. A look at the recent business history:
A.G. Edwards was acquired by Wachovia which did end up relocating jobs here from Charlotte, NC but many other jobs were slashed.
May Department Stores was acquired by Federated (Macy’s) who eventually shut down operations in St. Louis and took 1700 jobs with them.
TWA was acquired by American Airlines who cut thousands of jobs and plenty of flights. This is the reason you now have a layover in Columbus in order to fly to Denver (an exaggeration but not by much). This one pisses me off the most.
McDonnell-Douglas was acquired by Boeing. This one wasn’t necessarily bad for the city unless you count losing the prestige of a corporate headquarters. Boeing still employs over 15000 employees here and it’s still a place I can routinely threaten to leave my job for.
Recent rumors/minor concerns:
International Bowling Hall of Fame is heading to Arlington, TX is the next year. Now I’ve never been to this place and it’s always gotten ridiculed by visitors to the city but I don’t like to see it go. Especially since it’s leaving to make way for the perpetually delayed Ballpark Village project AKA the St. Louis Cardinals version of suburban living in the city!
St. Louis Rams are going to be sold. Chip Rosenbloom inherited the team after his mother Georgia Frontiere passed away. Rumors persist that the team might be moved back to LA after their lease expires in 2015. A new stadium is probably necessary to keep the team here. Rosenbloom has no interest in running the team as he’s off producing B-movies in LA.
This is part 1 in a 2 part series on 2008 summer movies. Stay tuned at the end of the summer for the second part.
I love the movies and I go often. From the popcorn and milkduds to the unattainably hot actresses there’s something about going to the movies that makes summer so much fun. I lean toward the films that focus more on explosions than emotions so the summertime is my favorite movie going season. Here’s my review of the films released during the first half of the summer (April-June).
As a nod to the Hollywood lifestyle films are rated on a 5 coke booger scale. 1 being a key hit (terrible film) and 5 being Tony Montana’s desk mound of blow (great film).
Forgetting Sarah Marshall (4/5)
This is a very typical Judd Apatow film. A strange looking guy is with a hot girl then fucks it up by doing something dumb only to redeem himself in the end. It’s formula but it’s a formula that works. Especially since the girls (Kristen Bell and Mila Kunis) are hotter than in any other Apatow film. Also there’s a fair amount of penis. I believe it’s an old Hollywood principle — boobs are sexy but weiner makes people laugh.
Iron Man (5/5)
Loved it! Robert Downey Jr. is a great actor and it’s about time they start casting those for superhero roles. The semi-realistic plot and plenty of explosions make this one a winner. My only problem is that they cast Jeff Bridges as the villain. I seriously can’t even see him on screen without thinking of the dude. “The dude abides, Iron Man.”
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2/5)
Very disappointing. I’m still upset about this one. A few reasons I’ll list: you can’t have a 58 year old woman (Karen Allen) being the love interest. I’m sorry it’s just gross. Shia Lebouf once again brings nothing to the table. In fact I think he actually takes things off the table. I’m supposed to believe he’s a tough motorcycle riding punk? He’s like 5′4″!! Also aliens? WTF? George Lucas bastardizes another franchise.
Wanted (4/5)
This is a surprisingly good film. I went for the Angelina Jolie and ridiculous action sequences and I came out enjoying the whole thing. The plot is a little thin (a magic loom says who should be killed? Wha?) but the action is worth it. They use a lot of free running for the sequences and it’s visually impressive. Also Jolie shows her naked booty (hey tushy tushy). Worth it.
Movies I still want to see:
Wall-E
Kung Fu Panda
Baby Mama
On the fence
You don’t mess with the Zohan
Get Smart
The Happening
The Love Guru
Not a chance in Hell
Sex and the City
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Speed Racer
What Happens in Vegas…
Harold and Kumar something something…
For some reason I’ve always found myself attracted to movies that are considered “cult classics” - movies with a small but passionate audience. These are usually movies that are too violent or use too much clever/edgy comedy for your average Midwestern moron to understand. As a result almost all of these movies have been considered commercial failures. Evil Dead, The Big Lebowski, Office Space, Clerks, and Roadhouse are examples of really good cult movies that never got a chance in theaters.
As I sat around my house on Sunday evening nursing a wicked hangover I decided to see if Netflix could help me through the day. A fair amount of searching later and there it was: 1986’s Cobra starring Sylvester Stallone. It had all the necessary elements - it was hyperviolent, had a ridiculous tag line (”Crime is a disease. Meet the cure.”), and it starred freaking Rambo! I was in.
Cobra did not disappoint. Here’s a couple reasons to add it to your DVD shelf:
The Plot makes exactly zero sense. The cops are chasing someone whom the media dubs “The Nightslasher” who in reality is actually some sort of axe wielding army of psychopaths. Now even if there wasn’t DNA testing available in 1986 I would think when a hacked up body turns up in a car that has been chopped in half with axes they might suspect the criminal is one than one dude right? Apparently not.
Marion Cobretti is a shoot first ask questions later cop. During the opening scene a hostage standoff is taking place at a grocery store. I guess the group of cops stationed outside can’t figure out what to do so they have to “call in the cobra”. When Cobra arrives he enters the building and kills the criminal by throwing a knife into his chest and then shooting him 5 times. In fact in the entire movie I don’t think he actually arrests anyone. He kills a lot of people but arrests no one. He may not have even been issued a set of handcuffs.
The Violence is ever present. Seriously I think for every action scene there is about 10 lines of dialogue. There may only be about 2 pages of actual written dialogue in this entire movie. The rest consists of action shots and montages with 80’s house music dubbed in.
Brigitte Nielson before she hit the wall. She was very very attractive in the 80’s. Now she spends time with Flava Flav in reality TV land. Time is one cruel bitch.
The Ending stays inline with the rest of the movie and also makes no sense. Cobra has just spent about 18 minutes shooting guys on motorcycles with a machine gun when he comes face to face with the main bad guy (possibly the actual Night Slasher, again there is very little dialogue). The bad guy says “You won’t shoot me. You’re the law. The law is civilized.” Did this moron not just see Cobra shoot like 38 guys dead? You think one more is going to effect him that much? Ridiculous. What do you think happens? Uh yeah Cobra kills him.
I think this movie was written by a group of guys sitting around smoking weed and trying to find another vehicle in which Stallone kills about 200 people. Mission accomplished.
I’ve already written about my disdain for the STLToday.com redesign. Well I still haven’t gotten over it. The geniuses over at the Post have decided to use a combination of Flash, JavaScript, and a kick in the nuts to shove advertisements in your face wherever you look. They are unavoidable. Here’s a brief tour in pictures.
The page loads. In the top left corner of the page seems to be peeled down revealing an ad that screams “Free Gas!” on a neon green background with white dollar signs flying around. The corner appears to be heaving/wheezing/pulsating and distracts you from reading the news.
What happens when you mouseover such an ad? Well of course it peels down to cover the entire freaking screen you’re looking at!
To get rid of this monstrosity you have to wait for the entire thing to peel down then wait for the close button to appear then click it then instead of just going away it has to peel all the way back up. Terrible implementation.
The second ad on the page is even worse. Worse because it’s almost unavoidable. If you scroll the page using the scrollbar you’re safe but if you’re like me and use a scrollwheel mouse or two finger scroll on a Mac you will hit this ad. This ad for Shubert Funiture Two covers the entire width of the page.
What happens when you mouseover it? Of course it covers the entire screen.
Again you must wait for the entire animation to complete loading then find the close button (not an easy task) and click it. I realize this is the “going out of business sale” but get out of my face. This has to be the most obtrusive news site ever created.
How has this effected my reading habits? Well I used to scan every section of the site now I just skim the homepage for as long as I can stand sometimes not even 5 minutes. I would be interested to see how their pageviews have gone down since the redesign. I’m now spending much more time reading The Guardian UK for my news. Shockingly the reporting on US news is better than what we have here in America. I’m also thinking about giving Newsweek a chance and for local news possibly switching to KSDK.com.
In 2001 I saw George Carlin in concert at Juanita K. Hammons Hall in Springfield, MO. I was a college student at the time and the tickets only cost me $10 compliments of SAC. It was a great time. George was in his mid-sixties put was still on his game. To this day I can still recite several monologues from the show - “You smell like an anchovies cunt, Bruno” - and feel privileged that I got to see this groundbreaking comedian live.
I was shocked when driving to work this morning I heard Howard Stern announcing George Carlin’s death. He was truly an innovator. He was like Lenny Bruce but funny. His 7 dirty words will go down as one of the most famous comedy sketches of all time.
Sometime around 1994 when the Internet arrived in the Dozier home in the form of America Online we had a blazing 2400 baud modem and were limited to 10 free hours a month. Imagine that. 10 hours a month! I’m online that much everyday now it seems.
Now Time Warner has introduced the idea of Internet Metering which would charge users based on much bandwidth they consume in a month.
From the article:
In that trial, new customers can buy plans with a 5-gigabyte cap, a 20-gigabyte cap or a 40-gigabyte cap. Prices for those plans range from $30 to $50. Above the cap, customers pay $1 a gigabyte. Plans with higher caps come with faster service.
This tiered pricing model won’t effect users who just check email and stock quotes but for the growing majority of Internet users this is a huge blow. With the convergence of Internet/TV/Video/Music there is no way a bandwidth cap will provide an adequate service level. My new Roku Netflix Player can consume up to 5GB per movie. That would put me into the second tier in under two hours!
Imagine all the things the Internet can be used for that would classify someone as a “bandwidth hog”. Hulu, iTunes, XBox, BitTorrent, Sirius Online, Skype, Vonage, Videoconferencing, and more. Plus applications are moving from the desktop to the online space so more and more people are spending more time connected. Eventually (nearly) all business will be conducted online.
I’m not some hippie but I do believe the Internet should be free for everyone. I believe that someday this will be reality. Every device will have an IP address. From our homes to our cars to our coffee makers. Capping Internet usage is doomed to failure and the executives that dreamed up this scheme are clueless.
The NYTimes article cites AT&T, Comcast, and Time Warner as planning on implementing these metering policies. I have Charter Cable which is already the worst company on the planet. I think my head might explode if they decided to go this route. I’m upset enough about the concept of throttling my connection speed and now this. Going back to the AOL pricing models of the early nineties is not an innovative new idea. It’s a giant step backward.
When I was about 7 years old I saw the video for Metallica’s “One” on MTV. It was about a war veteran who lost all his limbs, sight, hearing, and speech and was left to twitch in a hospital bed trapped inside his own mind for the rest of his life. It was the coolest damn thing I’d ever seen. This wasn’t the Motley Crue/Poison/Paula Abdul I was used to seeing. This was something special. I was in a second grade and I knew it then.
(”SOS - Kill Me” — Brutal)
Jump to 1999. I’m a senior in high school and a magical new program called Napster is released. You could now share your friend’s (and anybody else’s) playlists to download and listen to music. It was a great way to learn about new bands. It was like exchanging cassettes on the playground except so much more efficient. These were great times even with the dialup speeds we were using.
Unfortunately my old favorite band Metallica caught word that they’re newest song, “I Disappear” from the MI:2 soundtrack had been leaked to Napster in advance of the album release. Apparently this pissed drummer Lars Ulrich off to no end because he ended up suing Napster and a few universities where students were using Napster. Lars testified before Congress and made several PSAs telling us we were “stealing” by sharing our favorite music. WTF? How could he accuse us of stealing? We were fans of his band. Because of Napster Metallica’s music could reach an even wider audience. He just didn’t get it and it pissed everybody off.
(Metallica Good. Napster Bad.)
Eventually Napster has to close up shop and move toward a pay for play model. Metallica releases another subpar record, 2003’s St. Anger, and I forgot about how upset I was about the lawsuit in 2003. I just wanted my old band back.
The newest record is supposed to be released this fall and I was shocked to find out that Metallica was planning to embrace the online community this time around. Mission:Metallica will allow you to download the full album without DRM and create a Metallica social network among other things. Sure they’re just trying to make more money and copy off of Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails but it was a start. Maybe we didn’t have to be pissed at Metallica anymore.
Not so fast. News this week broke that Metallica had allowed a group of journalists to listen to a pre-release mix of the album. Fine and dandy so far but when these journalists wrote their reviews on various websites Metallica’s management demanded they be taken down. What the hell? The writers weren’t even required to sign an NDA. This was troubling indeed.
A few days later Metallica came out and said they had nothing to do with the request to delete the posts and they were giving Q Prime Management an “ear spank”. I hope that’s true. I just can’t understand what this band has against people being excited about their music.
I’m a sucker. I still look forward to the newest album and I’ll get it. Napster or not.
This is part one in a continuing series of call-outs when I think my friends have written something stupid.
My friend/co-worker/punching bag Matt has written a post weighing the benefits and costs of purchasing the latest version of the iPhone that will be released on July 11. He reached the conclusion that the iPhone 2.0 is not worth the cost. That’s fine it’s his blog so he can have whatever opinion he wants but he reached this decision by using uninformed and illogical arguments. He also used a lot of douchebaggy language that he learned while attending at B-School at the Harvard of Natural Bridge Rd.
Here are some excerpts:
When the first iPhone came out, the decision to buy was pretty easy. The EDGE network was too slow, and, whenever I am around WIFI, I have access to a computer - home, work, school, etc. So, the most significant feature of the iPhone - access to the Internet - was completely useless.
First of all free WIFI is readily available in many areas including coffee shops, airports, sports arenas, bars, restaurants, bookstores, etc. So calling the Internet access feature “completely useless’ is overreaching. Yes the EDGE network is balls. It’s really, really slow. I even wrote about that. But there are plenty of places where the iPhone is usable and quite valuable.
It would fill in any gaps that I currently have in Internet access with a tool that provides adequate access to the Internet (although, the iPhone still does not fully support Flash, Silverlight, or any streaming audio format).
Flash sucks and you know it. God how obtrusive. Seriously most of the apps I use have no need for Flash. iPhone apps use AJAX pretty extensively and the functionality works well. There are apps for Flash video including YouTube but I can’t think of any other times I would need it except maybe Slacker/Pandora/Last.fm and you can jailbreak the phone (if you want to risk it) for those apps. I don’t see Silverlight hitting the mainstream (at least I hope not) because everything Microsoft is doing right now seems so stale.
But, I have lingering doubts that with 4G (LTE and WiMax) right around the corner, 3G will be slow in comparison to whats around next year.
What kind of attitude is that? Of course something better is always right around the corner that’s what makes technology so much fun. I was wondering why you were still using a Commodore 64.
The second generation iPhone requires a 2 year contract through AT&T. This contract will lock you into guaranteed rates of $30-45/month (depending on plan) for data on top of the existing voice plan.
Everytime you get a new phone with any carrier you are required to lock into a 2 year contract. But you can always get another phone and just change/extend the contract. I never saw this as a big deal. Are you really changing carriers every week? The data plan has gone up $10/month over the previous iPhone and that does suck.
The iPhone would increase my current contract by a minimum of $25/month. Over 24 months (and factoring in a nearly risk-free return of 3% from ING), the contract alone would cost me $618 more.
I know you have a Razr but you’re forgetting just how cool this phone is. It’s worth the extra money. I highly doubt you would be saving the $25/month anyway you’ll probably just use that money to buy terrible 80’s music that your girlfriend tells you is good.
For me the GPS and apps are quite trivial and will not factor into my decision.
That’s the old way of thinking. On normal cellphones the apps are trivial and almost impossible to use. The iPhone is quite different. The apps make the device. They are incredible and extremely easy to use.
But, of course, that could change when I see all my friends with one. Sometimes, you just have to be a little irrational.
Like writing that post? Yeah that was a little irrational.
Last night I finally received my newest toy, the Roku Netflix Player. After waiting almost two weeks for backordering and Fedex’s slooooow ground shipping to get here I came home after work and there it was. A tiny black box roughly the size of a paperback book (if that book is the Bible) that I could watch my Netflix movies on! No more waiting for the mail to get here! I was excited. Then I tried to set it up which turned into a major pain in the ass.
The contents of the box were simple. The player, a remote, and cables. Easy enough. I hooked up the Roku to my TV via HDMI and plugged it in fully expecting it would detect my wireless network and be on it’s way. Not so fast. It found my network alright but it refused to let me connect. After unhooking and reconnecting wires and restarting modems and routers I still had nothing. I was pissed and a little sweaty.
I logged on to the Roku support website where I was told to hook the player up through a wired connection “just to get it started”. Apparently there was a software update that needed to be installed which would greatly improve the networking capabilities of the box. Now how I was expected to know that a product that was just released two weeks ago needed a software update I’m not sure but I decided to give it a try. I dug out my 25ft ethernet cable and hooked it directly into the box. Everything finally worked. The software installed and I was viewing my queue in seconds. I wasn’t quite prepared to be tripping over ethernet cable for the next 6 months however so I gave the wireless route another go.
Of course that didn’t work. Same error as earlier. I was seriously about to smash this POS with a hammer. I took a deep breath and tried it one last time. Unhooked and power cycled everything then said a little prayer to Jeebus Cripes. And what do you know….it worked! Estimated time of install = 2 hours.
Making up for all the hassle is the interface. It is slick! The videos are near DVD quality and after adding a movie to your instant queue it appears in about 15 seconds on screen. Netflix has done it once again.
There are, of course, some areas for improvement:
Selection Only about 10,000 of Netflix’s 100,000 movies are available for instant watching. They need to work hard to increase this selection. Most TV shows seem to be there so that is a plus.
Blu-Ray All the videos are standard def. It would be nice to have a few HD choices in there as well. Like I said the majority of videos I tested were DVD or near-DVD quality but a few looked like they were on the edge of VHS quality.
DVD Menus/Controls I understand the nature of the Internet and the effect that it has on video but I would like the full DVD controls to be available on these videos. FF/Rewind/Next/Previous/Extras etc. Right now there is a rudimentary FF/Rewind functionality.
More than Netflix One of the biggest drawbacks is that this box only plays Netflix videos. I realize that’s the point but I would like to see it incorporate content from other sites. If they add Hulu, DailyShow.com, and South Park Studios I don’t think I would ever leave the house. Mp3 and XVid would be gravy.
I would like to personally thank George W. Bush for the economic stimulus which allowed me to purchase this $99 box. Thanks Bushie this almost makes up for the time you cock-blocked me back in 2004 (that’s a story for another post).
Today is June 1st and in St. Louis that means the weather will be hot, sticky, and miserable for 3 solid months. I hate this time of year. I walked to Starbucks at about 1pm and I thought I was going to die. It feels like you’re walking through soup out there. I think I’ll spend the rest of the day in the AC. Somebody wake me when it’s fall.
Some other things that caught my eye this week:
Dumb Joke: Sarah Jessica Parker walks into a bar. The bartender asks, “Why the long face?” Have you heard that one before? Well apparently somebody turned that stupid joke into a stupid website. Just in time for the Sex and the City movie it seems.
Remember that creepy fat guy who gave us the terrible late 90’s boyband music trend? Well as he was creating the careers of The Backstreet Boys, NSync, and LFO Lou Perlman was apparently molesting some of them.
A fire destroyed the Universal Studios backlot in LA. Among the burned memorabilia was the Back to the Future set. That sucks.
This is very nerdy but this reference to a “GUI interface using Visual Basic” in CSI:New York made me laugh.
