September 2006
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Day September 29, 2006

Entries 3 Total

Unrequired Reading

Sep 29, ’06 5:40 PM

No one will pay to see Scarlett Johanson. You know your career’s in trouble when you’re being compared to Ben Affleck:

Years back, it was Eddie Murphy, who went from mega-star to loser when he churned out such bombs as Pluto Nash and I Spy before recovering his stroke. Kevin Costner still seems to be in the penalty box, although his upcoming action film, The Guardian, may change that. And there’s the sad story of Ben Affleck: good-looking, kind-hearted, talented, and death to just about any film he’s in. (Remember 2004′s back-to-back stinkers, Saving Christmas and Jersey Girl?)

Well, welcome to box-office hell, Scarlett. An intelligent woman with some two dozen films to her credit, Johansson, 21, has everything that Hollywood wants in its starlets. She’s charming and she genuinely can act. Better yet, she’s drop-dead gorgeous. But of late, she seems to inject poison into just about every film that has her name in the credits.

I’m very disappointed that he didn’t make a comment about Kevin Costner finding his stroke.

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Pimp my kippah. (thanks, Sirk!)

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ESPN had the very stupid idea that people would buy cell phones for a network operated by ESPN, rather than Cingular or Verizon or somebody. It failed.

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Idiocracy will be the next cult classic.

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In grad school, I subscribed to the economy theory of liver destruction: If you’re going to get drunk, drink malt liquor. You can’t get more messed up for $1.99.

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Dubai’s making great strides in its efforts at becoming a free-trade zone. Of course, I’ll never be allowed to set foot there, since I’m a Jew.

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When I visit someone’s home, the first thing I look for is the host’s bookshelf. So does Jay Parini:

What interests me about other people’s books is the nature of their collection. A personal library is an X-ray of the owner’s soul. It offers keys to a particular temperament, an intellectual disposition, a way of being in the world. Even how the books are arranged on the shelves deserves notice, even reflection. There is probably no such thing as complete chaos in such arrangements.

Thanks to Delicious Library, you can check out mine.

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And I’ve decided to take Little, Big with me to Paris. I’ll letcha know how it goes.

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The Grateful Persian

Sep 29, ’06 6:34 AM

My other point of pride is how quickly and how well some of my dear readers (and great friends) offered up resources to help out The Brooding Persian. I forwarded everyone’s messages to him, and he was enormously grateful. He’s going to try to follow through with our advice and see where it gets him.

Thanks to everybody who pitched in on this. I’m proud to have such good and caring friends.

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Made it!

Sep 29, ’06 5:55 AM

Maybe (?) it’s dweebish to take pride in being able to help put on a good pharmaceutical outsourcing conference, but it’s an awfully good feeling when an event works out as well this one has.

The first day of the event is the more stressful one: We had 130 companies at the one-day tabletop exhibition and more than 300 attendees in the house for the conference sessions (between sessions, we had events in the exhibit hall, so the attendees could learn about the exhibitors and do business). It’s basically a four-person operation, with some day-of-show help from some of our office staff.

The buildup is pretty harrowing for us, knowing that more than 500 people are on site because of the strength of the brand 0f our magazine. But the big day was a rousing success. The exhibitors were ecstatic with the quality of the leads they were getting from the attendees, while the attendees loved the presentations we put together (I take a little more pride in that part, since this was the first year I was largely responsible for organizing the presenters and topics).

Anyway, I know this is coming off as a rah-rah horn-self-tooting, but I feel awfully good about how well it all turned out. Exhibitors were seeking us out at the cocktail reception after the show, to tell us they wanted to sign up for next year’s event now. It takes months of preparation that still leaves plenty of last-minute stress, and it’s a great feeling when everyone else is happy with the results.

Now, on to Paris, for a conference about 9 bazillion times bigger than this one.

(I’ll try to post some Unrequired Reading this afternoon, when I’m home.)

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