Well the truth is I’m in this Starbucks and that’s a place for buying coffee and snacks that are pretentious.

When I got there a weird customer at the counter was getting done telling the working girl that she should be a model and she did bulimia at that part of his creepy story.

Here comes the exciting part so get ready.

After I traded money for water and the water was in a bottle I sat down and did some eavesdropping on these guys and they are guys that are a couple tables down.

These are the parts that I heard and it was like this that I heard them.

hey mark how’s it going I just did a pirouette so we’re all set up

if you go to the reports tab we’re all set up

now go to quarterly tax preparation we’re all set up

go ahead to the biroway that should be set up get a screenshot of yourself so I can verify your information is correct mark

sure sure hourly rate booty what it’s ten an hour can you put that in real quick mark great tabs tabs tabs that’s the future mark i love you

Oh man this should be a whole dot com blog and that’s for sure maybe it can be called The Overheard Wrong On Purpose Businessmen Blog On the Real.

I like things that are popular and also pretty girls are another thing I like.

Do you like that same stuff if so keep reading here comes more blogs. lol

Well, you probably remember how my Uncle Bill Spaeth is always being forgetful with doing things in life because I write about that like every other post.

He did it again with these money guys who want to smelt aluminum and he’s dropping the ball on getting them their permission slips.

These business presidents bought that factory and every day he doesn’t let them smelt old cars it’s messed up for sure.

The June 9 letter was addressed to the City Council, Mayor Bob Burr, City Manager Brian Dissette and Zoning Administrator Bill Spaeth.

Spaeth is on vacation and was not available to comment on whether the smelting operation would be an allowed use under current zoning.

Way to go chief, this is like the time you didn’t mail my application to go on Here Comes the Bachelor in time to get to meet all those babes and go in hot tubs.

Now I’ll be alone forever and those smelting people are with me on how that one happened.

You have to let them smelt the aluminum or it’s messed up just like my life and how I’m not a famous TV stud.

Stop playing golfing.

I was over at Kickstarter Dot Com helping support my friend Mike’s project, and thought, “Man, I should have something on here and people can give me money to do it.”

After like 20 seconds, I came up with a good idea, and it’s called The Christmas Bridge.

Don’t get confused by my filmmaking skills – this isn’t a movie project, it’s an actual physical construct.

It’s a real bridge I want to build – a unique bridge, even.

It is imagined and conceived as follows:

1) It’s a bridge that stretches from Cleveland to Columbus, Ohio – this is scientifically proven to be the most boring 200 miles to drive on Earth, and it needs an injection of bridge.

2) It’s always Christmas Day on the Christmas Bridge, and it’s always snowing on it, even in the Summer. Pipes help this happen.

3) This is the Fantasy Island of bridges – if you go on it and make a wish, it’ll come true in a way that teaches you a lesson about learning.

4) Nic Cage is always on the Christmas Bridge, and he’s sledding back and forth, and nobody can figure out how he makes his sled keep going, and he never needs to sleep.

5) Metal is what it’s made of and there are never any tolls except for stocking stuffers, and the stocking stuffers are iPod Nanos.

6) When people get to the other side of the Bridge, they get their Nanos back, but it’s not their own Nano, it’s somebody else’s, but it only has viral videos on it. This is to make everyone want to come back for more of the Bridge experience.

I only need $91,000,000 to build the Christmas Bridge and keep it running for the first month.

The equations I made say it’ll make enough in that initial 30 days to sustain itself.

It’s really important that the Christmas Bridge stay free, because of the Christmas part of the bridge, which is the whole bridge.

This was submitted to Kickstarter this morning, so we’ll see if they approve it.

(This is the type of post I throw together in 5 minutes that makes me register christmasbridge.com, ends up as a whole book concept, and ultimately results in self-hate.)

(If you don’t follow the NBA pretty closely, you probably need not bother with this post.

To make it relatable to all, I’d have to do a lot of explaining.)

I’ve been reading a lot about how offended everyone is about Cleveland being allowed to re-sign Z in what was clearly an unspoken understanding about the Jamison trade.

“Look, we have a chance to pick up Jamison for nothing if we pretend we don’t want you anymore and you take a 30-day vacation. Good? Good.”

It was likely never said outside the Danny Ferry Excitement Bunker, but everyone “got it”.

The great lengths the team has gone to removing Z’s image from the arena, and how Z’s agent is pretending to romance other teams – it’s all funny, at least to a Cleveland fan like myself.

What’s odd is how aghast people are about this now, when it’s been going on for years.

Now, we all know what the aghastedness is about: anything that helps Cleveland win the title brings LeBron one step closer to staying, which means the national media won’t have anything to write about.

Even my unbiased side doesn’t think he’s leaving anyway, and certainly not for the Knicks – historically, how many league MVPs have left one of the best teams in the NBA for one of the worst, and taken less money to do so?

If people would stop hoping for the sensational story and start looking at the facts, it might help. Don’t forget, he could’ve left three years ago if he’d wanted to.

In any case, the point of this post is that nobody is talking about this: what Cleveland is doing is an amazingly great example of something.

Here you’ve got a small-market team, in a city that’s shrinking and losing jobs, in a lousy economy…gaming the system.

Isn’t that what everyone complains that the Red Sox and Yankees and Knicks do? Just spend money rampantly and buy a winner? (Well, the Knicks don’t actually accomplish that, but you get the point.)

Yes, having LeBron is a variable that won’t fit in anyone else’s potential template, but the little team from Cleveland becoming the economic bully of the NBA is point that should be celebrated in some fashion, not criticized.

Talk all you want about the system being broken – I’d say the people running the teams (GMs/Owners) are simply bad at their jobs in many cases.

This is about more than just a few robbery trades – Gilbert has built a first class organization, and Danny Ferry has done a fantastic job.

Remember when he played hardball with Varajao, refusing to overpay for him? How many other GMs would’ve just ponied up $10M/year for six years without thinking about it?

Call it hometown pride, but that’s the good story nobody’s taking from this. Smart owner willing to spend, smart GM willing to make tough/smart deals, build yourself a winner.

Even outside THE NEW YORK CITY.

OMG ALICIA KEYS SING YOUR FAUX-FANCY SONG.

This has been in the works for a bit and I’m excited to finally be able to talk about it.

Who Shot Mamba? is one of only four web properties that are going to be included in Brand in Entertainment’s brand auction next month at Christie’s in NYC.

Basically, this is an opportunity for the Mamba franchise to get shoved down the throats of major brands for further development, exposure, and continuation.

It’s also an opportunity for me to wear a suit.

In no way was this a simple thing to have happen. All credit and thanks goes to the walking think-tank that is Gennefer Snowfield of Space Truffles Entertainment.

I don’t know why she likes space desserts so much, but I do know we see a lot of things in this web (and brand) based entertainment space exactly the same.

You can read more about the entire event here, but perhaps this is the most vital piece of info for you Brad Radby fans in particular.

For 2010, BiE currently has 33 films and 25 television projects scheduled and is working on such films as “Henry’s Crime” starring [President] Keanu Reeves and James Caan, “Unamerican” starring Jessica Biel and John Leguizamo, and has just finished work on “Meeting Spencer” with Jeffrey Tambor.

In any case, there will be lots more news about this as January 20th gets closer, and there’s something else fairly amazing happening the week I’ll be in NYC, which I can’t talk about just yet.

So if you love WSM?, make your comments happen over on YouTube, and keep the love coming on the WSM? Facebook Page, which raced past 3000 fans the other day.

Seriously, it means a ton to see such great feedback and everyone who worked on this appreciates every bit of it.

Chapter 6 lands January 5th – here’s a quick :54 preview of what’s ahead in Chapter 7. Wait, that makes no sense to do it like that.

So Who Shot Mamba? – our self-dubbed “broadband motion picture” – starts running tomorrow.

The most oft-asked question about it – is it a movie or a web series? The answer is simple – it’s both. It’s a stand-alone feature film crafted specifically to work as a web serial.

As such, instead of a self-congratulatory post about WSM? finally coming out, I’d like to explain my rationale behind why it’s been done like this, as opposed to just making an indie film, or just making a web series.

For the sake of this discussion, let’s eliminate two kinds of indie films:

1) $30M indie films backed by Peter Jackson, i.e. District 9. That’s not to take a away from what District 9 has done, it’s just that it was never not getting theatrical distribution of some kind.

2) The outliers like Paranormal Activity – if you’re planning your marketing and ambitions on a “but Paranormal Activity did it…” I admire your ambition, but I’d also like to stay in a more general area of discussion. (I really mean “realistic”, but I don’t want to be a dream-killer.)

This boils down to is a discussion about technology and the future, with a touch of marketing. To do that, we start with today.

You’ve got your forms of content:

1) Feature Films
2) TV Series
3) Web Series

Then your distribution:

1) Theatrical
2) Network & Cable Television
3) Web Streaming (Including mobile.)
4) Web Downloads
5) Web Rentals
6) DVD
7) DVD rentals

Here’s where I think we could be in +/- five years. Maybe not fully established, but enough that society is accepting the paradigm:

Content:

1) Feature Films
2) Series – Long Form
3) Series – Short Form

There it is – some will be studio backed, some brand backed, and some independent. I don’t think there will be a difference between a “web series” and a “TV show”.

They’re all gonna be coming through the same channels, whether it be YouTube, Hulu, iTunes, or NBC-Comcast.net or whatever. This isn’t crazy – WSM? will be on your Tivo system – this stuff is already happening.

There are movies with well-known talent hitting onDemand before small theatrical runs. Look at Friday Night Lights and DirectTV. Let’s take a break and advertise the movie.

Mesmerizing.

So…future distribution:

1) Theatrical
2) Digital Streaming
3) Digital Download
4) Digital Rental

Don’t be surprised to see cable/satellite overhauled completely – think about your cable bill, and how many of the shows/channels you don’t watch. What if instead, you paid a buck for every show you actually wanted to see?

Do the math – see what your bill comes out to. Just something to think about.

(And yes, I think DVD will be gone that fast, or at least fully recognized as on the way out – the new lines of HDTVs are all web-capable, have Netflix installed, etc. It took VHS about 8 years to full extinction upon the advent of DVD – with the accelerated rate of tech advancement, DVD could die that much faster. This, especially when you factor in affordability – technology usually gets cheaper as it gets better.)

Okay, so let’s come back WSM?. Looking at the second set of distribution options, factoring in the tough state of indie film sales and distribution, what’s one to do with their independent film?

Breaking that down, there’s basically three things you want out of your indie film:

1) Profit for your investors and yourself.
2) Exposure and the new opportunities that it may bring.
3) Artistic fulfillment.

Number three you’re gonna get just from making it, unless you’re the internally-tortured type like myself. Good work.

The first one is an extreme long-shot if you’re aiming for a theatrical release. It just is – read up on the market. It’s beyond a long-shot, especially if you’re a hardcore indie, i.e. no big names or anything.

Number two however…readily available now, and even moreso in my hypothetical future.

What happens and how well it works is up to you and your marketing. (Go talk to @filmutopia on his blog about that.)

The point for me is that looking at the project I wanted to do, even in this pre-future, it made way more sense to tailor it to the web. It’s a cult-type of film that will find its cult way easier this way.

Rather than wait/hope/pray for some kind of gift from the theatrical or cable gods, we’ve got 2,000+ people devoted to watching it when it debuts tomorrow. Not a massive number, but for a web-streaming production with no big names that hasn’t even come out, that’s not too bad.

It beats sitting around waiting to get rejection letters from festivals. Will we make money on downloads/DVD/merchandise or get the exposure to do bigger and better things? Remains to be seen.

In the future, I believe that a vast majority of indie films will go this route, and they won’t need to serialize to do so. (That said, serialization is an interesting narrative choice to make – WSM? was written with – and I believe the quirkiness of the material lends itself to – its mini-cliffhangers.)

Obviously the technology development and adoption needs to be completed first. This is already possible to some extent if you can get your indie on Netflix.

After that, there’s a certain mind-set shift that has to occur among filmmakers – like it’s okay not to be in a theater. It’s no secret it’s quickly becoming the realm of the blockbusters and nothing else. I’m certainly okay with that – if there’s an audience, they pay, and they’re happy, I won’t complain.*

*All that under the disclaimer that those $200M exploding-stuff movies are the exact ones I want to make.

What do you think? Unload your thoughts at me.

WEB SERIES NOTE: I see a lot of talk from established people in the space like Yuri Baranovsky talking about “saving the web series” or “raising the bar” for web series.

What I’m saying is that “save the web series” isn’t a concept that’s gonna happen – the web series as it is today will be a historical footnote of a transitional period, much like the film serial.

You’ll be able to watch Who Shot Mamba? on our YouTube channel and our Facebook Page. Also, DVD, iTunes, Tivo. More on that soon.

If you really want to read about the entire history of this production, there’s a free eBook I wrote right here – foreword by the esteemed director, Dustin Pearlman. Lots of screenshots and stories in there, as well.

Okay so I’m interested in this web series currently shooting called SOLO, because I’ve been told its funny by @robgokeemusic, whose taste I trust, and it’s the child of @JonathanNail, who is writing/producing/acting, a form of self-torture I can sympathize with.

This post has nothing to do with the series itself, except that there was something on their Facebook Page that really stuck out to me.

Like seriously Facebook, you need to be better than that. At least find a way to filter ads that I see or that people allow on their pages.

I’m not against age-separated relationships btw – I’m against that pic of a young blond girl being held by a shirtless older man who looks like he’s going to do date rape at her in his meth lab.

Also, LOL!

What do you think are the names of the two people in that ad, and how did they meet.

(Blog Tour stalled yesterday a bit – I wrote a Laker preview for Heels On Hardwood, but it goes up today. I’m http://www.waitingfornextyear.com/“>also at WFNY talking Cavaliers a bit.)

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about those Redbox DVD-rental vending machines, and what the inside of one looks like, and like how all the movies know how to come out, and like where they go when you put them back in, and pretty much the entire process of getting a DVD from a RedBox.

I mentioned this on Twitter – here was one thread of response.

JoannePistonFan @brianspaeth Is redbox that thing inside the grocery store?

brianspaeth @JoannePistonFan Yeah movies live inside there and you push the button to tell them to come out. Also you do that with money.

So like to solve this, I went ahead and tried to get Wolverine Begins at three different RedBoxes – all three were out of it.

The problem is, it took me a while to determine they didn’t have it. One, I just assumed part of the whole RedBox gag was that they always have everything.

Two, it never actually told me that it didn’t have Wolverine Begins – no “sold out” or anything – it just like takes it out of the menu options.

So like a stupid person, instead of waiting for maybe the next week, I just bought it for $20. This, a movie I really didn’t want to see.

Not only that, but I didn’t even go to Wal-Mart – it was at the grocery store check-out line, and if you’ve read me for any length of time, you know POP (Point Of Purchase) items are my personal money extraction drugs.

Also, this all happened like two months ago, before Wolverine Begins was out on DVD. Do you think RedBox likes it when I refer to their business as a “gag”. wtf

THE PRIZES
First Prize: The $15 Bill, as shown on top, and signed by Tara, a random girl who works at a T-Mobile store. She’s really fun, because she was all like, “Sure!” when I asked her to put a heart next to her name.

Second Prize: The Subpar and Far Inferior Backward $15 Bill, as seen on bottom, and also signed by Tara. She was hesitant to put the heart on this one – a complex woman, to be sure.

THE CONTEST
This is a good old-fashioned coloring contest, which is perfect for helping out all of you who are bored at work.

The picture is seen below – this is the amazing actress, Brandi Engel, as drawn by the amazing artist, Paul Taylor. The explosion has no name. The rules follow the pic.

THE JUDGING
The contest will be a point-based system – the judges are:

1) @Brandi88 (TEMPEST:Brandi Engel)
2) @Need4Sheed_com (TEMPEST: Natalie Sitto).
3) @brianspaeth (TEMPEST: Brian Spaeth; NAY, this is me.)
4) @pablowapsi (TEMPEST: Paul Taylor)

It’s a 1-25 scale from each of the judges – so like “100″ would be a perfect coloring job. Don’t fret – the “most-skilled” coloring job may not necessarily be the “best” one. Hence the four judges, each with a personal TEMPEST.

SUBMISSIONS
First of all, click here to go get the full-rez version. You can either print it out and color with crayons/markers, or do it with a computer based app like Photoshop or MS Paint, or anything you want.

When you’re done, simply “@WhoShotMamba” your submission with the words “I colored @Brandi88″, and a link to your completed work. (If you aren’t on Twitter or just want to be private about your coloring action, you can also email it to me at yaysports@gmail.com, my secret email address I don’t tell anyone about.)

(NOTE: @WhoShotMamba is the account for my film, Who Shot Mamba?, and is run by @alexiskn (TEMPEST: Alexis Norton). Following @alexiskn AND @WhoShotMamba on Twitter is worth 10 bonus points.)

As you submit, there will be all kinds of excitement and such and we can all show off what a good coloring person you are. Make sure to “sign” the piece with your Twitter handle.

The deadline is next Friday, which is July 31. It starts…now.

By the way, I just remembered one time in high school where I pronounced “photography” as “FOE-TOE-GRAFFY” out loud to someone. Have you ever done something similar? Is the moment burned into your brain like that one is into mine? Also, what do you think about this contest?

(This is @kelliesimpson, my first Internet Wife.)

I don’t know if stuff like this goes on in like Second Life or those other online community games, but as all this social networking gets more real world, ie people are online who they are offline, I’m convinced there’s money to be made somewhere in the concept of Internet Married.

Whether it be a venue for heavy flirting as it is now (I’m Internet Engaged to at least 5 girls), or an actual non-legal but formal arrangement wherein you can only be internet married to one person at a time, there’s just something there.

For example, let’s say InternetMarried.com had like a lot of traffic, and the gist of it is that two people (who met on Twitter or wherever) decide they want to get Internet Married. It’s submitted to the community for a judgment, and then like some kind of something is issued.

(Naturally, you have an offshoot site called Internet Divorced.)

So like someone go run with that and get rich off of it. I think the real money would come when a real marriage came out of it, and then you started doing talk shows and writing books, pretending you’re some kind of relationship expert.

Oh – another idea I have is called Nuclear Internet, which is like the regular internet, but nuclear, and everything has like plutonium dripping everywhere. I don’t even think you need to issue judgments or have a central website for this, so like you could get started like immediately.

Thoughts on all of the above?

(Follow me on Twitter here.)
(Download the first 55 pages of my epic, pretentious, and stupid book, Prelude to a Super Airplane, here – it’s available in paperback, or iPhone/Kindle for only 1.99.)

Occasionally I get asked whatup with 2WO G2N G2Y.

Here’s the deal – I won’t do anything with it, because there are people who worked on it who haven’t been paid yet.

Details are unimportant and avoid the bottom line: the proverbial buck stops with me on this project, I take full responsibility for it, and the fact that it’s unresolved sixth months later is an unfair, embarrassing, and ugly situation.

These are the initials of everyone who hasn’t been paid:

DG, JM, NJ, CS, SS, CS, JC, and AT.

I’ll link to this up in the 2GG tab above, and knock people off the list as this is taken care of. If you’re one of these people and you have to vent, go ahead and do it right here – I (and I alone) deserve to be bad-mouthed until it’s a closed case.

I learned a couple producering lessons on 2GG for sure, and unfortunately the good and talented people who helped make it have felt a trickle-down effect.

(For the sake of transparency, I also owe my parents about $6,500,000 in “metal anguish fees” for pretty much my entire high school experience.)

Here’s a mind-bender of a post for you, since a lot of you wish I would write about the NBA, and a lot more of you wish I wouldn’t write about Twitter.

(This is weird to me, since I usually am just pointing out girls I meet there.)

Alas, you know if you watch the basketball on the television, that often they’ll pop up with a little note to go follow the NBA on Twitter. So you do so, and are rewarded with exclusive nuggets of info like this:

Rockets jump out to 29-16 lead over the Lakers after 1 in Houston. Shane “Who’s Your Daddy?” Battier leading the charge w/12pts.

Apologies for drilling down to the obvious, but why, if you’re watching a game on TV, do you need a score update, let alone one that’s (as of this typing) 25 minutes old?

(This is a long one – I’m gonna use the “more” tag so as not to clog up the front page. Click on, friends – it gets pretty tank-toppy.)

In fairness to those tasked to running and figuring out who/what/when/where/why the NBA needs to use Twitter, I realize the filthy lawyers have ruined your initiatives at every turn, including the initiative where you just hand me the keys.

Anyway, here are ten ways the NBA should tweak up and fix their Twitter stream, largely off the top of my head.

BASICS:

1) Put a face on that thing. I don’t want to talk to the NBA logo. I want to talk to Rachael, or Lisa, or especially to Jenny. I want to see her face, and know she’s a real person, and engage her on a personal and genuine basis.

2) Jenny should never, ever post anything I can get from an AP report, a box score, or a news story. Game analysis is pretty useless, unless Jenny tells me exactly which team she roots for, and is refreshingly biased. That’s right – I want the NBA Twitter feed rooting for a particular team. I want it WORD UP for real.

3) Talk with the fans, not at them. Let’s see a lot of “@” replies. Do you realize I’ve bought things from Best Buy just because BB employees on Twitter have made me feel as if they like me?

4) Link to non-NBA owned blogs and websites, and also to things that have nothing to do with the NBA. What’s Jenny really interested in? It’d be nice to know she’s not just trying to sell me a basketball product while she’s there.

5) Help. Jenny should watch trending topics and do searches related to the NBA. Anyone who has a problem/concern/etc – she should address it, even if it’s just to say she’ll pass it on to the right people.

I had this happen over the weekend when I complained about an Excel issue. Like within 2 minutes, @toddaton, an actual Microsoft employee, reached out to help. Now I’m telling everyone how awesome Microsoft is.

If nothing else, Jenny could be soothing the teen angst of Dallas fans with her sultry and seductive demeanor.

ADVANCED:

6) David Stern. Every Friday. 20 Minutes. Taking questions. BY HIMSELF AND WITHOUT LAWYERS. Encourage non-basketball conversation. (Really, this should be its own Twitter stream, but an offshoot still falls under this mission statement.)

7) Have Jenny go to games, sit behind the bench, and tell me things via Twitter I’m not supposed to know about the players. This should be largely irreverent info. Why were the Washington Wizards the most popular .500 team in league history for a few years? Because I got to know their personalities, thanks to Dan Steinberg. They were human.

8) Jenny should wear little tank tops and Twitpic the outfit, so everyone knows what she’s wearing and can look for her on TV. It’s like Where’s Waldo, and like she can hold up little signs during timeouts with special messages people on Twitter ask her to write down. You’d be surprised how special people feel if you do things like this. They’re fans for life, they tell all their friends, and they’re watching games to see if they can get a shout-out.

PROMOS

9) Jenny should give stuff away all the time. Example:

First ten people to link to a video of themselves reciting a poem about how much they love the NBA win a $25 credit at the NBA.com store!

Within minutes you’ve got hundreds of videos (maybe thousands) going up on the internet wherein people are talking about how much they love the NBA.

Does this happen otherwise? And it cost $250 that’s being spent in the NBA store anyway – that’s some cheap advertising.

10) Jenny should host and run promos at games also.

I’ll be with an NBA employee at concourse entrance 4B at halftime giving away hats. Come up, take a pic, and Twitpic it to get yours!

Easy and fun, right? It’s small, it’s personal, it’s cheap, it’s effective. You can scale this program up easily. Give away 200 hats at a stand, and all someone has to say is “Jenny sent me” or something. She doesn’t even need to be there – the point is the fan feels as if someone at the NBA personally gave them something for free.

RESULTS

a) Jenny becomes an instant web celebrity, and the online face of your league – someone the fans feel like they like and know. This is a good thing. Ask Best Buy.

b) All the NBA blogs will follow her every word, and gush over each new picture of her.

c) The 400 new articles written daily about how companies are using Twitter in innovative and unique ways? The NBA is now being featured in those, and Jenny gets a platform outside the NBA fanbase. People who wouldn’t ever talk about the league are. Is generating interest among non-fans valuable at all?

By the way, most of this costs no more than hiring Jenny, who you can probably pay 10 bucks an hour. (Plus my consulting fee and tank top fitting session costs. NATCH WORD UP AGAIN.)

I don’t mean to be condescending, and I know for 100% fact there are people in the NBA offices who “get it”. They’re simply tied to their desks by lawyers and suits. I suppose my point is do it right or don’t do it at all.

IMO you’re actually hurting your image a bit by doing it wrong. I don’t like to read or write about it anymore, but I do still love the league – I don’t like to see it looking silly.

(Follow me on Twitter here.)
(Download the first 55 pages of my epic, pretentious, and stupid book, Prelude to a Super Airplane, here.)

UPDATE SAT 4/18: If you’re looking for Cavs/Lasers predictions and thoughts and such, they’ll be on my Twitter feed. “Cavs in 4, with no less than 7 Sheed technicals” sums it up.

To follow up on the whole Texas thing quick – this map is my solution for fixing the entire financial crisis.

1) Sell Montana to China for cash.

2) Agree to let Texas secede, but Trademark the name “Texas” before they do so, while forcing them to agree to my alternative supplied here, then sell the name Texas back to them for cash.

3) This isn’t totally crucial with all the cash we’ll have after steps one and two, but if we can also find a way to move Alaska and Hawaii to those locations shown on the map, I can’t help but think we’ll be a stronger nation.

The big news yesterday was actually this high-speed choo-choo train system Barack Obama wants to build with his own two hands.

If I were smart, I’d go do a find/replace and write myself Prelude to a Super Choo-Choo Train – the media could be all like, “Ooh, he’s so precious with his mind predicting abilities regarding technology and transportation in the near future…ooooh…ooohh…oooh…oo. Look at his muscular arms.”

Fast trains from the future are the way to go, especially if they make that bubble sound like a shuttle pod. Even if they don’t technically make that sound while running, I’d recommend putting in an external speaker system that broadcasts the sound.

It may sound dumb, but I’d be 75% more likely to ride these things if they did this.

Oprah is all about Twitter today – she’s making her first Tweet, after which she’ll hand the account over to a show intern, who will Tweet each day’s guests in a lawyer approved fashion.

Hopefully the show will cover the phenomenon of current and ex-basketball bloggers from Los Angeles interviewing girls from Orlando about the NBA.

The No-Look Pass did a lengthy piece with @alexiskn yesterday, and hit up @ColleenBurns today, who provides a link to a picture worth looking at for sure.

I have my piece with Colleen sitting here, but will probably save it for Monday, because I only ask her one thing about the NBA. Mainly I cover different scenarios in which we would watch Bad Boys II and hold hands.

(Follow me on Twitter here.)
(Download the first 55 pages of my epic, pretentious, and stupid book, Prelude to a Super Airplane, here.)

(I got this conceptual picture from here.)

I don’t have too much to say about this, I just want to say something, because it opens up so many possibilities when it happens.

Basically – Apple entering the eBook market via a tablet-sized iPod Touch.

(That link actually goes to a story on how it would affect the comic book market, but it’s a general article.)

Anyway, while Amazon’s Kindle has been great and moderately popular with hardcore reader-types, it’s not had a mass affect yet.

The eBook is a tough market, because there’s really no standard format or anything. Right now, my book PTSA sells as a secured PDF doc, and who knows where it can and can’t work right if it’s not on a computer.

I’ve tried to do formatting for the Kindle, but it’s beyond my ability and I’ve got better things to spend my time on.

Apple would force a more general format, or at the very least make it easy to buy/sell/read, and like with music, gobble up and/or create the market share. (I think I mangled that sentence.)

Really, I think it just opens up a floodgate of possibilities, not only for books and comics, but for those dying newspapers, as well. More specifically, for investigative journalism.

I have a few reporter/newspaper friends, and they’re all living with a perpetual “is this the week I get fired” hanging over them. I suggested the following based on the mythical tablet iPod Touch:

Like [redacted] – look at it this way.

Let’s say you did one hardcore, in-depth investigative report every month. Like really tackled something heavy, that only you could/would do, but with a broad appeal/interest. It’s your story – like the kind where you’ve dug up stuff on Senators and loans or whatever.

Would 10,000 people pay a buck or 50 cents a month to subscribe to that? And remember – you’re marketing to the entire WORLD here. 10,000 people is nothing. (Or maybe you do two/month – I don’t know how long these things take.)

There are certainly enough political junkies out there who would have interest in that. You might see 10K people in DC alone.

In any case, that’s 120K a year, before taxes and Apple fees and such. Basically a personal newspaper of sorts – what’s missing right now is the distribution method, and if Apple supplies it, we’ll see something like this.

Plugging in your Touch and having all your content appear every morning in an organized (and mobile) fashion is much more appealing than sending money via Paypal, lugging your laptop around, logging in to a website, etc.

The thing is, people will pay for things like news online, if you make it easy and user-friendly. Apple would be a company that could do that.

Remember that the music industry was a mess before iTunes came in and blazed a more definitive path.

Yes, music is not in the best shape, but it’s a better time than ever to be a musician, because you don’t need to go through the whole “get signed to a label” process to make it.

It’s the big labels who are hurting most, because their old business model no longer works. The artists have more opportunity than ever, and that should be exciting to creative types.

Anyway, I know this was kind of rambling, but the sky doesn’t have to be falling just because the Rocky Mountain News shut down.

(Follow me on Twitter here.)
(Download the first 55 pages of my epic, pretentious, and stupid book, Prelude to a Super Airplane, here.)

In an effort to reach out to more people who think about airplanes, I’ve also been doing some interviews with people who run airplane-enhanced sites.

This means their sites are powered by and for airplanes.

One of these is Brett, aka The Cranky Flier. He has a squadron of 94 vintage WWII airplanes that do nothing but keep his site powered by battery-powered, solar wind energy.

He agreed to answer some questions about the airplane riding industry. Please go check out his site when you have a chance.

1) I noticed on your website that you used to go to the airport in your youth just to watch the airplanes do their taking off and landing. In my book, I do a similar thing, because my character thinks about airplanes all the time. Do you think you could beat me in a “who could think about airplanes more” contest?

That’s a tough one. I think I can definitely contend, but it’ll be tough to prove. Now if you want to have a contest to see who knows the most airport codes, well, then I’ll take you in a second.

When are the major airplane ride companies going to ask for their bailout? This is also addressed in my book, and after I put in that thread, it struck me as quite realistic. Now I’m wondering why it hasn’t happened.

In my opinion, it’s because the airlines are actually in decent shape (for once) compared to other industries. They all prepared for imminent doom when oil was way up at $147 a barrel. Now the fall of oil prices has given them a good buffer to fight the declining economy. So in the scheme of things, most of them probably don’t need it (yet).

Since you’re the Cranky Flier, when you’re on an airplane, are you always grumbling about something and making sour faces?

Yes, most people mistake me for Walter Matthau or Jack Lemmon when I fly. Actually, I’m not that cranky when I travel, because I know how things work. Delays happen and so do cancellations, so I’m just going to roll with the punches.

If there’s anything I can do to help out, I’m always game for that as well. The only time I get cranky is if I know that I’m being lied to or treated unfairly for some reason. Then it’s time to throw down.

This was the trick question, but I don’t remember what the trick was. :(

Clearly Brett has dodged the airplane-thinking challenge, thus I have been declared the winner. You can follow Brett on Twitter here.

(The following is an excerpt from my book, Prelude to a Super Airplane. It can be purchased by clicking on any of the roughly 400 banners adorning this site, or by clicking here. It’s also available on Amazon.

I’ve posted the first 20 chapters (roughly 55 pages of PTSA) on this site. Links to each of those are at the end of this post, or you can download all of them as a pdf by clicking here.

I’m not going to turn this book into an analysis of the various airplane ride companies, but I do want to take the time to send some business to my favorite one.

Surely you’ve heard of Southwestern Airplane Rides, but have you ever taken an airplane ride on Southwestern Airplane Rides? It’s not the most expensive or fancy airplane ride company – in fact, I think it’s the cheapest.

But they do one thing that I simply love, and that’s self-seating.

Being tall and deceptively muscular, it’s difficult to find an airplane seat that’s totally comfortable. The goal, therefore, is to get into either the front row or the middle row, where there’s more legroom for someone like myself.

With Southwestern Airplane Rides’ self-seating, they make my task that much easier. I just have make sure I use their online internet website to check-in from home, absolutely as early as it’s permitted.

This gives you an “A” designation, which means you get on the airplane first. Following the logic – if I get on first, there are more seats open, often including those I desire.

Simple, yes?

Perhaps I’m easily pleased, but being able to do this outweighs the mountain of corners Southwestern Airplane Rides cuts in all areas of the airplane ride experience. These are too numerous to list here, and you could probably write an entire book just about these cut corners.

Oh, the other thing I love is their slogan, because it doesn’t try to fool or dazzle you – it is what it is:

What more or less could be said than that?

Southwestern Airplane Rides also has celebrity endorsements, with straight-to-the-point commercials featuring those celebrities. They go all out on these, and get famous movie directors to bring their unique concepts and sensibilities to them, and I admire that.

So, they get you where you’re going in one piece, let you pick your own seats, and support the arts. That’s all I could ever want from an airplane ride company.

Brad Radby’s Foreward, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15, Chapter 16, Chapter 17, Chapter 18, Chapter 19, Chapter 20, Chapter 31

Okay, here’s the most important thing – this book is good, and you can go buy it at this link.

Feel free to be patient, though – I’d much rather seduce you into buying it than have you blindly spend your money on a short description.

Things that will be happening as I attempt to get every single one of you to buy this:

1) Starting tomorrow, chapter excerpts.

2) After the excerpts are done, I’ll be posting bonus material. These will be pieces about characters that are inside the Super Airplane Saga, but don’t drive the primary story of this particular book.

This will give you a continued idea of the tone/quality, and also be a fun thing for those of you who have (or eventually) read it. It’s not throw-away stuff, either – it’s just that the forty characters that are in PTSA are the only ones that were absolutely necessary to tell this story.

3) Fifteen (15) people have read this already, including a few readers of this here blog. Reviews are forthcoming.

4) The banner ads stay until I have verification that all of you have bought it. The nice thing is they’ll be rotating with short teases on each character, drawing you in until you have no choice but to push the “purchase” button. An example:

5) I know nothing about the publishing business, so I’m doing short interviews with authors and other people, including, but not limited to, a construction foreman. He knows nothing about publishing, either!

6) Vegetable Trivia Game is going live, and its a chance to win free copies of PTSA. But you can only play on Twitter – I’m not bringing it here yet. Rules are in a forthcoming post.

So yeah – go buy my book!

(It’s also available via Amazon, but if you go through my site I make a lil’ more…he said humbly. Should be out on Barnes and Noble, Borders, et al next month. Furthermore.

And seriously – if anyone is savvy in eBook stuff, please let me know. I’d be happy to cut you off something to help get that done.)

LeBron better get his stuff together before I accuse him of spending all his time at the movies again.

Yes, he had a triple-double lasterday, but only because he went out of his way to try at his doing rebounding at the end, in order to get said triple-double.

The rest of the game he was acting like Tracy McGrady.

Z being out for a month (my estimate) stinks, so maybe it’s time to do the Wally-for-Brad Miller trade. All goes well, and Wally can be back with CLE by this time next month. He looks like he could use the rest anyway.

I see a lot of music videos at the gym that I’ve never seen before – probably because the gym is the only place I watch music videos.

Anyway, below is where some German chicks called Ultra Flirt try to trick a man into giving them a Ferrari.

I like this because it completely fools you into thinking the girls are hot, plus the whole thing seems like it’s from 1985, but Germanies are really doing this today.

Oh, and it’s a remix of “Heaven is a Place on Earth”, but I don’t think there’s any irony involved in this concept.

I like the part where the robot voice goes, “Let’s go!” and it says “Let’s Go!” on the screen at the same time.

Speaking of the 1985, here’s another video from last year where Doc Brown helps rappers dance with girls.

Catchy in its own way, plus at some point, Doc apparently dropped the wife, kids, and choo-choo train. It’s like a continuity mystery.

Okay, so Monday two things will happen.

1) The full lowdown on my book. Excerpts start getting posted Tuesday. If you’re clever enough, you can buy it now.

2) You can start playing Vegetable Trivia Game for real, and it’s the only way to win a free copy of my book, and it can only be done on Twitter. If you’re not following me now, maybe you should go start.

I’ve almost got it figured out, and I knew that was true when I started using it to hit on girls.

You’ve read it by now – LeBron says he’ll bring apocalypse upon The New York City Knicks, as well as the media, by possibly signing an extension with the Cavs this summer.

Let’s break down the reasons he may have chosen to say this now.

1) He’s really, really loves toying with the media.
2) Someone asked him a leading question and this is taken out of context.
3) Giving the media LeBron James talking points in the build-up to the Christmas Day games.
4) Doing PD reporter Brian Windhorst a favor, further cementing him as the go-to LeBron scooper.
5) Legitimately wants to do this. Why? Further breaking down the outline:

a) Has realized that basketballwise, there’s no better franchise for him, unless a bunch of guys take less money to meet up in one place, which will never happen.
b) Concerned Summer 2010 will be too big a distraction next season, destroying the type of run and chemistry the Cavs are enjoying now.
c) Money. Remember, another reason he wanted to be a free agent in 2010 is because the collective bargaining agreement is opening back up. With the way the economy is projected to be for the next few years, it’s possible he could lose money under the new CBA. All signs say the owners are going to ask for major rollbacks.
d) Knowing LeBron is locked in will make it easier for Danny Ferry to go sign a few solid “vets looking for rings” in Summer 2009.

I really don’t know, but I suppose anything is possible. If he does this, I’ve completely misjudged his character, and/or let the media influence me too much. I’ll apologize if so.

Hopefully if it happens, Austin Carr will be present to say, “The L-TRAIN, signing the paper with a pen!”

On another subject altogether, I’ve had a Twitter account for a long time, but never used it. Am considering – thoughts?

Hopefully that counts as the “road win against good team” everyone has been asking the Cavs to demonstrate the ability to achive.

I don’t think we saw the best the Nuggets had to offer lasterday, but that doesn’t change the fact that CLE blew them out.

Love what Brian Windhorst had to say here about the timeout in the third – I think that sums up that Coach Mike can coach. I give in.

Little known secret though – the Cavs actually hired the “offensive coordinator’ type assistant I’ve been asking for since “Coach Mike Year One”.

It’s very realistic, looking at the schedule, for CLE to head into that January 9th BOS game with another 11-game winning streak.

By the way – the Celtics actually have to play on the road at some point this year, right?

I’m not trying to take too much away from what they’ve accomplished, but both BOS and the Lakers have played an extremely unbalanced number of home games.

Anyone else think the league wanted to see both get off to amazing starts to pump up the attraction of the Christmas Day game?

President Bush went ahead and gave a bunch of band-aid money to Chrysler and GM. My guess is he just didn’t want to add “let auto industry collapse” to his legacy.

“Collectively, the automakers have asked Congress for $34 billion, but they are getting $17.4 billion and that will only get them to March 31,” [some smart person] said. “This is basically a football that the Bush administration is punting to the Obama administration; it lets the automakers avoid bankruptcy, but it doesn’t provide them with enough money to get through 2009, so they’re likely to need more money from the next administration.”

Can one plan out and implement an entire overhaul of the auto industry by late March?

Of course not – especially when by the first week in February all the work will be going into lobbying for more money.

And these might technically be loans, but they aren’t loans – not when everyone is in general agreement that there’s no way in hell the companies will be able to afford to pay them back.

Analysts say this opens the doors for basically any industry feeling a crunch, or pressure, or boredom to start asking the government for money.

You know I’m a fan of Atlas Shrugged, and I’m telling you right now, we’re starting to live it in this country. It’s happening. That’s bad.

Nobody is even sure if any of this stimulus (read: charity) will do anything, because of the ill-at-ease feelings here and there among the populace, etc.

“It is going to be tough to get out of this. People are scared,” said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor’s in New York. “How do you restore confidence when the markets have lost it?”

I’d say that more than any of these actual financial moves, the #1 thing that will help the economy is for the media to stop scaring the hell out of everyone.

Anyway – your interview questions are on the way, just be patient. Also, if you have a website or blog or something you want linked to in your interview, please let me know, and I’m happy to do it.