November 11, 2006

Third Prize is You're Fired





Blake: Let me have your attention for a moment! So you're talking about what? You're talking about...(puts out his cigarette)...bitching about that sale you shot, some son of a bitch that doesn't want to buy, somebody that doesn't want what you're selling, some broad you're trying to screw and so forth. Let's talk about something important. Are they all here?
Williamson: All but one.
Blake: Well, I'm going anyway. Let's talk about something important! (to Levene) Put that coffee down!! Coffee's for closers only. (Levene scoffs) Do you think I'm fucking with you? I am not fucking with you. I'm here from downtown. I'm here from Mitch and Murray. And I'm here on a mission of mercy. Your name's Levene?
Levene: Yeah.
Blake: You call yourself a salesman, you son of a bitch?
Moss: I don't have to listen to this shit.
Blake: You certainly don't pal. 'Cause the good news is -- you're fired. The bad news is you've got, all you got, just one week to regain your jobs, starting tonight. Starting with tonight's sit. Oh, have I got your attention now? Good. 'Cause we're adding a little something to this months sales contest. As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anyone want to see second prize? Second prize's a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired. You get the picture? You're laughing now? You got leads. Mitch and Murray paid good money. Get their names to sell them! You can't close the leads you're given, you can't close shit, you ARE shit, hit the bricks pal and beat it 'cause you are going out!!!
Levene: The leads are weak.
Blake: 'The leads are weak.' Fucking leads are weak? You're weak. I've been in this business fifteen years.
Moss: What's your name?
Blake: FUCK YOU, that's my name!! You know why, Mister? 'Cause you drove a Hyundai to get here tonight, I drove a eighty thousand dollar BMW. That's my name!! (to Levene) And your name is "you're wanting." And you can't play in a man's game. You can't close them. (at a near whisper) And you go home and tell your wife your troubles. (to everyone again) Because only one thing counts in this life: Get them to sign on the line which is dotted! You hear me, you fucking faggots?
(Blake flips over a blackboard which has two sets of letters on it: ABC, and AIDA.)
Blake: A-B-C. A-always, B-be, C-closing. Always be closing! Always be closing!! A-I-D-A. Attention, interest, decision, action. Attention -- do I have your attention? Interest -- are you interested? I know you are because it's fuck or walk. You close or you hit the bricks! Decision -- have you made your decision for Christ?!! And action. A-I-D-A; get out there!! You got the prospects comin' in; you think they came in to get out of the rain? Guy doesn't walk on the lot unless he wants to buy. Sitting out there waiting to give you their money! Are you gonna take it? Are you man enough to take it?


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November 09, 2006

respect.

ed bradley dies.

"I was told, 'You can be anything you want, kid,'" he once told an interviewer. "When you hear that often enough, you believe it."


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Sympathy

Goes out to Ken Camp, one of the nicest guys online, whose sister-in-law passed away. Thinking of you and your family, Ken.


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JBroLo on the Gay Bloggies - You forgot some folks.

Discussing the irony--hypocrisy?-- of a segregated -- where we should expect diversity -- blogging awards program. White, naked, young, male = gay?  JBroLo says oh, no no.


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REPRESENTIN'!

Happy 5th Birthday to Kevin Marks' Blog! Kevin explains why a bunch of us started blogging at the same time. The class of '01 rocksthesphere, babyyyy.


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Denise is right

Tucows rocks. Great people there I've had the pleasure of working with during my association with the best of Canada. Apparently Tucows is among some cool companies looking for corpo-lawyers. Wanna live in the snow? I miss it.


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If you want to know about getting on techcrunch...

mike and guy discuss. Good social communications advice in general.

What I found interesting about watching this is that no matter whether or not I poke Mike with a stick sometimes, he is a guy who likes to write. I mean he really likes to write. I don't know if even I can say that.

As per the details...

TC get 40 pitches per day.

They write about 10 per day. Some of those are re-reviews of companies they've written about before.

They read first couple sentences of your email. don't say revolutionary or huge.

Poor pitches about good companies kill a review

Talk about what's different from the 'known' entities.

Don't use sucky words: revolutionary, change the way we use the Internet, disruptive, interesting, user generated content, longtail product --> don't waste words either.

Get to the point. Let them flower it up.

Mike LIKES to write. For five hours straight. Where is the book, man? If you don't have kids you can write for 5 hours straight. You can't think for five seconds straight with kids.

Mike says don't spend your money at the expensive conferences. Get people writing about it and you get in front of hundreds of thousands of people, not hundreds.

Mike's second favorite marketing writer is Seth Godin. (aaaaah, NO mike!)

I had to stop--my kid just came in with a beach ball.


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Ladies, the Copy Machine Is Down the Hall...

oh fucking please.


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November 08, 2006

Speaking of Halley...

Remember the days when Stealth Discoing was in?




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It's a bird, a plane, no it's halley's comment

Halley's been posting again--good stuff. I like her republican man-date post. Man date. heh.

Ads by AdGenta.com


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A Rocker in the House

Sheila Lennon reports that John Hall, formerly of the band Orleans (and I mean way formerly) is now in the House. I'm not cheating by googling this, but didn't Orleans do the song that went: "Dance with me, I want to be your partner can't you see..."? I have a pretty good musical memory, but I'm not sure. Sheila says Hall upset his opponent. Apparently he also sang his acceptance speech. That makes me want to move back to NY.


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i'll be broke by sunup

Five years ago I said that google should make like the phone book and charge people NOT to be listed. (okay December 11, 2001 I said that to be exact).

"I wonder how long it will be before search engines start to offer a paid service for NOT listing specific search results... Say you posted something rather explicit on an offbeat site, or posted an online rant about your boss or mother-in-law, later to learn that Google has outed you... Would you pay to be "unlisted," like some folks do with that old hard-copy behemoth known as the white pages? It's a thought. Maybe an odd one. We'll see."

I remember thinking this because some of us do bad things or are bad people, or maybe good people who write dumb things or put stupid pictures online we wish we hadn't.

Now, I'm not talkin' 'bout me, mind you.

That other guy. You know the one. Lookie that way. Nothing to see here.

Of course, now I would say that wiping someone's slate clean is certainly not the job of a search-co because it compromises trust in service. Instead, that should be the job of a web2.0 startup looking for oodles of cash and an acquisition down the road.  I'm just sayin... smartie pants alright.


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The dumbest american

so... can i register to vote online? i was thinking to do that tomorrow.


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When You're in Om...

He doesn't know it, but I think of Om Malik about six times a day. That is the number of times I find myself typing so fast that I miss the "c" key while typing a URL, the resulting domain becoming a dot-om (and 404ing).

listics.om, rageboy.om, nabaztag.om, blogger.om--you name it. I type them all. Then I get pissed. Then I think of Om. InterNIC should consider a .om extension for people like me. All the sites I usually go to while thinking of Om by accident.


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November 07, 2006

Another cat blog?




heere kitty kitty--don't forget your earmuffs. ;-)

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i didn't vote because politicians don't like puppies.




hat tip: rox.

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the speed of meme

My friend Alec Saunders has an interesting post about meme creation, which I'd really classify more as good-ways-of-structuring-our-world-and-how-they-catch-on, but maybe meme creation is a little easier to say. You think? Alec uses the Voice 2.0 moniker as an example and concludes that it doesn't take a whopping PR budget to create your own category in the wondermous wide world of the web.

"In 12 months time, we’ve managed to insert an idea, which now has apparently a ton of currency, into a very old industry.  We haven’t relied on large marketing budgets, or heavy lifting PR campaigns.  Instead, using just blogs and conversation..."

Amen.

(although if you have a large marketing or PR budget, call me at 678-294-0900.)


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Did I mention allied turned 5 on the 4th?

that's like 67 in blog years. happy birthday to the class of 01!


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What Not to Do With Pictures: Part 1

Have a particularly stressful decade, take lots of 35mm pictures, and never develop them.

Save 12 canisters of film from that decade in various drawers and cubbies around the house..

Let your daughter talk you into rounding them up one day and taking them to Eckerds for 1-hour processing.

Return 3 hours later with daughter to a stack of 11 (one roll bit the dust) packets of photos to look through.

Stand at the counter and look at every one of them, every face frozen in time, every lost relationship manifest, every wound, every symbol in every corner of your world.

Find one packet of baby pictures from a day in November when your nine-year-old daughter was just six weeks old.

Feel your usually painful uterus ache more.

Show the photomat lady: This is her then; This is her now--tada!

Spend $77.


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November 05, 2006

speaking of asses...

I'm going to try to get mine to the volleyball court on Tuesday evenings to see if i can move it around the court while my forearms knock the ball over the net. It's my friend's church's "old people's" league (over 35), which is good except that I am really quite competitive, whether I'm worth a damn or not, so I'll try to leave my best john mcenroe (sans the racket) impressions at home. (operative word: try).


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my nabaztag's ass is blinking...

...hey, is that you sending me a message? you light up my ass!


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did you hear the one about the gay preacher and the male prostitute?

yeah, i thought so.


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i know i know i know!

I already blew NaBloPoMo. Day friggin ONE I was out. How lame. Big "L" on the forehead for that one.

I owe like 23 people something. this for you that for you this and that for you and you. I am sorry. My lameness precedes the items I owe each of you. I couldn't even make it two days in a damn blogging contest, so how quick do you think you'll be getting your deliverables? Goddam it's a good thing my clients like me.

Listen, I owe my kid some quality time, without screaming, without halloween-sugar-high mania. I owe my family a little attention. I owe myself a weekend without sweating work. I'm taking it.


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