Ted Leonsis vs. SportsTalk 980

I haven’t lived in Washington, D.C. since early 1995, but I follow my old friend Ted Leonsis’ musings on a regular basis. Ted was put off by when hosts of a talk show on SportsTalk 980 as he was headed, along with about 50,000 other people to see the David Beckham vs. DC United soccer match.

Beckham is a star in the international sense, had a movie named after him and married one of the spice girls and that’s the kind of star power we (the aggregate USA star-effer mentality) love.

The hosts on the talk show mocked the people who were going to the game. I understand the mentality: the jacked up attendance for that specific game (probably including Ted) is all because it was an “event” and had nothing to do with a love of soccer. We like the big events. It’s how the system works.

Unless the league can find 3-4 more players of Beckham’s star quality, and they won’t be able to without actually somehow creating the stars, it won’t matter. More to Ted’s real concern is hockey: he owns the NHL Washington Capitals, and has a loyal, but not huge fan base (especially compared to the NFL franchise, the Washington Redskins, but even the MLB and NBA franchises, and even some of the college teams have more of a following locally than the Capitals).

The problem for the NHL, in terms of sheer #’s is its lack of stars. Period. The end. Ted suggests that 980 was foolish for not embracing diversity of all sports leagues, and that it will perish into irrelevancy if it does not.

BIG DISCLAIMER: I love Ted. I’m serious. I have some genuine affection for the guy. He’s smart, charming, and funny and most definitely a “man of the people”, which I think is really cool. He says what he thinks and he’s authentic. I trust him. Plus, he’s been very helpful to me personally. He’s a great guy. But all that doesn’t add up to “he’s always right” and he’s wrong here.

First of all, 980 did cover the event, which I referred to as David Beckham vs. DC United because I can’t name a single other person on the LA Galaxy. I can’t name a single person on DC United either, unless Freddy Adu is still there and I believe the last I heard he was fleeing to play in a country that actually cares about soccer.

I think 980 covered this the way a Sports Talk station should've. They mocked the event nature of it. Sometimes, a part of human nature is that you get a lot more attention by insulting people than you otherwise would. This is a case in point. If they had simply celebrated the event as if it were the second coming of the Beatles, Ted would not have written about it for over the last week. The suggestion that sports talk needs to be diverse, especially in DC is likely folly. I believe 980 would have MORE listeners than it currently has if it said, “From now on, we talk about NOTHING but the Redskins! 365 days a year! All Redskins all the time!” The NFL is a big, big deal. Period. How big of a deal? The NFL DRAFT (yes, the boring ass draft!) was the second highest rated program on non-broadcast television the week it aired in April – edged out by the Sopranos. The NFL draft had MORE THAN THREE TIMES as many television viewers -- just over 5 million as the NHL Finals which had 1.4 million viewers.

The NHL has the same problem as soccer has. Not enough stars. Not nearly enough. Soccer has one. None of the NHL stars have the Q-Rating that Beckham has and only Alex Ovechken and Sidney “Sid the kid” Crosby have any Q-rating with the American public at all and again, not nearly as many people know who those guys are as Beckham and neither of them are in the public’s mind as much as Wayne Gretzky, Bobby Orr or Bobby Hull. The NHL is lacking good “Bobbys” these days! If the Capitals field a good team and are winning games, making the playoffs, etc., 980 will certainly cover the team locally. But the NHL has the bigger problem of lack of star quality. Even the most casual of sports fans can rattle off five NFL, NBA or MLB stars fairly easily. NHL? Soccer? NO FREAKING WAY.

Mark Cuban suggested to me via e-mail a couple of months back, and I believe not jokingly (though he might have been, I don’t think so) that the NHL needed to get Alex O. and Sid the Kid together with Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan. I think Cubes is correct. In the life imitates art department, fictional Entourage meets real life Entourage this week with Entourage star Adrian Grenier who plays Vinny Chase hooking his real-life star to the Paris Hilton gravy train. Paris is looking good by the way, perhaps incarceration is good for the skin.

I believe Ted would be better served by leading the NHL’s charge to somehow market its players to the broader public than solving the problems of a small sports talk radio station in DC. If successful, he will have killed two birds with one stone.

We Lie to Ourselves..but Why?

What we say: Pew: Consumers Tired of Celeb Scandals

What we actually do: Lindsay, Britney Boost Entertainment-News-Magazine Ratings

Please excuse me for being the kind of person who is more prone to believe in what we as a people actually do rather than what we say. What I am trying to decide between is whether:

1. by lying to ourselves as we do we are really, really holding ourselves back from progressing or

2. if lying to ourselves in this way actually saves us from extinction. I worry that the truth may make people more prone to killing themselves and others...

Is it OK to Capitalize on God? Yes: But You’d Better be GOOD at It!

I ran a little ad campaign tied to keyword “God” linked back to just this lousy landing page from a few days ago.

Google’s system is fair, and early in the game, “God” could be had fairly cheaply. $.25 a click for God. That’s not freaking bad man –for GOD!

But this God is fair and just and so is Google. People think some of the ways Google adwords work is nefarious. Those people are DOPES, do not listen to them. Google just works very well and is set up to constantly be optimizing on its own. .Here’s how it works: it can calculate the performance of your ad. If my ad tied to God resulted in clicks where every click left the page pretty much immediately (which was the case in over 80% of the instances), Google views that as a “low quality” ad. Here’s what happens as a result: the cost of the keyword gets jacked up. What happens then? Well then what happened is the campaign stopped.

It’s a good system. People don’t want to be paying for lousy ads (even @ .25/click) and moreover, Google wants ITS users to get good results. If its users continually click on your ad and then bail immediately, your ad (in this case my ad) isn’t giving Google users what they want. Google wants to continually optimize to produce better results (period), this sort of optimization is good for everyone.

For purposes of experiment, I don’t mind blowing $20 to see how it works. But how it works is because the site they landed on was not what the people who clicked wanted –and I could’ve experimented around with landing pages to see if one without a picture of Paris Hilton would’ve done better – is Google deems the ad “low quality”. Google will let you run low quality ads, even for God, but, there’s a price premium. In my case a 25X price premium! That’s right, because my ad was lousy they jacked up the CPC on God to $5. That is a CPC that is outside the bounds of what I am doing here (which is trying to learn and satisfy my own curiosity). I’m $.25/click curious, but not $5/click curious

I could have started over and had God at $.25 again, and when I create some content that would likely please God (and Google) for $.25 I may try again. For now,I think this system works really, really well. For you, for me, for Google – and maybe even for God.

The Evil Sony Imperialists

I wanted to be wrong about Sony. I knew I wasn't so I went ahead and wrote this piece anyway, before I had all of the data. But I really did have all the data -- I just didn't have any way to know 100% for sure. But now I do.

I heard from Yohan Le Nerriec, the chief architect at Orb and he confirmed my suspicions that I couldn't stream ORB to my normal PSP browser because Sony used closed protocols in their regular browser that ORB and others can't tap into.

The Sony solution for streaming ORB -- something that should work RIGHT AWAY on the PSP anyway is a $600 ad-on known as the PS3. That's right, if you want to stream video from ORB to your PSP, it can be done -- but it requires a $600 ad-on in the middle. You have to use the remote play feature of the PS3 to stream Orb -- and the remote play feature is not currently stable.

It so happens I had the PS3 anyway and it really is a cool gaming console. But I shouldn't need a $600 ad-on to make ORB work.

But Sony is evil like that. If it was simply a stupid business decision made out of stupidity, it wouldn't bother me. But this is how Sony operates. Always deliberately trying to make you pay even MORE for what you already paid for (I already paid $199 for the PSP) and there's no technological reason why the regular browser couldn't stream video except for this. Sony doesn't want you to have THAT much capability in a $200 product. They want you to pay MORE for that feature. $600 more in this case.

Yikes!

On a separate note, I wonder if they let Paris bring her PSP to jail....robert seidman

Capitalizing on God: I’m Falling for Paris

Either we’re having our “wow, our little girl is growing up!” moment or, Paris has really good media spinmeisters advising her. It’s all quite a turnaround from the “it’s so unfair!” of last week. She’s taking her lumps. Doesn’t want to appeal. She did the crime, she wants to do her time. It’s the right thing to say.

But she also said, “God has given me another chance!” Not only that, she said something about how she is going to stop acting dumb and put her influence to good use. I wanted to just hug her really.

I’m mixed on the playing of the God card. I still haven’t reached a conclusion on whether Capitalism is Self-Destructive, but as fodder into the mix, I propose that in a system that capitalizes on EVERYTHING, the number one thing it capitalizes on is God.

I’m not sure how I feel about this. Actually I am sure how I feel about it, but I love Paris anyway. She could’ve been resistant to doing the right thing, she could’ve used her position to just continuously do whatever the hell she wants anyway – and time will tell whether she is REALLY repenting here. But she’s saying she ought to repent and I’ll give her points for that because…it’s the truth.

As for God, that’s an essay for another day. But it’s true, as long as you’re alive, you always have another chance. My favorite fortune cookie of all time had the following fortune: it’s never too late to be what you might have been.

It really isn’t. Not for me, you, or Ms. Hilton.

The Glory of Google

Just to get still a little more "free" tracking, I added google's AdSense. It's not going to pay my rent or even lunch at McDonald's anytime soon. But the relevancy is amazing when next to a piece on Barry Bonds and Paris Hilton, the ad rotation seems pretty much to be a link to a "legal" steroids site, a link to all the news on Paris Hilton (from ABC) and a link to all things Barry Bonds on Fox Sports. You can't argue with that kind of targeting.

I wrote a long piece on how everyone capitalizes on Barry and Paris. Perhaps no entity capitalizes on it more than Google.

The Seidman Math: Paris Hilton = Barry Bonds = We’re All a Bunch of Freaking Hypocrites

Except for my brother and his ilk. They don’t care about Paris, Barry, steroids or probably even baseball. So people like that: you are squeaky clean with me. Everyone else…

Everybody is using Paris, even me. Everyone is trying to get in front of the media. The judges, the lawyers, the Sherriff, the DA. Apparently she broke out in hives. As someone who had a chronic problem with hives for about 3 years, I think jail would do that to me too. So they sent her home. Home confinement. Of course she’ll start whining that it’s so unfair because the ankle bracelet they made her wear for her home confinement is giving her another rash. But now, they want to have a hearing to see if the judge who sent her home wasn’t smoking crack. Should Paris go back to jail? That’s really not the point to me, and I don’t care. The point is all of this is going on because all of these sorry ass fools, including Paris, want to be on TV.

Me? I don’t want to be on TV. I’ve had horrible skin for the last year and a half. My experiment was to see what generates more traffic through the blog search world over time, Paris, the NHL, or the iPhone. In that trio, unbelievably, the NHL was winning. In second place after the NHL was – and this just makes me sad “Pacific Catch”. There was a Pacific Catch ad in the iPhone commercial, and I wrote about it and got more hits on Pacific Catch than the iPhone for a couple of days.

Then I wrote Still Stinging Over Betamax (Why Sony Still Can’t Help But Suck Sometimes) and for reasons I still am not sure of that blew everything else away by 5x within a few hours of posting it.

Back to Paris. Everyone (other than the people like my brother) is playing a role and using Paris to their advantage, including Paris.

Then there’s Barry Bonds. I’m not going to opine here on his personality and likability. I’m here to talk about the steroids. I wish they would just legalize performance enhancers and be done with it. Ultimately it will come to that I think. We like seeing the ball hit far. Everyone loved Mark and Sammy chasing 61. There’s a lot of revisionist history going on now. Sometimes the media and baseball executives act like nobody was talking about steroids in ’98 when McGwire and Sosa were chasing the record. Once they were at 55, are you kidding me!? They talked about steroids EVERY DAY – at least a little. You can go to the ESPN and Sportsline archives and see the stories about performance enhancers during that time.

Barry Bonds may be the poster child for performance enhancers. If the books are true if it could be shot into you and metabolized and wouldn’t kill you, seems like he took it. But honestly, seeing him hit around 23 of the 40+ splash hits (home runs hit out of the stadium that land in the San Francisco Bay) in person was fun as hell. Those splash hits are the best. All those fools in kayaks clamoring to get the ball (more people capitalizing on Barry Bonds) and if Barry Bonds wasn’t in some 0 for 300 slump, I’d be hearing nothing but Barry Bonds on all my favorite ESPN shows. I’m thankful for the break. It’s going to hit me though right around my birthday in the middle of July. When he’s at 753 Time Magazine and Newsweek will probably have him on the cover to get in on the capitalizing.

We may not like Barry Bonds, but the system loves him because it can capitalize on him (to the tune of a lot of money), he doesn’t care because he’s so talented (and was even without the juice) that he can capitalize on the system, and of course that’s the case with Paris too. It really is exactly the same thing. I don't know if that's "talent" in Paris' case, but there is no doubt she is capitalizing on herself too.

We like steroids and we like Paris Hilton. Ok, you might hate her, but if you do, you LOVE to hate her. ESPN knows just about everyone who doesn’t live in a 94XXX zip code hates Bonds. But those folks LOVE to hate Bonds. Human psychology at the group level, sad as it is -- we’re much more prone to bond together over someone we dislike than over someone we think is the greatest thing since sliced bread. We love, love, love rallying around something to hate.

I’ll tell you what else we love. Performance enhancers. Steroids. Whatever. We love it. You say you don’t, and you want the game to be pure. I believe you and it’s a nice thought. I would like life to be fair, too. But it isn’t. I haven’t decided yet whether capitalism is self destructive, but I’m sure of one thing, Capitalism will produce Barry Bonds and Paris Hilton and steroids and cheating. And this isn’t something that can be eradicated by thinking you wish it wasn’t that way. That’s just denial. This isn’t something that can be fixed. It can be addressed and hopefully "dealt with" and coped with much better, but not fixed. While I was being facetious with the headline of this, it really is a mathematical equation. If you want Capitalism, you get steroids and Paris Hilton. You may not like that, but that’s like not liking your checking account balance or not liking that 1+1+1 = 3. You may not like it, but there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.

So my theory on that is "fine, let’s just start talking about the 1+1+1 = 3" stuff so people can begin to see it.

I’m not all the way through this thinking. I couldn’t tell you definitively that I am never OK with hypocrisy. Currently that is definitely not true. I’m OK with some hypocrisy. That too seems to be part of the unavoidable math of being human if one of the better quotes I’ve ever heard is true: hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue (according to Harvard B-School professor Richard Tedlow’s mother).

I’m OK with hypocrisy. What I am not OK with is being in denial about hypocrisy. I want to be aware of it at least so I can decide whether I am OK with it. I don’t love Paris Hilton’s behavior, just like I didn’t like the behavior of some B-team Lindsay Lohan from my neighborhood. But her and Paris? I'd still be ok seeing both of them naked. I can live with this hypocrisy.

I can live with Barry Bonds and legalized steroids too. As for the people who hate him, I do understand -- totally. But I also understand Barry Bonds a little bit too. Going back to around 2000 when it was clear to anyone who had eyes that Bonds had bulked up a LOT in the last couple of years, I always blamed that on “us”. We did that to him in a way, and the only way his psyche could respond to it was to do what he did. Throw out how he acts (and he acts like an idiot sometimes) he still is actually human and he saw us loving on Sosa and McGwire so much that summer and thought, “OMFG, if I cheated like those guys, I’d hit 70! At least!” In 1998, if you looked at the ‘90s, Bonds already was the player of the decade. He had to think, “Wow, America doesn’t really value any of that. They value the long ball. All right.”

I’ll tell you something else – there were people on every team in Major League Baseball that year who felt the same way and did the exact same thing. Bonds was just the person with the most natural talent to ever do that. With the world hating him, leaked grand jury testimony, a Federal Prosecutor (another schmuck trying to capitalize on Bonds) with no case, the eyes of a nation on him, fans throwing plastic syringes at him. With all that, he was still amazing. He could still step in the batter's box and display amazing focus and plate discipline. I’ve been watching baseball since I was a kid. I’ve never seen anything like it. He may have cheated, but he was still the most talented hitter I ever saw.

I think the important thing here is to accept that stuff like this happens in Capitalism. You can’t change cheating in professional sports any more than you can change cheating and lying in politics. You can’t. Whenever the stakes are that high, given human nature, it’s pure math. What people want to do is to deny (or worse, think they can change it) human nature. The desire to do this results in an awful lot of BS in this world. To quote Elvis Costello, "I used to be disgusted, now I try to be amused."

What you could do, if it really mattered to you, is vote with your wallet. I unloaded all my Giants seasons tickets off on a friend. I don’t want to contribute financially to the hypocrisy with my wallet at least not to the tune of $5000 -- i'd rather by more ipods with it -- no hypocrisy with the iPod!

Would I prefer the owners and Bud Selig to just admit the truth: that they knew what the hell was going on and looked the other way because they were laughing all the way to the bank? I would prefer it, but I don’t expect to hear them say it. I don't need them to say it though, any more than I needed Clinton to tell me he had SOME KIND of sexual relations with...that woman. I didn't need him to tell me. I don't need the owners to tell me either. It's as obvious as Jason Giambi admitting he used steroids without actually using the word steroidsIt’s obvious it’s true. Independent of how I feel about Mr. Bonds’ personality, I don’t find how he handled himself any more offensive than how the Giants organization handled itself in this matter. They did what they did because it was worth a lot of money. Barry did what Barry did…I don’t think it was about the money, I think he wanted to be the greatest of all time. Plus, because of it, he made a lot more money. But if he would’ve been a likeable public persona – even as a cheater. I mean Sammy Sosa is a dual cheater AND a liar. Steroids, CORKED BAT, and when he was at Congress, all of the sudden his English wasn’t so good. But we LIKED Sammy. He has a nice smile. A nice smile can overcome dual cheating and being a liar with the American public. Barry Bonds doesn't smile anywhere near as much as Sammy did. Sammy's English was always very good on ESPN. And don’t even start me on Rafael “the finger wag” Palmiero.

I mean come on. Who the hell didn’t know this guy wouldn’t cheat his ass off for more money? The guy did the VIAGRA ad for money when he was in his 30s. What kind of man, who was already rich, who wasn’t just a complete whore for money would do the Viagra ad at that time? I hear Viagra is an in drug now with people who don’t really need it, but at the time a lot of people made fun of him. He laughed all the way to the bank because, you know, that’s the kind of “man” he is. But he can’t sell newspapers and so you won’t hear about him. Bonds you’ll be hearing a lot of when his bat gets back on track.

These things are just byproducts of the system we live in. Unless we vote with our wallets, nothing will change and on this kind of stuff (Paris Hilton, Barry Bonds, steroids) we just don’t really care all that much. I think the first step is to get out of denial that these things are natural byproducts of our particular system of doing things. When that happens some good conversation can begin, but right now there aren’t enough people who are aware of the hypocrisy.

Denial is a good defense and survival mechanism. I think if all you want is for your civilization to “survive”, it’s a great mechanism to keep around. But if you wish to progress, awareness is the path. It’s a math problem, but not enough folks are comfortable with the math yet.

Bill Gates vs. Paris Hilton? I'll take the iPod!

at least if it's a popularity contest. Paris Hilton, 8 updates in 0 (zero!) minutes. Bill Gates, 8 updates in 5 hours.

I like looking at the data, but I have no idea what it means. Apple TV returned 46 hits in the last 5 hours.

In fact, Apple is the Paris killer with it's iPod receiving 21 updates in the last ZERO minutes.

George Bush? 2 hits in the last 0 minutes, 7 updates in the last 5 hours.

Let's do Mark Cuban vs. Donald Trump.

Cubes, 4 in the last 24 hours, the Donald? 5 in the last 24 hours.

But Paris and the iPod are way more popular than Harry Potter from the bloglines search view of the world. I'm not sure if any of these comparisons are fair because I can't get a good read on how Bloglines (or Google for its blogsearch) indexes.

Is The NHL Really In Better Shape Now?

My brother says that in business/negotiations, “he who cares the most usually loses.” Under this theory I thought I could probably win an argument with Ted Leonsis about the NHL because I figured as the owner of the Washington Capitals NHL franchise (and he is a minority owner of the Washington Wizards NBA franchise as well) he is bound to care more than me. I felt like I was in a good position.

But I do not have my sea legs yet, and came out of the communication exchange feeling a little bit worn down and in need of a glass of wine. I give Ted many points for stamina. I also give him a tremendous amount of credit for making himself so accessible to the NHL fan-base (and everyone else, for that matter). I think guys like Leonsis and Cuban making themselves so accessible IS one of the most outstanding aspects of the internet. It’s possible to get guys like this engaged in very interesting conversations. Extremely engaged at times. So I will tip my hat to Ted on that, it’s a great thing.

In fact that’s the reason that I wrote him. I really think the NHL has a great opportunity because while it has lost 50% of its viewers for the Stanley Cup finals in the last 5 years, they were there as recently as 5 years ago. I do worry that more people read Ted’s blog in one month than watched the NHL finals and while that’s great for Ted, I don’t see it as so good for the NHL.

From my perceptive if you had three million homes tuned in 5 years ago and less than half that many are tuned in now, your prospects are worse now than they were before, not better. However…

The world is a wacky place and linear math like that doesn’t always work. As Leonsis himself notes there are now 2000 billionaires. That’s about 10 times as many billionaires as there are sports franchises worth buying. Because of the concentration of capital and the limited supply of sports franchises, we do live in a crazy world where because of the “limited amount of real-estate” property values are going up, up, up, even in cases where the neighborhood is having severe problems (losing half your viewers is a bad day in the neighborhood).

Leonsis points out that from a financial perspective the league is in much better shape now because although ratings were down 50% in 2006 from the 2002 numbers, the league actually broke even in 2006 and lost a significant chunk of change in 2002 when the ratings were much better.

Despite escalation of the underlying value regardless of performance (because of the 2000 billionaires and limited # of franchises), at some point performance still matters. While I agree that breaking even is better than losing money – and I do see that as both an improvement to the business model and improved financial performance, I still am not quite comfortable with the prospects, but I’m focusing on just the problem of the national ratings. Leonsis notes there have been positive improvements and that ticket revenues and actual attendance are both up, as were local ratings for regular season broadcasts.

Despite these improvements, Leonsis agrees that the national ratings remain a big issue. Current deals that have some of the finals on the Versus network really limit exposure (availability to only about 20M of the 100+M tv universe) and hampers both ratings and cross-promotional opportunities.

Though I confess Ted’s explanations do leave me feeling less panicked, I can’t see how the prospects of a league that 1.5 million homes tune in to the finals are truly better than the prospects of something with twice as many homes tuned in. Also, it seems to me that since those folks were watching as recently as 5 years ago, they’re the first people I would focus on winning back. I believe Ted has an opportunity compared to other figures in the NHL because he is out there in the popular culture with a link to his blog from Engadget and everything.

Other than the stars of the NHL themselves doing everything in their power to get face time with the American public (with the leagues assistance), Ted should somehow use his position to do his part to get the 50% back simply because he’s in a better position than most affiliated with the league to have an impact with that.

Is the NHL “really” in better shape now? Ted thinks so, but I’m still not there yet and this year’s ratings (Saturday’s game 3 did a .8 rating with a 2 share during its highest ½ hourly period on Saturday night) of less than a million homes even when the game was on NBC during primetime is not leaving me feel like the NHL is *really* in better shape, even if the franchise values are increasing and the financial performance is better than it was 5 years ago when the average rating was about 3x Saturday night’s results.

I know Paris is in jail, but maybe that’s the best time to approach her with some sort of deal to save the NHL. One thing I think Leonsis is in a better position than most involved with the NHL is really helping put a focus on how to effectively market the stars of the NHL, in fact, I believe marketing its stars is the only way to win back viewers. I see Leonsis as a very determined guy, and if he was determined, really determined to help the NHL market its stars, I think he’d succeed with it.

Is It Better to Act Like a Dope?

I am fascinated by the way things actually work, mostly because it's frequent that I suppose they "ought" to work some other way. If you do blog or Google searches on "Paris Hilton" you get much more up to the minute coverage (probably by at least one order of magnitude) than you do if you do the same search for "Bill Gates". It boggles my mind.

While I certainly understand that many more men would buy a Playboy magazine because it had naked pictures of Paris Hilton than because it has an interview with Bill Gates (and personally I'd be thrilled with that particular issue for both reasons) the pop culture seems to "value" Paris more.

Some people would say that's because Paris is way more like the average person than Bill Gates. Oh yeah? Really? Is the average joe an heiress who could live off the interest income of her inheritance 25x better than the average person who goes to work, and that assumes she actually ever had to pay for anything? I doubt that.

I think it's more that Don Henley was right: "People love it when you lose, give 'em Dirty Laundry". If Bill Gates got caught up in some juicy sex scandal, he'd probably trump Paris and Lindsay going to jail, but Mr. Gates has the good sense not to act like a dope. At least not in public.

Paris, Lindsay, Britney, Donald, Rosie – they all have one thing in common. They're skilled at acting like dopes in public and still being able to capitalize on it.

I actually kind of like Trump, and I confess, I enjoy it when he talks smack to Rosie. But he seems kind of decadent. I mean I can imagine the Donald having a 2400 square foot shower, with fifteen 50" waterproof plasma screens installed and solid gold knobs and whatnot. The stench of excess (at least in his public persona) is all over him. I don't view Mark Cuban that way. I don't see him being excessive in that fashion. I mean invest in a new sports league? Sure, but TVs and solid gold in the shower, nah.

Why? Well I'm sure from Cuban's perspective and certainly my own, that kind of excess would just be dopey. Exactly the kind of dopey stuff we Americans seem to love, love, love in the popular culture.

I think the reason that The Apprentice did so much better than Cuban's own reality series is pretty simple: Cuban's not a dope. Trump may not be a dope either, but he seemingly has absolutely no problem playing the fool in public either. More often than not, we seem more interested in that kind of behavior than about people who actually know how to behave.

Bad behavior is more entertaining. I think I am coming to the conclusion that if your goal is to run a software company, or run a TV Network and an NBA franchise, acting like a dope is NOT better. But, if you want to be an entertainer, it seems like it's better to be a dope.

Seidman’s Law: You Should’ve Never Trusted Hollywood

Actually that isn't "Seidman's Law".

Seidman's Law is simply this: if the truth hurts, it's because you're doing something that you know (consciously or subconsciously) that you shouldn't be doing, but you're doing it anyway.

I bring it up here only because Mark Cuban's solution to "save the National Hockey League" which pretty much jibed with my own solution does wind up hurting me on some level. The beauty of this law, if you care in the littlest bit about improving your own self awareness is that if the truth hurts you, but you don't know why, that correlates 100% with you (or in this case, me) being in denial about it. So the truth hurts me because I'm in denial in some way about being such a hypocrite. And knowing the truth hurts, but not why means: denial and that is an awareness opportunity for me.

For those who care, Cubes solution to save the NHL was for the stars of the NHL to basically get involved with the likes of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan and wind up showing up in People magazine (or at least the National Enquirer).

I agree it would probably work, but something about this truth – hurt me, so I listened to System of Down's "Lost in Hollywood" about 30 times and it came to me.

Lindsay and Paris are pretty foul people. I mean they are famous and attractive, but really, they are pretty vile. They have the whole world by the balls and yet, they still need to be showing up skanky and drunk all the time. To the tune of they are both going to jail for being the skanky, out-of-control drunks that they are.

You wouldn't want your kids going out with girls (or their male equivalents) like this, but even though Lindsay and Paris both act horribly vile, regularly, and in public to the point of J-A-I-L they still have enough value that they could save the NHL.

Where's my hypocrisy? Well…

Writing about Cuban, Paris and Lindsay is the only thing that wound up automatically feeding my blog postings into the "world". In this case the small world of people who care about the NHL, but I'm not against capitalizing on the value of Lindsay and Paris' skankyness, or cashing in on Cuban's cred either.

The hypocrisy on my part? I'm SO over it.

I'm totally down, just like the NHL should be, to use Paris and Lindsay to get attention. Damn if it doesn't seem to work.

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Update, I'm not alone: Media in frenzy over jail-bound Paris Hilton

How Mark Cuban Would Save the NHL

Around the beginning of the year my friend Bill G. pointed me to former AOL executive and Washington Capitals owner Ted Leonsis’ blog. On the blog Leonsis was bemoaning the lack of season holders who actually lived in DC where the arena is and that most of the season ticket holders were from the surrounding wealthy Virginia and Maryland suburbs. With DC having a huge African American population and with hockey not being especially popular with ANY Americans, let alone African Americans, I thought what he wrote was ridiculous.

I wrote him to say basically that they should be thrilled to have season ticket holders period, regardless of where they lived and that I’d be more worried about the fact that in the popular culture, Hockey isn’t really a part of that. I got especially annoyed with him and was rather hard on him but my reasons were he was talking to me like I was a total dope, “We’re in good shape, the tv stuff will be fine…” etc. I told him I thought he was crazy and that what he really needed to do was make sure Paris and Britney showed up in the stands on TV.

Recently I wrote Cuban asking him for his quick thoughts on saving hockey, and whether it was dead, dead, dead like the 8-Track player of my youth or whether it could be saved. Here’s his response:

"It needs personalities. There is no one in popular culture. Sid the kid and Ovechkin need to get drunk w Paris and Lindsay."

And this is why he’s a billionaire and I’m some guy writing a blog that presently nobody is reading. That last little bit is critical. Showing up on TV isn’t enough. The alcohol IS necessary...for the sex tape that will save the NHL!

Come on Paris, turn your sites to a good cause. Save the NHL!