rob’s blog

Walt Disney has become the first Hollywood studio to take smoking out of all of its films.

I didn’t notice any smokers in Ratatouille, and I couldn’t see them in a new traditional film from Disney either. But the FT article goes on to state that Bob Iger’s position is that “the company would also ‘discourage’ depictions of smoking in films made by its other studio labels.”

Disney’s owns Bob Weinstein’s Miramax Films which has released a ton of adult-oriented features including Tarantino’s, Pulp Fiction and Resevoir Dogs. Quentin Tarantino makes including cigarettes in his movies a recurrent presence. Iger goes on to say that argueing with filmmakers working under his roof about excluding cigarette smoking is a “confrontation we are certainly willing to have.” Continue Reading »

I was sent a link to this the other day by my friend Ala, but only reviewed it this morning. It is a video interview with new Blazers front man, Greg Oden. There is plenty of hype about this guy’s basketball skills and his size–but I had no idea he was also very funny, super down to earth and is a blogger! Continue Reading »

Counting page views as a measurement tool for traffic ranking of websites is out. Average visit length is in. Want a metric? According to Google Analytics, my Dave Matthews Band fan site, Weekly Davespeak had 8,806 visits between July 1st and July 8th. Each visitor averaged six minutes and 27 seconds drifting from one page to the next. Running off that average, the human race spent thirty-nine and a half days reading about Dave Matthews Band on my site this week. I wish I had a site about recycling that was that popular. (via Micropersuasion)

Cloverfield AKA The Parasite AKA 1-18-08 had its teaser trailer break on the web today. You need to check this out, it looks awesome. The movie comes from Paramount pictures and Lost director JJ Abrams “shrouded in secrecy” hoping for free hype no-doubt. It is a disaster film of some kind supposedly shot through home video cameras. (via Quicktime)

Research In Motion’s co-CEO Jim Balsillie has been clowning on AT&T for giving away the farm with the iPhone. He says that AT&T is helping turn carriers into a commodity rather than a brand. Right now carriers create exclusive deals with phone companies to pull customers for the most popular types. There is some irony in Balsillie’s comments coming now–RIM just released its newest greatest phone, the Blackberry Curve 8300 under an exclusive contract with AT&T. (via BlackBerry Cool)

Baja Fresh was blowing up around the time I graduated from college. I had the one near my mom’s house in my phone for a while and I set up a number of dinners for pick up on the way home from my job. Then the quality of their food went south so I stopped going. Fast-forward to this past week when I see a billboard for a new Nacho Burrito at Baja Fresh.

I decided that I must have this new burrito. I finally got around to trying it out this afternoon, so here’s a quick review of the new offering from Baja Fresh.

First, you should know that Baja Fresh was bought by Wendy’s in 2002 for 245 million dollars. I graduated in 2003, so the timing makes sense given the hype around the company. However, in only a few years the business has become increasingly less valuable to the point where it was bought from Wendy’s for a song–David Kim of Anaheim, CA led a group of investors to buy Baja Fresh for only $31 million. Continue Reading »

Some of you may have read my last post and given a quick “who cares” about the RSS feed. Following releases by RSS from the White House means that you can sometimes get a jump on news. Sometimes you just get a reminder of what it is like to be hearing from our President each day.

This morning a transcript of “Remarks by President Bush Before Arrival of President Putin of Russia” was released which was a entertaining until that he managed to sandwhich the instillation of fear that has been the hallmark of his administration: “But it just goes to show the war against these extremists goes on. You never know where they may try to strike.”

Here’s a link to the full text, my favorite part is where he describes a potential fishing trip on his coming day with Vladimir Putin “Maybe today. It’s pretty casual up here, as you know, unstructured.” Continue Reading »