It's a Wonder I'm Not a Gabillionaire

As you probably already know I am a business genius. Sure, I used to be a scientist but I realized, early on, that it wasn’t fair all the cool stuff I would invent, so I decided, being the great guy I am, that I would let other people have the glory. Luckily enough, I became so successful at being a business genius that I was made head of the police department. Don’t worry about which police department, because I am now head of all of them. Also, don’t bother worrying about if that makes any sense or not. So now that I am officially a business genius police officer, I will have a look at some famous and not so famous companies and fining them for stupidity. Those of you who are lucky enough to live near me will know some of the not so famous places. Let us embark on this journey through the world of business decisions made by imbeciles.



Business Name: Parfums de Coeur

Product: Bod – Male Body Spray

What Does It Do? Bod is yet another body spray, for men, that is supposed to make them smell like they are good at sex. The whole idea is that they copy exactly what Axe created and try to sell it as something of their own.

The Offense: Marketing. Let us examine how Parfums de Coeur markets their Bod line of male body sprays. Every commercial features a group of, at least, ten, ripped, guys with their shirts off playing some sort of sport. The commercial is focused on showing their chest and how in shape they are. For a total of two seconds (in sum, not sequentially) they show a chick or two, always fully clothed. Then end the commercial with a guy flipping his hair back as he flexes his entire upper body.

What’s Wrong With This Picture? For those of us not cursed with TiVo or Moxi (or whatever other offshoot of TiVo is out there) you have been subjected to Bod’s awful commercials. For those of us who read male magazines with any sort of regularity, and by regularity I mean ever in the past two years, you have been subjected to Bod’s awful advertisements. As far as advertising to men goes, there is a very simple formal (and believe me, I know a thing or two about formulas) that 99% of businesses have caught onto: Good Looking Girls + Less Clothing + Few Guys as Possible = High Revenues. That is the most basic outline for how to market to a guy. Sure there exist a few products that require a different approach such as: lots of guys beating each other up (sporting goods) or doing something extreme/rugged (selling trucks).

I’m curious to know who decided that: one girl + fully clothed + lots of guys – clothing = Good Idea. Contrary to popular belief, guys are not retarded (well…most of the time). No guy is going to watch that commercial and think to him self “wow, if I put that stuff on I’m going to magically turn from this human form of Staypuft the Marshmallow man into this super ripped dude.” What marketing guy at Parfums overlooked the Axe/Tag benchmark of – show a guy, who looks relatively normal, putting on their product then have flocks of chicks surround him?

The Fine: Immediate removal of the head of marketing and $364.77 to me, for wasted time being subjected to the garbage they call marketing. I figure that’s a fair fine as they have already paid enough money on their commercials which earned them zero sales.



Business Name: OB’s

Product: Bar/Restaurant

What Do They Do? OB’s is a business located in beautiful Manhattan Beach, CA which advertises itself to offer great food, well mixed drinks and cold beers all with friendly service. For those of you who are not from around here, OB’s is a definitive local’s hangout. The only people who have ever heard of it are people who live in or extremely close to Manhattan Beach.

The Offense: False advertising. A better look at the way the business is run will yield results showing rude waitresses and an incompetent manager/owner. Upon my last two visits to said restaurant, my friends and I, who, used to, give them plenty of business, were treated like a second rate customer and person in general.

What’s Wrong With This Picture? It has always been my understanding that when the majority of your income is directly proportional to your kindness due to the fact that you work in the service industry, that you would, in theory, always be kind, especially to customers. I used to bartend and I am currently a mortgage broker; two jobs which have a prerequisite that you are at least somewhat pleasant. Perhaps I missed out on the part of training that suggested you openly disrespect someone who has come in and is willing to tip you. It has also been my understanding that, as the owner of a restaurant, you would want to hire people who were relatively nice, but I’ve been wrong before*.

The Fine: Immediate change of ownership of the property over to Vin Diesel. I hear when he drinks his own pee his asparagus smells funny.



Business Name: Zeppy’s Pizza

Product: Pizza Parlor

What Do They Do? Zeppy’s is long time loved by Hermosa Beach visitors for their Sicilian style pizza at very cheap prices. They are most notably (and wisely) known for their location and store hours. Zeppy’s is dead in the center of the Hermosa pier, which, for those of you out of towners, is known for its long row of late night bars. Zeppy’s motto is to stay open late to grab all the inebriated hungry bar hoppers, aka serve drunk food.

The Offense: Messing with my stomach. On multiple occasions I have stumbled into Zeppy’s to grab myself a slice of warm, delicious, steaming, Sicilian pizza between the hours of 1:30-2:00AM. During such occasions it is not all that rare that they have announced “Sorry we are out of pizza!”

What Is Wrong With This Picture? Wait a minute, let me get this straight…you are pizza parlor that makes 75% of your money between the hours of midnight and 2:30 and you are out of fucking pizza? Well, maybe the bread guy didn’t show up that day and they were out of dough. Then they should have walked their asses down to the liquor store (which is also on the pier) bought a loaf of bread, slapped some tomato sauce on it, covered it with cheese, taken my two dollars and fifty cents and I would have been none the wiser. It might…MIGHT…be ok if this only happened once, but it has happened countless times. I hope they can sleep at night with that on their conscience…asking me to go home still starving. I bet waking nightmares keep them up all night.

The Fine: One pan of Hawaiian pizza, three slices of pepperoni, a small coke…make that diet coke, I’m not trying to get all fat here and eight quarters, so I can play their Tetris and Ms. Pacman machines.



Business Name: Aladdin Gaming L.L.C.

Product: The Aladdin

What Does it Do? The Aladdin is a casino/hotel that lies in heart of the Las Vegas Strip. Although hotels are profitable, the casino is what makes the majority of their money, much like EVERY casino/hotel in Las Vegas.

The Offense: Sucking at being a casino in Vegas. The layout of the Aladdin, although very aesthetically pleasing, is atrocious. The Aladdin’s casino is virtually non existent. If you have never been there before, good luck actually finding the casino. Should you be unfortunate enough to be staying there, I recommend bringing your mattress with you, as the beds are far from soft. Finally, should you stumble into the Aladdin because you are walking past it and nature happens to call at that moment, I wish you the best of luck finding a bathroom.

What Is Wrong With This Picture? Casinos have one purpose in Vegas…just one…make money. A long time ago some dude figured out how to make money in the middle of, an otherwise, very unpleasant plot of land. He decided it would be best to have people piss away their money gambling. So how do you do that in today’s world? Make it so that the people who are willing to piss away their money can find a good place to do that. I recommend placing gambling areas right by ALL doors. Make it harder to find your way out of a gambling spot than into one. I understand that people like to shop (which is all you can do for the first 5-10 min. in The Aladdin) but shopping costs you money, gambling does not. You buy the machines and people continuously give you money. It really is simple.

What’s the other thing you should probably do as a casino owner? Keep people in your gambling area by catering to their comfort needs. I guess the owner has different sleeping habits than I, but personally, sleeping on a concrete slate, like the Flintstones, is not relaxing. In retrospect, I suppose, in the case of The Aladdin, making the bathrooms scarcer than National Championships by the San Francisco Giants in the past 50 years would be a good thing. By the time someone has finally found one they are too emotionally defeated to leave and thus venture further into the black hole in search of a casino.

The Fine: Although it may seem harsh, Jack Sommer, (owner of Aladdin Gaming L.L.C.) should be put to death. Any human being who can manage to have a major Las Vegas casino operate in the red does not need to pollute the gene pool.


*Note: I’ve never been wrong before.

The Art of Women

Sometimes, I do things for my readers that I just wouldn't do for anyone else. Honestly. No I swear. To give as authentic a feel to the material that follows, I read, cover to cover, two completely vapid women's magazines. (Disclaimer time! I’m sure not all magazines women read are vapid. Women who read magazines can easily be brilliant. "Women's magazines" is a generally accepted publishing term that pertains to a specific set of magazines profitably geared toward issues that happen to interest, no one…umm…I mean…a large number of women, unlike my blog which most of my readers are still men or boys...who may or may not shower regularly.)

As a result of this absolutely objective research, I learned at least three things:

1.Women have no business being smarter than men. I don't know how they do it, but they can read stuff like this on a regular basis and still manage to outsmart us guys every now and then. Granted, Maxim or Stuff isn't exactly the high water mark of intellectually satisfying literature – but at least they're smart enough to put less clothes on the models. Here's a disturbing thought: Maybe women are way smarter than us, so much so that they could not possibly relate to us without dumbing themselves down, and they use these magazines as a sort of handicapping tool. Very sporting of them. Very sporting indeed.

2.None of these people know anything about things I care about. I'd love one of these four items to be something like, "Women get a high level of insight on how to plug in their own electronics from the regular ‘ask a midget’ feature." But no dice. Just advice on how to get "revenge hair.” Although, I think revenge hair would make a pretty sweet horror movie, I’d be willing to bet, the editor had other ideas.

3.Matthew McConaughey is surprisingly attractive. According to one of these magazines, Mr. McConaughey is "so hot, we had to hose down the girl who interviewed him." This got me thumbing through the magazine, looking for the picture of the young woman with a wet t-shirt. But on the way, I met up with the thoughtful, gray gaze of America's most eligible bachelor. Then my receptionist, who had acquired this magazine on a special mission (as if I'd be caught dead buying it), walked by, caught sight of the article over my shoulder, tripped over her own feet, and called out "Matthew, save me!" on her way down. Monster.com here she comes.

Women have always been a subject of wonder to me. It’s easy for any guy to say “girls just don’t make any sense.” That statement flows off the tongue so freely because it’s, pretty much, 100% accurate. They have more emotions than Pamela Andersen has STDs and these emotions will go from high to low quicker than Gary Coleman’s career. They can be sweet as an M&M and the next minute scream and yell at you until you feel as useful as a midget in a ‘reach things high up’ contest. But women are certainly not all bad. If they were all bad then you’d see a lot more dude on dude relationships. Fortunately, for all of us, girls smell a whole lot better than guys do. Not that it’s terribly hard to smell better than a combination of sweat, pizza and beer, but never the less, most females have a delectable odor.

The way woman pick out their fragrances will never make sense to me. Why is it that girls seem to be into smelling like food? It’s not just that they want to smell like food, they buy products to make them smell like 47 different food products. I mean not that food doesn’t smell good, especially the food products that females choose to smell like, but it just doesn’t make sense to me. I love food. I probably like a fat steak more than any chick likes, say, strawberries. Does that mean I want to smell like a freshly grilled steak? Well, maybe. But that is beyond the point. Point is everything I like to eat I don’t necessarily want to smell like. Guys wear cologne and body spray that smells like cologne and body spray, no real distinguishable scent.

Whilst, Christmas shopping, this year, I made my way into a Bath and Body Works store, partly lead by my panging stomach desperate for sustenance. Most of my time was spent, I mean, wasted, trying to figure what half of the crap in that store actually does. Once I came to the realization that my efforts would be in vein, I decided to ask for help. The lady, who might I add was very kind, asked me if I knew what I was looking for. I instantly became tempted to blurt out “Lady, if I knew I what I was looking for, would I have just spent the last 10 minutes looking around the store with a puzzled look on my face,” but being the angel I am, decided against such a course of action. I instead responded with, “if I hand you 30 dollars will you just put something in my hand that would make a good present for a 45 year old woman, you don’t even have to give me a receipt.” At this point, if she were to have given me a $5 bar of soap and a hair brush and said it was 30 bucks I’d have complimented her for her kindness and been on my way. Well needless to say, that didn’t happen. This is when the questions started coming: “Well what does she like?” “What kind of scents does she wear?” “What are her colors?” Again, I fought temptation to ask why she would inquire with such pointless banter, but managed to muster out a very measly and weak, “I have no idea.” Here is where the confusion really set in. She proceeded to tell me about a new basket of stuff which included a bar of soap, shampoo, this lotion that felt like it had sand in it and (for some reason) a rock. She ended her, astoundingly accurate, description of the item with “Ohh and it comes in our new, popular, scent: Peach strawberry cucumber lemon.” Ok, I admit, that wasn’t the actual scent, but it had so many different flavors of food in it, I think, even a pneumonic device for it would be hard to remember.

Female body products are very cleverly disguised. I live with a girl. My roommate’s girlfriend lives at my house. No, I am not going to start ranting about how much of a drag it is to live with a girl, cause it really isn’t, I happen to like her and she is just fine as a livingmate. This, simply, means I get a first hand account of all the crap that chicks use. Doesn’t mean that I understand them or why they have them, but still I get to see a lot of the little items.
I definitely consider myself more of a morning person than most other people. I wake up everyday before 9:00 regardless of what time I went to bed the night before or how much partying I did. I do not need a cup of coffee in the morning to get going. I don’t even need to stand in the shower for 10 minutes before I start to wake up. Still, I am not exactly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when my alarm goes off on the weekdays.

The first thing I do when I wake up is shower. Now, in my sleepy haze the last thing I need is to be thrown into sensory overload. I found this out about a month ago. I learned that at that hour of the morning, I can’t distinguish the overly redolent, pearl white bar of coconut scented soap as something I shouldn’t eat. Once that smell of coconut hits my nose I simply think, wow someone was nice enough to leave a piece of coconut for me to eat in the shower. Once I realize that said item is, indeed, a bar of soap, and not a kind gesture from my roommate or his ball and chain, I then have to go through the cognitive process of weighing my options as to whether or not to ‘sample’ this delicious looking morsel. I mean come on, one little bit isn’t going to kill me, and she’ll never even know I did it.

After I talk myself out of tasting the soap, I look up at the little shower hanging thingy, and see a plastic case that says “Whoosh” on the outside. Peering into its contents I notice it to be a blue gelatin. I poke my fingers in it, whirl them around a bit and give it a good smell. “Well,” I think to myself, “if it looks like Jell-O, feels like Jell-O and smells like Jell-O…” Again, the thought of “Ohh someone was kind enough to leave me some Jell-O to eat in the morning when I shower,” crossed my mind. After further examination, I saw that this stuff ran about $25 a pound. That snapped me out of it. No way am I eating someone else’s 25 dollar Jell-O. It must taste amazing, but still, I’m not paying 25 bucks for Jell-O. Later I found out that stuff was indeed a type of soap. I still say it’s Jell-O.

My guess is that she wanted the Jell-O all for herself. Well, I’ll teach her! We’ll see how she feels about being greedy after I eat all of her Jell-O!