February 28, 2008
Blathering Benz ...
For what it's worth, here's a link to an interview I did at the NAA show in Orlando. While I do try to explain Maroon Ventures on some level, even I had a tough time listening to it all the way through ... And there are links to Jay Small, Bob Kellagher and Howard Owens' interviews, too. Those are definitely worthwhile.
Posted by Bob Benz at 8:57 AM | Comments (0)
February 20, 2008
Goodbye, old buddy ...
This doesn't come as a surprise, but it still sucks. Hard. Rest in peace, Albuquerque Tribune.
Posted by Bob Benz at 3:10 PM | Comments (2)
February 17, 2008
Romero takes a bite out of the blogosphere ...
Here's a great interview with George Romero on his new Diary of the Dead movie. In the interview, he disses bloggers, contemplates the Planet of the Apes and pays homage to Christoper Lee's Mummy. What more could you ask for?
Posted by Bob Benz at 2:28 PM | Comments (0)
February 14, 2008
The green fairy
Lit Kicks features an informative post by Michael Norris on absinthe, including this description of the feeling it brings on:
"I began to experience a nice, mellow buzz. Unlike whiskey, which tends to dull the senses, absinthe brings about a clarity of mind that is unusual in an alcoholic beverage. I didn’t experience visions or hallucinations, just a feeling of well-being and a sharpening of the senses. The music sounded better than usual."
Apparently, some absinthe is legal in the U.S. now. I had a bartender in San Francisco tell me they had absinthe in stock, but I wasn't willing to pay roughly $50 for a taste. I also wasn't sure if she was talking about real absinthe with wormwood or something more akin to Absente.
I've been ordering mine from a company in the Czech Republic. They tone down the alcohol content a bit but the wormwood is there and it's as good as the absinthe I sampled in Paris and Estonia.
Posted by Bob Benz at 7:51 AM | Comments (0)
February 13, 2008
Monty Python, the Wall Street Journal and the meaning of life ...
In his "The Game" column the other day, the Wall Street Journal's Dennis K. Berman did a column on BHP Billington's $132b offer for Rio Tinto, which would bring together two of the world's largest mining companies. His column included this quote:
"In the 19th century, countries were prone to dispatch navies to secure a flow of goods. Today, they send investment bankers."
I smiled at the idea, which clearly is true, and immediately my mind went to the sketch that opens Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life," which I still rank as their greatest work:
Amazing, how the Pythons pull it all together here ...
Posted by Bob Benz at 7:21 PM | Comments (4)
I'm not weird at all ...
A friend who is studying film at UCLA just shot me a link to this clip that she directed. Neat stuff. She's come a long way since she interned with us in Knoxville ...
Posted by Bob Benz at 7:10 PM | Comments (0)
February 12, 2008
Be the star of your own movie ...
When I was at Scripps, we created a fund to invest in innovative ideas. We called it the Entrepreneur Fund, and it's spawned a lot of neat projects. But the one I'm most geeked about has just gone into beta and it's definitely worth keeping an eye on. It's called RootClip, and the general idea is that someone creates a one minute video segment of a story -- a root clip. Other folks then jump in and create the next segment, with site users voting on which one should become the next installment. Ideally, you end up with a coherent story created by multiple filmmakers and driven by popular vote.
Check it out. If it's going to succeed, it will need to attract a broad range of aspiring filmmakers who are willing to play along ...
Posted by Bob Benz at 6:51 PM | Comments (1)
Maroon Ventures decloaks ...
When I told people I was leaving Scripps, I fielded a lot of questions about what Maroon Ventures is. No, it's not a cult based in the mountains of Colorado. Here's the press release we issued today announcing that Wes Jackson, former head of Belo Interative, and I are joining Chris Tippie and Charity Huff in MV. This is going to be a blast ...
News Release
February 12, 2008
Maroon Ventures Announces Addition of New Partners from Across the
Local Media Industry
Crested Butte, Colorado - Maroon Ventures, a professional services firm that is playing a key role in helping 21 newspaper companies leverage their relationship with Yahoo! and HotJobs, announced Wednesday the addition of new partners with diverse local media backgrounds.
Wesley A. Jackson and Robert Benz will join existing partners Christopher W. Tippie and Charity J. Huff in Maroon Ventures. The new partners each will be responsible for strategic ventures focused on identifying and building new technology and businesses.
Jackson joins Maroon Ventures after having served as corporate senior vice president for Belo Corp. and president/general manager of Belo Interactive Media. He was responsible for P&L, operations, strategy, national sales and product development for more than 30 Web sites. In addition, Jackson has represented Belo in the newspaper consortium’s strategic partnership with Yahoo!
Benz previously served as vice president of interactive media for E.W. Scripps Company’s newspaper division. Key achievements in his role at Scripps included the installation of content management systems, implementing extensive financial benchmarking, establishing an innovation fund and managing an interactive staff of 40 that handles ad serving, sales, operations, product management, search engine marketing and programming.
“Maroon Ventures was founded in 2006 to take venture capital and new technology development
beyond the ideation phase to operational execution,” founding partner, Tippie said. “By bringing our deep, local media industry knowledge and operational expertise to bear on new opportunities, Maroon Ventures will create businesses that produce a high return for our partners and clients. Adding Wes and Bob to our team provides us with invaluable operational experience from corporate development to business execution.”
About Maroon Ventures
Maroon Ventures is a professional services firm that connects emerging business opportunities with media companies to help them execute in local markets. Its members draw on extensive operational and strategic experience to drive innovation throughout the business lifecycle.
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Posted by Bob Benz at 6:41 PM | Comments (2)
February 11, 2008
They're coming to get you again, Barbara!
George Romero is about to release another zombie film, as detailed in this New York Times article,. The reporter does a nice job of detailing what makes Romero stand head and shoulders above his peers ...
Great quote from Simon Pegg, who wrote and starred in "Shaun of the Dead":
“Other zombie movies don’t match George’s eye for satire or wit. Even films such as ‘28 Days Later,’ which I really enjoyed, delivered the allegory but with a very straight face. George seems able to scare, disgust, challenge and amuse, simultaneously.”
Yup. That sums it up nicely.
Posted by Bob Benz at 8:01 AM | Comments (0)
February 10, 2008
The Legend of Iron Crotch
I just finished reading Matthew Polly's "American Shaolin: Flying Kicks, Buddhist Monks and the Legend of Iron Crotch: An Odyssey in the New China."
In one respect, Polly is "just another overprivileged Gen-X twit spending daddy's hard-earned money trying to find himself in some exotic locale." But he's much more. He's a humble, respectful, humorous visitor to the post-Tiananmen China of the 1990s who takes readers along for the ride, and it's a fascinating ride.
Polly, a 98-pound weakling from Topeka, gets it in his head that he wants to study kung fu at the legendary Shaolin Temple, the supposed birthplace of both the martial art and Zen Buddhism.
What Polly finds when he finally arrives in Shaolin is more akin to "Kungfu World, a low-rent version of an Epcot Center pavilion." Undaunted, he finds the monks, negotiates tuition fees with communist party officials and immerses himself in Shaolin. His observations on Chinese culture and customs are fascinating. During the course of his studies, he learns "to eat bitter" (suffer) and becomes quite proficient at kung fu and kickboxing. Great stuff ..
And Iron Crotch? He's a monk whom Polly dubs "Monk Dong," a practitioner of iron crotch kung fu. In other words, he's learned to withstand insane abuse to his genitals. Talk about eating bitter:
"The door was slightly ajar. Overcome with curiosity, I peeked through the crack.
"Monk Dong, naked from the waist down, had placed his testicles on a wooden desk. At regular intervals, he brought down the palm of his right hand hard on his sack. He smacked and grunted. I winced."
Ouch ...
Posted by Bob Benz at 1:31 PM | Comments (0)
Show us your Elvis!
This is what happens when Memphis and Mardi Gras collide. Elvis ends up handing out beads at the Memphis Grizzlies game. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised ... it was a surreal night from the start.
When I arrived at my hotel on Tuesday (I stayed at a Hampton cause I hate those damned ducks at the Peabody -- quacking bastards) the TV was scrolling lists of school closings. I couldn't figure out why they'd be doing that.
Then I saw the weather.
Radar showed an angry swarm of storms heading our way and everyone was battening down the hatches. When I stepped out of the hotel to go to the Grizzlies game, Memphis was in a state of blitzkrieg. Sirens were wailing and warm, random winds peppered with rain were whipping around. Way too warm for February. The kind of warm that carries a faint smell of tornado on it.
The FedEx Forum was almost empty. Partially because the Grizzlies suck, but mostly because sane people decided to stay home and hunker down. We enjoyed the game anyway. I managed to snag some beads without doing anything embarrassing. But after the game, we found out how bad the storms really were. Reports were already trickling in on storms that left dozens dead in Tennessee. Fortunately, Memphis dodged a direct blow. But it was one of those nights that made you glad the King was in the Building and protecting us from Ill Winds.
Posted by Bob Benz at 10:58 AM | Comments (0)