Signals

How many times has this happened to you? You become deeply attached to someone, and everything is just wonderful, and you sincerely hope and believe that you'll stay together forever. Then suddenly you are hiring a lawyer, and they hire a lawyer, and you realize the honeymoon is over.

Rolex, Tiffany, Ferrari. And now, Sony.

Depending on your point of view, Sony is doing something wonderful, or deplorable. Either way, I'm sure the Internet will be outraged.

Spider-Man is a comic-book character that was created in 1962. The inaugural issue sold for 12 cents. Sony Pictures, which now owns the screen rights to the character, decided not to release the latest Spider-Man movie in the world’s biggest movie market. That decision might cost Sony as much as $340 million.

Is it just me, or is there something really weird about this video? I’ll invite you to watch it after the break, but meanwhile, at least IMHO, someone has gone off the rails here. Maybe it was a marketing big-wig at Sony’s HQ. Maybe it was just some regional manager. Or maybe the whole thing is a put-on, a spoof specifically designed to encourage suckers like me to recommend that you watch it. In any case, the video might go viral, but I’m pretty sure this marketing concept never will.

Whenever I board a train, airplane, or boat, I always ask if I can drive. Except for the time when that cruise ship capsized and sank off the French coast, the engineer/pilot/captain has never handed over the keys. Still, it never hurts to ask. But when I get in a car, I almost always get to drive. Which brings us to the question of “driving” a car and the future of mobile entertainment.

Girlfriend, I feel for you, I really do. Why can't people just accept the fact that you are a music genius? You know why they hate you? It's because they can't be you. If you win the case, they'll say you are banal, uncreative, and unoriginal. And if you lose the case, you will have plagiarized and have to pay tons of $$$ damages. It's just not fair.