starri
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Posts posted by starri
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I wish I was more convinced of that. I mean they've had one or two Robert follow-up stories, but overall we don't hear much about what becomes of his deals.
The money was best with Robert's deal, but I think Lumio needs a crapload of help to reach the level it could really do. Not convinced Robert has the strings to pull to get that done.
I really don't think the Lumio guy is looking to immediately jump into Target or Walmart. After mentioning his website and retailing at various museums, he mentioned that his next aim is to get into some place like Design Within Reach, which is (pardon the pun) way out of reach even of middle-class consumers. Honestly, a $200 lamp at DWR would be a bargain. His bigger problem seemed to be inventory, which the money will solve.
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If anyone wants a 24-pack of Zipz at a discount, act quickly.
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Fortunately, my opinion of Dean Cain was already irreparably affected when he went on Fox News to complain about how lazy unemployed people are.
Not to mention Million Dollar Bigfoot Challenge.
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My closed captioning said "she was a respected neurologist who closed her practice last January." An inconsistency, I guess. But it made more sense to me that she would have had a neurology practice.
You don't usually change specialities in medicine that radically. And I say this as someone who spent most of his undergraduate career focused on microbiology.
I'm really sorry that this is what I choose to obsess over. It's probably why my husband hates watching television with me.
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No, but didn't Drew yell at Clare in a crowded hallway when he found out he wasn't the father?
I honestly don't remember or really care. If that was the case, could they have stuck Immie in the background?
I don't know, that's a level of subtlety I shouldn't really expect from this show.
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I'm hoping this is an appropriate place to discuss this, since we've just entered into another Pilot Season.
I've only watched The New Yorker Presents (which seemed more like a slightly more elitist This American Life than the actual magazine, but I did really like), Salem Rogers (which was funnier than I was expecting), and The Man in the High Castle (which was incredibly solid, but would be a difficult show to binge-watch because the subject matter is so dark), and if they end up taking three series, I'm betting it'll be those three because those have gotten the most solid reviews. I don't know if my universe would be emptier if they don't make it, but I think I'm pulling for them.
I was very disappointed to learn that after picking up Chris Carter's The Afters last year, they announced a few weeks ago that they weren't going to move ahead with it after all.
Point of Honor, the Civil War series that was developed for ABC and then dropped like a hot potato is apparently awful, and I might give that a look just for the trainwreck factor.
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I prefer him over the "I'm doing this for my family" and "This is my last chance" contestants. Show me a savvy businessperson with an interesting idea who talks mainly about their business, with only a cursory mention of their personal life -- like the majority of the pitches last night -- and I'm a happy viewer.
He didn't seem that savvy if he couldn't give anyone answers to their questions.
Even the TurboPup woman, who hadn't even really proved her concept, had solid answers to every question the Sharks put to her, and a lot of them even complimented her on making smart decisions, even if she was a little too early to really get an investment from them.
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I watched the Pilot again and they called her a neurologist, not a virologist.
SyFy.com describes her as a virologist. It would be a little odd for a neurologist to be lecturing about an outbreak of whooping cough.
Of course, it's a little odd that a virologist would be lecturing about whooping cough as well, because it's a bacterial disease.
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I think, at the end of Turbopup, Robert said, "Can I have the dog?" I loved him last night. I really loved that he got Lumio (which looked awesome and is the 1st thing on Shark Tank that I'm considering buying). I was afraid that he wouldn't even though he was the 1st shark to make an offer. It was nice to hear that the entrepreneur went into the pitch hoping to work with Robert.
Robert has said numerous times that one of the things that attracts him as an investor is interesting designs. This was right up his alley, and he's a really good partner for this deal.
I think if there's any pattern to how the Sharks invest, Robert goes for design and sports, Lori goes for stuff that would sell on QVC and/or as an impulse buy on a big box endcap somewhere, Barbara goes for food, Kevin goes for cash flow (with the occasional digression like Wicked Good Cupcakes), Mark goes for things that amuse him (billionaires and their toys), and Daymond tends to towards fashion and home products.
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It has its own built-in battery that charges on a microUSB.
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Heh, I just rewatched that scene to get the above quote and it made no sense to me either. Like she was just taking walk-ins with weird viruses? Uh, no.
Damn you, Obamacare!
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I don't necessarily think that people thought Cassie was simply crazy; Goynes or one of his goons made a comment about how she'd given up her practice (although I don't understand how a clinical virologist would have a practice, that's more of a research field).
I really don't know if I liked the show. It definitely grabbed my attention in the last few minutes, but I found myself kind of wandering during the meat of the episode.
Also, naming the lead female character Cassandra was just a bit on the nose for me.
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I hate, hate, hate Eli. The only thing I've ever found slightly redemptive about him was his friendship with Adam, and even that went by the boards later.
Oddly, Clare's friendship with Adam was the thing that made me warm up to her, and I still like her, despite the fact that she's been written like an idiot since the cancer. I have hated the Clare/Eli relationship since always, and it grates my teeth that they're probably going to get a happy ending when so many other characters haven't.
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So, Imogen was the one to tell Eli about the baby's true parentage. Okay, Eli is her friend, Clare wasn't going to do it, and perhaps Alli has enough sense not to try (questionable, given how quickly she gave up the info to Dallas), and the mutual dislike between Drew and Eli is strong enough that I can't imagine Drew, even spitefully, seeking Eli out.
But she said she knew because she'd overheard it. Was there actually a point where we were shown that happening?
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I think it was Kevin that called him an elf? I was thinking leprechaun.
Kevin did call him a leprechaun.
This isn't really a comment about the episode per se, but Mark's comment about how after he'd made it really big he spent thousands upon thousands of dollars for expensive bespoke suits that he's worn maybe three times only reinforced my idea that he'd show up in sweatpants if he could get away with it.
Lumio is available at both the MoMA and at Cooper-Hewitt, the Smithsonian's museum about design that's here in New York. I really have no use or place for it, but man, I'm really tempted.
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They were doing so well up until the suit guy. Not a single pitch that I found annoying, and then suddenly there was this...thing I wanted to kick in the teeth.
Other than that, really loved the Lumio, and Robert was exactly the right partner for him. If my apartment wasn't furnished mainly Early IKEA, I'd be a customer. Maybe went I get out of school and can actually own a home where my husband and I can walk two abreast.
Didn't care for the NapWell (and I'm a weirdo who actually uses a sleep mask because even the slightest amount of light will wake me), but I loved the two guys. Particularly the MD/PHd candidate, who makes me feel like even more of a slacker than I already feel some days.
I'm a cat person, not a dog person, but I thought TurboPup was a great product, really loved the woman, and even though I thought Daymond was kind of an odd fit for that deal (I wish Barbara had been there) better that they got a good outcome. Daymond was Tweeting that his own dog is ready for one during the show. I wish her a lot of success.
Yeah, the suit guy...right in his horse teeth.
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And yet, with 3/4 getting deals (even if the last one didn't go through), it's one of the most successful episodes we've seen. What is this madness?
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The vest is brilliant, in my opinion. The royalty structure obviously isn't good for an investor, and that complicates it. And maybe it won't sell in Wal-Mart based on people picking it up off the shelf. I do think there are a lot of people out there who don't want their kids to lug around 20 pounds on their back without proper support. But maybe I'm just a wuss.
With my standard caveat that I don't have kids, from the size of those things, they wouldn't be much use for any kid in any grade later than about third, because they really didn't look like they held much.
You really want to save children's backs? Give them all tablets with the books preloaded and most other apps locked out.
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Because I doubt any bank is loaning out millions of dollars for internet sites anymore.
We're currently in a second DotCom bubble, but this one is app-based. They may not have bank loans, but they had (by their own admission) venture capital money from which they were paying themselves a third of their revenue.
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I don't know how long Dan Slott has been the head cheese in charge of Amazing, but for whatever reason, as skeptical as I've been of just about big Spider-Event that has come up during his tenure, starting with Spider-Island and especially Superior Spider-Man--every single one of them has completely worked for me. I'm not a huge fan of retcons, but a lot of stuff that's come up in the last two or three years has made the new post-OMD reality a lot more palatable for me.
Which brings us to Spider-Verse. When you first hear that they were planning "Crisis on Infinite Spider-Men," the idea sounds howlingly stupid. But the execution has been the absolute PERFECT balance of batshit insane and *brilliant*. Maybe it's because it's just a giant story that exists as fanservice, I don't really care. It's also been helped by the fact that the addition of some of the new characters, especially Spider-Gwen, have clicked with me immediately. The whole "Worlds will live! Worlds will die!" should normally be DC's playground, but Spider-Verse has been a whole greater than the sum of its parts, and even its parts have been terrific.
Between this and Ms. Marvel, the MU hasn't been this much fun in a long time.
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One of the sticker sisters lives near Indianapolis and one of the news stations there said they later decided they couldn't part with the business and backed<br />out of the deal. Cuban is supposedly going to stay involved as an adviser.<br /><br />
Didn't they say that they lived in/near Raleigh? Weird. There was something off-putting about the two of them, and it wasn't just because they were both getting up to full-on tears over the idea of selling a product that A) wasn't working, and B) was really, really stupid.
Scratch and Bake is a perfect Whole Foods product: both expensive and designed to make the purchaser feel smug. Their target isn't people who want to make cookies from scratch, it's people who want to use a baking mix without feeling like they're using a mix. That's why the women were so insistent that they not put everything into one bag.
Bottle Cleaner guy was fine, except that he grated my teeth when he said that his product was better because they were using things that were "mineral- and organic-based." Well, sure, most things are. Putting some baking soda and citric acid so it effervesces like Alka Seltzer isn't somehow magically "better" than cleaning a bottle some other way except that the end result probably tastes better. I'd also question how clean it really gets the bottle, but there was nothing wrong with the tablets overall. And I do like them trying to do environmentally-friendly packaging. I hoped they solved that one.
The Vest thing was just...sad. And between the two guys, the one wearing the sunglasses indoors seemed really shady (no pun intended) and the man with the daughter and the very long development cycle...well, look, this is just me being a snob, but if I was a venture capitalist like the Sharks basically are, I think I'd be predisposed to not be very enthusiastic toward someone hitting me up for an investment when his/her speech is so...folksy. I know that makes me a terrible person, and I know my tendency to speak the Queen's English is probably makes me utterly pretentious, In my meager defense, I grew up hearing a very odd dialect called the Tidewater accent, which is very British-sounding, and a lot of it sunk in for me.
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Well, right, but why would you go on this show to do that? The Sharks have a very clear track record of berating those people.
At least one of those product got a deal. I don't remember the specifics of the product beyond the fact that it was like some kind of vitamin spray, but Lori chose to invest in them. I suppose it was less quacky than some of the stuff (the crazy woman with the pressure bands for pregnancy nausea springs to mind), but if you need vitamins, it's still better to get them from food than pills.
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Why do people bother coming on with any product that has claims of improving your health, weight loss, etc., without prior FDA approval?
Because you can sell whatever snake oil you want so long as you don't make specific medical claims.
"Helps support immune health" is legal, especially if it's got the fine print of "Claims not evaluated by the FDA." "Prevents the common cold" would be illegal.
I have my standard rant about that kind of thing that I could pull out (it prominently features a guy we'll just call "Schmoctor Schmoz"), but to remain on topic, I'll only say that I give Cuban all the credit in the world for being the first Shark to call out that kind of bullshit.
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I think we're getting toward beating a dead horse, but Google Express, which currently operates in the Bay Area, LA, Chicago, Washington, DC, Boston, and Manhattan charges either a flat $3.99 per delivery or $10/month for unlimited where delivery is free if the total merchandise is over $15. In New York, they offer about a dozen different stores, although personally the only ones that I regularly seem to shop from are Target, CostCo, PetsMart (trust me, even $100 not to have lug a 12 lb bag of kitty litter on the subway is a bargain), and Fairway (a supermarket chain in the great NY metro area). They don't do perishables, and I wish their delivery windows were a little tighter (right now, you pick from one of three four-hour blocks per day), but they seem pretty popular. I know I'm not the only person in my building that uses them, and I live in a not-quite-gentrified area of Harlem. Maybe it's different because they have Google money behind them, but if Doorman serves a need, I know a lot of people who would use it.
Anyway, this is getting pretty far afield from the episode, so maybe we should move over to the small talk thread if we want to continue it.
Amazon Pilots: Powered By Democracy
in Network Talk
When Juliana was on the bus going to the Neutral Zone, the woman who sat down beside her and ended up robbing her made mention that the Japanese didn't care if you had "the wrong color, the wrong religion, or the wrong bed-mate."
The only additional pilot that I watched was Cocked, which I *hated*. I get that they were going for a Justified/Sons of Anarchy kind of vibe, but it didn't quite get there, and Jason Lee's character was so despicable, I don't think I could follow his continuing adventures. When I filled out the survey, I said that I knew I wasn't its target audience, but that I thought it was the wrong kind of polarizing in the current political landscape and that if they do end up picking it up, it would probably affect my overall opinion of Amazon.