Evans Above

Gary Hayes has developed an interesting look at some social media statistics.

[The graph once referenced by this article is now gone. So this page is here as a placeholder. Oh well. :-)]

Lisa Ling co-hosted on The View this morning and the ladies (or “girls” as Kate Gosselin kept calling them) took a phone call from the opportunistic TV mom.

The call was about her estranged husband Jon taking over $200,000 from their joint account. Kate also commented on how the show’s legally issue hiatus was upsetting her eight children as they were now missing out on yet another all expenses paid trip to New York.

Apparently Ling hadn’t had a sip of the Gosselin Kool-Aid — Kate recently co-hosted The View — and said twice that there must be other ways for Kate to make money without putting her children on TV, even if it was just during the time of the divorce.

Barbara Walters abruptly thanked Kate and ended the call, derailing Ling’s criticism of the show. Perhaps while dealing with her sister’s imprisonment in North Korea, Lisa forgot how to kiss the backsides of people famous for nothing.

Fashion house Emanuel Ungaro recently unveiled their spring 2010 collection which was co-designed by Lindsay Lohan.

Strangely a Toronto paper’s story on the situation referred to Lohan as an “Hollywood A-lister”. Are they publishing in some bizarre reverse alphabet world where children learn their ZYX’s?

It’s been a couple of weeks since I last posted. I’ve been busy getting ready for the 34th Toronto International Film Festival and doing some backend work on the site. My post TIFF goal is to post here more frequently.

I believe that a swift kick in the rear should be followed by a pat on the back if the person or company involved has learned something.

After being made aware of my previous Pizza Pizza article, I received a phone call from a customer service manager. He had been unaware of the situation and had not received any paperwork on it despite the fact that I had spoken to several reps who said they would boost it up the chain.

What I appreciated was his candor. He didn’t try to hide behind computer failures or “Bob was on vacation” or any of the other 1,000 excuses you hear these days. He simply stated that they dropped the ball on this one and he’d be talking to the reps to make sure that a situation like this was handled better in future. There was no corporate speak. Just a guy apologizing to a customer and promising that they’d do their best to learn from this and improve. He took my info and personally followed up to make sure the refund actually came through.

Many companies get to a size where they see themselves as some sort of individual entity. The Borg versus all of their customers. It was nice to hear one person accept that mistakes were made and take responsibility for trying to fix it.

Commerce is an amazing thing in the internet age. With a few clicks of the mouse, I can buy airline tickets, book a hotel and have it all charged to a credit card that instantly shows the transactions in my account.

Apparently Pizza Pizza Limited in Toronto has not been briefed on this thing called progress.

Over 50 days ago, on July 2nd, I ordered a pizza via their online ordering system. They advertise a “40 minutes or free” guarantee and the pizza arrived 42 minutes after the stated delivery time. If you’re going to make such guarantees, I’m not about to quibble with you. I’m not about to go “42 minutes? You were so darn close that I’m going to give you the money anyway. And here’s some extra for the effort you made.”

As it is, the particular franchise near us must be populated with daredevils as they frequently arrive at my apartment building just under the wire. This time, though, the pizza was late.

The driver strolled out of the elevator.

“How are you today, sir?”

“Better now that my pizza is free,” I replied. This never pleases them. In my life, I’ve had them arrive late maybe three times and they really aren’t pleased when you go for the guarantee. Guess what? If you don’t want to honour the guarantee, don’t offer it. There are plenty of other pizza joints who don’t make that claim. If you do and you’re late, well, it’s YOUR guarantee.

He said it wasn’t late and said the guarantee applied to the time he buzzed in downstairs, not the time he was at my door.. I knew that and pointed out that he had buzzed in to the lobby two minutes past the guarantee time and he conceded the point.

He told me that it was my choice if I wanted it to be free. Gee, I could choose whether to pay or not? I’m sure the suspense as to what I decided must be gripping. I took his receipt, crossed out the price, wrote something like “Late. Free Pizza” on it and initialed the receipt. After he left, I called their order number and informed customer service that it was a free pizza. They said they’d indicate that in my account.

Days later, a charge appeared on my bill. It was for the base amount of the pizza, as if I paid for it and didn’t tip. I called customer service. They said that apparently the authorization amount had been charged. I asked how that could happen if I hadn’t signed and their system indicated it would be a free order. The rep said that he’d put a reverse request into accounting. It might take a couple of weeks. There’s be no additional compensation for the inconvenience.

A couple of weeks? A ridiculous delay in this day and age. But I waited. The charge was still there. I called Pizza Pizza customer service again. They looked into it and said that yes, it was sent on to accounting. The representative said that the reverse would happen “at any moment.” I’d love to see the Pizza Pizza dictionary because “moment” must be defined differently.

At the 48 day mark, yes, forty-eight days, I called again. The rep didn’t know what the delay was and said he’d personally make sure that management would look into it the next day.

So here we are, another week later, and the charge has still not been reversed. In this day and age, the speed and quality of Pizza Pizza’s customer service is truly pathetic. Where’s the hold up? Their system indicates it should be a free pizza. Why was the reverse not done immediately when I called the first time after seeing the erroneous charge? Why was it not handled “personally” the day after the last rep, at the forty-eight day mark, said he’d make sure it was brought to management’s attention? Why am I now paying interest on a pizza that was never meant to be charged to me in the first place?

Hats off, Pizza Pizza Ltd., you give customer service a bad name.

While Hurricane Bill battered Canada’s Maritimes with high winds and waves, the Bahamas was hit with a natural disaster of another kind.

Heidi Montag appeared on Miss Universe Sunday night. I’d say “performed”, but that’s really too strong a word for what she did as she lip-synched her way through a tune called “Body Language.”

Her attempts at dancing made Star Wars’s C3PO looking like the winning contestant on Dancing with the Stars. Producers kept the cameras pretty tight on her so as not to show her lame choreography and eventually they cut away to video footage of the contestants in bikinis, effectively reducing her appearance to background music.

Seeing as Donald Trump owns Miss Universe, what do you think the chances are that he’ll invite her and fellow celebutard and husband, Spencer Pratt, to appear on the next Celebrity Apprentice?

Dipped into the mail bag the other day and pulled out Elvis: The Ed Sullivan Show: The Classic Performances a new DVD featuring 15 performances that Elvis sang during his three appearances on the legendary Sunday night variety show.

Though the title may be a little clunky, the DVD is anything but. The musical performances include Don’t Be Cruel, Love Me Tender, Peace in the Valley and the rockabilly classic Ready Teddy. The sound on these performances is first rate.

The DVD also has a great collection of extras including a brief look at Sullivan’s career, an interview with legendary Sun Records producer Sam Phillips and a selection of home movies including an appearance by Priscilla. The only missing extra would be an explanation of how they got the audio on this disc to sound so good.

Watching a young Elvis command the stage shows just what a presence the rock’n‘roll legend was. This DVD is a good addition to the library of Elvis fans and fanatics alike.

The soundtrack CD for the Judd Apatow and Adam Sandler collaboration Funny People is a refreshing and fun collection of ten songs. With artists ranging from Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr to James Taylor and Warren Zevon, listening to the CD is like getting a mix tape from a friend.

This road trip worthy collection, which also features Adam Sandler covering The Beatles Anthology mash-up “Real Love”, also includes a couple of tracks by Jason Schwartzman’s Coconut Records, an early take of Neil Diamond’s “We” and an acoustic take of “Watching the Wheels” by John Lennon.

I first cracked this disc open as I sat in a coffee shop and the collection of tunes was able wash away the pablum that passed for music coming over their speakers. A good mix of tunes can create an oasis during your day and the Funny People soundtrack provides more than a few auditory palm trees on the horizon.

So some lowlife illegally takes hotel peephole pictures of ESPN sportscaster Erin Andrews and how does the mainstream media deal with it?

They could have just reported on the incident and said how nude video and photos of Erin Andrews were all over the web. They could have discussed how, as a lawyer for ESPN said, showing the images could make those websites accessories after the fact. Instead, several networks and publications decided to air the photos of Erin Andrews nude and blur or obscure out some parts.

Now perhaps that’s to be expected from birdcage liner The New York Post and the video sewage known as FOX News, but CBS’ The Early Show did the same thing.

CBS. CBS News. The home of Walter Cronkite. I’m sure he wouldn’t have been pleased, but the news these days has devolved into a bunch of repetition and rumour.

Like a dose of ratings Viagra, financial news network CNBC had a ratings boost last week when it aired a penetrating look at the adult industry called Porn: Business of Pleasure. Ratings measurement service Nielsen said the special earned the net, more famous for Jim Cramer’s bombastic booyahs then Jenna Jameson’s hoohahs, a roughly 500% increase in rating for that time slot.

The special, hosted by Fast Money’s Melissa Lee, had me chuckling at the beginning. Lee stood in Times Square and her red trench coat was longer than what she was wearing underneath, so it gave the impression that she was a Wall Street flasher. Apart from that laugh, the special was what you’d expect from a financial network trying to boost ratings during an economic downturn.

They did a quick history of the industry. They mentioned how VHS, DVD and the internet made anonymous consumption easier and how many hotel chains earn a significant chunk of their profits from adult pay-per-view. They touched on the topic of free porn on the internet and how it was giving the $13 billion adult economy a good spanking. Or as they said on the special, free internet porn “could bring the adult industry to it’s knees.” Really? They went there? Would the voice-over guy be telling us soon that the special would go “deep inside”? Did the Squawk Box hosts sit around at a meeting generating double entendres?

The show also featured interviews with adult stars like The Girlfriend Experience’s Sasha Grey and Adult Entertainment Expo veteran Jesse Jane as well execs like Vivid Video co-founder Steven Hirsch. They blurred out scenes from movies like Digital Playground’s Pirates 2 and video of Jesse Jane’s strip club performances. They briefly looked at Paul F. Little a.k.a. Max Hardcore’s prison sentence for obscenity and spoke to lawyers on both sides of the issue. Of course CNBC is a financial network, so the theme that the industry was facing hard times was constantly driven home. Can a bailout be far behind?

CNBC is walking a tightrope here. Creating salacious material like this special and Dirty Money: The Business of High-End Prostitution may gain new viewers from the one-handed web surfing crowd but it’s not necessarily going down well with advertisers. Charles Schwab already pulled some advertising which proves that though financial firms may have deep pockets they may not be into Deep Throat.

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