Howard Stern went off on social networking--bashing and hating--and Gary Vee calls him out on how he's just trying to protect and control.

This is a must-listen.

I get sent an invite to SocialMinder.  The idea is something I've been wanting LinkedIn to do for ages... Let me set how often I want to speak to someone.  So, they grab my LinkedIn contacts, look for them on e-mail and tell me how long since we've spoke--nominating people for me to reach out to.  It even suggests articles for me to send them, based on company name or industry. 

It's neat, but I have a few issues:

One, this has to be on LinkedIn's near term development list.  In fact, they have this feature, to some extent, in their Outlook toolbar.

Two, the algorithm is too simplistic.  It seems to have just gone through people I talked to a bunch and then haven't talk to in a while.  There are probably reasons for that.  Most of the people if found for me left NYC or switched industries (or we broke up). 

Three, I don't like the way the trail is setup.  It gives me ten people to stay in touch with, but if I want to keep up with anyone else, I have to upgrade.  Upgrading means I have to send it to 15 people.  Instead of making my spam my friends, how about just building an AWESOME product and making it easy for me to share with my friends if I think it's any good.

Anyway... nice attempt, but just not enough there there, and they seem more concerned with spreading the word than anything else.

A couple of years ago, Meetup announced that it was going to start charging for its group organizing services. Almost instantly, they lost half their groups. Once the fallout passed, however, something amazing happened: More and more groups started paying. Soon they had more Meetup groups than when the site was free, which actually improved the overall service. Now, when you find a Meetup group, you know that it's at least active enough that someone is paying 18 bucks a month for it.

Having come from a venture capital firm, it turns out that I have a previously undiscovered bias towards cutting edge, sexy business models--which Meetup is not.

I'm a revenue snob.

Google has a sexy business model. People search, others advertise against those searches...very slick. Sermo's business model is ridiculously hot. Doctors come together in a community and pharma and Wall St. pay to watch. That's almost porn-worthy it's so sexy.

So when someone like Zoominfo comes along and charges for access to its people search--you know Zoominfo, that half wrong profile of you that confuses you with that media sales guy from Kalamazoo--I had to admit I turned up my nose...

...until I saw that they were making 15 million in sales. Yes, that's right. Zoominfo is doing 15 million in sales selling $349 annual subscriptions to its database. It's easy to dismiss a company like that, because the data quality is so poor, and if you're a VC trained data snob. If you understood anything about recruiting, which is essentially a lead gen business, you'll realize that a lead doesn't have to be 100% perfect to have some value--especially if the payout is a big recruiting bounty.

It really hit home when I was talking to an investor yesterday about Path 101's Resume Genome Project. I was talking all about how having this rich database of data will enable next gen recommendations and encourage users to contribute more data, and the investor simply asked, "What about searching the 8 million resumes you'll have in your database day one...isn't that a business?"

Yeah, actually, it is. It's not super sexy, and other people could do it, but the market is so fragmented that anyone with some scale of profiles has a business. It's the same in the jobs business. Name a company that only wanted to be and only tried to be a job board that couldn't generate revenues. It's the companies that tried to be some kind of fancy matching thing first, like ItzBig, without solving employers and job seekers immediate problems first, that went under. It's what David Kidder recently referred to at a nextNY event as "getting in the jetstream of revenue"--finding out what people are paying for right now and making that part of your business plan.

So perhaps before you try to be better than your competitor as a startup, you might try being just as good--because just as good can mean revenues and next gen can sometimes mean too early. What you'll likely find is that a focused startup's attempt to be just as good actually results in a much better product that people might even be willing to pay for.

You know who should think about bringing their noses back down to earth? Facebook. Does anyone not think that there could be some kind of premium feature set that a quarter of the population would pay five bucks a month for? I'd pay to see who viewed my profile for sure... or certainly for stats on views....or for no ads and application notifications.

So before you go for the wacky virtual click per social micropayment model, perhaps "I make a product, you buy it" should at least be thought about.

I've been having a Twitter exchange with James Eiden about how you can call an election with such small percentages of the votes in for a state.  I didn't think it's that difficult to figure out how it's done, but apparently, it needs more than 140 characters so here goes:

News organizations triangulate from a number of different sources: primary voting, new voter registrations, previous elections, demographics, and yes, exit polling.  Exit polling, given its unpredictability, I imagine is mostly used as a backup check at this point--to make sure long tail events didn't occur. 

So how do you call a state with 1% in?

Let's take our example state of Jesusland:

Jesusland has 100 voting districts, each representing an equal number of voters.

What are things we know about Jesusland before the election happens?

- Number of registered voters for each party in each district. 

- Primary results from that year.

- Historical records.

We know most people generally vote along party lines, so when you have districts that are heavily Republican or Democrat, you can pretty much count on those folks to go to one side or the other right away.  This is where exit polling comes in.  When you exit poll all of Jesusland's Republican heavy election districts and it seems like there wasn't a major shift against the tide, you can count those votes as in the bag within a margin of error--especially if those same districts turned out in strong numbers for these same candidates in Jesusland's primaries.

That may leave only about a third of the population of Jesusland really in play, making each district about 3.33% of the contested group.  To put the statistical significance of that number in perspective, there are about 180 million potential voters in this whole country.  When national polls are conducted, they're done with less than 10,000 voters and statisticians put them at a 3.5% margin of error.  To get 3.33% of votors responding would be like getting 6 million people nationally to answer a Gallup poll.  So when you see 1% of people reporting and you think it's too early to call, keep in mind that's orders of magnitude more than Gallup usually gets and they're able to get within a few percantage points.  When you get that large of a percent in key districts that are highly contested, you can pretty much call the rest of the race within fair degrees of certainty assuming no major cross-party upheavals.

I mean, it's no different than the whole map of the US, really.  If Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania polls closed at 4 in the afternoon, we'd know who the president was by dinnertime.

The most recent tracks I've been listening to on last.fm:

IMG_2323, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Turns out there's an O'Donnell running for something in my friend's voting district.... O FTW!

I was recently interviewed by Mary Flynn of The Deal and profiled in the magazine as well.  It's going to be awesome press for us, so we're really excited, but I did want to add one thing to the article. 

Andrea Orr wrote:

"Path 101 doesn't operate in Silicon Valley, where even in today's tough funding climate, there's a strong fellowship in the startup community that provides at least some moral support when no financial backing is forthcoming."

Oh Andrea...Why the New York community knock?  Actually, we're glad we don't operate in Silicon Valley!  Instead, we're operating right where every startup should be in a difficult environment--right in the middle of where our existing network is, surrounded by supportive people who know us well.

Just the other day, we had an investor meeting with the New York based folks who have supported us from the beginning and I said to Alex, "Jeez, can you imagine if we didn't have the investors that we did.  How tough would that be to just have some random angels that don't know you very well?" 

If anything, there's a stronger fellowship in the New York community, because we constantly get dinged by mainstream media as a "sad assed backwater" of a tech community.  We feel like we're all in it together--NYC tech against the world!

Need more proof? 

nextNY is almost at 2,000 members!

A new co-working space, New Work City, just opened.

Our NY Tech Meetups are filled to the brim and sellout in minutes.

NY's own Fred Wilson won the Donor's Choose Blogger Challenge, beating out Valley competition from TechCrunch, AllThingsD

Via Heif... 

"What happens to the Obama "network" after the election? It's an intriguing question. The capacity that has been built to mobilize people's time and money greatly exceeds that of the parties. Think about it: Obama's campaign has mobilized on the order of two million or more individuals in one fashion or another. It has raised unprecedented amounts of money from unprecedented numbers of people. This is not a typical case of a campaign as an ad hoc organization that goes into mothballs for four years. The lights are not going off on this operation. If Obama loses, the network provides him an instant infrastructure to run again. The more intriguing question to me, as a student of politics, is what happens if, as seems likely right now, he wins."

Complexity and Social Networks Blog: The party after the campaign

Aside from my belief that he is not only the best but the most appropriate candidate for the job, the thing that really excites me about Barack Obama is how many young people I know are seriously interested in politics now--and how active and motivated they have become.  Many times before, candidates have tried to mobilize youth, and come up sure.  This time, it appears, it's for real--and that's great because there's only one policy that guarantees better results from your government: an interested and active populace.  No matter what your persuasion, you have to agree that the second people become detached from and disinterested in the actions of their government, it's over.  We, as a people, have lost.

So, every last one of you who went knocking on doors in Ohio or Pennsylvania, or who called their grandparents in Florida--don't let up!  

I believe Barack Obama is a great man, but the minute we stop pushing as hard as we are now, he'll fail.  We campaign against politics as usual, but if we the people go back to apathy as usual, we wasted a whole lot of effort.  The potential for change he represents requires everyone to give not only their verbal support, but their action and interest.  The tools are there.  The organizational structures are in place.  Don't let up.

"From TampaBays10: The head of the Hillsborough GOP, David Storck, distributed an email from a Republican Party volunteer saying the voters are a threat. That's because, as the volunteer says in the email, he sees "car loads of black Obama supporters coming from the inner city to cast their votes for Obama." It goes on to say, "This is their chance to get a black president and they seem to care little the he is at minimum a socialist and probably Marxist in his core beliefs." The Republican volunteer says that is because, "After all he is black- no experience or accomplishments but he is black." Read on...

 

If the McCain/Palin campaign has done anything, it has exposed the worst in our society."

FL GOP Chair Sends Out Racist E-mail: Beware Of The Car Loads Of Blacks | Crooks and Liars

LinkedIn showed its hand yesterday with the release of its application platform, InApps.  If there was any doubt as to the direction of the company, between this and the company's recent investment from SAP, it should be clear now: LinkedIn is for business professionals.  This is a work product, not a Facebook killer. 

Just look at the applications added to the opening mix--sharing presentations, organizing travel info, storing files--it's pretty clear that these are business tools.  You might of thought given last year's interface revamp, complete with photos and a newsfeed, that LinkedIn was going after Facebook.  Given that Facebook might have a profitable businessmodel in three years, and that LinkedIn is doing about 100 million in revs, you'd have to wonder why they'd even want to be Facebook.

By building tools meant for the bleeding edge of serious business users and taking money from a huge CRM company, LinkedIn is clearly making a statement that their future is getting deeper into the workflow of their professional users, not in getting a wider userbase and being the place where everyone gathers.  Sure, they continue to grow, but what wasn't released yesterday was a resume builder wizard, significant improvement to Groups (which still lags significantly behind Meetup) or a tutorial on how to get the most out of the site.  These would have been tools that would have introduced more people to the site or driven more engagement for the masses of people with profiles who barely use the site.  Clearly, my dad the web unsavvy accountant who runs a small practice out of his house isn't the intended audience here, it's the VP of Regional Sales for Cisco who wants to eventually plug LinkedIn to the rest of his CRM driven process.  

In fact, you could have made a case that if they wanted that wide Facebook-like userbase and a less intimidating onramp for gathering likeminded people who share interests, they should have bought Meetup.  Instead, by opening up the platform to Slideshare and other similar apps, it looks they're signalling that stay at home moms and German speakers in Sioux City aren't the people you're likely to want to make professional connections with. 

In my opinion, that means that a huge segment of the population is going to be left behind by LinkedIn's value proposition.  The more LinkedIn networking feels like work, the less mainstream the usage will be, but also the more actual work will get done.  Given that actual work seems very monetizable, I have no doubt that LinkedIn and its business platform will generate significant revenues, but also leave a gaping hole in the market for more casual networkers--ie the 99 percent of the rest of us.

The most recent tracks I've been listening to on last.fm:

A short time ago, I got invited to testify in front of the NYC Council. The hearing is supposed to:

"...focus on improving the city’s technology small business sector. The hearing will examine the state of a business sector that NY has traditionally lagged behind in, specifically the recently created NYC Seed program, which will provide up to $200,000 (per company) of investment into New York-based technology start-ups. The hearing will also examine what steps can be taken to better fund (i.e. venture capitalism) the growth of startup technological companies in order to make NYC more competitive with other cities when it comes to the technology sector."

Here's the testimony that I'll give today:

Charlie O'Donnell (charlie@path101.com)

Co-founder & CEO of Path 101 (www.path101.com), Founder, nextNY (www.nextNY.org),  Blogger (www.thisisgoingtobebig.com), #71 on 2007 Silicon Alley Insider Influentials list, Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship - Fordham University, Instructor - ITAC FastTrac

First, I'd like to say thank you to the Council members who continue to have a strong interest in the NYC technology community.   Having a critical mass of influential people committed to maintaining and improving New York City as a place for innovation is half the battle.

Unfortunately for an organization as large as the New York City government, the other half of this battle is a ground war.  The ideas that will have the most impact on the local technology community are those that go house to house, school to school, wifi node to wifi node.  The stumbling blocks to improving our area's ability to promote innovation aren't simple--they're nounced. 

Take, for example, the NYC Seed program.  There has never ever been a lack of capital in New York City--for any kind of investment.  Many startups have been funded by people in the financial or real estate industries, when they're not funded by traditional venture capital firms.   No, money is not the issue, as I have written about before.  The issue is that there are not enough dedicated institutions who are economically incentivized to build community and business infrastructure here.  Owen Davis, at the end of the day, is one guy with $2 million who will get the chance to help 10 companies over the next year.  That's fantastic, but what if policy changes lead to the abandoning of this program.  Other than those 10 companies, which early stage statistics assume that at least half probably won't make it anyway, what will be the permanent impact of his work? 

If he had, let's say, a four year window, as most venture capital firms do, he'd have the time to build the necessarily relationships with all of the places where innovation comes from here in the city.  If he had a staff member or two, he'd be able to spend time not just investing, but working to create permanent channels to schools, businesses, professional groups, and technology centers--and he'd have the time horizon to accept longer term return on investment from building these relationships.  Institutional investors give their VCs a four year mandate to make investments across economic cycles--there's no reason why NYC Seed shouldn't have the same runway.  

At the end of the day, longer committments and more people on the ground are needed because innovation comes not from technology, but from people--and New York City technology has a people problem.  Local schools, with few exceptions, are not consistantly developing students focused on creating value through entrepreneurship and technological innovation.  You can build all the incubators you want--unless you're seeding students as early as high school or junior high with the idea that they could build the next Google here in New York, and giving them the learning tools to accomplish that, it's never going to happen.  

Here are two suggestions I'd make for New York City to make a bigger people impact:

First, I'd create the position of a technology community manager.  Large websites have community managers to make sure that they're aware what's going on in their communities, and that their communities are aware of all of the site's resources.  I'm as involved in the local community as any entrepreneur, and I still can't tell you the difference between what the NYC Council's mandate is related to technology and how that differs from the EDC, the Department of Small Business Services, how they relate to NYSTAR, etc.   A community manager would be a single point of contact whose mandate would be to familiarize themselves with all city services, local university programs, community groups, large businesses interested in working with the local tech community and other initiatives.  For example, nextNY is looking to run an event on business development best practices for startup companies.  We're looking for some space to run the event for between 50-100 people.  We have no budget.  I know there's probably some big company with a sizable conference room who'd love to have a bunch of startups come in and talk about business development one night.   I just don't know who that is and how to contact them.   A tech community manager could do that--and significantly help with these types of issues that involved local entrepreneurs try to solve on their own all the time in addition to their dayjobs.  

The second thing I would do would be to refocus on technology education in not only the public school system but also work with private schools and universities as well.  It needs to start early, too.  We can't have all our creative and talented youth thinking that their only opportunity for success in NYC is to work for a Fortune 500 company, because small business and entrepreneurship is what drives the growth in our economy.  How about a charter school built around information technology entrepreneurship--one that works with the best local computer science programs to provide scholarships to students trying to create their own businesses?   We need better answers to the question, "Where do world class developers come from in NYC?"   Right now, the school system isn't the answer to that question.

More than anything else, though, I think it's important that our local government--the individuals--lead by example and participate in the local technology community.  The local community is hyper connected through blogging, social networking sites, and a quirky but rapidly growing service called Twitter that ties people together one 160 character short form message at a time.  There are currently almost 2000 up and coming technology and digital media professionals on the nextNY listserv--are any of you on it?   Sure, it's kind of geeky in it's content, but you can set it to provide a daily digest.   If you're not on it, and can't spare the time to read the one daily digest e-mail of the group's activities, I'm not exactly sure how you're really going to be able to be supportive of the local tech community.  Communities are growing organically on these sites--like the 500+ people who have attached themselves to the Shake Shack Twitter account, mostly local tech folks, in order to navigate the long lines at our favorite local food establishment.   These communities are growing largely without the participation of local government leaders.  How many of you have a blog on your own websites that gets at least one posting a week, or a social networking profile that you yourself actually login to with similar frequency?   If you're not doing this, you're really not going to be in the flow of the needs of the local community.

Last week, Sam Lessin of Drop.io hosted a talk on the future of venture capital.  A question was asked as to weather or not there will be a need for venture capital as it becomes cheaper and cheaper to build a company.

I have to be honest...This cheap to build a company thing is one of the biggest steaming heaps of sheep poo I've ever heard.  I keep waiting for some TV voice to say, "You, too, can have a Web 2.0 company of your very own for 3 easy payments of $19.95!"

Yes, it is orders of magnitude cheaper to build an internet web service that hundreds of thousands of people use, but that doesn't make it a company.  Without a business model or significant revenues, you do not have a company.  In fact, you do not even have a product, because, last time I checked, products have the potential to generate revenue. 

Web services with hundreds of thousands, if not millions of users--those are products.  They can start generating revenues because their "product" is access to a community and they sell that to advertisers.  Without a large community, what you have is a prototype--an experience even.  I don't care how many people were in the beta.  I smile when VCs look for "early traction", since I'm not even sure that 100k users is proof of much of anything that seriously de-risks the business.  Yes, you built something, but that doesn't mean it scales, crosses the mainstream chasm, or that it can be a business.  Of course, you'd rather have those people than not, but success is still very much an uphill climb from there. 

To generate significant, sustainable revenues, you have to have sales people, support people, management, marketing people--and last I checked, salaries have gone up in the last x years.  All they do is go up.  So, while you're not paying Microsoft for server software, you're still paying for great marketing people and probably more than you used to.  Real companies have real expenses, like people, rent.  Technology overhead, while dramatically lower, shouldn't be your number one cost once you reach a certain scale--unless you're crawling the web or streaming video, and funny enough, those costs can still pile up.   I don't see YouTube paying their bandwidth bill on spare change yet.

Even if you're PlentyofFish, overhead makes a company.  Despite the revenues, I'm not sure that a company has been built there.  It's certainly not one I'd want to buy, because there's no institutional knowledge, no brand work, etc.  What do you have if you buy it and Markus gets hit buy a bus?  You have someone else's keyword click generator without the instruction manual.  It's certainly not the kind of thing that lasts past the founder, which makes it a really awesome lifestyle business, but not really a company.  In that case, cheap to build has been swaped out for sustainability.

Its not even true that you're getting to market that much faster either.  If you were building a semiconductor company ten years ago, sure it took you two years to complete a chip, but the day it was done, you signed your first million dollar order or someone bought you.  How long is it taking Web 2.0 companies to generate that much in revs?  On average, just as long if not longer.  If your goal is 25 mil in revs and 50-100 people to support that effort, then its really not so cheap to build a company.  Cheaper than it was perhaps, but not discovery of electricity cheaper.  Oh, and whatever magnitude cheaper you're building companies at now is also the magnitude of price degradation in the market.  There's more competition for that discretionary dollar and higher expectation on behalf of the consumer.  If you can build cheap, than someone else can, and then prices go down... so cheap to build doesn't mean sustainable margin expansion.

What about Craigslist?  Twenty something employees driving teens to twenty in revs in 300 cities. 

What about it? 

JK Rowling prints that in a week and she probably has a support team of about that size, too.  She's basically a company. Her licensing deals are just printing money for her at ridiculous margins.  It's a media model, and Craigslist is basically a media company.  

Also keep in mind that, by dollar, web services only represent a tiny percentage of what VCs invest in.  Many VCs are investing in chips, routers, devices, pharma, materials...even retail... Still putting 10-20 million dollars to work in a deal.  None of these companies have been built on Web 2.0 capex models.  They require people, hardware, buildings, tangible products.

So, to think that there's no need for VC anymore because a small percentage of the market needs less money seems a bit silly.

I'm really surprised at Dave Winer. 

He just compared Twitter to Netscape and proposed that the microblogging company may get left in the dust if it doesn't work to "open up".  He then outlined all the mistakes that Netscape made when it lost the "browser war" to Microsoft.

Only...  he didn't even get close to half right in his assessment of why Netscape failed and the lesson that Twitter should learn from it.  I would think with his experience, he'd know better.

His first point:

"Netscape had left their Mac browser to languish while they focused on Windows. Microsoft, realizing that most web developers used Macs, produced an excellent Mac browser first, and worked closely with Mac developers to make sure their browser worked with the Mac software web developers used."

Actually, Microsoft signed an agreement with Apple to be their default browser for 5 years starting in 1997.   When you're the default browser on operating systems that operate 90%+ of all computers, then of course you're going to have dominant market share.  When you're talking mainstream usage, people will click on whatever browser brings them to the internet for the most part, not whatever the web developer using a Mac told them to use.

Did Dave forget that Microsoft's anti-competitive behavior around the browser cost it nearly a billion dollars in fines?  Seriously, when's the last time someone ever accused Microsoft of winning market share by building a superior product?   It was Microsoft's ruthless business practices that won them share, not quality of product or developer outreach. 

When the agreement expired, and Apple switched to Safari as their default, IE for Mac share went down the tubes.  So much for the superior product and developer relationships. 

Lesson for Twitter here?  None.

Second point:

"Netscape let anyone download their browser for free, but charged corporate users for the software. Microsoft's browser was totally free for everyone."

True, but again... what's the Twitter lesson here?  Twitter is free and they're not even charging for use of their API, no matter how much people pound it.  If anything, there have been developers who have called for Twitter to start charging for a better level of API service.

Third point:

"Microsoft fixed bugs, enhanced performance, listened to market and responded, did all the things a mature company that remembered its entrepreneurial roots could do. Netscape, being a disorganized, chaotic Valley wunderkind, did none of this."

Obviously, Dave hasn't used Twitter in the last six months, because Twitter, if anything, has done a seriously commendable job hearing the performance issues and systematically solving them.  The Fail Whale is nearly extinct and anyone who uses Twitter really can't argue with the amazing turnaround in the performance of the service. 

Microsoft fixing bugs?  Really...    Again, here's Dave accusing MSFT of winning through product quality.  Bizarre.

Dave goes on to put Twitter in the same boat as IBM, who tried to shut down the clonemakers and lost the PC Software market.   Twitter isn't trying to do that.  Frankly, they're not paying much attention to the clones mostly because their users aren't.  People like Twitter.  Users have an emotional attachment to the service that is actually very reminiscent of how people feel about Apple.  The mass migrations to Pownce, Jaiku, Indenti.ca, and Friendfeed never happened.  

I forget who said it, but Dave's post reminds me of when someone in the tech blogs said that "Open means 'gimme' ".   People who want "open" are the have nots, and for the most part, most users are pretty satisfied with closed when there's a good quality product.  Apple is a shining example of that.  People want good and simple more than they want open. 

That's not to say that Twitter doesn't have a monetization challenge ahead of it.  It also needs to do a better job of explaining it's value proposition to mainstream users and signing up group of people at a time.  If anything kills it, it's not going to be the fact that the service isn't open enough. 

Links I've recently tagged on del.icio.us:

2008-10-23_1751, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

McCain asked me whether I wanted to make my own "Joe the Plumber-esque " sign. I adjusted it for my own purposes. :) It looks much better now.

Path 101 conversation on Chatterous this morning...  Jen, Alex and I were all in the office, and Hilary was working remotely today.  Tell me we're not a fun bunch to work with...

[ 10/23/08 11:09 ] alex lines says:

whoah, business mullett

[ 10/23/08 11:09 ] alex lines says:

in the wild!

[ 10/23/08 11:10 ] Hilary says:

photo?

[ 10/23/08 11:10 ] alex lines says:

hmm, if he comes back by I'll try to snap one but it could be dangerous

[ 10/23/08 11:11 ] Hilary says:

heh

[ 10/23/08 11:12 ] Jen Oslislo says:

what does one do if a mullet is provoked into attack?

[ 10/23/08 11:12 ] alex lines says:

judicious use of scissors can sometimes work

[ 10/23/08 11:12 ] ceonyc says:

Don't run

[ 10/23/08 11:12 ] ceonyc says:

they can smell fear

[ 10/23/08 11:12 ] ceonyc says:

lie still

[ 10/23/08 11:13 ] Jen Oslislo says:

climb a tree?

[ 10/23/08 11:13 ] Jen Oslislo says:

ah

[ 10/23/08 11:13 ] ceonyc says:

Are you kidding?

[ 10/23/08 11:13 ] alex lines says:

or start playing "I'm proud to be an american" and they'll be forced to stand still and salute as you make your getaway

[ 10/23/08 11:13 ] ceonyc says:

Mullets can climb trees!

[ 10/23/08 11:13 ] ceonyc says:

They're expert climbers.

[ 10/23/08 11:13 ] Jen Oslislo says:

haha

[ 10/23/08 11:13 ] Jen Oslislo says:

can they swim?

[ 10/23/08 11:13 ] Hilary says:

hehe

[ 10/23/08 11:13 ] alex lines says:

definitely not

[ 10/23/08 11:13 ] ceonyc says:

And they "fly", too... like squirrels

[ 10/23/08 11:13 ] ceonyc says:

that's what that tail is for

[ 10/23/08 11:14 ] ceonyc says:

used as a glider

[ 10/23/08 11:14 ] alex lines says:

though they are borne along the top of the water on an oily slick

[ 10/23/08 11:14 ] Jen Oslislo says:

you'd think it would act as a rudder in water

[ 10/23/08 11:14 ] ceonyc says:

Yes, but they're not bouyant.

[ 10/23/08 11:14 ] ceonyc says:

Sink straight to the bottom

[ 10/23/08 11:14 ] ceonyc says:

like your ID card in the toilet.

[ 10/23/08 11:15 ] Jen Oslislo says:

do they also have an innate fear of urine?

[ 10/23/08 11:15 ] alex lines says:

it's territorial

[ 10/23/08 11:16 ] Jen Oslislo says:

interesting

[ 10/23/08 11:16 ] Jen Oslislo says:

so charlie... do you shave your head to hide your true mullet nature?

[ 10/23/08 11:16 ] ceonyc says:

No, my mullet ran off with another woman.

[ 10/23/08 11:16 ] alex lines says:

that's what I was wondering. maybe charlie's hair only grows in one shape

[ 10/23/08 11:16 ] Hilary says:

I think we've all been wanting to ask that question.

[ 10/23/08 11:16 ] Jen Oslislo says:

hahaha

[ 10/23/08 11:17 ] alex lines says:

did it run off on her head?

[ 10/23/08 11:17 ] Jen Oslislo says:

if a mullet bites you, do you grow one yourself?

[ 10/23/08 11:17 ] ceonyc says:

Yes

[ 10/23/08 11:17 ] ceonyc says:

You can only kill it with Holy Water

[ 10/23/08 11:18 ] alex lines says:

from a hairdresser's spray bottle

[ 10/23/08 11:18 ] ceonyc says:

The power of Christ compels you! The power of Christ compels you!

[ 10/23/08 11:19 ] Hilary says:

This whole conversation just gave me a vivid flashback to this show I saw once as a kid - Hell Toupee: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0511100/

[ 10/23/08 11:19 ] alex lines says:

oh it was an amazing story

[ 10/23/08 11:19 ] alex lines says:

i remember those

[ 10/23/08 11:19 ] ceonyc says:

"That story is amazing!"

[ 10/23/08 11:19 ] alex lines says:

very touching

[ 10/23/08 11:20 ] ceonyc says:

IMDB User Comments: Guilty Pleasure

[ 10/23/08 11:21 ] Hilary says:

There must be a killer mullet movie somewhere.

[ 10/23/08 11:21 ] Jen Oslislo says:

if not, yet another potential revenue stream for path101

[ 10/23/08 11:22 ] Jen Oslislo says:

we could just film alex trying to photograph the mullet

[ 10/23/08 11:22 ] ceonyc says:

http://i212.photobucket.com/albums/cc157/whitey_cid/mullet.jpg

[ 10/23/08 11:22 ] ceonyc says:

Best. Mullet. Ever.

[ 10/23/08 11:22 ] alex lines says:

one of my favorites

[ 10/23/08 11:22 ] Jen Oslislo says:

that is a beaut

[ 10/23/08 11:22 ] alex lines says:

mccain supporter

[ 10/23/08 11:22 ] Hilary says:

And the shorts... wow.

[ 10/23/08 11:23 ] ceonyc says:

Actually, it's one of Sarah Palin's kids.

[ 10/23/08 11:23 ] ceonyc says:

Mullet Palin

[ 10/23/08 11:23 ] alex lines says:

don't you mean jorts

[ 10/23/08 11:23 ] Hilary says:

haha

[ 10/23/08 11:23 ] ceonyc says:

Great accidental product placement for safecraft.com

[ 10/23/08 11:24 ] ceonyc says:

Safecraft Safety Equipment is used by most of the top professionals in Motorsports, Automotive, Aviation, Marine and other demanding industries.

[ 10/23/08 11:24 ] Jen Oslislo says:

i can't stop looking at it

[ 10/23/08 11:24 ] ceonyc says:

Saw that one coming.

[ 10/23/08 11:28 ] alex lines says:

yep, that's him, businessmullet. http://www.mulletsgalore.com/classifications/01/