Gap Kids

Time has discovered that Gap Kids apparel are being made by, wait for it, kids. Apparently the kids were sold into servitude and cannot go home until their debt is paid. If the kids cried they were beaten with a rubber hose and had oilly rags shoved into their mouths. The halls were covered in shit from an overflowing toilet. Maybe I'm just a rich white guy, but I would rather die than sell my child into harsh slave labor.

Gap says it is investigating. It also apparently has terminated 23 factories for child labor violations in the last year. I suppose we're supposed to be impressed with that, but I hear that and that just sounds like a tremendous breakdown in their process. They don't make that many items. How can they have 23 different factories in a single year with child labor issues? And how disruptive to their business to have to churn that many vendors. Every human being should be pissed about this and their shareholders should be double pissed. That Gap knows of this behavior and has not immediately terminated that factory really says something.

The Rat on top

Ratatouille hit $515M globally this week. Its $10M from tying Monsters Inc. which it will probably pass at this point. That will make it the #3 Pixar movie outgrossed only by The Incredibles and Finding Nemo. So much for the haters!

Magic Airlines

The Disney Blog posted this old Eastern Airlines commercial when it was the official airline of Disney World. Creepy.

It just goes to show you how unmanicured the Disney brand was in the past and how tightly controlled it is now. Brand Management would never let an ad like this happen today.

Applebees

I'm in Washington today to see Nintendo. We had no time to get to our meeting and the only place was an Applebees. How disgusting? I had a real hard time finding something that wasn't deep fried, had a creamy sauce, or had two kinds of cheese. I had a chicken fajita wrap, which was loaded with hidden cheese. It was gross. I want to throw up.

Nintendo was awesome. They have a little museum of old hardware there like the Virtual Boy. You can get Wiis there and they are fully in stock! I got one and some Donkey Kong merch for my kids.

Now I'm headed to SFO. Tonight I'm having dinner with Cottie at Masa's. Hopefully, I will be able to eat by the time I land and the real cuisine will clean out my system.

Its 5:54 am

And I have the pina colado song stuck in my head because of Samatha Who? Good show. But that song is driving me crazy.

Speaking of crazy, it's another crazy week. Yesterday and today packed every minute 8-7 with meetings, half of them obligatory but not very important, which are the worst kind because they are like a sentence.

Tomorrow I go to Nintendo in Washington, then Pixar for two days. Too. Much. Travel. Must. Stop.

The Rat passes McQueen on the inside lane

Ratatouille has now opened throughout Europe and just passed Cars global box office. Rumor is, it may wind up over $500M. So much for the haters.

The new DCA

The rumors are true. Disney announced a $1.1B rehab of Disney's California Adventure yesterday. The changes will be extensive and I can't wait to see it all complete. Here's the highlights:


New Theming
DCA will be extensively re-themed to be like California when Walt first arrived. The whole front of the park will be ripped up and replaced. The new "weenie" will be based on the Cathay Circle theater where Snow White first bowed. Its the castle equivalent for this park. There will be extensive theme changes and placemaking throughout the park.


Cars Land
Probably most excitingly, there will be a new Cars themed land with 3 new Cars rides and an "E"-ticket racing ride based on GM test track. Cars Land will add another 12 acres to the park.


Disney's World of Color
A fantastic new nighttime water show that is supposed to blow the doors off The Bellagio.



Paradise Pier
We knew about Toy Story Mania, but they are also adding a Little Mermaid E-Ticket. I wonder if they have dusted off Tony Baxter's plans or started from scratch. In any case, good to see that its not all Pixar in this rehab.

Blue Sky Disney says there's even more to come. If so, I can't wait to see what's next. But just think how much fun this park is going to be when all this is done.

Today, DCA has 3 must-ride E-Tickets - Tower of Terror, Soarin', and the roller coaster. River Rapids is okay, but at every theme park. Monsters Inc. is kind of lame but some decent fun if the line's not too long. And the kids love Turtle Talk. That's kind of it. This adds 3 new E-Tickets and some nice C and D tickets. It still ain't Disneyland, but its getting closer. A lot closer. There are going to be some rides in DCA that you just won't want to miss on your visit and that is going to drive a lot higher visitation.

The Future of Headphones

For more free cartoons you can use, follow the jump to We Blog Cartoons. Thanks Hypebot!

Bowie Couture

David Bowie has a new line of clothes at Target. Yes, they have skinny ties.

Hypebot on Total Music

Here's Hypebot's take on Total Music....

"Whether device manufacturers like Zune or Creative will agree to play ball remains to be seen, but its hard to imagine that someone won't grasp at this latest rope thrown from the sinking major label warships.

Most pundits will try to make this a Major Labels vs. Steve Jobs death match. "We got rolled like a bunch of puppies," Morris said during a private meeting." But "Total Control" is really is more about competing with free music grabbed via P2P and from friends. If is work's - and the concept will take many twists and turns before it ever becomes available - Morris & Co. will have changed the game again.

PS - Sell your shares in Napster before the John Q investor figures this out. And consider finishing your law degree. Big money will be made litigating how a share of a $90 one time fee is covered by a standard recording contract."

Terra Firma

Finally, someone who gets it. You may recall that EMI was acquired by a private equity group called Terra Firma. The head of Terra Firma wrote a little note to EMI's staff the other day with his thoughts on former EMI group Radiohead's decision to publish and distribute its new album without a record company. Some excerpts and the full text after the jump:

"EMI Recorded Music still has value to the vast majority of artists - in funding their development and in distributing and marketing their music - but highly successful bands have other alternatives for making money (such as touring) and a few, especially the more established ones, may be able to abandon their label and try to go it alone. You can see why they might choose to do so. Why should they subsidise their label’s new talent roster - or for that matter their record company’s excessive expenditures and advances - particularly when they are providing income to their record company through their catalogue sales?

We will need to give artists at all levels a deal that is fair to both sides, perhaps one that moves away from the large advances model of old and provides a true alignment of interests and transparency.

However, for every artist being signed to us, regardless of level, we need to deliver them maximum value and a world-class service; we need to develop products that the consumer wants. We need to develop revenue streams both for our artists and for EMI that come from many channels and not just from CDs. We need to be best in class at identifying and developing these revenue streams where best in class is not being judged against the recorded music business, but against international businesses of all types."

Mike on Music

Cottistador has a few thoughts on "Total Music"...

"And the funny thing is, they're even more fucked than they know. The next great music label already exists, and it's sitting in Beverly Hills as we speak -- MySpace. They are very much aware of how lucky they got that every upcoming band decided to use them to communicate with fans, and have grabbed that ball with both hands and are running with it like their asses are on fire. I was down there last month on business, and got a detailed briefing on their roadmap. Suffice to say that Murdoch -- as he so often does -- got one hell of deal for his money, and that he'll own a huge chunk of the music industry in five years time."

Universally Dumb

BusinessWeek has an article about Universal Music's plan to launch an industry owned and run music subscription service. Oh, and they have their asshole buddies Sony Music on board too. Sound familiar? It should, because these same two companies tried - and failed - to do the same thing with pressplay, a memorable disaster. And remember the other industry download effort, MusicNet. Yep, same thing happened. These dumb asses have only one idea and that idea is just not going to work.

Here's the new twist, the polish on the turd, if you will. Now instead of selling subscriptions to consumers, they want to sell them to MP3 player makers, so the consumer never has to directly pay for the songs. They figure it will cost only $90 per player because people buy new MP3 players every 18 months. $90 cost works out to roughly $180 retail. So SanDisk's entry price point player would go from $29 to $210. Smart guys, really smart. Sure you'll have a lot of takers on that one. Bet Apple is quaking in its boots with that $180 cost advantage they have. Maybe they'll finesse it a little bit and figure that someone with a 512MB player can only hold about 120 songs and then figure that only a fraction of those are downloaded, and come up with some lower scaled amount, but that would require the music industry to not be greedy or stupid, so probably not.

What gets me is all this talk from Vivendi's CEO about how "indecent" it is that Apple makes 30% of the sale. Indecent? The record company gets 70% of the take?! WTF? Retailers make 30% on CDs and you don't hear these guys calling Wal-Mart indecent (Wal-Mart would instantly crush them for such insolence). And remember that on CDs, you probably have about $1-2 of material cost plus transportation plus mark downs, none of which exist at all the download space. Not to mention that Apple does a much better job of selling long tail content while brick-and-mortar retailers only sell hits for the most part. So what are these shitheads complaining about? They are more profitable per song than they have ever been in stores and they are selling more of their back catalogs than ever.

I'll tell you why, because Apple insists on a la carte song sales, so consumers are cherry picking. They are buying the one or two songs they like on a record and skipping the filler. And that's killing the music companies' revenues. But you know what? Make better songs and maybe people will buy them.

Picking a fight with Apple makes zero sense. These greedheads deserve what they are going to get. Rampant piracy. Anti-trust lawsuits. Shareholder revolt. CEO churn. Until someone with a brain figures out they need to find a more efficient model for doing business that is compatible with where the consumer and the future is going instead of trying to fight both constantly. This industry is caught in deja vu and it needs to snap out of it.

Almighty

Sitting on the airplane. They have Evan Almighty on. I would like to think that God is like Morgan Freeman in this movie for two reasons. First, I think Morgan Freeman has a cool voice and manner about him. Second, I like the idea of God wearing linens PJs everywhere because I'd like to think that God is comfortably dressed.

Toy Fair

Today I'm at Toy Fair in Dallas. The shuttle from the hotel to the convention center is a huge SUV limo. Very cheesy!

Mob Rule

Some teacher dressed up like a cheerleader and did a cheer for her class and some kid reported it and put it on YouTube. Now a whole bunch of people are making crazy about it and want the teach fired. Matt Lauer and Merideth Viera don't get the issue and neither do I. Its so totally out of context. But more than that, we have got to stop this ridiculous mob rule in America. America is going crazy over every little scandal and the witch hunts are getting worse and worse.

We have too much TV shelf space and not enough real news to fill it. YouTube and the Internet just make that worse. People have nothing to talk about so they talk about things we wouldn't have given 5 minutes to a decade ago. Exercise some common sense America!

Nazi-style experiments on US children

Yes, its true. George Bush is testing pesticides on babies. WTF? Is there anything that these evil bastards won't do?

The Real Meaning of American Pie

This video has been on YouTube for a while, but I didn't post it when I first saw it. Its awesome and explains a lot about Don MacLean's American Pie. Must watch!

Will there ever be another Bob Dylan?

Was just thinking about the music I want my kids to learn about and a lot of it was from before I was born. Do I think that Dylan and The Beatles are better than a lot of what came after because they are older or did they achieve a standard we haven't seen since?

My generation was robbed of its Dylans. The only thing I think we had that approached him was Nirvana and Tupac and both were killed.

Today the music business has become such a machine that there isn't much room for a Dylan. Not marketable enough they would say. Maybe the internet is the last refuge of the jester, but if so, then where is he?

Watch This

Disney comes to Hawaii

Yes, its true, Disney is coming to the island of Oahu. Its not a theme park, its the first of Disney's themed resorts. The resort will be 21 acres and have 800 rooms. The resort is supposed to tell authentic Hawaiian stories and honor local tradition. I wonder, will we get a Tiki Room? Oh please let it be so. Make a Tiki restaurant like Walt's original idea.

Here's an image, although you can't see much because the resort is obscured by trees. I can't wait, and yet I have to, because the resort doesn't open until 2011.

Thanks Disney Blog!

Wall-E video

This link will take you to a Wall-E video on YouTube that was recently shown at some trade show. Its a nice little interview with Andrew Stanton. Unfortunately, whoever posted this turned embedding off, so you gotta make the jump.

Apple finally gets some competition

Microsoft released its new Zunes today, a new 80GB Zune and two flash based Zunes. Take a look at the specs and I think you see something interesting - for the first time, Apple's got a little competition. They still don't have the multi-touch interface. But MS has a lot of multi-touch patents from Surface and has the multi-touch king running MS Research, Bill Buxton. But I digress...the Zune flash is at the same prices as the iPod Nano, but with WiFi and a slightly smaller screen. The 80GB Zune has a 3.2" screen, almost as big as the iPod Touch, but with the right storage and someone paying over $200 wants. This is what the touch should have been. This is going to get interesting.

In other news, Amazon launched its MP3 DRM-free store with Warner Music as well as EMI. The interface sucks, but I'm going to start buying music there because I don't want the shackles and with news like the new Zune, I'm not sure Apple's going to have the best player all the time.