imjingjing

We love LA. Century Boulevard? We love it. Victory Boulevard? We love it. Santa Monica Boulevard? We love it. Sixth Street? We love it. That street where a hooker beat me up with her dick after I called her out for selling me Baking Soda instead of cocaine WHO DOES S/HE THINK I AM , A RUBE?!?! We love it. That’s why for this edition of The Business, we got some of the finest comics currently residing in the City of Angels to drop by: Andy Haynes was born in the shadows of Mt. Rainier in the wilds of the Pacific Northwest, raised on salmon and caffeine. He now lives in Los Angeles, where he works as comedian, and writer. Part camp counselor, part debate team captain, he’s bringing his immature take on serious issue to audiences around the English speaking world. With recent performances on the Late Night with Jimmy Fallon show, and at the New Faces showcase at the Montreal Just for Laughs Festival, Andy is becoming a must see performer. Nick Turner is a humble ...

The Business gets feral this week. Our corporate office will be inundated with wild animals, as Sam Tallent, Cameron Vannini and Dr. Foxmeat get all up in our habitat. Since all bios for Dr. Foxmeat have been either scratched into bark or howled at the moon, there is n o written record from which to draw data. What we can conclude is that he is from Arcata, California on some kind of southward trek (which is weird, cause harvest isn’t for months). Cameron Vannini is a dapper, young SF comic and philanthropist. Also known as the San Francisco Treat, Cameron performs regularly at the SF Punchline and is a AAA card member (even though he doesn't have a license). He has been spotted at Cobb's Comedy club, the San Jose Improv, and the Sacramento Punchline. Ingredients include the 2010 SF International Comedy competition and semi finalist in 2010 SJ Improv comedy competition. Sam Tallent's from Denver. Alex Koll and him have done some very bad things together...

Making small digital news providers sustainable has become the holy grail of journalists and the search continues for workable business models and revenue streams. Advertising may produce some revenue, but it will never generate sufficient resources to support digital journalism because so little advertising money is available for sites with small audiences. About three-quarters of all online advertising goes to the top 10 sites and Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Yahoo account for about 60 percent of all online revenue. This leaves very little advertising expenditures to be contested among all other players--of which news providers are only a small fraction. At the same time, the prices paid for online advertising are falling because there are so many sites offering advertising, the advertising inventory is nearly infinite, and audiences continue fragmenting. This means the majority of funding for start-up digital journalism must come from elsewhere and online news sites—especially s...

This week the Business loses Chris and Chris, but welcomes back two local faves Anna Seregina and Rajeev Dhar to make up for our Chris-less-ness. Anna Seregina is a San Francisco-based stand-up comic and performer. She was born in Moscow, Russia, which could explain her deep-rooted cynicism. It could also explain nothing. After being involved in theater and improv for nearly a decade and being funny for nearly a lifetime, she decided to take the plunge into stand-up comedy. Her style can nearly be defined as vocal and un-lady-like, drawing heavily on what little life experience she has. She has been described as having the “worst aura.” Most facts about her are true. Most truths about her are facts. Rajeev Dhar (Phd) has a Tumblr page, but it's password protected, so I couldn't lift his bio from it word-for-word like I did Anna's. Regardless, he is very funny and runs the Tuesday night comedy show called The Break Room at Amnesia in the Mission, not far fr...

Lots of coverage already on the NYRA cover-up: here , here , here and here , for starters. Here's what we know: The New York statute permitting an extra 1% takeout (to 26%) on certain exotic wagers "sunsetted" on September 15, 2010. At that point, the takeout was supposed to drop back to 25% -- still way too high. NYRA CEO Charlie Hayward was alerted to the upcoming change by an internal email from NYRA's vice-president for simulcasting before the deadline. Charlie apparently referred the matter to NYRA's $400,000-plus-per-year general counsel Pat Kehoe. In September, 2011, a year after the deadline, Steve Crist of the Daily Racing Form passed a message on the Hayward from a DRF reader asking, hey, what about that takeout change? Hayward said he'd take care of it and asked Crist not to go public with the matter. In December, 2011, the takeout problem finally became public and NYRA said "oops" and took steps to refund the $8 million-plus in overcharg...