Whisky with Boesky, and cookies with Milken
Thursday, September 28, 2006
One of my favourite Futurama episodes is
Futurestock.
If you've seen the episode, you'll remember "that guy," who froze himself in the eighties after he was diagnosed with bonitis. Fry nominated him to become the CEO of Planet Express "not just because he has a suit, but because he knows about business and stuff, and he has a tie."
In turn "that guy" made Fry vice-chairman of the board. They changed the name of the company to PlanEx and did nothing, except to arrange a merger with Mom's Friendly Delivery Company. Mhh...all the synergies.
It was an awesome episode. Awesome to the max.
There are a couple of things they don't teach in MBA school, but "that guy" comes to the rescue. For example:
On the subject of pep-talks: "There are only two kinds of people: sheep and shark. Anyone who is a sheep, is fired. Who's a sheep?"
Setting a mission: "Sharks are winners and they don't look back, because they don't have necks. Necks are for sheep."
Management strategies: "The first order of business is to blame everything on the guy before me."
Setting a marketing strategy (a genius): "Delivery has nothing to do with the delivery business. Image, people. Image."
And finaly, "that guy" on friendship: "I'm an eighties guy. Friendship to me means that for two bucks I beat you with a pool cue until you got detached retinas."
Man, I want to be an "80's dollar jockey," but I don't want to have any regrets, like "that guy" did. In his deathbed he said, and I quote, "My only regret is that...I have bonitis." It's funny, you see, he actually forgot to cure his bonitis because he was "too busy being an eighties guy."
By the way, I'm wondering how long this site,
dailyepisodes.com, will stay up. I can see a truck full of angry lawyers getting ready to battle. (And funny enough, some may even dress like "that guy.")
Finally, the title of this entry is a quote from the episode. "That guy" was alluding to the fact that he was the toast of Wall Street.
Boesky and
Milken were in fact big players in the U.S. finance world. Although they ended up being crooks, they were very big. (Those Futurama writers were very clever.)
Comments:
Thanks for the clarification on the Boesky/Milken joke here. I'm a big Futurama fan, but admittedly, this one went over my head.
what's a pool cube? I thought he said a pool cue. (the sticks they use )
Oops...Cube == cue.
Thanks, Anonymous.