4/18/2008

Wall Street Journal Parody

Some people decided that this Wall Street Journal guy was made up. I went to the security tape and it shows how he put a WSJ coin tray on the counter, then started looking for the parody issue, and then asked about buying them all. I took one for myself. This person is named David Laurent and he is based in Riverside.

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He is putting the coin tray on the counter.

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I am examining the coin tray while David Laurent looks for the parody issues.

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He asks about buying them all and I take one for myself.

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Dave Metz looks at a copy while we look for more.

****

I was in the NY Times!
By Alexander Laurence

I dreamed of seeing my name in the New York Times one day for hitting a home run in a crucial game or for some great book review. But this article about the parody issue of the Wall Street Journal will do. I have worked part-time at a newsstand in Los Angeles for a year. It has enabled me to meet all sorts of people. I have had some contact with many people who live in that neighborhood in Fairfax Village.

Kosher News is a newsstand that has been there since the 1940s. It is across the street from Canter's Deli which has been in Los Angeles for almost a century. Axl Rose has been rumored to have worked at the newsstand when he first moved to Los Angeles. One day I had just started and was tired. I was talking to a friend Dave Metz.

We were talking about some things that had happened that week. It was a sunny comfortable day. This guy from the Wall Street Journal walks up and installs a new coin tray on the counter. I asked him if he has any WSJ bags. He says that he doesn't. Then he picks up some copies of this newspaper called "My Wall Street Journal." Since I hadn't worked there for a few days I didn't notice it, and wasn't aware of it. Me and Dave Metz talked to him about what it was. It was found out that it was a parody issue of the newspaper.

I thought to myself if he is buying all these I need to have one for myself. Just like a few months ago when everyone was buying copies of New York Magazine with Lindsay Lohan on the cover. I needed to have one for future Ebay sales.The guy gave me an American Express card and paid for some issues. He was going around to all the newsstands and buying up copies if they had them.

Dave Metz and I looked at each other and wondered if that really happened. Why was this guy buying up all the copies? Metz went home and called someone from the New York Times. The next thing I know I get a call the next day from a writer asking me about what happened. By this time I had read the newspaper and found out it was done by Tony Hendra, famous for his association with the National Lampoon, and being the manager of Spinal Tap. I told Richard Perez-Pena the facts of the inccident. A few days later the article came out.It has caused quite a buzz on the internet. It has been popular with bloggers and has even been on the Huffington Post. It is days later and it is still getting mentioned in many publications. We ended up getting five more copies and someone promised to send us a bunch more. There was a crazy video on youtube about this. It continues to baffle and bewilder.
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4/14/2008

The Wall Street Journal and me



A Funnier-Than-Usual Journal Gets Snapped Up Early
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
Published: April 14, 2008

It seems someone at The Wall Street Journal really likes a biting new parody of the paper — likes it enough, in fact, to leave at least one newsstand with no copies remaining for anyone else to buy.

The tabloid-format satire, “My Wall Street Journal,” mostly sets out to skewer The Journal’s new owner, the News Corporation, and its chairman, Rupert Murdoch, with swipes at News properties like Fox News, The New York Post and The Journal itself. It takes aim at other targets, too, including Wall Street firms and traders, and assorted politicians and pundits.

It was not supposed to go on sale until this week, but some newsstands began selling it early. Last Thursday, Alexander Laurence was working at one such stand in Los Angeles, chatting with a customer, David Metz, when, both of them say, a man in a shirt with a Journal logo asked if anyone had seen a paper that looked sort of like The Journal.

“This guy comes by all the time to bring promotional stuff for The Wall Street Journal — bags, coin trays, stickers,” Mr. Laurence said.

Sure enough, they found what he was looking for. “He grabbed them all, said, ‘I need to buy all of these,’ ” Mr. Laurence said. “He had been going around to different stands, buying them.”

The man paid with a corporate American Express card. “At first he’s saying they have to make a correction or it’s not supposed to be out yet,” Mr. Metz said. “But then he said these are not published by The Wall Street Journal.”

A spokesman for The Journal, Robert H. Christie, declined to comment.

Tony Hendra, editor in chief of the satire, has experience as a creator of Journal parodies in 1982 and 1983. This time, he had contributions from a team of comedy writers, including Andy Borowitz, Richard Belzer and Terry Jones. The result will be on sale this week at newsstands and bookstores, at Amazon.com, and at wsjparody.com. Mr. Hendra, a former editor of National Lampoon, said he had not heard of anyone trying to hoard copies. “But it certainly would be good for sales,” he said. “I’d find it amusing if they bought all 250,000. We could print more.” RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
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4/11/2008

Playlist @ Bar 107




Alexander Laurence playlist for
April 10th 2008

This is in alphabetical order, not order played:

Adam and The Ants "Kings of The Wild Frontier"
Art Brut "Direct Hit"
The B52s "52 Girls"
The Black Angels "Black Grease"
Blondie "Rapture"
Blood Red Shoes "You Bring Me Down"
Blur "Music Is My Radar"
Bowie "Scary Monsters"
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds "Dig Lazurus Dig!"
The Clash "White Riot"
Crystal Castles "Untrust Us"
Crystal Castles "Crimewave"
Crystal Castles "Vanished"
CSS "Let's Make Love and Listen to Death From Above"
Devo "The Day My Baby Gave Me A Surprize"
Does It Offend You Yeah? "Whip It"
Ian Dury "Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick"
Franz Ferdinand "Michael" remix
The Futureheads "Hounds Of Love"
Get Cape Wear Cape Fly "D.A.N.C.E."
Gnarls Barkley "Gone Daddy Gone"
Goldfrapp "A & E"
The Horrors "Gloves"
Hot Chip "Ready For The Floor"
Hot Chocolate "You Sexy Thing"
Interpol "Slow Hands" (Britt Daniel Remix)
Joy Division "Transmission
Junior Boys "In The Morning"
The Kills "Cheap and Cheerful"
Klaxons "The Night"
Ladytron "Black Cat"
Ladytron "I'm Not Scared"
Ladytron "Burning Up"
LCD Soundsystem "North American Scum"
Liars "Plaster Casts of Everything"
MIA "Paper Planes"
MGMT "Time To Pretend"
MGMT "Electric Feel"
MGMT "Kids"
My Bloody Valentine "When You Sleep"
The Normal "Warm Leatherette"
Ozzy Osbourne "Crazy Train"
The Raconteurs "Top Yourself"
The Rapture "House of Jealous Lovers"
The Raveonettes "Dead Sound"
Roxy Music "Editions of You"
Sex Pistols "Pretty Vacant"
Soft Cell "Down In The Subway"
The Stooges "1970"
Supertramp "The Logical Song"
Thin Lizzy "Jailbreak"
Thin Lizzy "Warriors"
Vampire Weekend "Mansford Roof"
The Vines "Highly Evolved"
White Stripes "Seven Nation Army" disco remix
Wreckless Eric "Whole Wide World"
The Zombies "She's Not There"
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