Thomas P. Freydl, President

So an e-mail passed my desk this afternoon, I'll XXX out the names to protect the innocent.

Oh like hell I will. I'll hyperlink to their goddamned e-mail addresses!!

-----Original Message-----
From: Jordan Fischler
Sent: Thursday, April 30, 2009 5:13 PM
To: Tim Black
Cc: Jonathan Heit

Subject: Emailing: PopTok Three Month Public Relations Plan August-November 2008

Tim - here's what I can find. I don’t have the pitch plan. Freydl wrote it, so god knows where it is.

==
Actually. if I can find some I'll post pictures of these two, though really only one is at fault. The other innocently on the receiving end. The last, me, sat unawares as a simple cc, drawn into the heart of the ire.

To be fair, Thomas P. Freydl's reign as President of Allison & Partners was bumpy at best. Lots of highs and some lows, but the timing of joining and leaving a startup is always a toss up. He's gone on to do some very interesting things, and has a long and storied career ahead of him.

Allison has continued to thrive as well, with many

HOLD ON, THE FUCKING NBA IS ON TWITTER.

I'm so goddamned sick of tw... ahh, I digress.

I just mean to draw attention to the fact that maybe Jordan shouldn't be so dismissive. Tom's work on the proposal did ultimately win us that business. But if anyone can complain about PopTok, it would be Jordan, that's for sure.

She did all the work on the business, until we hired Caitlin. Lord knows I didn't have the capacity and PopTok (as they'll attest) didn't have the budget. But I scorched Freydl in that department, hosting their launch PR blitz including a well-written piece by Matt Garrahan in the FT. Mickey Schulhoff's newest company was in business.

It was a tough row to hoe, ironically we ended up switching the strategy to Twitter and Facebook only. Kept the service running, aided them in developing a secondary incremental revenue generator.

And this is like a year ago. Now they are a case study, and an interesting one at that, because they are still making a go of it. The original concepts, send tiny snippets of video to friends through IM is a good one. Not unlike imeem's original model, but again I digress...

Tommy is a good man, and we all get down sometimes. He'll be back and better than ever, you can count on it.

Now, for my three guesses as to where that original plan may have ended up:
--On a flash drive that ended up on a bathroom floor in a swank club (think: Hyde)
--Printed and Bound in the pocket in the back seat of a luxury car (think: Mercedes E Class)
--Rolled up into a cylinder (think: nervous habit)

What do you think happened to it? Comments below:

We can't even agree on the same TV show

My brother-in-law Roger asked me today if Phil and I agreed on any teams.

"Oh, no," I answered. "I wouldn't know how to act if we did."

From the time we were young kids, we never agreed on anything. Especially sports teams. Not sure whether I liked the teams and he chose just not to like (but that's a little narcissistic) or if we just disagree on everything. Life will bear us out, but I still argue that he was just a bandwagon fan the entire time anyway.

The New York Mets in '86, Dallas Cowboys a year or two later. Cowboys were always our other brother Lowell's favorite team also, so that's less obvious. But equally obnoxious. Amazingly he doesn't still follow the Edmonton Oilers or even the Boston Celtics, who he fell in love with during that period as well. I actually liked the Islanders (another Lowell team) and the Philadelphia 76ers

But those sports never mattered. The Yankee/Mets and Cowboys/Giants. Those were natural opposites. Bitter arguments on each side. Arguments that follow us through each stage of our lives. Weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, Births. We just fight, it's what we do.

This all became clear to me the other day when we were at my parents' place and Phil went on another one of his rants, this time about Friday Night Lights.

"Best show on TV!  How great is it?  Dad dutifully agrees, if not matching his enthusiasm.  I wistfully wish I had been watching the show from the beginning.  I'll catch up, heck, just linked to it on Hulu.

"It really is great," Dad notes.

"Oh," I add, realizing I had not had a chance to catch up with anyone on this, since nobody I now follows it but him, "did you see Rescue Me?"  

"Yes," he says, shaking his head.

"So?  What did you think?"

"Great.  Fantastic," he says.  "That could be the best show on TV, actually."  

Phil silently nods, but his face shows he doesn't believe there is any possible way this could be true, even though he has NEVER SEEN THE SHOW ONCE!

"It's amazing, dude," I say to him, in a much less zealous way than he pushes FNL on anyone who will listen, including a Facebook post.  "New York, firefighters, Denis Leary.  It's a good show."

The eerie thing is that the one show we DO agree on is 90210. The zip code where apparently everyone marries or has babies with their high school sweethearts. Kelly's son Sammy is staying with his dad Dylan at the same time a Japanese-speaking Donna Martin is still married to David Silver, making her the step-sister in law of Silver.

Maybe it's the song...

Original 90210 Theme Song - CW