Playboy's Girls of the Big 10 (Part 1)

According to college students, I have a dream job. I'm not going to complain (right now). There are times when it truly is the best job in the world. There are also times when I want to instigate physical altercations with co-workers, bar staff, sponsors, vendors, and even the (diva) models. All in all, it's a good gig.

Our first two events of Playboy's Girls of the Big 10 Tour are in the rearview. I flew into Detroit on Tuesday and we've been rocking a Ford Cargo Van from Detroit to East Lansing to Ann Arbor. Today we head to Columbus for the last event on Saturday.

MICHIGAN STATE (EAST LANSING)

The first event at Michigan State (East Lansing) was a hit. We had four Spartan co-eds (does anybody even use this term anymore?) booked for the event at Rick's East Lansing. I can't remember their pseudonym's, but it's usually a first name/middle name combo. Mad respect to the girls that porn-ify their names a little bit more. The girls' call time was 9PM, so you usually expect them to show up between 15-30 minutes late. I was shocked when I saw the girls walk into the bar at exactly 9PM.

Working with models is a unique gig. Most regular men would fall prey to their well-honed manipulation skills. Luckily, when I started doing this job, I was still pretty much afraid of girls... rendering their powers useless. At this point, I'm a pretty salty girl-wrangler. You want a drink? Don't care. Tired of standing? Don't care. That's your boyfriend? Certainly don't fucking care. The flip-side of the situation is actually the most entertaining. Random boyfriend walks past the line and right up to the table and when questioned says, "That's my girlfriend". Good for you... now step the fuck off. Your girlfriend is working, fool. But don't get me wrong -- these girls were all well-behaved.

The girls from Michigan State with our college reps

People started filtering into the venue, Rick's East Lansing, shortly after the girls arrived. We gave away all 100 guy "Girls of the Big 10" t-shirts in about an hour. We had shirts for girls, but they didn't seem to go as quickly. We had a small amount of wifebeaters for girls... and I ended up seeing a humongous drunk guy wearing one at the end of the night. Unfortunately, our event was not for "Gays of the Big 10" ... not sexy.

We have the The White Tie Affair coming with us to all three Big 10 events and CollegeFest next week. OMG, yes TWTA from The Hills. Obv. You can rag on them all you want, but they're actually very good at what they do. They got the crowd up and jumping with the help of the Michigan State girls and an unbelievably gorgeous Playboy model named Cassie. Cassie and had an instant connection -- we found out that we both love Jumanji.

At the end of the night, it was definitely a great event. We had fantastic reps at East Lansing and I was quite pleased. Ryan, Mary, Dylan, Brad, and Zak are the effing tits. Everybody cleared out a little after 2AM and we packed up our gear. The Playboy crew headed to a late night munchies spot where I picked up a bacon, egg, and cheese on a croissant (typical) and I went to sleep at about 3AM.

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN - ANN ARBOR

The next morning, we were headed to Ann Arbor at about 10AM. For the Michigan event, we only had one of the three girls from the pictorial that wanted to appear at the event. So to make up for the lack of hot chicks, we had to book four of the girls from Michigan State. I was a little worried that the decision to let them wear their green shirts might end with me getting my ass beat. Luckily, that was not the case.

The Rick's in Ann Arbor actually holds more people than the bar in East Lansing. So we knew we were in for quite a rowdy night. Chris, the boss @ Rick's AA, told me that they had a St. Practice Day (halfway to St. Patty's) party the night before and that the place was packed. The Rick's Ann Arbor staff was more than accommodating -- we're besties now. The White Tie Affair van showed up at about 6PM and it was time to rock and roll.

Our sponsor for the Michigan and Ohio State events was the movie My Best Friend's Girl. I was hoping that once people were drunk enough, it would be a popular attraction. The highlights from the booth were a guy who admitted he jerked off at a bus stop and a girl that boned a certain celebrity who was well-known in the 80's (hint: he's in a popular internet forum picture that says "you're a homo").

Once the party got started, it was a little bit chaotic. There seemed to be a higher level of douchebaggery and I've never seen more broken glass on the floor in my life. The East Lansing girls were professionals when it came time to bring The White Tie Affair on stage.

I had to tip my hat to TWTA. They're not my favorite band, but they're good at what they do. They covered "Billy Jean" but then they went out on a limb with Lil Wayne - "Got Money". I have to admit, they fucking killed it with "Got Money". So the girls were shaking in on stage, and I did notice a weird "move" they were trying. Apparently, it's sexy to do what I termed a "reverse Eiffel Tower" where the girls put their hips together and arch their backs... not really sure what that's about.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say these girls watch The Hills

When we got back to the girl's signing table, some assholes had taken the chairs. I didn't really feel like stirring up shit since the night was almost over -- so I just ignored that fact. I did notice that one of them had drawn a penis on the table cloth. That would have been somewhat amusing if it didn't cost $700. A short time later, two of the jackasses decided that they would try to fight each other. I was almost killed in a fratboy crossfire while trying to diffuse the situation. Once the 250 pound meathead turned his murderous gaze towards me, I decided that his "friend" would be a better martyr.

We were all pretty exhausted once the first two events were done. Fortunately, we had Friday to travel and get situation in Columbus with the event on Saturday. The drive to Columbus was about 3-4 hours and I will report back on the final event in a day or two.

Click Here for the Full Playboy Girls of the Big 10 Photo Gallery

Michael Vick Takes Biggest Paycut in History

The guy used to be worth tens of millions of dollars and now makes less than a dollar a day. According to his lawyers (via USA Today)

"The debtor is not employed (except for employment in prison for wages of 12 cents per hour)."

Michael Vick's life is completely destroyed. He's got herpes, no money, and lives in prison. We all thought Marcus Vick had the ultimate meltdown when he stomped on Elvis Dumervil's leg and pulled a gun in McDonald's. At least Marcus has his freedom and also a hot girlfriend, Delicia Cordon.

Delicia Cordon makes being a failure feel quite alright
Michael Vick AKA Ron Mexico AKA Ookie used to make $700,000 per game. That doesn't count the millions he made from endorsements and dog fighting either. The Michael Vick Experience just isn't what it used to be.

Those extras make more money than Michael Vick

Brandi C Eliminated, Looks Crazy

I watch I Love Money and I think Brandi C looks a little bit insane. She's got wayyyy too much going on. She needs less makeup, less botox, less colagen, less facial piercings, etc. I found a good picture of her where she looks much like John Travolta in Battlefield Earth. It's true.

They both have good alien scowls
According to an interview, she got porn out of her system after Rock of Love. But apparently, she couldn't get that used-pornstar-look off of her face.

Will Wright's Amazing Fashion Statement

Will Wright is the creator of Sim City, The Sims, and the new game Spore. Obviously, he's very smart and very rich man. I looked him up on Wikipedia to find out more and I came across a picture of him from South by Southwest. I know he's a badass, but I think this is a little extreme. The Columbia vest with no undershirt is quite bold.

Will Wright doesn't let sleeves limit his genius

OCD Actual Convo: Got Boned by the GZA

I would have posted this earlier, but Time Warner is trying to silence me by shutting down my internet. That... or incompetence. In any case, I had a lovely conversation with my old friend from high school. He lives in Texas and recently went to see the GZA in concert. I was quite entertained by this exchange. However, I still need somebody to give me more details on the "Dallas mafia".

He's trying to figure out how to bang your girlfriend... again
Anonymous Asshole Friend:  do you know who the Gza is? from the wutang clan?
Anonymous Asshole Friend:  He's cousin to the Rza, and one of the best rappers ever, but (name removed), me and this girl we know who drove us saw him in Austin last night, and after the show she got on his tour bus and boned the Gza
OfficialChrisDuncan:  hahahaha
Anonymous Asshole Friend:  it was pretty funny
except for the part where we waited outside the Gza's tour bus for two hours
OfficialChrisDuncan:  wow, that's a lot of boning
OfficialChrisDuncan: was she hot?
Anonymous Asshole Friend:  yeah she's super hot
OfficialChrisDuncan:  that's disappointing
Anonymous Asshole Friend:  we know her boyfriend
Anonymous Asshole Friend:  her boyfriend that deals underground card games for the Dallas mafia

RIP UNLIMITED INTERNET 1996-2008

Unfortunately, the concept of "unlimited internet" will be a time in history from the about 1996 (AOL went to monthly fees) to 2008. The concept of paying for "hourly internet" became ridiculous once broadband was available. However, average consumers will be paying for a new unit of internet: bandwidth. Comcast will start enforcing a cap of 250 GB per month while Time Warner is testing tiered bandwidth limits in Texas. This limit may not present many immediate problems -- but its potential impact is far greater than simply handcuffing bandwidth hogs. As Om Malik stated last week, "Much as I would like to think otherwise, this is the end of the Internet as we know it."

GIGA WHAT, GIGA WHO
People will have to learn to put bandwidth into context. It's easy for a regular person to understand how much something costs if they're being charged by the hour. Understanding the cost of a unit of data is more difficult. You can understand that 1000 megabytes equals 1 gigabyte -- but without context that means very little.

At the same time, how will we accurately measure data transfer throughout an entire household? A family with multiple PCs (and children) will be hard to track. The New York Times does a good job summarizing a few common bandwidth hogs:

Casual Internet users who merely send e-mail messages, check movie times and read the news are not likely to exceed the caps. But people who watch television shows on Hulu.com, rent movies on iTunes or play the multiplayer game Halo on Xbox may start to exceed the limits — and millions of people are already doing those things.

Streaming an hour of video on Hulu, which shows programs like “Saturday Night Live,” “Family Guy” and “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” consumes about 200 megabytes, or one-fifth of a gigabyte. A higher-quality hour of the same content bought through Apple’s iTunes store can use about 500 megabytes, or half a gigabyte.

A high-definition episode of “Survivor” on CBS.com can use up to a gigabyte, and a DVD-quality movie through Netflix’s new online service can eat up about five gigabytes. One Netflix download alone, in fact, could bring a user to the limit on the cheapest plan in Time Warner’s trial in Beaumont.

I can guarantee that Hulu, NetFlix, XBox 360, PlayStation 3, and the iPhone (not yet but probably soon) will create numerous "overage" headaches for families in the not-so-distant future. It's a lot like when food was first labeled with calories because people will have to understand the inherent cost of downloading content. It will cost a few bucks to download an HD movie, but it will also cost you a quarter (up to a buck) to the cable company. According to Business Week in 1996, most of AOL's revenue came from "monthly and hourly fees it charges members--$9.95 for the first five hours and $2.95 for each hour after that." With Comcast's 12 Mb connection, you could potentially download 5GB in an hour. Let's say they charge you $50/month with a 250 GB cap -- that hour of downloading was just $1. You're doing a little better than AOL in 1996 -- but who knows how the overages will compare. Keep in mind that the average internet bill was probably much less than the $50 we pay for broadband now.

STILL C.A.P.
I'm sure many of you are saying, "I'm no internet pirate" or "I live by myself". You won't reach the cap... yet. Even so, the cap combined with Moore's Law means that you're paying the same amount for something of diminishing value.

Your previously "unlimited" service is now "limited". The proposed limit or cap means that downloading a certain amount will result in an overage (obviously, further explanation below). Even so, your "unlimited" service actually was limited by the max speed of your connection (10 mb/s for my Time Warner connection) and because the connection is shared with other households (your combined speeds have a set limit).

If you weren't peeved by the idea of a cap, consider the fact that bandwidth costs less and less every day. Taken from Wikipedia, here's an excerpt on Moore's Law:

Network capacity According to Gerry/Gerald Butters,^[19][20] the former head of Lucent's Optical Networking Group at Bell Labs, there is another version, called Butter's Law of Photonics,^[21] a formulation which deliberately parallels Moore's law. Butter's law^[22] says that the amount of data coming out of an optical fiber is doubling every nine months. Thus, the cost of transmitting a bit over an optical network decreases by half every nine months. The availability of wavelength-division multiplexing (sometimes called "WDM") increased the capacity that could be placed on a single fiber by as much as a factor of 100. Optical networking and DWDM is rapidly bringing down the cost of networking, and further progress seems assured. As a result, the wholesale price of data traffic collapsed in the dot-com bubble. Nielsen's Law says that the bandwidth available to users increases by 50% annually.^[23]

You know the way you see that "capacity ticker" before you log into GMail? You know how it's always going up? The cable companies aren't making any promises and don't expect them to adapt quickly. Even if less than 1% of users go over 250 GB of data transfer a month, who is to say that won't be normal in the near future? I bet there are a lot of households that use over 100 GB/month. Those people realistically have a chance of surpassing a 250 GB cap within the next year or two.

I think it's realistic to say that at least 5-10% of people will go over that limit (they might not surpass the limit EVERY month) in the near future. I think that number could be as high as 15%. The point is that the cable companies won't adapt to future usage. In any case, the cap will surely affect more than "less than 1% of users" in a year or two -- not quite as harmless as it sounds. I'm a seasoned internet user and downloader and I really couldn't tell you exactly how much I download. I'd guess between 100-150 GB, but it really does vary.

GOLD DIGGERS
Another problem with the cap is that it's indirectly anti-competitive. Back when AOL was pay-per-hour, it still had free areas. Time Warner and Comcast could do something very similar. Time Warner could offer CNN news clips without counting the download to the cap. At the same time, the cap will also encourage users to use DVR or On Demand since there is no added cost of these services. That also means that content creators will still have to find ways to get onto DVR/On Demand. It would be a lot harder to binge-watch a season of Lost or 24 if it eliminates 10-20% of your monthly download allotment. Translated into dollars, that's an extra $5 to $10 in "cost-to-download". That means it will be extremely difficult to achieve success comparable to broadcast/cable television... without also being on broadcast or cable television.

GUILTY CONSCIENCE
Exceeding the cap will have consequences beyond simple overage charges. Per Download.com, Comcast reserves the right to suspend your account for a year if you go over the cap twice in a six month period. What if there are no other high speed internet options in your area? What if you're locked into a one year contract? I think that's absurd. There are a million arguments against this move.

Time Warner and Comcast would both like to claim that this policy is designed to curb piracy. However, I would imagine that this will actually have the opposite effect. Pirates have always been experts at side-stepping connection and bandwidth issues. They used to split files so they could fit on floppy disks and so dropping your connection wouldn't cost you hours of wasted time. Pirates popularized file compression like ZIP & RAR and adopted compressed video formats like MPEG4 and DIVX/XVID. The same people conceived P2P file-sharing. Do you really think that ABC is going to figure out the best way to get you Lost before they do? Pirates will most likely optimize video for these caps over time. Hulu might be the new hotness -- but it still doesn't edge mininova or ThePirateBay by much in the traffic department.

Hulu, mininova, and ThePirateBay all have similar levels of traffic

What's the best way to avoid the cap? The simple answer: don't use the internet. That's actually not right. The best way to sidestep the cap is to avoid using YOUR internet. Back when AOL was charged per-hour, kids were phishing like it was going out of style. Now, they won't even have to phish. The same "less than 1%" that does all of the downloading will just figure out a way to hack everybody's wireless. Wonderful, isn't it? At least the first time you surpass the cap, you can just say "I think I was hacked" and avoid paying for it.

HATE IT OR LOVE IT
What are the solutions? There probably aren't many that make sense for both consumers and ISP's. There might be a way to wrap bandwidth cost into the cost of content, but you could only hit the big boys (media companies) with that one. Given their aversion to innovation, they'd prefer to let the ISP's play bad guy here. In my opinion, a lot of the solutions may already be here. The remaining potential solutions (that I can think of) go back to roots in piracy. This climate will create a host of new opportunities for file sharing and video compression. It also may force us to go back to the drawing board. Maybe people will create "download stations" that will quickly write DVDs or fill USB memory sticks. Because right now, the fastest way to transfer 8 GB to a consumer... is to overnight them a DVD. Fortunately, the US Postal Service's rates won't screw "less than 1%" of their customers.

OCD Imagery: Dr. J's Girlfriend Dorus Madden

Julius Erving is the man. Well-known for his dunks and short shorts, you can see him in Dr. Pepper commercials now. I'm not sure which of those impresses Dorus Madden the most, but I am quite impressed with her. So that brings us to the question of the day: Would you rather have Dorus Madden or Sarah Palin? I think Dorus wins in my book... barely.

You'd have the same shit-eating grin on your face
Sarah Palin is the Vice President of SASSY