...and a Happy New Year

Hey folks. It's my birthday - I'm now 28 years old (feel free to buy me things). I thought I'd post to reflect on the past year and what next year may bring. It has been a year of immense change for me personally and professionally. All in all, it was quite fun.

In January, I was still recovering financially from the move to Texas in my escape from Hurricane Wilma - and very quickly did I do so. I sold off the intellectual property rights to BlipMedia, and picked up a position at 5Tribe, a niche media marketing firm. 5Tribe is an interesting company, and it's difficult to describe exactly what they do succinctly, but I was contracted to create a custom data acquisition appliance for them as well as a handheld appliance. I completed the former, but the contract was cut short in March before the latter could be completed.

Personally, I was enjoying my local hero status, and enjoying that I was getting to spend time with my friend Darrell, whom I hadn't had time to hang out with in years. He and I hadn't started a new project together since the ill-fated Mark and Darrell Show - something we started before my move to Florida. We tried to launch several things together, most meeting with varying degrees of failure. Finally, we hit upon what we thought was a winner - PoddedMeat.

Unfortunately, due to who knows what reason, the gung-ho attitude disappeared somewhere in the middle of launch week, in which he dropped the ball in a manner so as to really mess up things. We ended up delaying launch a week, if memory serves, and Darrell and I parted company. This was probably the low point for me all year - losing my best friend over an argument. For those of you who keep asking, no, we haven't spoken to each other since then.

I also sold off my first company, BlipMedia, in pieces to various other podcasting companies. With it I paid off some debts and bought a new car. I worked on my first political campaign, and resigned from my first political campaign when the politician I worked for lied to me about the funding (shocking, I know!).

I topped Rizzn.com off at around 1300 posts this year, and my traffic finally died down from the Suge Knight incident. I launched two major blogging networks, and as a whole we produce about a book's worth of writing material every two weeks.

I met a beautiful girl, married her, then got her pregnant.

All in all, it's been an interesting year. I hope next year is just as interesting and at least half as successful!

/rizzn

Pseudo-Celebrity Ego-Searches

I've been toying with Google Analytics today a little bit. Excellent tool. You can drill down onto any specific stat you can imagine with that. Definitely recommended to anyone.

At any rate, the number of pseudo-celebrities who have been ego searching and popping up on Rizzn.com lately are interesting. I'll list them here and my connection to them.

Robin Kish: did an investigative report on me one time on CBS4 in Miami. It was completely incorrect, and they hacked the crap out of my interview to make me look like a moron. The video is somewhere here on the website. On the upside, she is quite attractive. I still have her business card around here somewhere... every once in a while I come across it and think back to that non-fact-finding, vapid, and attractive blonde reporter from CBS4. (see also: Robin Kish - factchecker extraordinare, CBS4)

Bill Redpath: I quoted a letter from him not long ago. He's the LP national committee chairman. Several hits with his general locale reporting back on the IP address have shown up lately. Hey guy! What's up!

Mara Buxbaum: This is Christopher Walken's publicist. I spoke with her last year regarding the rumors of whether or not Mr. Walken was running for President of the United States in 2008. As it turned out, he wasn't. Ms. Buxbaum was very cordial and pleasant to deal with over the phone. She's hit the site a number of times lately in a number of different ways, it appears, in an attempt to see what pagerank sites with her name on it get (many different ways of searching, some with her agency name on it and some without).

Suge Knight: Suge Knight is once again doing ego searches and people on the Death Row record label forums are linking to my website again. I can't tell you how nervous this makes me. This is all in regards to when I took photographs and video of the man the night he was shot/shot himself accidentally (police investigation inconclusive either way).

That's it for now. Talk atcha later.

/rizzn

Large Set of Small Updates

Quite an interesting day it's been. I've been saving these blog posts to put into a long newspost for about a week or so. Good stuff in here. As for me, I'm keeping busy, and business is finally picking up again after a weeklong slump. Expect a project progress report later this week.

f o u r [ ] 2 n i t e
For those of you in the East Texas area thie evening, FourSquare behind IHOP. It's the secret way to meet cool Tyler people. Starts at 9PM.


Suge Knight declares bankruptcy
Death Row Records label head Suge Knight has filed for bankruptcy, after he refused to pay US$107 million in an ownership dispute of his record company. Knight had lost a lawsuit filed by Lydia Harris last year. Harris had claimed that Knight had swindled her out of her 50 percent stake in Death Row Records.

Harris had alleged that Knight concocted a scheme to "destroy her ability to lay claim to her rightful share of the ownership and profits" of the label. The presiding judge had awarded the massive sum to Harris after discovering that Knight and his attorneys had not provided certain financial data.

Nanowires to Power Your Implants
Researchers at Georgia Tech have come up with a new way to power medical implants, using the motion of the body to generate electricity. By implanting fibers called nanowires, which are just 20-40 billionths of a meter in diameter, the researchers believe they can produce enough energy to drive implantable devices or even smart apparel. The zinc-oxide nanowires are piezoelectric, like the quartz crystals in a wristwatch, so the more you bend 'em, the more energy they produce.

Adnan Khashoggi Sued by SEC
Our good buddy Adnan is in the news again. Boy we love those Krazy Khashoggi's over here at Rizzn.Com. For those of you who don't know, Adnan's brother Essam was involved in the FlyDLUX ordeal back in 2003. Khashoggi is best known as an arms broker in the Iran- Contra scandal of the mid-1980s, when he served as middleman for illegal sales of weapons to Iran. He was often described then as one of the world's richest men.

In 1993, El-Batrawi founded GenesisIntermedia as a telemarketing and infomercial company. In 1999, the company's 100 sales agents made more than 1 million calls a month selling courses such as ``Secrets of Stock Investing'' and ``Ted Thomas' Personal Fortune Real Estate Investment Program'' with price tags of as much as $5,000.

Saudi financier Adnan Khashoggi and former GenesisIntermedia Inc. Chief Executive Officer Ramy El- Batrawi were sued by U.S. regulators over claims they orchestrated a $130 million stock loan and manipulation scheme. Khashoggi, 70, and El-Batrawi, 44, loaned 15 million GenesisIntermedia shares to Deutsche Bank Securities Ltd. while artificially inflating the stock price by engaging in large numbers of buys and sells, the Securities and Exchange Commission said in a lawsuit in federal court in Los Angeles. They failed to repay the loans to intermediary brokers when the scheme collapsed, the SEC said.

Attorneys for El-Batrawi and Khashoggi couldn't be immediately located to comment. SEC attorney Kara Brockmeyer said the agency hadn't determined yet who their attorneys are. El-Batrawi has no listed telephone number in Los Angeles, and Khashoggi's place of residence isn't known, according to the complaint.

The lawsuit is the third the SEC has brought related to the GenesisIntermedia fraud. In 2004, Kenneth D'Angelo, who helped facilitate the stock loans settled with the SEC after pleading guilty to securities and wire fraud. A lawsuit against Smith in Los Angeles is still pending.

The case is SEC v. Ramy El-Batrawi et al, U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, 06-2247.

peace or something like that
My good buddy Rob is still out in Africa bringing good will to all mankind. He writes the following on his blog (of interest to those of you following his series on the Lords Resistance Army).

I just found out that the lord’s resistance army that was causing so much trouble in the place I was working last year has recently met with representatives of the Government of Southern sudan and that they have come to some sort of agreement to cease hostilities and work towards a peaceful solution. The details are a bit sketchy at the moment.

i am a little jealous. apparantly the peace talks took place very close to maridi and the officials that came, stayed in the compound that I was living in while i was there. Would have been interesting to get a chance to sit and talk with a few of those guys that came through.

so hopefully the official news will come out very soon and we will get to find out what the agreements were.

That's the word for the moment, folks. Be good.

/rizzn

Katrina Lost and Found Update

I had a conversation with John Galloway from the Katrina Data Project today.  In the short time we both started our respective projects, I must tip my hat to him and his crew, as he’s currently accomplished much more than I.  He’s been able to assimilate about five large databases of information so far, and is establishing relationships with other non-profits out there. That’s why we’re joining forces, and I’m going to concentrate more on getting the word out and creating an ‘affiliate’ program for the database.  Stay tuned to Katrina Lost and Found for details on that.  Very soon, I’ll have a simple, small form you can integrate into your website to allow people to search or register in the database.

Another project that should be tackled within the next few days and weeks is a comprehensive database of people in the South that are willing to take in families and help them assimilate back into society, instead of being holed up in shelters, domes, and firestations. Let me know if you want to start organising something of that nature.

On a different note, I almost destroyed my television set last night while watching Real Time with Bill Maher, and I have have a much decreased respect for actor Brad Whitefield, the man who plays Joshua Lymon on The West Wing. They literally accused President Bush of murdering the state of Louisiana.  Meanwhile, Kanye West (yes, the fellow who played host to Suge Knight’s shooting last weekend) accused President Bush of overt racism on live television (during NBC’s telathon). It’s upsetting to see that this issue could very literally be something that ends up dividing our country permanently.

This just in: moments ago a civilian rescue helicopter crashed in NOLA, no fatalities.  The crash occurred in the middle of a rescue effort. 

I’m actually surprised to see that this is the first helicopter crash, given all the low altitude chopper traffic in the city.  I was actually expecting to see a vertol or Sinouk crash in the rebuilding of the levy.  This would have been a good situation to implement a UAV.

/rizzn

 

2005 VMA Wrap-up

Well, howdy do everyone.  I feel like I’ve been in another world the last few days, not so much because covering the VMA stuff is so exciting, but because I’ve basically not slept this entire weekend.  OK, that’s not true, I slept about 10 hours since Thursday.  I can tell the folks at the office were a little upset I walked in at about 1:30pm, but hey, I gotta do what I gotta do.

Ricky got a good deal of great photos, and we’ll likely be posting them here on the site within the next few days.  I made a few really good contacts on the press line (a big howdy to Monica and Dennis if you happen to read this).

I found out something quite interesting this weekend.. being a blogger is the new uber-hip thing!  I know no one actually reads this thing, so I feel pretty safe in saying this … if you want access to celebrities at these types of events, all you have to do is tell the PR person you’re a blogger!  On Friday evening, I got an all access pass to an event hosted by Carmen Electra for free (Louis XIV played a set). It was about as boring as any other party I’ve ever been to, but the point is I got a $700 pass for free.

Journalistically, of course the highlight of the weekend was Suge getting shot (although had he not been shot, a lot of other good celebs would have shown up – OJ Simpson, Jamie Foxx and Jeremy Piven were rumored to be on their way).  I’ve got a pretty good run down of what happenned there in this blog entry, but in my sleep-deprived haze I forgot to mention that the police were launching tear-gas gimmicks into the crowd to get us to back away from Yusef when they were arresting him. 

Something about that whole evening seems really fishy, because it took about five minutes of pandemonium before anyone called the police or even the security forces over to the scene.  What’s more, the MSM (with the exception of the Herald) aren’t reporting on the arrest of Yusef at all, not to mention that AP, CNN, and a couple other wire services are getting the guest list completely wrong.  It’s pretty sad, because there were exactly four ABC Radio correspondents there as well as an actual MTV news crew, and none of them bothered to interview anyone, opting to simply flee the scene.  It was me, the house photographer, and Access Hollywood running into the fray, and that’s it!

I guess it shows I have either very weak survival instincts, or very strong journalistic ones.

I’ve got to get some work done today, so I’m done with this entry.  Hopefully we’ll get Blip’s core processes moved over to the new server today.

/rizzn

Suge Knight Shot - photos and ID

Update (8/30/2005): This should be the last little bit of Suge Knight update (because I think it’s safe to assume at this point that no more real news is going to come out of this thing)… I wouldn’t post it but it’s so damn funny (hat tip to libertyblog):

[H]ere’s the rapper David Banner on the shooting of Suge Knight at a party for the MTV awards:

“I don’t think that what happened was any different than at any other event where you have a lot of people,” said David Banner. “It’s tragic that it happened and that the media magnified this so much.”

Remind me not to be at any event where there are a lot of people when David Banner’s around, be it a Shriner’s convention, airport terminal etc.

Update (8/29/2005): If you’re coming in from an external link (thank’s National Ledger and the scads of Hip Hop mags that linked me), you should check out my generalized VMA wrap up, with more Suge shooting details. 

Update (8/29/2005): The man arrested is alleged to be named spoken word artist Malik Yusef. He was part of the Game’s entourage, undoubtably, as there were about 40 people who entered with him.

Given that he’s a spoken word artist, and P. D.. ‘scuse me, Diddy has strong ties to Def Poetry and Bad Boys of Comedy, it gives credence to the whole conspiracy angle of his involvement in perhaps motivating someone to retaliate for Biggie’s Death (Biggie Smalls, of course, a friend of Diddy (then Puff Daddy, I think), who was suspected of being killed by someone hired by Suge – but that’s all rumor, and I would never suggest that Suge had anything to do with it (without taking my personal information off the website first)).

Slightly less conspiracy theory-esque, about two months ago, a rapper named Game got into a fight with members of Suge’s entourage.  Peep this quote from hiphopdx.com from back in June:

Later on at the Sunset room, Game reportedly crossed paths with Suge and that’s where details become sketchy. Many rumors state that Game and his crew ran into Suge and his entourage and after a few words were exchanged, a member out of Suge’s camp to a swing at Game. They say that after Game dodged a few punches, his crew yanked him away from the situation before it got out of hand. Nobody got hurt but the question remains “Why?” More on this as it unfolds.

The Game was in attendence that night (this photo is from his appearance on the red carpet.  As a side note, CNN reported that The Black Eyed Peas, Paris Hilton, and Eddie Murphy were there or had attended the party.  That is pure fiction.  Paris was a no show to every party this year, the Black Eyed Peas were only staying in that hotel, but were in fact performing down the road at the Mansion, and Eddie Murphy only went to one party, which was at the Prive the night before.

---

Breaking news from the VMA pre-parties, circa midnight Saturday/Sunday... Owner of Death Row Records, Suge Knight, has just been shot in the thigh by an unknown assailant while coming out of the Shore Club in South Beach. Suge was attending Kanye West's MTV VMA Pre-Party.

I was working the red carpet line just videoing other people's interviews with people and I happenned to MTV Netherland's interview with Suge (video uploaded). Some time after Suge arrived, there was quite a commotion inside the party tent, and hundreds of people came streaming out. From watching my Def Comedy Jam, I'm well aware that when a herd of African-Americans go running in one direction, danger is surely in the opposite direction. Being an intrepid reporter (and someone who has no fear of losing life nor limb), I ran right into the action.

Suge's sidekick quickly booted me out of the area. Forcefully. In the video, you can see me being shoved out of the way by the way the camera gyrates.

I then snuck around the side of the building to see what I could find, and sure enough, a group of fans had already congregated out there where the ambulance was being pulled up. I arrived just after Suge was put into the ambulance, but in time to buy a couple of pictures off some guys from Brooklyn to sell to our agency (we think we have the exclusive on that). I was lucky not to get roughed up by Suge's cohorts, as they stomped on a couple people's cameras that were taking pictures out the side.

There wasn't much action around the side, so I went back around to the front just in time to see someone from someone's entourage being hauled out in handcuffs (I'm not sure who this person is, but if you can identify him for me please, I'd love to get a name before the MSM). The rest of the night was spent captioning and editing photos and videos, so not much else to report but the specifics that I know:

Suge was shot in the upper thigh, on the outside part. He's in good condition. This all took place at the Shore Club in South Beach. There was a mad dash for the door. The publicists were crying. In fact, a lot of people were crying. Suge's cohorts are jerks.

These are captures from my video. I've already got people who are buying it, so no worries there. It should show up on Access Hollywood or something, I'm told.

(Just so you know, I’ve been up for 36 hours, so if this makes no sense, I’ll go back and correct it later – stay tuned for updates).

/rizzn