The Nitty Gritty

But more than all of those I am an entertainer. I carry around a ukulele with me for the same reason a gangster carries a gun; better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it. Stage or sidewalk, Your Pal Pete shows are just where they happen.
Currently, I'm working on a musical, RagnaPOP(or she's got the bomb), set to premiere at this year's Capital Fringe Festival. I'm also working on music, comedy, and musical comedy; for kids and/or adults.
The fruit of these projects will be available on this site, so check back regularly!

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

The Awesome Power Of Oprah

Much has been made over Oprah Winfrey's stumping for Barack Obama, as well it should. The woman has genuine pull that I have seen the effects of personally. This is from my book Surviving Retail (which is still without an agent, by the way, the scene is about 8 years ago when I worked at a Sharper Image, merely the best example at the power of "O", not the only one:

"I was eating a late lunch and watching the Oprah show and they were having a 'Oprah’s favorite things' show. One of her absolute fave raves was a corkscrew that we happened to sell. It was honestly the world’s best, there are tons of commercials on now for the Houdini Corkscrew, this was the first, expensive version of that. Ms. Winfrey demonstrated this wonderful product, but twisted the cork out by hand. I joked at the screen, 'Oprah you're doing it wrong, just press the lever again!' It cost about $130, more than the combined total of all the wine I had ever purchased-especially if you only count bottles with corks -so it was usually only sold around the holidays when it makes the perfect gift for the wine consumer that couldn’t justify the expense for themselves.

After my lunch break I told Javier(a co-worker) about what I had just seen and he said, 'That was probably why we just got two calls for it.' That was just the first 10 minutes, by the next day we had fielded about 3 dozen calls about them with most people going,”$130? Figures Oprah wouldn’t mention that part!” But a surprisingly large number resulted in actual purchases, and we ran out within a couple of days. It seemed like the company wasn’t aware of the upcoming big “O’ shoutout, because most of our stores ran out and we had to get as special shipment to replenish from the company."

I call her my "Favorite Billionaire" because even though she is a bit pompous and self-righteous at times; compared to how bad she could be, she's downright humble.

Let's just hope she only uses it for good (or for awesome)!

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