Herb Allen’s Sun Valley Conference – 2014
You know what? F these young tech dorks!
The great John Grisham once wrote there is a “Time To Kill” (or Jesus said it in the Bible – I don’t know)… but last night was almost my time to kill several asshole billionaire millennials.
I just wanted to strangle them with those tight t-shirts they’re so proud of wearing.
Herb Allen has lost control of this conference. He has been overly enamored and completely overrun by the arrogant pricks that are the Silicon Valley t-shirt mafia.
Let me step back…
After a fucking long day of interviews and presentations from the likes of Phil Jackson and Larry Page (Larry talked about robots – that’s the pot calling the kettle black – he IS a robot!) in which they said everything and yet nothing, all we in the captive audience wanted to do was relax, have a drink and a little fun.
Every year, there is always one night that is set aside for some type of entertainment in which we, the attendees, are the entertainers.
It could be a karaoke night. A boxing tournament. Or even the controversial (and truly horrific) “Burning Mogul” event from a couple of years ago.
This year, Herb decided it would be fun to put on skits and songs like kids do at real summer camps. It sort of sounded like fun – many emails were sent back and forth from everyone and we all agreed.
Warren Buffett fought very hard to put on some sort of Broadway musical but there weren’t enough female moguls available to fill all the parts of something like that.
So short little rehearsed sketches or songs was the final decision.
Tim Armstrong was going to be at the piano (he plays better than Lang Lang, you know) and would accompany anyone that needed it.
It was all set.
Harvey Weinstein and I were going to do the “Dave’s not here” bit from Cheech & Chong. I had that record memorized when I was younger.
But then punk ass Zuckerberg decided he didn’t want to do a skit or song. He wanted to do improv and have an improv jam.
An improv jam in the Great Hall of the Moguls (The Limelight Ballroom)?
The fuck?!
And Herb Allen caved immediately and said it was a great idea. Much better than what he had planned.
So the skits were off and I witnessed what was possibly the worst display of comedy I have seen since our pilot episode of “My Wife Left Me For Bucky Dent.”
I would have preferred to sit and watch Barry Diller play video games on Twitch than to watch this terrible terrible improv show.
True horror is watching Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Weiner and Ben Horowitz improvising a rap version of the “Gilligan’s Island” theme song (on an audience suggestion by Jeff Bezos).
Words can’t describe the discomfort we all felt when General Stanley McChrystal was pulled up into a scene where he was asked to get a reservation at a Mexican restaurant from an unintelligible Mexican waiter (played painfully by Les Moonves).
The General was genuinely angry and absolutely flustered by the whole experience.
It was gut-wrenching.
But the young punks ate it up.
I haven’t seen people laugh at something so awful since I was kneed in the nuts by Sumner Redstone in front of his family.
Other lowlights include:
- A Charlie Rose chiquita banana bit (no further comment necessary)
- A painful first date improv which took place at a laundry mat featuring Marissa Mayer (who still refuses to fix her thrashed voice – though she was the first to arrive, well ahead of schedule) and Michael Bloomberg. There was so much silence and embarrassment that people started shouting out things for them to say. They still stood, unable to come up with anything and then just stopped.
- To finish, Harvey Weinstein jumped up and did a sort of one man show where he is ordering God to make some changes on Earth. It sounds funnier than it was because his changes were so stupid and it went on like 25 minutes.
It was a complete humiliation for everyone involved.
The coming together of old and new media took a huge step backwards last night.
Just a massive epic fail.
Oh well – today’s panels are dominated by old media guys talking about content. It’s our day to shine!
Khan Manka, Jr. – Chairman & CEO – Manka Bros. Studios – The World’s Largest Media Company