Yes, as many investors know, Motorola stock has headed south this year. But one apparently cannot blame industrious David Pinsky, a sort of high-tech consigliere to the Hollywood stars, according to the June 12 Fortune.
He’s the seemingly pragmatic, Los Angeles-based head of the Schaumburg electronics giant’s entertainment marketing group. One of his mandates: “Making sure famous people gab on Motorola products.”
He’s the reason singer Mariah Carey uses a Timeport P930 pager on her latest video.
And that Leonardo DiCaprio and the cast of “Friends” have their own handy Motorola products.
“Have you ever gotten drunk and prank-called any of the celebrities?” Fortune asks Pinsky in a back-and-forth that falls rather short of, say, a Playboy interview.
“No,” Pinsky replies, “but I do have a very interesting Palm Pilot. When I look at my Rolodex, I have the names and numbers of a lot of influential people.”
In reply to another inquiry, Pinsky says Motorola, ever magnanimous, won’t yank products from stars such as Tina Yothers who are not stars anymore or stars who bomb bigtime such as John Travolta with his latest movie, “Battlefield Earth.”
Asked to name the meanest celebrity, Pinsky is very politic. “I have yet to meet someone who hasn’t been nice to us,” he says. “Remember, they also want something from Motorola.”
Quickly: The June 3 Economist was excellent on how diamonds all too often pay for African wars. At least two ongoing conflicts involve rebel movements that control mines and sell the diamonds to buy arms.
The only possible solution the London-based weekly can come up with is a system in which all rough diamonds are certified with that certification open to outside scrutiny.
If you have doubts about United Nations peacekeeping in Africa, or anywhere for that matter, check out the thoughtful case made for creating a beefed-up, highly trained international force by Brian Urquhart, a former top UN official, in the June 15 New York Review of Books.
He dispatches the argument, often heard among conservatives, that such a force is a threat to national sovereignty, arguing that the force would be overseen, in effect, by all nations in the form of the UN Security Council.
And he wonders why countries should be anxious about the prospect of peacekeeping becoming too effective and too efficient.
If the Internet is supposed to cut prices, wonders June-July’s Context, why is it that the more antiques are sold on-line, the higher the prices soar.
Well, it’s simple supply and demand, says the magazine, especially since “most antiques that are new arrivals on the market are junk.”
The article also is good on how on-line commerce has altered the relationship between dealers and clients.
For example, American antique furniture expert Albert Sack had a piecrust table his dad bought in 1910 for $500.
After a series of subsequent sales, Sack himself tried to buy it back, only to be foiled by a client he had educated. The client was none other than Barbra Streisand, who proceeded to outbid him, paying $490,000.
June’s National Geographic includes Tribune reporter Paul Salopek’s 1,500-mile journey atop a mule through the rugged mountains of Mexico as he re-creates the 1890 journey (“a fool’s errand”) of Carl Lumholtz, an enigmatic, aristocratic Norwegian explorer who sought descendants of the Anasazi, ancient cliff dwellers of the Southwest. Lumholtz’s trek took more than five years, but Salopek sought to duplicate it in nine months.
Well, if you’d prefer traveling sans mule, and with room service just a few rings away, the June Travel + Leisure takes you to spiffy new hotels in London, the Turkish coast and the Australian outback.
Finally, inevitably, there is the question of “Who will be the Next Kathie Lee?” in the June 9 Entertainment Weekly. Beats me.
