The Week in Cheek: business news that's completely wireless

For the second week in a row Apple was the biggest business news story of week, but rather than being blindsided by a 13 billion euro tax bill, this time it was Apple that provided the charge with the introduction of iPhone 7. Ho hum was the collective response with the stock price falling $4.74 since the big Apple event, but have we lost our sense of wonderment?

My grandmother Nana would marvel that the ice box had become a refrigerator, she could get on a plane in Toronto drink two Bloody Marys and wake up in London England and It's a Small World was available on vinyl, but a new phone is introduced that can spend half an hour in the toilet and still take better pictures than the best camera most of us have ever owned and we're all like, "Where's the 'Wow' in that?"  

Apple’s iPhone 7 Plus is the first major phone to marry the dual-lens system to immense computing capabilities. ~ Om Malik, The New Yorker

Nana had a Brownie camera. When the flash wouldn't flash (which was most of the time) she'd unscrew the little bulb, put the tip in her mouth, suck on it for a second then screw it back into the camera. Let us at least be thankful that we don't have to suck on our smartphones.

Speaking of sucking, Kanye West and Adidas publicly celebrated their doomed relationship in the heat of New York's Fashion Week. As the afternoon sun scorched the crumbling remains of a hospital that once housed smallpox victims on Roosevelt Island, civilian models dressed as swatches of neutered femininity stood and fainted in formation, sacrificing themselves to Yeezy Season 4.

Professional models then hobbled down the runway like post-apocalyptic zombies that had given up all hope of living deadness. Was Kanye making a statement about the hierarchy of models, the brutish footwear that separates us from nature and the terror that accompanies each Anna Wintour sighting, or was he simply putting the fascist in fashion?

Speaking of apocalyptic teetering, as if Chipotle doesn't have enough on its plate, activist investor Bill Ackman swooped in this week and took a 9.9% $1.2 billion stake in the company. Both Chipotle and Ackman are down on their luck making this pairing look like a page out of the Silver Linings Playbook.

This week in mergers and acquisitions, the BIGGEST TECH MERGER OF ALL TIME was announced as Dell purchased EMC for $60 billion, but nobody is talking about it because it's unspeakably boring. But is it? With $40 billion in borrowed money buoying the buy-out that comes with $2.5 billion in annual interest charges, Michael Dell is placing a huge bet, not on corporate hardware-software-cloud solutions, but on sexy things like virtual reality and artificial intelligence. This is Dell's midlife crisis where it, like a lot of stodgy bloated companies, wants to divorce itself from thousands of employees, drink its own Soylent and pretend to be a startup again. We'll see how it all plays out.

Quote of the week:

“I love Cosmo, but I gave it everything I had. I just didn’t have another sex position in me.” ~ Joanna Coles leaves Cosmo for a new position as Hearst's Chief Content Officer

Almost as exciting as 77 positions in 77 days is billionaire John Malone's purchase through Liberty Media of a controlling interest in Formula One. 70% of F1 revenue comes from television rights and ticket sales which makes the acquisition a good fit, and Malone's media savvy should help F1 get a foothold in North America.

Stats of the Week:

A decade ago sports events were a mere 14% of the top 100 live-viewed TV shows in the U.S.. Last year they were 93%. Source: Bloomberg

In 2015, 114 million people viewed the Super Bowl in the United States. Formula One attracts more than 400 million viewers worldwide, the Indianapolis 500 a mere 6.4 million viewers. Source: The Wall Street Journal

Finally, what would a Week in Cheek be without a cheeky case involving a CEO who allegedly fraudulently touted his spiritual sexual lubricant company? Empowered Products CEO Scott Fraser, who looks like he's basking in the glow of a nuclear South Korean sunrise...

used the pen (and gay porn star) name "Charlie Buck" to promote his penny stock in an investor newsletter called Contrarian Press. Everyone loves a contrarian, especially a sexy one. Except the Securities and Exchange Commission. You're not supposed to talk up your own stock disguised as a porn star, even if what you write is 100% true.

I have known the founder, president, and CEO of Empowered Products, Scott Fraser for many years. ~ Charlie Buck/Scott Fraser

It would be such a shame if the SEC disempowered Empowered Products and its Pink Happy Pack Program that offers couples better communication through lubrication.

May your weekend be filled with passionate exchanges of expanding enrichment.

Recommended Reading

Vanity Fair's Nick Bilton looks at the secrecy, silos and subterfuge behind the Theranos scandal.

“Is it possible to say with a straight face that Se?or Frog’s is a better restaurant than Per Se?" Ian Parker chews the foie gras with New York Times' food critic Pete Wells.

A very angry old man pulled two full carts through. He purchased a Twix bar, a bottle of Diet Pepsi, 36 pairs of underwear, and 262 adult diapers. I believe I have just had another glimpse into my future. Laugh along with the first hilarious week in the life of a Target cashier.

"When I worked for Wells Fargo, I faced the threat of being fired if I didn't meet their unreasonable sales quotas every day." Bloomberg's Matt Levine explores the unintended consequences of management by measurement.

Star Trek celebrated its fiftieth anniversary this week and the author of Trekonomics had something to say about it.

The slogan for Apple's new iPhone 7 translates as "This is penis" in Cantonese. They said the 7 would be a hard sell in China...