NO, REALLY, NOTHING IS PAID FOR.

October 15th, 2009

A Note from Walter Sabo:

First I will disclose that Apple did not compensate me for typing on this MAC. The chair I’m sitting on was bought and paid for at Home Depot from my personal funds. Despite my request for promotional consideration, ConEd has yet to give me the electricity for free and I have no opinion on electricity, branded or generic. The computer is sitting next the new Phillip Roth novel, which was purchased at Barnes and Noble. Hopefully, soon, there will be clear signage at the store indicating whether or not a publisher has paid for premium shelf or end aisle placement of books, as is standard practice in book retailing.
 

The Thomas’ English muffin I’m eating, against the advice of Dr. Richard Fuchs of Columbia Presbyterian (neither paid for this endorsement), is delicious. I bought it at the Food Emporium where Thomas’ may have paid for the shelf space since their brand covers about a third of the bread aisle. Food distributors pay for virtually every inch of a supermarket’s shelf space. Certainly Food Emporium played no formal role in this email. 
 

Playing on the TV is a rerun of Dawson’s Creek.  It was one of the first shows where everything was bought and paid for from the clothes to the furniture. I’m sure they are re-editing all episodes to include annotations because it would be disappointing to learn that Joey’s jeans were comped after I gifted about 81 of them.
 

I really enjoy listening to top-40 radio stations from the 1960’s---usually recorded on Ampex tape, which did not pay for this mention.  During the ‘60’s a lot of stations aired “Payola Records.” Those were songs paid for by record labels to receive air time. The stations that played a lot of those songs quickly vanished because they had few listeners---the payola songs were stiffs. You have either long forgotten those songs or never heard of them

At the time of the Payola scandals in the 60’s, Dick Clark testified before Congress saying, “No amount of play can turn a stiff into a hit.” Dick Clark Productions did not pay me for the referral to his quote. Please enjoy Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Year’s Eve on ABC. (ABC is owned by Disney Corp, which refused to pay for this endorsement and has no sense of humor.)

(Full Disclosure. This parody blog was written by Walter Sabo who can’t even get a free movie ticket the way reviewers do. Even his Mother told him, “Not everyone is going to think you’re funny.”)

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