This was recently posted to the Palo Alto Craigslist jobs board:

Successful entrepreneur in media/entertainment/technology fields seeks intelligent, open-minded, flexible and responsible muse who will be a sounding board for often radical creative idea, story and production concepts, and in time, to become a confidante and life coach to help him express inner motivations within the context of a very complex, fast-paced life.

Entrepreneur has existing personal assistant/executive admin staff providing primary business and household administration services. Ideal candidate would join this team in Personal Assistant role under the close supervision/tutelage of Executive Assistant, augmenting staff and filling in as needed and in accordance with skill set/experience. Responsibilities include supporting business and personal travel, including private jets/ground transportation/hotels; personal shopping/style suggestions; attending (and at times organizing) social/political/business events; recommending (and at times attending) entertainment/dining/ art and music events, valet services, advising/coordinating diet/exercise, handling any small matter that arises, from picking up coffee to coordinating conference calls. Candidate must be able to scale from professional to casual demeanor, and from business to casual dress, and to be able to able to communicate effectively with a wide range of people, from financial executives to fine artists and filmmakers.

Entrepreneur has substantial executive responsibilities that come in fits and starts with existing projects and personal obligations that tie up his time randomly and leave unpredictable blocks of time available, often with short notice of opening slots and closing slots. Candidate needs to be able to be in a position to be highly flexible in terms of availability. As experience and familiarity with entrepreneur's lifestyle grows, there is opportunity for more hours of work, overlapping more of entrepreneur's day. Over time, ideal candidate would "shadow" entrepreneur, in both a personal assistant and muse role, handling practical matters as they come up, as well as being a sounding board/coach/critic for ideas both in scheduled sessions and when time avails itself, e.g. during flights.

Ideal candidate has or is getting Bachelors or Masters degree; has knowledge and interest as well as an eye/ear in the realms of art, music, film, video, performing arts, fashion, videogames, interactive online media; is an effective writer and/or sketcher to document/organize ideas; an empathetic listener; tasteful; adept at using computer tools/navigating the Web. Pluses include artistic, performance and/or training/massage experience. Candidate must be comfortable exploring any creative material, including highly personal and extremely dark subjects. But above all, candidate must be the sort of person with a serious passion for a long-term career in the role of providing support for a highly creative, high-end individual who has an extremely busy and complex life.

This is an exceptional position for an exceptional candidate. Compensation commensurate with experience, applicable skill set and fit for the role. If the candidate works out, opportunity for substantial financial growth and first-class perks. An ideal fit will be highly valued. Position will start on a part-time trial basis, and then if candidate is a fit, expand in accordance with scope of role candidate is able to fill. Schedule: initially 8-24 hours/week.

Must be legal to work in the US, have driver's license and car. You will be provided with everything else needed for your work.

Respond via email with brief description of how you see yourself as suited for this role and resume.

So does we have any guesses as to who the person that placed the ad might be? And can someone please forward this on to Mary Rambin so she can hurry get her resume in? For some reason she sounds perfect for this gig.





Creative/Tech Entrepreneur Seeks Exceptional Muse/Personal Assistant [Craigslist]

She called up a Gawker Media employee, who shall go unnamed, to complain about unspecified errors in Owen Thomas' recent coverage. But not from anger (or an overdose of Blueprint Cleanse) but out of love. See, Gawker's going downhill, she claims, and she'll buy a "round of drinks" if her will is done. Thankfully, I'm not taking orders from Rambin.

Owen's cranky streak is one of the reasons we love him. (Other reasons: he's a talented writer who knows the tech beat inside and out.) Around here, unsolicited and unhinged rants are worn as a badge of honor. The only reason, as far as we can tell, that she thinks Gawker is falling apart is that we're not covering her every move. Such is the double-edged nature of fameballing. And, Mary, if you have a problem with one of my writers, rather than calling the ad staff, you should get in touch with me directly.

NonSociety, a group blog detailing Allison's, Rambin's, and Silicon Valley heiress Meghan Asha's daily misadventures, has always promised to be more than just a stream of the trio's daily trivia. "It's just the three of us... but not for long! We're bringing on other contributors," the site has promised since it launched last year. Only now, with Rambin's exit, is Allison looking seriously for more people. The site was never about the three of them, Allison now argues. Well, of course, it was never about anything at all.

Allison, in a drunken moment at the South By Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas, admitted to Rambin's impending departure from the lifestreaming venture, in which Allison, Rambin, and Silicon Valley heiress Meghan Asha Parikh posted constant blog entries, photos, and videos from their empty lives.

Rambin was the least prolific blogger of the three. And yet she contributed so much to NonSociety in contributing so little. True, her "speach" often lacked "coherance" (two actual recent typos). But there's nothing as entertaining as watching a rich girl who recently spent a month on a yacht opine about what it takes to make money. (Which, apparently, she needs.)

Here's Rambin's ramble about the future of Web video:

Here's my answer: I think the key to web video is creating all different formats that can exist together. Create a show with a relatively high production value with approachable characters or personas. Have these people or actors make their own unedited videos so the audience gets to know and love them. Concurrently, short, edited videos should be shot with experts and celebs to show a different perspective in an entertaining way. Approach major brands with sponsorship packages that supplement their current traditional campaign (so they don't get their panties in a bunch). Pitch brand awareness and your distribution channels (which should be any website that will have you). License the show to a major network to increase your eyeballs and the show's value and revenue.

She seems to be talking about TMIweekly, a Web-video show which recently got picked up by NBC's most obscure TV channel. Rambin, Allison said, is sticking with the show even as she's dropping NonSociety. Can you blame her? It's the only part of Allison's laughable startup which is showing even a glimmer of commercial promise. It almost makes you feel sorry for Rambin, when her best prospect for making money consists of unwatchable video on a channel no one watches.

Appropriate, because New York Nonstop is as close as one can get to the Internet in obscurity, and yet still claim to be on television, making it an appropriate home for the contentless musings of Allison, an inappropriately well-known dating columnist Time Out New York, and her two friends, Silicon Valley heiress Meghan Asha Parikh and vapid handbag designer Mary Rambin. (Or perhaps just Rambin: Rumors are spreading that Parikh may have quit, though Allison denies this.)

Episodes of TMIweekly, a videoblog, have featured the three talking about uninteresting aspects of their lives. (Imagine Twitter, but videotaped.) It's part of a pseudo-business called NonSociety. Allison recently informed me that NonSociety had taken in $60,000 in revenues in all of 2008. Using the advanced business metric known as earnings before expenses, that would give NonSociety's three foundresses a living slightly above minimum wage. Parikh's family fortune must surely throw off more interest than that in a month.

The 24-hour news channel broadcasts in Manhattan, sort of, on digital channel 4.2, and Time Warner Cable carries it on channel 161. So if you avoid triple-digit cable channels and haven't upgraded to a digital converter — since the government has pushed back the deadline for the digital transition, you probably haven't — you can remain blissfully Allison-free. New York NonStop claims a theoretical reach of 5.7 million, though, so it's possible someone, somewhere, in the New York area might accidentally be exposed to her work.

Whatever NBC is paying Allison for this 24x7 filler, it's surely too much. As NBC officials themselves seem to realize! Meredith McGinn, senior manager of special products for NBC4, explained to the New York Daily News:

You'll get your meat — your news, weather and headlines — every 15 minutes. In between those 15 minutes, you may have a two-minute segment, a two-minute pod, a five-minute pod. So the shows we're looking at are in little bits, not your traditional half-hour newscasts.

So the news is the meat, which makes TMIweekly, what, exactly? Shredded lettuce? Mayo? Anything, surely, except relish.

Rather than force you to watch TMIweekly, we will show you Gawker videographer Richard Blakeley's much funnier parody, "NomSociety":

Welcome To NomSociety from Richard Blakeley on Vimeo.

Google's ads pick up on keywords in NonSociety, a collection of egoblogs maintained by Allison and two friends, vapid handbag designer Mary Rambin and insecure Silicon Valley heiress Meghan Asha Parikh. The search engine's ad-placing algorithms are mercilessly insightful. The current selection:

Davos, debt, and digestion. Pretty much sums up the threesome, doesn't it?

The other day, Wall Street Journal editor Robert Thomson opined about Google on the Charlie Rose Show:

But one of the — Google — I mean, the harsh way of just defining it, Google devalues everything it touches. Google is great for Google, but it's terrible for content providers, because it divides that content quantitatively rather than qualitatively. And if you are going to get people to pay for content, you have to encourage them to make qualitative decisions about that content.

As much as we hate to disagree with Thomson, we think Google has made an excellent qualitative judgment on NonSociety.

These three are more career-driven and have more to say than their L.A. counterparts, which should only lead to more drama. Even when they're not hitting Waverly Inn for dinner or flying cross-country for exclusive Silicon Alley [sic] events, this clique is never boring. They get Restylane injections for fun, own pocket-size dogs, and never go anywhere without blogging about it. What's not to love?