Stranger in a Strange Google Land

Published: August 28, 2009 @ 12:34 pm

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By Peter Mehlman

About 650,000 people have watched me interview athletes on YouTube since Aug. 9. Is that a high number of people? A low number of people? No idea.

The interviews are produced by BermanBraun which has a deal with Google who, unbeknownst to me, bought YouTube. There were lots of preliminary meetings and conference calls during which I was like a U.N. delegate without an interpreter.

Some verbs used as nouns sounded familiar, like "hits" and "views." Some nouns were renovated into verbs, like "monetize." It was difficult to put any of it into context, but I kind of got this berserk idea that people were trying to make a profit on the project.

Is anyone making money on this project? No idea.

At one meeting, the body language of certain people seemed to indicate that Google was trying to find a sponsor for the "channel," which may or may not exist on a "platform" on which there's a "gadget."

When Google -- a concern that seems to have the power to make others stand and take notice -- signed on Palm Pre as sponsor, the meetings surged in attendance. Just the taking of attendance on the conference calls took 15 minutes. "Is Palm here? BermanBraun? Google? YouTube? JoyStick? Modernista? Double Click?"

All the people from all the companies sounded oppressively competent. What do they all do?

No idea.

Like Woody Allen saying that he never noticed that his Freudian therapist had died, no one noticed when I stopped attending meetings.

I just wanted to ask Kobe Bryant how much he tips the referees.

Tags: Google, YouTube

Description

After graduating from the University of Maryland, Peter Mehlman started his career as a writer for the Washington Post. He slid from print journalism to television when, from 1982 to 1984, he wrote for and produced the television series, “SportsBeat” with Howard Cosell. For the next five years he returned to writing full sentences as a freelance writer in New York. His byline appeared in numerous national publications including the New York Times magazine, GQ, Esquire and every women’s magazine imaginable...

In 1989 he moved to Los Angeles where he bumped into Larry David, whom he'd met twice in New York. David, was developing “a little show with Jerry Seinfeld”, and invited Mehlman to submit a sample script. Having never written a script, Mehlman sent a humor piece he had written for the New York Times Magazine. Jerry Seinfeld loved it and gave Mehlman a writing assignment, out of which came the series’ first freelance episode, “The Apartment.” Mehlman was hired for the first full season of “Seinfeld” (1991-92) and wrote 23 episodes during the next six years and became an executive producer.

Mehlman is most famous for his “Yada Yada” episode, and he is also the author of such now classic Seinfeld-isms as “spongeworthy” and “shrinkage” and “double-dipping.”

In 1997, Mehlman joined DreamWorks and created “It’s like, you know...,” a scathing look at Los Angeles. In recent years, he has continued creating TV shows, writing screenplays and humor pieces for NPR, Esquire, The New York Times, Washington Post and LA Times while also appearing on-camera for TNT Sports and his own web program “Pete Mehlman’s Narrow World of Sports."

TheWrap.com