Search engines rank George W. Bush No. 1 dumb mother$%@!

"How did it know?" was the first thought that crossed our minds here at Salon Technology, when we fired up our search engines this morning. At Google and Yahoo, the answer was always the same: Plug the phrase "dumb motherfucker" into the search field and what do you get? A link straight to the George W. Bush for President online store, selling such fine collectibles as "Victory Cigars," "W. 2000" water tumblers and "W. Stands for Women" buttons (only 2,803 remaining at 20 cents each!).

Have our search engines somehow banded together, cyborg-like, to send a not-so-subtle opinion about our new esteemed leader through the ether? Apparently, it's not nearly that much of a conspiracy. A parody zine called HugeDisk Men's Magazine is taking the credit.

As it turns out, HugeDisk recently ran a column called Ask Hester which linked from the phrase "dumb motherfucker" to the George W. Bush online store. The editors write: "The search engines noticed that we, along with a few other Web sites, endorsed George as a 'dumb motherfucker' and adjusted George's search engine rankings accordingly." They add that they are "proud to have done our part to cement Texas Governor George W. Bush's online reputation."

If George needs a shoulder to cry on, surely Bill Gates can sympathize. -- Janelle Brown [1:55 p.m. PST, Jan. 24, 2001]

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No more dot-com IPOs? Try Hollywood

PARK CITY, Utah -- Now that Internet companies aren't going public anymore, what do you do if you're an investor with visions of making a killing, a taste for living dangerously and a desire for a whiff of glamour? Starting soon, you'll be able to buy stock in new Hollywood movies on the OTC Bulletin Board. Civilian Pictures, a start-up studio in Hollywood, plans to incorporate each of its film projects and hawk the shares -- to the little guy as well as the rich mogul -- through its new brokerage arm, Civilian Trading. The outfit is already creating buzz among the indie crowd at this week's Sundance Film Festival, where it's holding its launch party this evening. If the scheme catches on, some investors might turn to the gossip in Daily Variety and Entertainment Tonight in the same way they now rely on CNBC for market intelligence.

Civilian plans to put together films with proven talent (directors, writers, actors) as a way of reducing some of the uncertainty in the usual Hollywood crapshoot. After one of its films has been in release for a while -- perhaps a couple of years -- its company will disband and distribute the profits (if there are any) back to the shareholders. The presumption is that many of the films will fail -- that's just how it works in Hollywood -- but a few might become big hits that bring in windfalls and more than compensate for the flops. The glam factor makes it an alluring play for investors with a tolerance for high risk -- and hey, can it be any riskier than buying an Internet stock? -- Alan Deutschman [10:45 a.m. PST, Jan. 24, 2001]

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A Net-funded wackomentary hits Sundance

PARK CITY, Utah -- Dot-coms are better known for pricing artists out of lofts and neighborhoods than for supporting the creation of culture. So it's refreshing to learn that one of the hottest films at this week's Sundance Film Festival was paid for by a profit-hungry Internet company.

The film, "Home Movie," is a funny, offbeat 60-minute look at five wacko houses and the absurdly colorful people who live in them. We visit a couple who have colonized an abandoned nuclear missile silo and underground bunker in Kansas, a retired actress who must ford three rivers to get to her treehouse in a remote Hawaiian jungle, an alligator wrangler who bunks in a houseboat in the Louisiana swamps, a septuagenarian inventor who orders around a robot through his Jetsons-style home in the Chicago suburbs and a couple who have completely restyled their abode into a palace for their 11 cats.

The unlikely backer of this indie film project is Homestore.com, an Internet realtor whose impresario, venture capitalist John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins, is more likely to be found at an electronics store than an art movie house. The movie came about when Homestore's hip L.A. advertising agency, Chiat/Day, approached filmmaker Chris Smith, whose earlier Sundance feature, "American Movie," has acquired a cult following among cinemaphiles. Smith took the gig because he was offered the film director's equivalent of Nirvana: creative control -- a.k.a. "final cut" in the lingo.

And what does Homestore.com get for its undisclosed amount of cash? The deal was that the company could take some of Smith's footage and recut it into TV commercials to promote its Internet home-improvement e-commerce portal. But at a Sundance screening, the film team said quietly that it now seems unlikely that the ads will ever air. Could it be because Homestore's stock (HOMS) has fallen from $138 a share to $27 in the past 12 months while the film was being completed, and ad spending by Net companies has been drastically cut?

The ending promises to be a happy one. Art is created and TV executives are buzzing about putting Smith's full hour-long wackomentary on the small screen for the delight of alt-culture types and film buffs everywhere. At last, VCs have fostered some real art, even if their motives weren't entirely nonprofit. -- Alan Deutschman [2:30 p.m. PST, Jan. 22, 2001]

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The stud-muffin shortage in Silicon Valley

Are the little black books of Women.com wearing thin? Last year, the Web site debuted a popular feature called The Men of Silicon Valley, with cheesecake profiles and photo galleries of the top 10 "eligible" bachelors: studs like Craig Newmark and Epicentric's Oliver Muoto, culled from the address books of the Women.com staff. On Friday, Women.com repeated the offense; but this time, the site expanded beyond California to include the top 10 "Men of the Internet."

A frustrated single gal in Silicon Valley might take this to mean that there were so few eligible men in the area that Women.com had to cast its net wider. After all, New York seems to boast more roguish Net celebrities such as Philip "Pud" Kaplan of FuckedCompany, or Rufus Griscom of Nerve.com, both of whom were chosen by Women.com as hot male commodities. Perhaps the dot-com downturn is taking its toll on the dating scene in San Francisco, as well? If so, Women.com soothes its readers, you can always go east, young woman, go east. --Janelle Brown [1 p.m. PST, Jan. 19, 2001]

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Is solar power the answer for dot-com profitability?

Stop complaining, start profiting! That's the lesson to be culled from one San Francisco company's move away from the beleaguered electricity grid and toward solar power. The Rosebud Agency -- which books concerts for Robert Cray, Ben Harper, Paolo Conte and other artists -- now runs entirely on the warm, free rays of the sun.

The move doesn't just keep the company from suffering the wrath of rolling blackouts; it also brings in some cash. Because the panels bring in more energy than the company needs, "we've been selling energy back to PG&E, making several hundred dollars each of the last three months," says Mike Kappus, president and owner. "This weekend, for instance, we'll be selling power back, making money -- and we won't even be working!"

Kappus argues that he bought the Oxypower system -- which will end up costing about $50,000 after state rebates -- for environmental reasons. Profiting from the crisis is "purely coincidental," he says. Still, Kappus recognizes a certain irony in his new windfall and doesn't mind rubbing it in. Dot-coms in particular, he says, could learn from Rosebud's experience.

"Look at the millions of dollars they were spending all last year," he says. "If they spent a fraction of their party money on solar panels, they'd be profiting right now instead of going out of business." -- Damien Cave [11 a.m. PST, Jan. 19, 2001]

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