Gutfelch posted:

What happened was I was invited to speak at a conference on how to generate buzz. I had originally turned it down because I thought, if you need to go to a conference on buzz, you won’t be able to generate buzz. You’re hopeless.

I realized that was a bad idea, so I called them back up, and they said, “We’ve already filled it with a guy from Maxim.” And I was at Stuff, and we were sister publications at Dennis [Publishing], and I was kind of ticked off.

So instead I bought tickets for seats at the conference, and I filled them with three little people. And they brought in clipboards with cellphones and they set them on vibrate. So when their phones went off on the clipboards, they would make the buzzing noise. So in a way I was showing everyone at the conference how to generate buzz.

And then a month later, I was promoted to director of brand development for Stuff. But it was obviously a “promotion” promotion. They sent me to an Oakwood apartment in Beverly Hills. It was a lost year. I was jogging on Sunset and getting drunk most of the time. But it was worth it.