Dan's Papers - May 29, 2009 - Twentysomething...

Nearly everybody I know puts pictures of themselves online partying like rock stars. EVERYBODY, from Harvard grads to PhDs to lawyers, has pictures of themselves giving the thumbs up sign with a beer in their hand. It's sort of a way of saying to the world, "Hey, I'm cool because I like to go out and have a good time with other people."

Putting your pictures online is a relatively new thing. Thanks to websites like Facebook and MySpace, anybody with a digital camera can share an unlimited amount of photos with the world. You can even take video of yourself dancing the night away for all the world to see.

I did some deep thinking the other day about what this is going to mean for our future leaders and "adults" of the world. Just about anybody who's in the mood to run for any kind of political office in the next 10 years is going to have some pretty scandalous pictures of themselves that are easy for the public to access. Can you imagine Googling your future doctor and then landing on a MySpace page with pictures of them in their 20s doing a keg stand?

What I think would be even weirder are pictures of a future presidential candidate making a funny face at a frat party and a video of him or her playing beer pong. And what if these pictures sway people, and the parties then seek out people who never used Facebook? Would you vote for a guy 20 years from now who never made a Facebook page while in college?

I have to tie this in somehow here, so I'm going to just say that Terminator Salvation is unbelievably awesome. Watching this movie, I saw my entire life come full circle. I can remember vividly being nine years old and watching Terminator 2 with my father at a private theater with the Udell's (who own London Jewelers out here) and having a complete moment of "Oh my God" for the next decade. Terminator 3 was a complete disappointment and I went into Terminator Salvation without any hesitation, but not super high expectations. Dear God, what a movie! I was so unbelievably impressed on so many different levels - highly recommend it. It's awesome.

Anyway, I read that Star Trek was fantastic as well and felt a huge sense of urgency to invest some of my 401K, which is a pathetic amount of money but money nonetheless, into entertainment stock. I can't remember the last time so many good movies were lined up for the summer.

I spent about four hours online researching movie stocks and started to think about how attractive Time Warner (TWX) was looking. I wasn't thrilled about a horrendous negative EPS or its ugly hit in the last year, but hey, I really like their movies. I then realized that I was seriously thinking about buying a stock after watching a movie and that Time Warner has AOL - a business I don't like. Suddenly I got an alert message on my Blackberry that a picture of me was "tagged" on Facebook. I had a look and sure enough, there was my mug with a big smile at Montauk's The Surf Lodge, where I was the night before letting loose.