Quibi: Short Form, Long Regrets

All showbiz ideas are terrible until someone does them better

This is Rob Long with Martini Shot for The Ankler.

A friend of mine has a bad habit of pouring himself a big glass of wine in the evening, sometimes more than one, and then going shopping on the internet.

Then, a few days later, the delivery guys bring him a mystery package.

Sometimes it’s stuff he needs — pen refills or a USB drive or a new box of printer ink. But sometimes it’s stuff that only seems useful, and imperative, after a few glasses of wine or whiskey late at night, when there’s no one else awake or around to tell him to just close the lid of the MacBook Pro and go to bed.

That’s when he opens up the package and pulls out nootropic supplements or a toothbrush sanitizer or one of those travel pillows that looks like a toilet seat.

And the stuff sits on the kitchen counter in silent reproach — look at what you did, it all seems to say — and he ends up sending most of it back, which you can almost always do, though they usually ask why — wrong size? Not as described? Doesn’t fit? — though never allowing you to tell them the real reason, which was, judgment impaired by the following: Long day, skipped dinner, three glasses of cabernet, WiFi.

That’s when the phrase, “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” really comes into its own.

I remember, years ago, when a Hollywood insider sent me a text with a link to a recent announcement about a new company, called Quibi, which was founded by Jeffrey Katzenberg, a show business entrepreneur and hugely successful producer, and Meg Whitman, who ran eBay and Hewlett Packard and almost became the governor of the state of California.