You can take your MBA and shove it up your A-S-S

If there's one thing I'll admit about Stanford, it's that they seem to have a knack for producing a great pool of entrepreneurs and innovators: Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard of HP, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, Jerry Yang of Yahoo!, Peter Thiel of PayPal, Phil Knight of Nike (aka Resident Rich Uncle Pennybags of UC Eugene; also, international advocate of a your-face-looks-like-a-million-bucks-it's-green-and-wrinkly level of ridiculously ugly uniforms) - and these are just some of the bigger names. Stanford's Graduate School of Business just seems to have some sort of nurturing environment conducive to giving their students the freedom to toss around these new ideas and actually act on them, to give them the greatest possible chance to plant their seeds and hopefully see significant fruit.

The Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley isn't too shabby either - any school that produces great beings such as Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, and Norman Mineta, former Secretary of Transportation (whom some refer to as "Underperformin' Norman"), has got to have SOME clout behind it.

On Thursday, February 19th, however, I had a glimpse of the next great wave of innovators who may claim gold and glory to our dear alma mater. And they're not even enrolled in Haas. (By the way: Dear Haas School of Business, I WILL PLAY MUSIC ON MAXWELL FIELD WHENEVER THE FUCK I WANT TO. STICKS OUT OF ASSES, POR FAVOR. Thank you for your time, Go Bears, praise be to Tedford.)

Two buddies of mine, CarpeDM and FederagoogSlayer, wallowing in sheer boredom, greed, and their recent clinical diagnoses of Stage Three Senioritis, decided to make and sell black-bottom cupcakes on Sproul Plaza just for kicks. When I first saw the notification on my Facebook inbox, I seriously thought it was a joke. Were they serious about this? For goodness' sake, they named their new upstart the Happy Summertime Funcake Factory. How they managed to come up with such an awesome name like the Happy Summertime Funcake Factory without the assistance of some combination of greater-than-or-equal-to four recreational drugs is simply beyond me.

(Wait a second. Maybe they DID have extracurricular "help"...who else would make cupcakes at 2am? OH MY GOD SKY FALLING WAAAAAH)

For kicks, I decided to go check out their very amateur, very illegal shining beacon of a new wave of young entrepreneurship. I didn't take a picture, but a fellow friend, P. Titty, happened to take a picture of the event and was kind enough to let me use the image.


The future of business models. God help us.

Let's break down this photo:
1) The weather was GORGEOUS. This day was a completely random sunny day stuck straight in the asscrack of two weeks of gray skies and rain.
2) They seriously named their place the Happy Summertime Funcake Factory. Seriously.
3) You can't see it very well in the photo, but on the small print next to the little ClipArt on the sign, it says "KISSES $1.00" with the "$1.00" crossed out and "50 cents" written underneath it.
4) To the stage right of the fine gentleman in maroon on the left of the photo (our friend RyRo) is the blue Cal Band sandwichboard, normally only brought out for Cal Day for potential recruits to take interest forms and our older-than-Goldie-Hawn brochures.

Now let's analyze.
1) Clearly this is a sign from the great Oski in the sky that this is the beginning of an amazing journey.
2) SERIOUSLY?! (It eventually grew on me. Seriously.)
3) CarpeDM had originally priced cupcakes at 50 cents and Hershey's Kisses at a DOLLAR EACH. I'm glad we NORMAL PEOPLE with COMMON BUSINESS SENSE were able to talk him to marking it down.
4) When they first brought out the table, there was a UCPD copper just chillin' next to The Structure Formerly Known As Sather Gate, shooting hate rays from his eyes in our general directionn. He might have been looking at the Asian Business Association table across from us, I don't know, it's entirely possible, damn Asians and their businesses. Since the operation was illegal, we thought this might have been a problem. Good thing he biked away shortly after the table was set up and we were all THAT'S RIGHT, RIDE AWAY BITCH, YOU CAN'T STOP ME MUTHAFUCKA CUZ I'M ON A BOAT. (Basically, the Cal Band sandwichboard was brought out to cover our asses.)

I purchased one of the cupcakes, and they were DELICIOUS. I never thought that half-day-old cream cheese in the middle of a cupcake would be good, but man, it was delicious. Black-bottom cupcakes. BUY THEM. PLEASE.

That night, I asked CarpeDM how their first day went (I had to leave early), and it turns out they sold them all and made about $50. Subtract about $25 for materials, and we find that they turned a nice $25 profit (URGHRHGR MATH BRAIN HURT MOMMA WAAH). A beautiful start to a beautiful new era of future business models. Who needs an MBA when you have a little plastic Cal Band membership card?

I believe in Harvey Dent. I also believe in happiness, summertime, fun, cakes, and factories.

BUY THEIR CUPCAKES. It's a STEAL at 50 cents a pop. You will not regret it.