In the midst of dot com insanity, I decided it was time to take a shot at the goose that laid the golden eggs. By the time we got to the 2001 Roast, the Internet bubble had just burst and the event turned out to be a perfectly timed wake.

Here’s what Salon had to say about it.

Roast the Net: 2001 @ The Ritz Theatre with SXSW

• Miss the IPOs?
• Lawsuits got you down?
• Weary of grim tales of dot-com downturn?
• Enjoy the bull humour market
• Options for everyone!

The Whole Damn Thing (1hr 52min)

1. Heather Gold……..Patrick Naughton (2.1MB, 12:19)
2. Lance Arthur (with a special appearance by the pets.com mascot) …………. (3.5MB, 20:13)
3. Liz Belile Net Work is like Sex Work (2.7MB, 15:36)
4. Thomas Scoville .Pink Slips and Ham (3.1MB, 18:23) (transcript)
5. Justin Hall ……………………. (4.7MB, 27:14)
6. True Stories of Dot Com madness…assorted members of the crowd, including the pig head winner—centralbooking’s Kevin Smokler…………………… (3.2MB, 18:29)

Roast the Net: 2000

Along with Her Domain and SXSW Interactive, subvert.com presented

The First Internet Industry Roast

Listen to:

• the entire 2000 roast
• an edited version of Heather’s material from the 2000 roast

Roast permformers

1. Heather Gold ………….Intro/rock star CEO/start-up dysfunction
2. special guest Adam Powell ……………………unWired
3. HG ………………….. romance in Silicon Valley/eating our words
4. Paulina Borsook …………living just enough for the city
5. HG ……………………………chachka economy/butter.com
6. HG + Elizabeth Belile ……..Poem for a World Wide Whatever
7. Betty Ray ………………………………………..lizard brain
8. Thomas Scoville …………………………..howl.com
9. Justin Hall ………………business opportunities I missed

Many thanks to the wonderful Roaster:

• Lance Arthur publishes at glassdog and the Fray. He is the David Rakoff of the Net. Except funnier and braver. Read him.
• Liz Belile bodyofwords.com poet fantastique, author of Polishing the Bayonet, the spoken word CD “Your Only Other Option is Surgery” and creator of Gynomite: named Houston’s Best Reading Series.
• Paulina Borsook is the author of “Cyberselfish/A critical romp through the terribly libertarian culture of high-tech.” As she said in her official bio for “The Best of Suck” years ago, she is basically a very nice girl who doesn’t understand why everyone gets so upset with what she writes.
• Heather Gold is a cross-platform writer/performer.
• Justin Hall, featured subject of the film Home Page, and so much more than can be described in one line.
• Adam Powell runs a little company called Angry Coffee.
• Betty Ray is the mayor of fuckertown.com
• Thomas Scoville (silicon follies, salon) reformed hacker, novelist, cyber-critic, and e-commerce conscientious objector. His favorite peripheral is his cat. For the Roast, Thomas wrote and performed, with beret, Howl.com

This entry was posted on Monday, March 12th, 2001 at 12:00 am and is filed under geek. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.