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		• Boo! And the 100 Other Dumbest Moments in e-Business History - March 30, 2001

80. Sept. 11 Inc., "I'm Almost -- Almost -- Too Stupid to Ridicule" Division: At 2:40 p.m. on Sept. 11, a New Jersey restaurateur named Michael Heiden files a form with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to trademark the words "World Trade Center." Interviewed by the Smoking Gun website, Heiden claims that Disney trademarked the term "Pearl Harbor" before producing that film [it did not], and that, "if they ever do make a movie [about the terrorist attacks], I'd like to get involved."

81. Speaking of Pearl Harbor -- a film budgeted at $135 million and scrutinized by countless Disney (DIS) executives -- nobody involved in its production thinks to question the scene in which Ben Affleck boards a train from Grand Central Terminal in New York to his airbase ... in England.

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82. After 18 months at Webvan, overseeing a stock plunge of more than 99 percent, CEO George Shaheen resigns from the online grocer in April 2001, receiving a pension that pays him $375,000 per year for life. The only saving grace: Webvan goes bankrupt three months later, rendering it unable to pay Shaheen's pension.

83. Sept. 11 Inc., Misplaced Patriotism Division: In the months after the attacks, more than a dozen people and companies file trademark applications for the phrase "Let's roll" or variants thereof. In the face of protests from the Todd Beamer Foundation -- named for the passenger on United Flight 93 who uttered the phrase -- one trademark applicant, Jack L. Williams of Grosse Pointe Park, Mich., tells the Associated Press, "I don't care what your name is, it's first in, first swim.... It's all about good old American capitalism."

84. CelebSites, a company whose business consists of managing celebrities' URLs in order to prevent famous people's names from falling into the hands of unscrupulous cybersquatters, shuts down in March 2001. As a result, some of its clients' names fall into the hands of unscrupulous cybersquatters.

85. Still Partying Like It's 1999, Part 3: Peter Chung, a newly hired associate at the Carlyle Group, sends an e-mail to his friends bragging about his lavish new lifestyle. The e-mail -- in which he boasts of the "hot chicks" he's bedding and concludes, "CHUNG is KING of his domain here in Seoul" -- is sent to thousands of other people and eventually makes its way back to his bosses. Chung, no longer king of his domain, is summarily fired.

86. A Finnish textiles conference, intending to invite a representative of the World Trade Organization to speak, instead accidentally invites Andy Bichlbaum, an American antiglobalization activist-prankster. He delivers a speech in which he expresses sympathy for the South in the Civil War, describes Mohandas Gandhi as a "rabble-rouser," and disrobes to reveal that he is wearing a golden spandex unitard featuring a 3-foot-long inflatable phallus.

87. Apparently unaware of the group's enmity for the corporate world, GM (GM) pays the British pop band Chumbawamba $100,000 for the rights to use the song "Pass It Along" in a Pontiac ad campaign. The band promptly passes along the money to a pair of advocacy groups, including one, CorpWatch, that intends to spend some of the money looking into GM's social and environmental track record.

88. Sept. 11 Inc., Lip Service Does Not Equal Charity Division: Shoe designer Steve Madden resigns as CEO of his eponymous company after being arrested on stock-fraud charges, to which he pleads guilty. A move that could help rehabilitate his image -- designing an American-flag-themed shoe called "Bravest" in order to "raise money for New York City's fallen firefighters" -- backfires when the New York Times reveals that none of the $515,783 in profits from the shoe were given to firefighters' charities until reporters began inquiring into the matter.

89. Sept. 11 Inc., A Tiny Portion of the Proceeds Doesn't Equal Charity Either Division: Once reporters do look into Steve Madden Inc.'s disposition of funds from "Bravest," the company pledges to give 10 percent of its proceeds from the shoe, and a minimum of $100,000, to a firefighters' charity. It keeps the remainder for itself. Jamie Karson, Madden's new CEO, explains to the Times that "the most patriotic thing we can do is make money."