DOT COMEDY

THEY SELL A FEW BOOKS AND CDS HERE AND THERE
On Wednesday (10/24), Amazon announced its 3Q financial hoo-hah, giving the stock a needed goose. The e-tailer posted a 3Q pro forma—which we believe means "in favor of forma"—loss of 25 cents a share, a full 8 cents a share lower than analysts expected and a whole cent below last year's 3Q loss. Revenues also beat analysts' expectations, topping $638 million, $38 million over the estimates. "We believe that Amazon's operating performance in 3Q suggests that it is highly committed to achieving profitability in the near future," said an analyst with the unlikely name of Jeetil Patel. Amazon also said it had $900 million in cash and cash equivalents at the end of the third quarter, but was planning to blow about $100 million of it on candy and video games.

SOMEWHERE IN HIS HOUSE IS A PORTRAIT OF A SKELETON
Living legend Dick Clark will hit the Net for a text-based chat on ARTISTdirect Thursday (10/26) at 4 p.m. Pacific Time. Fans of the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame inductee and "American Bandstand" host can submit questions prior to the chat at www.artistdirect.com/events/dickclark or at www.dickclark.com. The site recommends that those submitting questions stick to music-related topics and hold the queries about "The $100,000 Pyramid" or that damn "Bloopers" show with Ed McMahon for a later date.

NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH "DIGITAL MUSIC"
Columbia Records has released a new technology which it proudly calls "a total music watching/listening experience…enhanced with mind-blowing graphic and pictorial animations…[that is] reinventing and repositioning music videos in cyberspace." And that has to be true, because we read it right in a press release written in plain ol' black and white. The technology, carrying the catchy name of Music Digitals, offers full-length tracks paired with graphics courtesy of Shockwave's Flash animation. The initial release of these Music Digitals, all available at the bands' Web sites, includes The Getaway People, P.J. Olsson and The Union Underground. The band PALOALTO is also supposed to have one available, but the link listed on the press release is the same as for The Getaway People. Therefore, we can only assume those two bands have a Bruce Wayne/Batman relationship. "We wanted to give music fans something new and exciting," said one Columbia spokesman, "but we also wanted to keep it sorta quiet. These four mostly unknown artists give us the best of both worlds."

FINALLY, ANOTHER EARNINGS STATEMENT!
It would be too easy to let you out of here without foisting another earnings statement on you. XM Satellite Radio today reported its exciting 3Q financial results. There was a bunch of other "operating results" announced by the company—key technological milestones, strategic partnerships and whatnot—but since we still don't have satellite radio in our Hummers, we'll just stick to the cash money. XM reported a 3Q EBITDA loss of $20.1 million (up from $17.4 million last year) and a net loss of $160.1 million, or $3.26 a share (up from $17.4 million, or $2.60 a share, last year). Then there was this whole thing about Series B stock and Series C stock, but, honestly, by the time we got to that part of the press release, we were pretty drunk. Oh, they are launching a satellite in December. So, that should be pretty cool.