The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week

AOL's marketing campaigns have employed classic images "in a tasteful manner" for years, says an AOL spokesman in an email. "We simply felt that a gentle reference to technology as a part of Hopper's 'Nighthawks' masterpiece was a timely and interesting nuance people would appreciate and find interesting," he wrote. "Besides, who doesn't check their email over a cup of coffee?"

"Gentle reference?" What does that mean? "Timely and interesting nuance"?Timely in reference to what? "Nuance"? Is that what you call a major alteration to a work of art -- along the lines of, say, my rewriting the Harry Potter books to include, oh, I don't know, inappropriate intimate relationships between the teachers and students at Hogwarts? And that thing about checking email over coffee -- is that supposed to be funny?

Yeah, we know, we know. It was just harmless fun. They were just fooling around. We should lighten up.

2. A Tenth of a Penny for Your Thoughts

Vivendi Universal's (V Quote) misadventures in the U.S.-based entertainment business took yet another odd turn this week, even as the company announced its sensible agreement to merge much of the business with General Electric's (GE Quote) NBC.

The latest head-scratcher came as Vivendi Universal Chairman Jean-Rene Fourtou explained on a conference call with analysts why the company had decided not to sell its Universal Music record label just yet.

Cinquante Cent?

Stars in music are "becoming the brand, you know, of a new culture," Fourtou said, according to the research lab's transcription of his comments. "You have seen the successful movie we made with Eminem, but with 5 cents, and things like that, we have a lot of ideas, you know, based on the fact that we are the symbols of a new culture, which is urban music..."

It's possible that when Fourtou made his reference to "5 cents" he actually meant to say "50 Cent" -- the rapper who makes an appearance on the Universal soundtrack album for the Universal movie 8 Mile, starring Eminem.

If that's the case, forgive us for making fun of someone who speaks English infinitely better than we speak French.

On the other hand, it occurs to us that perhaps Fourtou was making some sort of sly comment about the continuing strength of the euro. We understand that the effects of a weak dollar policy are complex and mysterious, but we had no idea how far-reaching they were.