The Stan Sigman Experience

The world of mobile telecommunications was shocked this morning to discover that former AT&T Mobility CEO Stan Sigman is not the man people thought he was.

Just 12 hours after the event honoring his induction into the Wireless Hall of Fame and his rambling 5-hour acceptance speech, Stan Sigman was revealed to be not a man at all but a piece of performance art.

Speaking to gathered media, San Francisco performance artist Julian Leflaunt said that for the past 40 years, he has been playing the part of “Stan Sigman” as part of a piece entitled “Corporate ‘Leadership’ and The Folly of the American Enterprise”.

“I created everything about Stan,” said Leflaunt. “From his horrible public speaking ability to his post-retirement goatee.”

Working as a Bell stockman the 1960s, Leflaunt says, he became aware of the vapid nature of our vaunted executive class.

“I was determined to show the CEO for what he was: a long-winded oaf concerned with nothing more than achieving personal glory off the back of the worker. These emperors of our economy have no clothes, I thought, and I set out to devote my life to showing them to the rest of the world as I saw them.”

Cleverly manipulating the bureaucracy at Bell, Leflaunt recast himself as “Stan Sigman”, the name being a play on “standard signal man”, which the artist says represented the conformity enforced by corporate America on the proletariat.

So his life’s work began. But then, Leflaunt said, something strange happened.

“As much as I wanted to hate him, I grew to love Stan,” he said. “My feelings for him as a rising CEO did not change — I still believed him to be the most useless of cogs in the capitalist machine — but as a person I found him to be sympathetic and even tragic. His love of golf for its moments of platonic camaraderie and closeness with other men, a closeness he always craved from his father but never got. His passion for quarter horses, driven by his recurring childish fantasies of being a cowboy on the frontier of the late 1800s. The more I rounded out his character, the sadder he became to me.”

Leflaunt admits that the piece got out of hand.

“I really had no intentions of carrying it on for more than 40 years,” Leflaunt said. “But I couldn’t stop. I needed to see how it ended! And then the iPhone deal just fell into my lap.”

Leflaunt was concerned the deal was almost his undoing.

“I was frightened that I had overplayed my hand at Macworld Expo in 2007,” Leflaunt said. “I wanted to deliver a truly dreadful speech, I felt that was important to the piece, but when I shook Steve Jobs’ hand after I was done, I thought I saw him give me a look. I flew home in a cold sweat.”

For his part, Jobs says he was completely unaware that the man he had worked with on the most significant product release of the decade was an utter fabrication.

“I had no idea,” said a disbelieving Steve Jobs. “I mean, one time he was chuckling in the middle of a meeting for no discernible reason, but… wow. Incredible. My hat’s off to him.

“Anyway, this totally voids our exclusivity deal with AT&T so… Verizon iPhone in January.”

Asked what he will work on next, Leflaunt says he plans on taking his first vacation in 40 years, claiming the others were in character so they don’t count. Then he plans to devote time to cat memes on the Internet.

“That’s where all the cutting-edge work is being done nowadays,” he said.

329 thoughts on “The Stan Sigman Experience”

  7. Wisconsin?

    Where?

    What?

    Who?

    Excuse my ignorance but I opened my thesaurus but there is no dinosaur called Wisconsin.

  9. He should notice me.

    I’m huge in Wisconsin.

    And pretty lardy in Kent also, truth be told.

    If the Limey contingent are wondering where that (ridiculous) huge white horse statue we had planned has gone . . . I ate it.

  10. Has it occurred to anyone that we’re like some kind of biology project for John, in that he plants a post and then leaves it to fester? You know, like growing beans from seeds in a jar. Or cress. And seeing what happens when you keep them in the dark?

  16. If you remember, damn, I forgotten what I was going to say but the Moltz/Gruber/Balmer Trinity elucidate every 131 comments, so only another 417 to go.

  18. sfh – you could spread that out over three posts in future, could you? I fear the Nxxx 417 scam may be true.

    Now if you’ll excuse me I just need to go and wait in a London hotel lobby for the chap to whom I’ve lent £5000 so he can get the next post from the Moltz/Gruber/Balmer trinity out of their collective brain(s).

    [Not *those* brains, of course . . . unless…]

  19. Where’d my ‘u’ go on the end of ‘sfh’, hmmm?

    See that – sneaky double post out of nothing.

    Genius.

    417 here we come…

  24. We used to have a game called Lotto.

    Will the 417th post from the Trinity reveal how to play that game?

  32. It looks as though the new CARS installment (“An Anthropomorphized White iPhone 4 Is Confronted Regarding Its Inability to Be Shipped”) has been posted over at–wait for it–Daring Fireball!

    More proof that Moltz is… well, you know.

  35. Why has Moltz abandoned us for the Daring Furball?!?

    I’m going to go over to the corner and cry now.

  36. Seems i was right about 417 but with Paul the Psychic Octopus dead, where will the information come from?

    You don’t suppose that the Moltz/Gruber/Balmer Trinity is an octopus, do you?

  37. It all fits!

    The Trinity, derived from the perfection and completeness vested in the number 3, indicating that this board is now finished and given over to its End Times.

    And the Octo, the blessed number 8, signifying resurrection and new birth. Showing those with pure hearts that Psychic-Paul had to be sacrificed that he might travel with octopodal zeal to the Underworld to release a new post that can now be made gloriously manifest amongst us, graced and inspired with the ontological, triune perfection of the Moltz/Gruber/Balmer GeekHead. In the 8th month, no less. Following a Nxxx post on the twenty-EIGHTH. And on a day where I have already eaten *eight* jammy dodgers.

    Who but vain apostates can doubt the veracity of these Signs?

    All Praise Our Lord Jobs.

    Hollowed be His Eyes.

  39. BroMu,
    More bad news regarding Croydon sliding down the pan.
    Not only two LIDLs, not even partially compensated by one John Lewis or Sue Perkins’ “Seven Car Parks of Croydon” on Radio 4. Now, two Cash Converters and the final humility, one Best Buy.
    Just commenced saving for a one way ticket to Switzerland.

  40. Well don’t go via Gravesend:

    1 LIDL
    1 ALDI
    2 ASDA
    4 Assorted ‘Poundstretcher’ types
    6 ‘We cash cheques/cash converters’ (count ’em!)
    3 Outright pawn shops
    And we’ve had a Best Buy for ages.
    No John Lewis and only a Tesco ‘metro’ in the town centre . . . which has three bouncers on permanent duty (even during the day).

    Woe.

    Still, at least we’re not Chavham or Gillingham….

  41. You poor souls have nothing to complain about until you have Wal-Mart staring you in the face. It’s not pretty.

  42. Hah – I was waiting for the Wal-Mart wail.

    I went in one when I was in New York (I think). It was like some kind of air-conditioned, echoey Limbo, peopled with pimples and the odd tramp-stamp.

    Clearly I felt right at home and scampered straight off in search of the Burberry-Patterned-Findus-Crispy-Pancakes section.

  43. So I made the Moltz/Gruber/Balmer Cerberus creature like you asked. I’m not sure why you wanted it… It seems to be tearing a huge hole in the space time continuum.

  45. No, Steve… You felt a little wonky because… um.. nevermind.
    Yeah, just don’t worry about it.

  46. We HAVE Walmart, they took over ASDA.

    Any donations for my one way ticket to Switzerland, gratefully received.

    Del,
    Cerebos? It’s a brand of salt on this side of the Pond.

  50. My neighborhood:
    Walmart
    Home Depot
    Old Navy
    A casino, if they ever get their act together.
    Any number of cheap, bad corner bars.

    If you stretch it out a little further (to a one mile limit):
    Aldi
    Lowe’s
    Ikea
    Best Buy

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