PopObama Nation

I absolutely love that our president is a celebrity. The internet Pop Culture generation, and the Pop Culture news arena take a gossipy, pop-talk approach to the white house and politics. They sure would have had a field day with the Clinton scandal, but they do keep us up to date on senators and prostitutes and a veritable whose who of adulterous politicians.Today, or the last few days for that matter the chatter on pop-media sites has been drawn to Obama's new housemate; his dog. Sources for People magazine say the dog was named by the youngest two siblings, and it comes as no shock that they would focus on the new puppy. Pop news has become a huge industry, and has broadened its scope from trends and celebrities, to celebrity and pop trends infecting the world around them. Popular culture, it is safe to say is not limited to the film and music stars but is actually broadened into what is simply 'popular' in society. people want to know things, and teh more Obama approaches teh celebrity status of a movie star, the more him and his family will be seen as such by the Perez Hiltons and TMZs of the world.

Didn't see that coming.

Internet phenomena have become a huge part of our culture. People share videos on YouTube, and send them to each other in e mails and postings. My mother even sent me a few video's from YouTube the other day and I became very curious about how often people watch these video's and you can see the millions of views accounted for but which one takes the cake!! So I searched the internet for a while and found the top ten most popular youtube clips! and i was surprised to see that it was this:

The Evolution of Dance:


I just found it very interesting how people spend their time on the internet with the whole 'Rick Rolling' thing as well. People have a ton pf free time they spend exposed to media on the internet, these phenomens, I do think will be harnessed one day to be able to make money most likely from advertising. There are television commercials already pushing the Rick Astley as a pop culture icon for notability.

Pop culture effects...

I saw the movie The Watchmen about a month ago. It was good, it was also out of control long but anyway... I started to wonder how many comic books/graphic novels were being harvested for movies, here is a neat listing of all of them, and a few up and coming in the future: Graphic Novel Movies The thought escaped me again until yesterday when I was gridlocked in Washington DC. Undoubtedly the worst place to drive on the planet earth. Save me from that Watchmen. I pulled off the highway with the assistance of the GPS I stole from a friend just inside the city limits and found a neat bookstore/coffee shop after getting bullied by a cop for parking in a CVS parking lot and not buying anything. I was looking for a book I was reading in one of my lit classes, figured I'd get a jump on some reading instead of wasting my day away in the car.
I moved to the front of the store (I came in the back) and right next to the door was a massive new section with all the bells and whitstles of a theme park ride indicating an enormous aumentation to the graphic novel section of the store. There were more 'as seen in the films' than I could care to see. The bookstore was privately owned, I was told and I fount ir very interesting how they were playing off of the popularity of the pop culture buzz in such a subdued, off the beaten path shop like this one.

Bet you can't catch my attention

I was reading over my blog, and a few others I peek at from time to time, and everybody, it seemed, commented on the Super Bowl advertisements. Very critical, very authoritative, and why not be? We are the audience, we are the target, why not be the judges as well? That being said, I do was to emphasize the point that it must be increasingly more difficult for advertisers or marketers to grab the attention of an audience. Firstly, why not change the channel when you have seven hundred others you could be watching instead of a commercial? Second, one could grab a snack, go to the bathroom, talk to a friend, anything but there is still the millions of dollars of hope pumped in to advertising on television. Part of this is to be blamed on peoples attention span coupled with their requirement for instant gratification. What can hold a 21 year old's attention that they haven't already seen somebody else do? We've had the internet for half of our lives, I challenge you to widen my eyes.

Durex. I applaud you... and question your sensitivity to the subject of sex. Personally I laugh, but can see if or why someone might gripe about some condom commercials . Yet at the same time, I could write a novel sized dissertation about my feelings on tampon commercials but I won't, I suppose people are offended by different things.

Well whatever your tolerance for silly, ridiculous, balloon animal?, sex jokes I think Durex has managed to get my attention with this one. I can't believe I'm posting this for a class. AS funny as it is, it it wildly inappropriate.

Her is the link to the video on YouTube, please, if you feel as though you may be offended by sexually explicit material no matter the comedic content do not view the commercial.

Durex Commercial



Anywho, the point is that advertisers are constantly pushing the envelope, and getting harangued by censors for their content. The fact is, as silly as it sounds, they have to test the boundaries, because only outside of those boundaries can they find content original enough, attractive enough, creative enough to burn an image in the viewers mind.

Recession

I was wondering today, as I stared at my roommates PS3 what it might cost to own such a thing. I looked up some figures, and any one of the newest fully loaded gaming systems; xbox 360, PS#, and wii will run someone, if they go all out and get the fully loaded packages between 630 and 670 dollars. No gamers argue that because of the versatility of the consoles doubling as internet machines, DVD, or blueray players significantly increase the monetary value, it is hard to believe that in an economic crisis that people will shell out this kind of cash for a system. Not to mention that these are store prices,and people were willing to pay well over 200% of the sticker price when they first came out just to get their hands on it faster.
The truth is, though as i poke around the internet I find article after article about how for one reason or another the different authors may attribute to the solidity of the gaming market that the video gaming console industry has been all but unaffected by the ecenomic situation. I fint it interesting, that such a pupular culture sect sits pretty while something like the automobile industry cries for help. Maybe not having a car makes people sit at home and play video games who knows. My point is, that even the struggle for survival in an economy where people all over America are running through four lanes of traffic to pick up a dime they dropped will spend enough to support the entire video game industry as though the market was ont he up and up. Its like america is addicted to it's pop culture, we need it, we crave it, and we will spend whatever it takes to support our own habit.

Kids these days.

Easter was the first time in over four years that my brother my sister and I were all together. Over the last few years we have managed to see each other sparingly, she in Florida he in DC or NY and I in Baltimore or NY as well but never all in the same place. We got a little rowdy on saturday night and spent the morning in our basement together for the first time since I was eleven or twelve.

We were watching a Tom and Jerry cartoon, and I was surprised at how nostalgic I became. The three of us grew up here, we don't see each other nearly as often as we should yet the final piece of the trip back in history seemed to be the cartoons we were watching. It made me think of old Thanksgivings and Christmas' and how we used to sit here and watch holiday specials together .i forgot how big of a centerpiece the television was to my childhood even though I fell like I don't watch as much, and never did watch as much as other people.

My brother and I started talking about the cartoons kids watch today. Our generation has an ever changing exposure to media, to television shows, and it actually stratifies our age groups. i can't relate to what younger people watch today, just like they would not be able to follow the shows I did. it is like our time line can be defined in terms of our exposure. It made me feel like I was a kid but it made me feel so old.

Poker faces and broken hearts

I got a very frantic phone call from my friend Diana after lunch today. She was crushed that her Lady GaGa concert had been cancelled/postponed. What was funny was how self righteous she was when she told me she had writted to Perez Hilton to bash the singer for her lack fo devotion to her fans. Fact is we live in a society where our culture is bought and sold as though it is a commodity. Films, DVD's, concert tickets, movies, CD's, downloads are our access tot he culture we call our own. How do celebrities get away with it? We go to a restaraunt, sit down and order food witht he intent of eating and the expectation that the service we pay for will be provided in at least some sory of satisfactory manner. We would be astonished if the experience was any different, and would more than likely never return to eat there again. With celebrities, we go back for more every time. In and out of rehab, problems with the law, social justive issues, crappy CD's, missed concerts are no deterrant for the relationship people share with their celebrity 'pals'.

Wild.

Wow... you need to get out more. So do I.

I was at the mall on Wednesday trying to collect various pieces of formal wear for an upcoming interview with my buddy Conor. I am not too good at the shopping think, as a rule, and I for one think malls make it even more difficult. An indecisive person without an agenda stuck at an intersection... that's how I think of it. After traveling to the Inner Harbor here in Baltimore, poking around ESPN Zone turning over the idea of hyperreality in my head to think of something intelligent to say about it, Conor blew my mind and made me look foolish quite simultaneously (not that it's particularly difficult). He looked around the light colored gleaming stone of the cookie cutter American up scale shopping experience and said "I like this mall it reminds me of home." Are you kidding! This, the most unholy of 'cultural' endeavors; reality numbing, buffet-style, life and money sucking, I'll be there next week anyway, 'just add water' social experience makes you feel at home!

Speechless because I'm guilty too. Damn.

Everything I need to know in life I learned from a comic strip

There have been contemporary adaptations of the comic strip on television. Cartoons like Popeye, and even as modern as the Simpsons and Family Guy have addressed political and social issues in their own way, but I haven't found one as wildly powerful and lovable as my favorite read in Calvin and Hobbes. The strip ran for ten years from 1985 to 1995, and the comic artist and author Bill Watterson uses the simplicity and innocence of a young six year old boy with a fantastic vocabulary and philosophic tone to make his readers laugh at both themselves and he antics of a boy and his stuffed tiger. People have a tendency to quote movies and television shows, and look at someone who doesn't recognize their allusion as though they were from another world. You are out of the loop if you don't know what Al Pacino was saying an hour into Scarface, yet most people would never recognize the faces of those formerly famous characters from the Sunday Comics. I don;t consider myself aloof from popular culture, I am sure I take in a much media as the next 21 year old but I do find it interesting how things advance and change from year to year. How may people rad the Sunday Comics rather than watch their television? How many people pay for a CD instead of downloading it, and the same trend with movies now. Comics may someday die, but until then, I'm sure movie production companies will squeeze the life out of them by trying to make 'live action' renditions of them on the big screen

Just in case you missed out...plus I have a man crush on him

While awaiting criminal sentencing for federal weapons charges, TI wrote down lyrics for the first time since his debut album, hence the name of his 2008 smash hit album 'Paper Trail'. The album is profoundly self aware. Even his most popular songs seem to face his personal issues; song topics usually left behind in those fifteen 'other' tracks left over on an album after MTV gets done with it. TI worked with Jay-Z, Rhianna, Swizz Beats, Justin Timberlake, Just Blaze, and Kanye West just to name a few of the hotshots to produce this album. Songs you have more then likely heard on the radio, 'Dead and Gone', 'What up, Whats Happenin?', 'Whatever You Like', 'Live Your Life', 'Slideshow', and 'My Life your Entertainment' all aired nationally, as well as internationally. It has been nominated for a Grammy, but the buzz it has generated has been much farther reaching.

In case you aren't a hip-hop fan, it is difficult to even turn on a television set without running into the new MTV documentary 'TI's Road to Redemption'. He is trying his hardest to walk through his own life with a few kids he feels are at risk of making the same mistakes he made. What is interesting about the show, the album, and the charges is they there is so much reality in it. We see reality shows filled with morons and lunatics, but this is reality. TI made an album about what he has learned in his life, the things that happened to him are real, and the charges are real. The people or the kids rather that he is mentoring are real, and so is their danger. Celebrities do a lot of things for publicity, and I don't doubt that to some degree TI is going to ask the judges to look st his progress during his sentencing but there is a certain reality in his life in the spotlight that most well known faces never show.

F@#$ My Life... I think there's an online community for everything

The library changed it's hours this semester. Apparently, instead of having general open hours until 2:00 AM, the lobby remains open that late and the stacks are only open until 11:00. I left to go to the computer lab near my dorm but when I returned the library was closed and whats more an entire mid term paper and research packets. I called around campus, and eventually was told to stick it out for about two hours when campus police would eventually search the building on their rounds and let me in.

While waiting for my nightmare to work itself out I called a few friends for comfort and two of the three of them told me to visit www.fmylife.com. The site is like an online open forum that anyone can post on, and tell stories... more or less about how their life sucks. Well, it did make me feel better and I got a good laugh out of a few of them but what I noticed was how easy it has become for people to be a part of everybody elses lives. It doesnt end with celebrities, it isn't limited to famous people in Popular American Culture, anyone can be heard.

'Man this is hard...'

The Super Bowl is one of those 'great American traditions' that manages to capture the entire country's attention at the same time. More or less our entire country is in a living room or bar watching a football game they may or may not care about. I love watching football, I may or may not have cried when the Giants lost to the Eagles this year and I'll never tell.

So why is it that during one of the most televised and watched TV events in the country we actually look forward to the interruptions? Maybe it was the Budweiser frogs, the screaming squirrels, the constant man-getting-hit-in-the-nuts jokes or anything in between. The issue is, that at some point hasn't it all been done before? Isn't every thirty second time space just one tacky giggle after another? I don't think I was impressed by any advertisements this year, and I think most people are on the same page as me...but somehow, someway, advertisers managed to attack the medium of TV from a new angle!

Miller High Life managed to catch my attention before the super bowl with this ad.



During the game, at various cities across the country a different one second commercial was aired. A bunch of them are recorded here.



Granted most of them didn't make it to out homes and screens, but it was certainly a creative approach to advertising. It isn't enough for a company to make a commercial, the millions of dollars invested in a commercial that fails to catch attention is wasted money and from my experience can do more harm than help to a company's reputation. People who work in advertising and marketing have moved beyond the money, beyond the commercial too produce a phenomena outside of the game and give themselves an advantage on a different playing field.