A few interesting items for you:

Apparently those people who are too good for the rest of us are too good for the famous people as well; rich people don’t care about celebrity endorsements.

I have been on YouTube.com.  I’ve poked around.  I think there’s some neat stuff there, but there’s still too many people with way too much time on their hands based on all the activity surrounding it.   Not to mention that as it becomes part of the mainstream media, what’s real and what isn’t will get tougher to determine.

Speaking of advertising, my fellow marketers have found yet another way to inundate us all with advertising – on school buses.  I don’t know about this – I haven’t been on a school bus in a while, but if my memory serves me correctly, the kids who don’t have headphones on are too loud to hear anything anyway.

Its almost as if they’ve been doing Cocaine – the energy drink.

Everybody who has filled up their iPod with iTunes purchased music, raise there hand.  *crickets chirps*  I thought so too.

Back in the "people with too much time worrying about stupid things" department, some people are concerned about the skinniness of models.  Others are saying you can’t regulate it.  The rest of us are saying "who cares!?!??!"

Happy birthday Play-Doh!  I’m gonna go grind some putty into a carpet in your honor.

The music industry must be in a sad state when the Naked Cowboy gets a record deal.  It’ll be even sadder if the record sells well.  It be downright depressing if its actually better than most of the stuff out there – which it easily could be actually…

OK, so this article is a bit over the top, but I have to admit… while they are comfortable, I do find Crocs to be disturbing looking.  They look like standard issue in a jailhouse – no metal, no sharp edges and lightweight. 

A few things that have popped up on my radar screen in the last week….

This isn’t really a ground breaking article: it basically says that teens are comfortable with technology.  But its worth mentioning and reading.

There’s a niche for everything, and here’s your proof: an airline for smokers.

Paris Hilton gets caught up in a CD altering prank.  Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bitchy rich heiress.

Netflix is now producing movies, which could be one of those small industry "tremors" that turns into a major earth-moving shake-up.   Home theater systems have liberated people from the movie theater, so why not by-pass it all-together?

I watched the VMAs the other night and I have to admit I was feeling a little bit old.  I recognized nearly every single performer and knew the majority of the songs, but it doesn’t mean I liked them. But for the youngin’s, its their Superbowl according to this article.

Last, but not least, the mystery of lonelygirl15.  People have way too much time on their hands if all they have to do is dissect videos this bad.  Well, the production is about 10 times better than anything else on there, but that just makes me thinkt hat lonelygirl is simply a hoax of some sort.

As noted in my previous post, I’ve been doing quite a bit of traveling.  It has been exhausting and I look forward to being home, but one thing that just about any kind of travel gives you is a different perspective and exposure to different cultures.  Even in this "United" country of ours, a short plane ride can land you in the middle of somewhere that can be as different as a foreign country. 

One interesting observations I’ve made over the last few weeks is the number of "sub cultures" that exist and make up the threads of our larger cultural tapestry.  Some examples:

Bikers – a dinner at Quaker Steak & Lube happened on bike night and it was interesting to see the various people who are into the biking "thing" and the wide spectrum of people that it attracts.  There are people who are clearly into the biker image – the stereotype that probably a lot of non-bikers have: tattoos, leather, lots of drinking and partying and kind of a crude attitude.  However, most people there were clearly not full-time bike gang members, but rather people who lead rather quiet normal lives but love the freedom of the open road that is afforded only on a bike.  Then there were the "crotch rocket" fans, juiced by the speed.

Iced Tea Drinkers – Yeah, I know this is weird one, but bear with me: while in the Harrisburg, PA area, I found out just how fanatical people are about their iced tea: at a local Wal-Mart Supercenter, they had THIRTEEN DOORS of prepared iced tea in the refrigerated section.  That is thirteen refrigerator doors full of gallons, half-gallons and single serves of prepared iced tea, with all sorts of flavors, from traditional lemon flavored to my new favorite, southern style sweet tea, which is a new addiction of mine.

Business travelers – While staying at a Holiday Inn Express in the middle of the Poconos (the nicest Holiday Inn I’ve ever stayed at, BTW), they had a complimentary "Manager’s Reception" with an open bar and grilled hamburgers and hot dogs.  As I looked around I saw that I was surrounded by road warriors, with their cell phones, Palm Treos and/or Blackberry hand-helds attached to their belts.  They wore clothes that were easy to press in the hotel rooms – no button down Oxfords here – and exchanged bad jokes and travel war stories.  I’m starting to identify with them…

BBQ fanatics – I’m one of them and at the Harpoon New England BBQ Championships, I was exposed again to them.  Its not just the competitors, but the general public as well.  The response I typically get when I say that I’m a certified BBQ judge is remarkable.  People love barbecue and are quite passionate about it. 

Sports car fanatics – Two weekends ago I was with Meghan visiting some friends of hers and bore witness to someone going to a "Trans Am Meeting" and saw first-hand the gathering of Corvette enthusiasts.  I know that people were fans of such sports cars, but until you see someone’s house with dozens of trophies won for their show car and dozens of cars gathered in one spot driven by people wearing Corvette-themed shirts and hats, you don’t really get how passionate they can be.

That is all I can think of now, though I’m sure I’m missing some. 

Hopefully they will come to me as I start to get back into keeping this blog up-to-date again!

Not an awful lot to link to – apparently pop culture took the week of the 4th off.  But I do have a few very interesting things.

First of all, apparently Japanese  adults are addicted to coloring.  I’m jealous.

This whole Cristal controversy thing is a really interesting case study in culture and class clashes.

Every year, the new dictionary entries are announced and its one of my favorite pieces of corporate PR of the year.

Ads on hooker’s thighs – if only it had been real.  Would have been better if the ads were in braille though.

I’ve mentioned the gradually increasing presence that China has in business and culture before and now they are taking matters into their own hands.

This one is for Meghan, who helps me so much with my research: a person was shot at a shoe sale in Turkey.  Best line in the article: "Shooting guns into the air is a not-uncommon method for dealing with emotional situations in Turkey, including weddings, soccer games, demonstrations and deals on shoes that are almost too good to be true."

And last but not least, two articles on the changing face of popular culture:

The Extinction of Mass Culture

The Rise and Fall of the Hit

These are probably two of the most important and interesting articles related to popular culture that you could read this year.  They really sum up the changing world of culture and how the internet has spread the control of culture among the masses.   I can now easily find more garage rock bands than I know what to do with and there’s all sorts of tools to help me find new music similar to what I already like and to help me discover new stuff.  Top 40 radio is probably far from dead, but it is definitely starting to write its own obituary.

I’m sure that if you examine your own habits, you’ll find that you’ve changed the way you watch, read, or listen to various media over the last few years, whether it be downloading music or satellite radio or frequenting a web site that caters to some obscure taste.