Almost (too) famous

In the past six weeks, Tiger Woods has seen several of his corporate partners end their endorsement contracts with him (AT&T), pull their Tiger-related products (Gatorade) or kill Tiger-focused ad campaigns (Tag Heuer). In their carefully worded news releases, the companies generally opted for language like "no longer the right representative" for our company (Accenture).

Obviously, in marketing-ese, that Accenture quote translates pretty clearly into "apparently slept with about 428 cocktail waitresses and future porn stars, which wasn't exactly what we had in mind for our highest paid endorser." I get that.

What I'm wondering is: What exactly do the good folks at the St. John apparel company mean when they explain that they're scrapping their Angelina Jolie ads because the actress "has overshadowed the brand"?

Because it's not like Jolie was a little-known up-and-comer when they signed her back in 2007. She was already Mrs. Pitt and a tabloid fixture - nay, tabloid hall-of-famer. And, at least according to my marketing textbook, massive, consistent and overwhelmingly positive media exposure isn't usually the kind of thing that compels companies to drop celebrity spokespeople, who were, after all, hired for their ability to generate exposure.

I don't want to start any rumors, but maybe they're getting ahead of the curve in case the world soon discovers that ongoing Angelina-Tiger relationship.

My new favorite blog

I just can't get enough. I don't know how I didn't stumble across this sooner!

Condom Controversy

So, have you heard about FOX News not airing a new Trojan ad because "it objected to the message that condoms can prevent pregnancy," according to the New York Times.

All I can say is this just reaffirms why I don't watch that station.

RIP Cincinnati and Kentucky Post

It's always a sad day when a newspaper announces it's going out of business.

What Makes The Top 25?

I’ve been on a big-time true crime reading kick lately—in the last six months, I’ve read Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, plus books about the Black Dahlia and the Zodiac Killer, just to name a few. So I was definitely intrigued when I read Time magazine’s feature on the “Top 25 Crimes of the Century.”

Obviously, the criteria for a Top 25 crime is pretty vague—and they chose to omit crimes including genocide and mass suicides—but they put together a pretty interesting list, I thought. Alongside obvious picks like Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy, for example, the magazine also profiled The Great Train Robbery of 1963 and the theft of “The Scream.”

But, I have to admit I was surprised at inclusion of some crimes at the expense of others. Why profile Andrew Cunanan and the Versace murders, for example, but not the Zodiac Killer? Why include the collapse of Barings Bank but nothing on the Boston Strangler? And I think everyone can agree that Mary Kay Letourneau is way creepy (not to mention worth her weight in Law & Order: SVU episodes), but Top 25 material? Really?

Reading Larry Dobrow

I continue to heart Larry Dobrow. The intro to today's review of Hallmark Magazine:

I don't go to industry functions because one, I never get invited anywhere and two, I generally dislike other people. But when the opportunity to attend a lightly-appetizered preview of the upcoming "Larry Sanders Show" DVD presented itself last night, I took the party pants out of cold storage and girded myself for some painful social interaction.

And farther down into the actual review....

Even its live-happier tips transcend the trappings of the genre. Ordinarily, I'd no sooner read a story sub-headlined "15 ways to rediscover what makes you laugh, sing, dance, feel, believe - and be gloriously yourself" than bury a swizzle stick deep in my ear canal, but the feature offers a trio of well-observed, non-maudlin essays about faith, exercise and journal writing. The mag also relates a handful of DIY-themed tales, like one about a woman who built her town's library from scratch, that somehow manage not to scream WE SHALL INSPIRE YOU! DON'T FIGHT IT, BITCH.

Despite the fact that I have a sad feeling that none of our readers have the affinity for Larry that I have, I may just make this a regular feature. Now, I just need to find a picture of him that I can Photoshop a creepy little heart around so I can have a proper logo. Ten bucks says that Larry Dobrow files a restraining order against me in the next six months.

Can you Digg it?

I know when it comes to technology and the Web, I can be kind of slow, so I'm probably telling you something that's going to make you ask what planet I've been on for the last 6 months. I have discovered Digg in the last few weeks, and I love it. For the three people in the world who haven't experienced the great world of Digg, it goes a bit like this--according to the site creators themselves:

"Digg is a user driven social content website. Ok, so what the heck does that mean? Well, everything on Digg is submitted by our community (that would be you). After you submit content, other people read your submission and Digg what they like best. If your story rocks and receives enough Diggs, it is promoted to the front page for the millions of visitors to see.

What can you do as a Digg user? Lots. Every person can digg (help promote), bury (help remove spam), and comment on stories... you can even Digg and bury comments you like or dislike. Digg also allows you to track your friends' activity throughout the site — want to share a video or news story with a friend? Digg it!"

One of the more amusing things about the site, in my opinion, is the tendency to nerdy tech stories. For instance, this is the current top story: World's Dorkiest Tattoo. Indeed this story is dorky. It involves some sort of HTML (I think) tattoo on some guy's neck.

I enjoy the site because you can find some interesting international news that you really don't see anywhere else, since I'm not really seeing a ton of diggs from main stream media outlets. The stuff I'm interested in is still pretty scarce, since the techies are clearly the early adopters of this site, but as it gets more popular, I'm sure the proportion of news I find interesting will increase.

Reading Larry Dobrow

Larry Dobrow has my dream job. Incidentally, Larry Dobrow deserves my dream job, because he’s a funnier, sharper, all-around better writer than I am. And that’s cool. That just means that I harbor an inappropriate— bordering on the line of stalker-ish—cyber crush on Larry Dobrow. For those keeping score at home, and who may now be tsk-ing because they know that I’m married, please note that crushes are acceptable within a marriage if they are prefaced by a modifier: see also “girl crush,” “celebrity crush,” etc.

Anyway, I have no idea what Larry Dobrow looks like (although I’ll admit to having Googled him), but I have joked (half-joked?) about building a shrine to him under my desk.

Larry Dobrow writes magazine reviews for MediaPost. Funny, insightful magazine reviews. Reviews that, week after week, contain at least one sentence that make me laugh out loud. Sometimes, when I read Larry Dobrow’s reviews, all is right with the world. Sometimes, when I read Larry Dobrow’s reviews, I forget that I live in Texas.

This week, Larry Dobrow reviewed the teen-targeted publication Your Prom.

A couple of choice bits:

-It (Your Prom) ranks as the rare title which boasts so little content that nearly every item can be referenced on its cover. Indeed, Your Prom is more or less a catalog, albeit one with a total absence of even slightly overweight women and a surfeit of prommed-up white chicks slathered in whorey makeup.

- For a guy just a bit outside the mag's target audience, there's a lot to learn. Owing to my refusal to appear in public after getting "the world's suckiest haircut," the "prom personality" quiz brands me as a "pessimistic partyer." My prom horoscope suggests that I should "channel my inner Beyoncé" in the months ahead, a contingency for which the tri-state area is profoundly unprepared.

If you haven’t developed an intense cyber crush on Larry Dobrow based solely on the above two tidbits, that’s cool; you and I probably were never that close anyway. If you want more Larry Dobrow goodness, go here to sign up (it's free!) to get the reviews emailed to you.