Monday, January 29, 2007

musings on miami...

musing 1:
old jewish grandmothers have been sporting bling since before gangsta rappers were in diapers

musing 2:
60 degrees in florida is really freakin cold

musing 3:
red lights mean go
sirens mean keep on driving
stop signs mean nothing at all

musing 4:
all women in miami, no matter how young or old, sound exactly like fran drescher

musing 5:
there's nothing like half a corned beef sandwich and some matzo ball soup to make you really homesick for the east coast

musing 6:
if it's not exactly how you like it, send it back

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

tails, very long tails...

Just got home from dinner/book club with Wired Mag/Long Tail writer, Chris Anderson. Really interesting stuff. There's an ongoing discussion in PR about what to do now that the traditional MSM folks are going away and leaving the journalism to the rest of us.

Seemingly overnight, traditional media has started to blog, has a new audience, a similar style and has moved on with their lives. But these are the people who always had a mouthpiece. It may have been censored or limited, but they had an audience and a way to reach them. Disgruntled masses now have a place to voice frustration. But I think it's only taught us that all customer call centers suck, whether they're in India or Iowa and that no corporation ever really cares if your satisfied until you threaten to switch to a competitor.

< rant> Dish Network and Sprint PCS are always tied in my book for worst customer service ever. Seriously, if you want to be abused, give them a call. They are always happy to steal an hour from your life only to tell you that they can't help you anyway. < /rant>

So, I am in this very weird segment of the population. I work in PR. That automatically feels weird when you set out to blog. I have intimate knowledge about a number of different types of technology, a solid understanding of media and a good feel for how to make cool things bubble up to the surface. But blogging has felt weird and awkward. It's part of the reason I resisted blogging for a long time.

I feel like I'm paid to have a bias. That my work meant that my opinions and thoughts were less valid. Lately, more and more, I feel like I'm precisely who should be blogging. I am passionate. I think the best PR people are. If you don't have passion for your work, how are you ever going to convince anyone else that your product, company or idea is interesting/cool/game-changing/the greatest thing since sliced bread?

I do PR even when I'm not paid to. I actually do my best work when I'm off the clock. That's the thing. Cool shit is cool shit. No two ways about it.

Monday, January 22, 2007

Weird things on my stoop

So, I've decided to start blogging about the weird things I find on my front stoop on a daily basis. I live in a neighborhood that seems to attract crazy people and weirdassshit and my stoop has a magnetic pull for all of it.

Tonight, I came home from work to find that an obviously high homeless person had attached a kitten on a leash to my front door. No seriously. I'm not joking. A tiny black kitten on a leash was attached to my front door. So I ask the guy, "Scuse me. Is this your cat?" and he says, "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I just put it there while I'm doing my laundry next door." This is complete and total bullshit because this guy is obviously not doing laundry but whatever. I have begun to think that the laundry mat is just a front for the drug running that goes on in the area.

Other things I have found on my stoop before I decided to start blogging about them on a daily basis:
one homeless man who curled himself into a ball and tried to tuck himself under my bedroom window on a rainy night, random packages of cheeze doodles, leftover parts of burritos, meth addicts scoring a fix, day laborers drinking beers, obnoxious hipsters smoking cigarettes, obnoxious hipsters screaming at the top of their lungs at 3am, a group of 12 or so teenagers wearing gang colors and smoking blunts in full view of the THREE cameras that are on my corner. I politely suggested that they smoke their blunts away from the cameras and they thanked me.

So, I'll try to keep this going as long as I can. I promise that there's no shortage of weirdassshit going on in front of my house.