Brand Noise

Adolescent Angst Goes Viral, Are You In?

After success with popular books and stage shows, Mortified now launches its debut web video series, The Mortified Shoebox Show.

Each week, The Mortified Shoebox Show treats viewers to "comic excavations" of the strange and extraordinary things we created as kids-- letters, lyrics, poems, journals, rap songs, home movies and more. Mixing concert clips, animated shorts, interviews and odd archival media, Mortified's debut series offers a snapshot of human history at its most hilarious and harrowing.

By moving online, Mortified is able give its participants -- writers, teachers, designers, actors, soccer moms, execs --  the terrifying chance to suddenly perform before a global audience.

An independently produced collaboration, season one is slated to last about eight or nine episodes... Interested in seeing season two? Contact them if you'd like to help facilitate. We dare you. It's common ground for Gen X and Y.

What's in a name, Engelbert?

What happens when a name gets co-opted? Does the co-opter gain the credibility of the original name owner? Or does the co-opter taint the name? All depends on which side of the fence you’re sitting on.

Take Engelbert Humperdinck, for instance.

Engelbert Humperdinck (1854–1921). German composer, best known for his opera, Hänsel und Gretel (ca. 1891). Humperdinck was greatly influenced by Richard Wagner, and worked as his assistant. In his melodrama Die Königskinder (1897), Humperdinck became the first composer to use Sprechgesang, a vocal technique halfway between singing and speaking.

Hmmm…which Engelbert were you thinking of?

British-American pop singer Engelbert Humperdinck (born Arnold George Dorsey, 1936) who rose to fame in the 1960s with his deceptively easygoing casual style after adopting the name of the famous German opera composer. Prior, his impression of Jerry Lewis prompted friends to begin calling him Gerry Dorsey, a name he worked under for almost a decade.

You tell me...

Ralphie Represents Pop-Culture Shift

America has a new favorite Christmas movie. A Christmas Story, the 1983 tale about Ralphie, a 9-year-old in 1940s Indiana, and his lust for a Red Ryder air rifle, is everything Wonderful Life is not: satiric and myth-deflating, down to the cranky store Santa kicking Ralphie down a slide.

In a 2006 Harris poll, respondents from 18 to 41 years old named it their favorite holiday movie, while their parents and grandparents picked Wonderful Life or Miracle on 34th Street.

This is one of those little pop-cultural shifts--football overtakes baseball, salsa defeats ketchup--that signal bigger changes: here, in the relationship between the community and the individual. In a traditional Christmas story, the larger holiday is a social good. Here, the Christmas celebrated by the greater society is crass, stressful and risible.

In the end, the characters discover an authentic holiday outside the usual traditions. It's the individual Christmas that matters.

It's the nostalgia of its Gen-X and -Y fans, who remember childhood in terms of divorces and bad haircuts…Ironically, Christmas Story takes place decades before they were born. But [Ralphie] and his friends don't twitter about bells and petals and angels' getting their wings. Christmas is about the kids' getting their due. It's a time of disappointment and bullies but also of dreams…

(This points a direct line to Depression era holidays when my grandparents, for one, decorated a box instead of a Christmas tree. Once again connecting Gen Xers with the GI Generation where honest humor is appreciated.)

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Tom Green Bubbles Back to TV

Tom Green is taking his late-night talk show from the Internet to television, partnering with Debmar-Mercury to make the show available to stations in January 2008.

The plan is to roll out the show on a handful of stations, mainly in late-night time slots, and then try to grow its footprint. (Tyler Perry’s House of Payne, originally debuted on 10 stations.) "That way we can let the show speak for itself instead of trying to sell a pilot first," said co-president Ira Bernstein.

One recent version of Green’s Internet show drew 20,000 viewers live, but he said about 650,000 clips from the show were seen from YouTube to MySpace or downloaded on iTunes within days.

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When did Knitting Get a Krew?

How'd I miss this one? Check it out: Graffiti Knittas.

"It's not vandalism," says knitta AKrylik in a Houston newspaper. "I almost wish there was a little more permanency to it, that it was a little harder to remove."

Mardi Gras: A Much-Needed Release

On Fat Tuesday, many people wore wildly colored costumes that poked fun at local leaders who have been criticized for letting the city languish in the devastation.

One group of four dressed like characters from the Wizard of Oz and carried a sign that read "Follow the Red Tape Road," in a dig at the difficulties faced by homeowners trying to get rebuilding money from Louisiana's Road Home program.

Keien Davis, who played Dorothy, said the color and excess of Mardi Gras had been important for New Orleans, which still has less than half its pre-storm population of 480,000.

Janet and Michael Krantz wore astronaut suits with diapers in reference to the recent troubles of love-struck NASA astronaut Lisa Nowak, who was arrested this month accused of driving across country to attack a romantic rival. Police said she wore diapers to avoid making a bathroom stop.

Photo: R.M. Elfer (L) and Judy Weaber (R) of New Orleans walk through Jackson Square dressed as "The Angry Little Sisters of the Apocalypse"

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Brands Pop Up When Least Expected

In a NY Times article on public vs. private suburban schools:

So they forsake city living to wind up shouldering the double burden of high taxes and tuition bills. Or they end up moving back to Manhattan or commuting with children in tow to the city’s private schools.

“It was not part of our plan at all, and I’m not sure how sustainable it is,” said Tracy Fauver, of Bedford, N.Y., whose three children attend the Rippowam Cisqua School in the town; tuition there runs from $17,500 to more than $26,000 per student. She said her husband’s Ford Focus had become something of a joke parked alongside his co-workers’ Mercedes-Benzes and BMWs, as the family has forgone fancy cars and vacations to afford the tuition.

And then overhead at Pre-K drop off:

Mom 1: Oscar likes hugs.
Mom 2: Uggs? I guess they look comfortable.

(Image from Shoewawa.)

Ellen Gets Spanx-ed

Ellen Degeneres gave a huge, honest plug to Spanx lingerie today on her show. When Ellen complained of her bumps and bulges, her stylist suggested a Spank. She made no qualms about the difficulty of getting the smaller than skintight bike-pant style slimming undergarments on. But she could dance in them...rock on. And so moves the brand of Spanx beyond the in-crowd and fashionistas.

Car Crazed Opps Make Everyone Happy

This weekend, supercar legend Steve Saleen opened The Saleen Store in the Irvine Spectrum, Orange County, California.

The store covers both lifestyle and technical performance, and will help to arrange vehicle purchasing, financing and administering trade-in assessments, as well as provide buyers with Saleen Speedlab Aftermarket Parts sales and installation.

An N2O Bar features ice cream, water, soda, Red Bull and oxygen. For cars, nitrous oxide and hydrogen are available.

As a race car driver, Steve launched his racing career in 1969, sold his first high-performance Saleen Mustang in 1984, entered the luxury supercar niche in 2000 with the Saleen S7. In 2001, the S7R race version was introduced.

Appearing as "God's Car", the S7 stole the show in "Bruce Almighty", and later starred in 50 Cent's music video, "Candy Shop." The S281 Mustangs have had cameo appearances in "Hollywood Homicide" and "2 Fast 2 Furious."

Also, Wikipedia reports that "a Saleen S281 in police trim has been spotted on the set for the upcoming Transformers film. However, the character does not appear to be Prowl (an Autobot who traditionally takes the alternate form of a law enforcement vehicle), as the police emblems are Decepticon symbols and the motto emblazoned on it is the sinister 'To Punish And Enslave'.

"In addition to the police-themed S281, a Saleen-modified Chevrolet Camaro concept car has also been spotted on the Transformers movie set, allegedly believed to become fan-favorite Bumblebee."

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports, Over two long days last summer, marketing executives paraded through a trailer at a Chicago racetrack, the site of the USG Sheetrock 400. There, the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing was pitching its top sponsors on a tempting proposition: the chance to lock down high-profile product placements in a feature film about Nascar racing in the works at Sony Corp.: "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby."

Sarah Nettinga, managing director of film, television and music entertainment for Nascar, had pored over the movie script and identified every page with a potential promotional opportunity.

In Chicago, she approached the organization's existing sponsors, including Sprint Nextel Corp., Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., Coca-Cola Co. and Unilever, on the cross-promotional possibilities within the movie, ranging from logos on the racers' suits to the burgers and pizza served at one character's dinner table.

Sony says it didn't make advertisers any promises, but Ms. Nettinga's offer indicated the company was remarkably open to suggestions. "It was literally, 'The producers pitched the story, and do you have any thoughts on where you would like to fit in?'" she recalls. Her role became so important to the making of the movie that it garnered her an executive-producer credit. Nascar also offered the filmmakers wide-ranging advice on the cars and racing, but it doesn't share in any profits.

Ice Cream Cemetery

Near the [Ben & Jerry’s] factory, tucked into Vermont's verdant Green Mountains, which produces 200,000 pints a day (and hosts as many as 2,500 visitors), are 28 emblematic gravestones. They stand in for the more than 400 flavors that have been banished since Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield - the self-proclaimed fattest, slowest kids in their seventh-grade gym class - first began making ice cream in 1978. (A more comprehensive memorial can be found at benjerry.com/graveyard.)

Patchy grass sprouts between tracks worn bare by the visitors who have come to mourn the passing of a favorite flavor, or simply enjoy the whimsically macabre spectacle of a cemetery dedicated to ice cream.

"Some people will leave flowers," says Tour Manager Chris Wilkins. "It's kind of scary."

Read more.