Miss Otis Regrets

For a good portion of my childhood I had a stay-at-home mom. Between careers in marketing, education and public relations, my mom stayed home to take care of my brother and me. I look back fondly to those days, bringing friends home knowing our house would always be “together” and the aroma of freshly baked brownies waiting to greet us as we entered.

A Young Justin on the Stairs
A Young Justin on the Stairs

Another memory that sticks out is the music my mother played as she worked around the house. This requirement of aural stimulation must be genetic because to this day I have trouble getting much of anything done without music or a podcast in the background.

In fact, as I write this I am listening to Jay-Z and Kanye West’s collaborative album, Watch the Throne.

For my mother the music was Earth Wind and Fire, Al Jarreau, Aaron Neville, Sade and Bette Midler. Of all those artists, it was the Divine Miss M that impacted me the most. You would think the love I had for her and Barbara Streisand would have tipped people off but I guess everyone somehow overlooked that… Continue reading

Lady Gaga, Marketing Genius?

Lady Gaga isn’t shy about much anything.  Her sexuality, her body, her style and even her desire to, as Missy Elliot would say, “make more paper.”  It was probably R&B/Rap music that first popularized product placement in their music videos, typically showing off a particular car or alcohol.  Though, in these videos, more often than not, the placement was more for the rapper than it was for the company behind the product.

In Lady Gaga and Beyonce’s latest video, Telephone, I counted something like fifteen product placements and I think I might have missed a few like a Coors Light spot that appeared a few times during a dance sequence.  Check out the screenshots for an illustration.

(Diet Coke, Chanel, DOOM , GISM – Anarchy&Violence, Monster Heartbeats by Lady Gaga, LG cell phone, VirginMobile, HP, Plenty of Fish, Monster Beats by Dre, Polaroid, Kraft Miracle Whip, Wonder Bread, Kill Bill Vol 1, Chevrolet SS Truck)

See if you can find more than I did.

Leave your finds in the comments, would love to see what I missed!

I can’t decide if Lady Gaga is a genius or a case example of tasteless, superfluous, obnoxious marketing.  So far this 9:33 minute video has gotten 17,000,000 views on YouTube and many of the placements happen more than once.  It adds up to a minimum 25,000,000 product placements as of this posting.  That is insane.

Any guesses on how effective it might be?  Do product placements like this bother you?  Did you notice them?  Do you think it takes away from the artist with products conspicuously appearing in videos like this or is this just the way things are going anymore?

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Manny Garcia can SING!

Thanks @DrBach98 for the link to this video. Manny Garcia (@mannygarcia) can reallysing. Wow. This video put me in such a wonderful mood. I hope it does the same for you.

Here are a couple Glee songs mashed up…not on the show (since they’re on two separate episodes) but by me!

Glee songs are all covers, so the original “True Colors” is by Cyndi Lauper, and “Defying Gravity” is from the musical Wicked.

Here’s the link to a FREE MP3 download:
http://www.iammanny.com/glee.html

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Anything that wasn’t Studying

Seems today I’d do just about anything to get out of studying for my physics final.  So, I recorded myself cleaning my apartment.  Exciting huh?  Well, maybe not but it is in HD, it is super high speed (8-12x reality), it does have some great music (if I may say so) and also a little paranormal activity.  See around 1:00 in.  There’s a metal oven rack remover that seems to have a will of it’s own.  Apparently it was swinging, on it own, while I cleaned the neighboring counter.  Kind of startling when I watched the video on YouTube!

Thoughts in the comments?

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Blame Drew’s Cancer

Click to VisitI remember reading about Drew’s cancer a couple of years ago, around the time that my aunt was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer, for the second time.  Things weren’t looking good for her, beating colon cancer was one thing.  Beating it a second time, after you’ve already been through several surgeries, was a totally different story.

The cancer moved from her colon to her lungs as we prepared to say our goodbyes.

It seemed impossible at the time, but somehow my aunt was dealt a second miracle.  An almost unexplainable disappearance of cancer in her lungs and colon.  The treatment from MD Anderson, which was experimental and not as promising as one would hope for, worked.

It’s been nearly two years and she is still cancer free.

Drew is not.

His fight against cancer has become a sort of internet phenomenon.  His website Blame Drew’s Cancer invites everyone to blame, you guessed it, Drew’s cancer for anything that goes wrong.  Stub your toe? Blame Drew’s cancer.  Lock your keys in the car? Blame Drew’s cancer.

The idea quickly spread and it wasn’t long before a hashtag was born (#blamedrewscancer) which people are encouraged to use on Twitter and various YouTube videos popped up.

This is by far my favorite.  It actually brought me to chills and even a few tears from my eyes.  Videos like this give me faith in this world, that it isn’t all bad, that there are good people out there.

Oh and thanks to @DaRave for indirectly reminding me about this movement.  No get to the gym!

You’ll Actually Like This Version

Beyonce has taken the world by storm, again… Not surprising, she makes some incredibly catchy songs, whether we like them or not.

Thanks to @ToriBlaine for finding this video and posting it to her Facebook stream.

Pomplamoose doing Beyonce’s All the Single Ladies in such a way that even @Clettenberg might like it.  Maybe…

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]