Books: Keep on Truckin'!

This may be OFN (old effin' news) but BooksPlus, a bookstore, came up with a clever ad idea utilizing the fight between e-books and good ol' tree-killin' paper books. Very good show, BooksPlus!

In some twist of fate, however, I couldn't actually find a website for BooksPlus. Hah!

Sanrio-a-Go-Go

As I woke up the day of my meteorology and statistics finals, the steady patter of water on my windows informed me that it was raining.

I finally I had my chance, I was going to take it!

The chance, that is, to bring out the rainboots. Oh, and not just any rainboots.

Say hello to my little friends.



That's right. They're pink. They're featuring Hello Kitty. And they're mine.

So, armed with the rubber shoes and an umbrella, I set off for my finals, happily splashing in the puddles while other students in sneakers, ballet flats or ugh, pointy-toed heels, carefully avoided the muddy water. I made a point of it to walk through the grass, the mud, and sometimes the muddy grass. These boots and me, we were made for adventure.

Finally, I got to my meteorology class and one of my classmates eyed my feet and said, "Huh."

"What?" I replied, shaking the water off my umbrella and setting it against the wall.

"Nothing," he shrugged, "I just, well, I just never pegged you as the Hello Kitty type," and he went back to reading.

Not the "Hello Kitty type?" Not the "Hello Kitty type?!" I was agog, and somewhat aghast. What did he mean by that? I considered asking him but he was a little absorbed by the reading material (that's not a pun.) I'm assuming that he meant that because I'm neither a five-year old girl with pigtails, nor am I a frequent giggler who bakes rainbows and sunshine for breakfast, lunch and dinner. These are common stereotypes of fans of this little white cat and I'm writing this post to say: hey, there's more to Sanrio than that!

For those of you who had been living under a rock on Mars for the past few decades, Hello Kitty, along with her boyfriend Dear Daniel (also a cat), and friends My Melody (a rabbit), Badtz Maru (a bad-boy penguin) and other animals, are the mascots of the Japanese stationary supply, gift and accessory powerhouse known as Sanrio. Hello Kitty is decidedly the most popular and famous of the bunch, and is often depicted doing things such as baking treats, dressing up in costumes, visiting foreign countries, or just having fun with her friends.

She's a gamer, too.

According to the Sanrio website:
"Sanrio was invented in 1960 by Mr. Shintaro Tsugi. Mr. Tsugi created a line of merchandise designed around gift-giving occasions."

Also from the website, there are reportedly more than 4,000 Sanrio stores in America today. In fact, the first Sanrio store in America was the one in the Eastridge Mall of good ol' San Jose, CA! Score one for the cute! Sanrio products are not only in specialty stores, but also sell in mass market outlets such as Wal-Mart, Target, and Payless Shoes as well.

Hello Kitty markets cuteness, yes, but that doesn't mean their target consumers have to necessarily reflect their product perse. Hello Kitty and her friends bring a sense of adorable and lovable sensibility to everyday things such as wallets, keychains, luggage sets, and school supplies. While mostly catering to the audience of young girls, elementary school age and younger, Sanrio creates products for young women as well. For example, Hello Kitty is featured on kitchen supplies such as plastic tubs and silverware, but also on toasters, sandwich makers, and coffee pots. She even has an electric guitar with her picture on it!

Rock on, pussy cat, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa...

What makes Sanrio different than the competition (Disney, or even Barbie) is its diversity of characters. The character list for Sanrio is so high that they even have to retire some characters (of cours, the Kitty stays) in order to refresh the market. Points in case are Keroppi, a green frog, and Pochocco, a beagle similar to Snoopy. (Coincidentally, Sanrio gift stores also sometimes carry items with characters from Peanuts, as well as Sesame Street.) Once again, while Mickey, Goofy and Donald can appeal to both boys and girls, while the Sanrio company is predominantly based on the female market, its pervasiveness in marketing and advertising is nonetheless just as equal. The mere fact that my classmate, a guy, could even recognize that the cat on my boots was Hello Kitty further illustrates this point. So, as far as I see it, saying to someone, "You're not the Hello Kitty type" is like saying, "You're not the Mickey Mouse type," or "You're not the type to buy things with cartoon charcters" type, even.

We miss you, buddy!

So, yeah, I may not wear pink every day. I may not dot the 'i's' in my name with hearts or giggle infectiously when someone says something mildly interesting. I don't even bake pastries that often.

But mess with Hello Kitty... and you'll get the claws.

Thank you for Cingular

Meanwhile, I could only hope to be as great a debater against the man as Mr. George Vaccaro, the Verizon Math guy, who's shown us all that Canadian Verizon employees don't understand the difference between .002 dollars and .002 cents.

That's really, really sad. I'm not a math person, at all, but I'd as soon as jump at someone's jugular if I were required to pay 100 times the amount originally agreed upon. Many fourth grade students could probably spot the difference in a much smaller amount of time. The confusion between the two amounts may be a common mistake, but after having it explained to you over and over again, you'd have to wonder what these people were on.

Verizon Math Guy got his start on YouTube, where he posted the phone conversation he had with Verizon. The post soon became one of the top viewed videos at YouTube, and he created the blog in order to respond to all the feedback he'd been getting from people who'd had similar experiences or just supported his cause. The comic guy over at xkcd (read his comics, they're grrrreat!) even drew this in retaliation and support. This is just another example of how the Internet can influence consumer public relations, in this case, for the worse.

"What now, bitches?" indeed.

The Media Whore: Part Deux

So, I suppose, after taking this class, I've still retained my title. Old ways die hard, after all. But perhaps I've grown a certain amount of taste, maybe I'm a bit more discerning now.

I've learned to take media in all its forms and then dig deeper and try to figure out the target audience and hidden levels. To take media and see the big picture (that's not a pun.) Or at least, that I can write whatever the Hell I want and someone out there is bound to read it. In all seriousness, I've been aware of the popularity of blogs and how vast readership can go for a while now, but it was interesting, not to mention pretty innovative, to use it as a course requirement. This is so much better than the grade-school "journal entries" in spiral binders about your "feelings" or your favorite memory crap like that. This is a bit more impersonal, or rather just as personal as you want to make it, without feeling like too much of an oblogation

oblogation, n.
from the English "obligation" + "blog";
The need to post entries in a blog
ex. "I've got an oblogation to write about that cute thing my cat did today!"

I invented that word just now. Definition will soon be on UrbanDictionary.com

That's history in the making, people! [Edit: Okay, so I googled it and found out that I didn't invent it, but I still submitted it to UD. Oh well.]

I will continue writing in this blog, I think. I already have a personal blog that I've kept for about 5 years now, but it's nice to have somewhere to write specific bits and pieces here and there.

Recipe Time

How To Recreate the
All-American Rejects/The Format/Motion City Soundtrack /Boys Like Girls
Concert Experience

Ingredients:
1 Event Center-sized auditorium, filled with crazed, seething fangirls
A metal crowd-control gate around the stage

Directions:

1. Stand against metal gate.

2. Cross your arms on the gate or ball your fists and put your arms in the defensive position in front of your chest.

3. Take a deep breath. Wait for the bands to get on stage.

4. Take one last breath.

5. Commence seething masses to push and shove you with rib-crushing force, as rock begins to start.

If all of these ingredients are unavailable, you may also stand with your back against a wall and ask a friend to crash a diesel truck, blasting a CD of your choice, in to you.

----

Besides that, the All-American Rejects headlining concert that took place 7pm, Dec. 4, last night was incredibly awesome.

I managed to get in the very front of the line with some friends, and as a result got right next to the stage, or as close as you can get with the gate in the way. Let's say I was close enough to tell you, gentle readers, that the lead singer of Boys Like Girls was wearing grey, Hanes boxer-briefs, while Tyson Ritter of the All-American Rejects may not have been wearing any at all, as his low-slung, tight-tight jeans left very little to the imagination.

Boys Like Girls
Bryan Donahue, John Keefe, Martin Johnson, Paul DiGiovanni

The first act was Boys Like Girls, an 4-guy, emo-rock band from Boston, MA. They were good as an opening act, pumping up the crowd and such. They played about five songs, most of which about girls and longing and being sad.

The Format opened by addressing the pushing/shoving issue by asking the crowd, "College students? Are you guys college students and pushing people?" However, that was the end of it and they played their set, which involved a lot of clapping and stomping.

Motion City Soundtrack seemed to be the crowd favorite so far, with the pushing and shoving and crushing of my ribcage getting even more intense. They actually stopped in the middle of one of their songs to ask if a fallen person in the back was okay and to implore the crowd to look out for everybody. Their songs were very upbeat and people around me were singing along to lyrics such as, "Let's Get Fucked Up and Die." Woo.

Of course, then All-American Rejects came on and the crowd got even wilder. Besides the fact that lead vocalist Tyson Ritter is hot, hot, hot (oh, back to the low-rise pants? For anyone who wants to know: the carpet matches the drapes. That is all.) they play a really great live show. Tyson sang to crying girls in the crowd and invited fans who stood on other people's shoulders up on stage. Their set also featured some narration, as the band would stop and tell a little story about being on the road before blasting into song.

And then...Nancy.

After one of their songs, Tyson asked everyone to greet a beautiful girl he'd been seeing lately. While all the girls boo'ed and hissed, the sneers turned into great big grins as Nancy came on stage.

Nancy is an inflatable, sex doll, by the way.

He danced around with her a little and said that if the crowd could dress the naked Nancy, the band would play for "8 more hours." This prompted a bunch of people throwing their clothes on stage, but Tyson insisted the crowd had to dress her themselves. So, he tossed her into the crowd, where she received a jacket. She would have gotten a scarf but someone took it back. The band played on for about three more songs.

Nick Wheeler, Mike Kennerty, Tyson Ritter, Chris Gaylor

There were a few special effects, such as during one song, both lead guitarist and Tyson went backstage and performed in front of a video camera, which was then projected on the huge TV sets on stage.

They pretended to end the show with a song called "The Last Song" from their first album, and left the stage until fans started shouting, "Hey, what about 'Move Along?!'" (It is their current award-winning single.) They, of course, came back on stage and rocked out on that to the screams of the crowd.

After the show, Tyson came back on stage to throw things to the crowd like guitar picks, drum sticks, the set lists and such. Then he ran off again.

All in all, a well-played show, even if it hurt to move for a few days after.

Coming soon: How I got free tickets to the Cobra Starship/Jack's Mannequin/Panic! at the Disco concert.