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Monthly Archives: July 2017
Happy Birthday Betty White, A Bubbie And The Police, And Grandpas Getting Stoned
I have three topics for you today.
The first one is a video about a Bubbie, (Grandma) and her encounter with the police. There is a surprise ending.
The second video is about three Grandpas smoking weed for the first time. Watch the video and then read the story in Mashable. You will enjoy.
The last post is about celebrating Betty White’s 95th birthday.
Defining Age
Liz Smith at 94
Jenny Allen is 61
I was getting a mani/pedi a few months ago when one of the manicurists, who is about 35 years old, said to me that “I was so cute” because I knew how to operate an iPhone. Her parents didn’t want to try.
I was sitting in a big lounge chair getting a pedicure at the time when she made that remark. I wanted to puke. I think of myself as an active digital influencer and the manicurist sees me as an elderly lady using a smartphone.
I got a mani/pedi again yesterday. A female client in the next chair made a remark to me about liking my Kimono. Her manicurist looked at the two of us to ask if we noticed the elderly woman who passed us a few minutes ago. She said she was adorable wearing a mini skirt. We both missed it. I asked the manicurist how old she thought the elderly woman was. She said, 60. I wanted to puke again.
I know that I can’t stop the years from racking up, but I just don’t want to be put in a group that is considered “cute” because we curse, wear youthful clothes, or use electronics.
Coincidentally, I’m not the only one who has difficulty dealing with the elderly woman syndrome. Hear what Liz Smith, the most famous gossip columnist ever, has to say about not getting work even when she offers her services for free.
And Jenny Allen, a famous journalist, humor writer and performer, talks about her life after she separated from her famous husband of 30 years, Jules Feiffer, and then contracting a life threatening disease.
Don’t miss these candid stories.
Click here for Liz Smith and here for Jenny Allen.
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Who Remembers?
Thank you Neil Goldstein, a great friend, for the memories.
“Sign Off” Messages. Remember these? TV would go off at midnight playing the National Anthem.
Cars were big and colorful in the 50’s.
We Got Dressed Up for Birthday Parties. And sometimes there was even a pony there!
We played in the streets. We didn’t have to text our friends back in the day – we’d all just come outside and play!
Gas was very cheap. On some days, it was only $0.20 a gallon, and beyond that, the people at the station could also fix just about anything.
The supermarket of the day.
Our skates got locked with a key.
The drive-in was a popular movie place.
The freezer had to be defrosted.
We loved licking the icing off the beaters.
Our food was delivered on roller skates.
This was called a sock hop.
Sunday was the day when families took a ride, sometimes aimlessly.
Most families had one TV. Everyone agreed on what to watch.
We used to stand on swings to go as high as we could. No one got hurt.
Some of us could swing multiple hula hoops.
We didn’t text. We would pass notes and we rarely got caught.
We Had Xylophones. We used to pull them on a string.
No cans or plastic bottles back then. We were 100% excited when we’d find a cooler like this to get that ice cold bottle!
A 50-Year Old Birthday Present To Herself
I just spent 1 hour and 18 minutes on the phone with Loren Pomerantz, a terrific gal who lives in the co-op apartment building in Manhattan where I used to live.” I had a million questions for her after I finished reading on Facebook that she was going on a year long trip to many different areas of the world.
What caught my eye was that Loren will be traveling the world while working remotely. She signed up with a group called “Remote Year” that will be taking 65 people to 12 cities in 10 countries. All the participants have jobs but will work from remote locations that the company sets up.
Most of the travelers are in their 20s and 30s but that doesn’t bother Loren because you are basically on your own in each city. For $2,000 a month, Remote Year provides you with an apartment that has a solid Internet connection, a 24-hour co-op office space, and transportation to each city. All travelers have to separately pay to get to the first city and then back home again from the last location.
The basic idea is that people who work from home or in what I call a virtual environment, have the opportunity to travel and do their job at the same time. Remote Year is great because for an affordable price you get the basics you need to work and play in each city, You are primarily on your own unless you call someone from the group to get together. You hopefully make new friends all the time.
You spend a month in each city so you definitely get to know what it’s like to live in each location. Loren decided to take this adventure because she wanted to give herself something special for reaching 50. She is single and wants to do this adventure without any of her friends. She is anxious to live a year traveling to far away places without any plans, or any commitments. While Loren is currently in a relationship, she still wants to go on this journey.
Loren is subletting her apartment and making all the arrangements for being away a year. When I spoke to her today it sounded like she was having as much fun preparing for the trip as she will on the trip. I didn’t want to get off the phone. The excitement in her voice, and the adventures of what she was going to experience, made me feel there is still a lot of living to do.
A Spy In Your Home
I never considered my Roomba to be anything but a good friend who vacuums our condo while we sleep. It’s been a miracle gadget that has saved us time and money when it comes to keeping our place clean.
Now I have just learned from my friends at tech site Gizmodo that future Roombas may be equipped with a camera to spy on us. The owners of the parent company, called iRobot, have figured out a way to make their robots a very valuable commodity.
The Roomba knows more about the layout of our home than we do. It knows the exact positioning of every object in my home, the size of each object, and the precise measurement between objects. That’s not all. Roomba also knows what areas of my home needs the most maintenance, how often we clean, and how much dirt gets accumulated.
The iRobot executives realized there’s a whole new ecosystem of products and services that need this information for future smart home products. If you think about it, the Roomba can be connected to all of the voice assistants like Alexa. The exchange of information between products is mind-boggling.
Roomba can also be a big asset for music companies who want to improve audio performance. The right kind of information about a room’s acoustics can change the dynamics of their technology. The same is true for furniture, lighting, floor coverings, window treatments, art, and household accessories.
The company said that future Roombas will inform users that they are being monitored. They claim users will be able to turn off sharing functions. That’s open for debate because many tech writers are questioning how and when consumers will know their options.
This is going to be a very interesting development to watch.
The Scary, Secret Life Of A Client
Dale Leary
You never really know who is sitting on the other side of a table, I thought the gentleman I was being introduced to that night at Smith and Wollensky in South Beach two years ago was a video games developer.
He certainly acted like it. We spent the night talking about how we were going to introduce the new product, who would be the spokesperson, where we would go for editorial reviews, and which publication would get the exclusive.
Dale Leary was just one of the guys making the decisions that night. The table was filled with the owner of the company, his wife, the Italian creator, the marketing executive, two investors, Eliot and myself, and Dale, who as it turned out was not only a video games producer but a reported child molestor.
He certainly didn’t show any signs of weirdness during a two hour meeting. There were a number of product development discussions and Dale acted totally professionally. He gave no clues that he had a whole other despicable life behind the scenes. I talked to him a number of times on the phone and he was a talented member of the team.
For a number of typical business reasons, the video game never came to market and I forgot about Dale Leary. At least, I thought I did. One night Eliot and I were watching the evening news and the anchors start talking about some guy who committed suicide after being accused of molesting his wife’s teen sister.
My eyes were focused on my iPhone during the broadcast. Eliot didn’t recognize him. Something made me look up at the TV screen. I immediately thought it was Dale but it couldn’t be possible. I was flabbergasted. I needed to know more.
I emailed one of the executives on the team who confirmed Dale was the guy on the nightly news, He had no explanation other than to say the entire situation was very upsetting and unthinkable. He had no clue that Dale was involved in these terrible acts and it was unnerving not to know the truth.
I have enclosed several stories about the case. I thought writing about the case would give me some closure. While I still wonder what makes a man commit such heinous crimes, I still have the option of believing it was all one big mistake. Not likely.
I hope this blog post reminds us all that we can never be too careful knowing others. It’s a very scary world.
Click here for the Miami Herald story
The video below featuring Dale was a promo piece for the game.
Do One Thing That Scares You Everyday
My nephew Alfredo asked me on Sunday what ever made me want to take a ride on the Thriller, a tour speed boat that averages 50 miles per hour (43.449 knots) for 45 minutes. I knew the answer but it was a complicated.
I gave him the short version. “I have been watching The Thriller pass by my condo window for years. I heard the exhilarating screams from joy riders and watched the boat bouncing about. I often thought, “One day, I’ll do it.”
The other part of the story was that a couple we met on a river cruise in the South of France just emailed us to say they recently took a ride in the cockpit of a two seater Indy Car, experiencing the thrill of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway track! The track was five miles long and the driver was none other than Mario Andretti. The speed was 190mph. The emailed ended by saying, “Do one thing that scares you everyday.”
This is as daring as I can get, at least for now.
My friend Ellyn had the ride of a lifetime.
Niece Val and nephew Alfredo are the adventurous ones.
Val and Alfredo are just two months away from moving very close to us.
The Thriller speed boat
SocialStar Creator Camp Teaches 10-Year Olds How To Make Mega Bucks
Image: Social Media Camp
Image: Medical Daily
In my day, friends of mine went to sleep away camp to swim, play ball, and to find a summer love. Today, a growing number of children from the ages of 10 to 20, go to camp to learn how to become social media stars.
Those children who adopt a specific topic, and have the discipline to frequently post YouTube and Snapchat videos, and text on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, have a reasonable chance of making a few hundred thousand dollars a year.
That’s why a sleep away camp like SocialStar in Los Angeles has a great chance of becoming a big business. Many more teenagers than we can imagine, want to get out into the workforce and become independently wealthy. I think many of them still want to go to college, but they also want to be major social media influencers.
The Verge tech site had a big story about this topic the other day. Click here to read it. The story outlines how envious most of the world is towards these “almost over night” sensations. The Verge article pointed out that many social media personalities claim that TV reporters and broadcast interviewers are somewhat nasty to them. When they get interviewed for stories about their success, there is often a “tinge” of jealousy.
Recently, a reporter from “Inside Edition” visited the house of a major social media influencer and learned that the teen was making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. The reporter asked, ‘Do you have a degree in journalism?’ The teen said ‘No.’ The reporter then said, “How are you qualified to be in broadcasting?”
The simple truth is that you don’t need a degree to be a social media star. You need a personality. Sleep away camps teach social media skills. The interesting part is that social media workshops are also popping up all over the United States for adults. As the country grows up, so do social media influencers.
Take advantage of this trend. It would be so much fun for you to be collecting a social security check and a social media one, at the same time.
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The Perils Of PR
I’ve been in the PR business for 40 years and it never gets old. The only trouble is that sometimes our clients don’t appreciate the publicity as much as we do. The hit my agency got for a novel smartphone case like The Butt on NPR could skyrocket sales.
However, our client is a serious artist (painter and sculptor) who wants the public to appreciate and respect his art.
This show on NPR spoofs The Butt. In my opinion, this is one of the best kind of PR bits for a product. It’s all about getting potential customers to remember you.
Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!
National Public Radio
Bluff The Listener
Bluff The Listener : NPR
NPR › 2017/07/22 › bluff-the-listener
The panelists on the show read three stories about an exciting new tech accessory, only one of which is true.
NPR – July 22, 2017
You can listen to the broadcast here.
DigiDame 