Digital City

If you think the destruction of the planet will in fact happen in 2012 or you just need to do some general planning for your average, everyday apocalyptic situation, Costco is here to help and save you money even.

Through Oct. 18, Costco.com is offering a one-year supply of THRIVE Self Reliance dehydrated and freeze-dried food for $799 - a savings of $200.

The 4723 servings in the package are actually a one-year supply for one person. If you think you won't need to be hunkered down in a bunker for that long, the food will last two people for six months or a family of four for three months.

A colleague sent me what is probably one of the craziest non-classifieds, display ads I've ever seen in the New York Times, or any other serious newspaper not considered an alt-weekly.

The ad is in section A of the paper and sizable, weighing in at 14 column inches. It's a blur of text except for the bold headline with preceding and trailing asterisks:
Revolution Over "Obama's Change" (original quotation marks, not mine).

Revolution is becoming a popular word these days between Iran, Honduras and high-fructose corn syrup, there hasn't been this much talk about change since Obama's Presidential campaign and now here's an ad that mentions both Revolution and Obama.

I took a quick look not expecting anything more than maybe a complaint about bailouts or the economy and the first words in the body of the ad are (all text and formatting as is):

<1> New Constitution. Eliminate Congress [based on Kingdom age's old political theory - Now everything is CELL phone Internet time/does not and cannot represent peopl/elected by low voting rates/minds changed by lobbyists/being a useless obstacle against 9-11, Iraq war, 2008 economy crisis & others/535 legislators + thousands helpers who use huge money for common sense job vs. Newton, Edison, Gen. McAthur, Bill Gates & Pilots who did great works themselves]

It appears to be a plan of sorts, maybe in/poetic form/ that involves shredding our current Constitution and relying on cell phones to run the current so damn, now I have to read the entire ad - see the full below to read the path to Utopia.

The world was already sad enough this morning with the death of Farrah Fawcett piled on top of the recent death of Ed McMahon. I had a conversation at lunch about the Celebrity Death Rule of Threes - you know when a famous person dies, they say celebrity deaths always come in threes. I'm not sure if there's ever been a statistical study, but based on perception, the rule seems real.

Lunch was finished with some casual speculation about who would be the third celebrity to die not really thinking it would happen. I figured if a celebrity died in the next week, that would complete the rule, or maybe David Carradine was the first. Michael Jackson wasn't mentioned at lunch, but with his death this afternoon, he completed the rule of three.

I've quietly been critical of Bing, Microsoft's new (re-branded) search engine ... or as Bing call's themself, a Decision engine. They use the word "query" too much in their commercials while they suggest Google may be partly to blame for the recession.

The interface is a daily picture with hidden hotspots for clicking and finding out more information about the day's subtle theme. It's such an obscure strategy, I can't even explain it properly. The one thing I do like about Bing is the fact that by giving it an identity, Microsoft is finally starting to get away from the even more confusing Live branding.

Even though Bing is counter-intuitive to the way people are searching for information on the Web, they are calling it a decision engine so I decided to put it to the test in that capacity

Bravo TV made a smart move extending their popular Top Chef franchise. While other networks are seemingly programming blind and uninspired, they took something that worked and made it better. Normally Top Chef takes unknown chefs and puts them through a series of challenges in order to find the uh, top chef. In Top Chef Masters, the contestants are some of the best chefs in the world with various degrees of celebritiness.

Bravo also got it right casting foodie hottie Kelly Choi as the host. An NYC TV regular with her Eat Out NY show, Kelly is ready to breakout into national stardom from her NYC TV hosting and producing duties. She also hosts Secrets of New York which is probably available on your local PBS station.

Top Chefs Master season premier registered in Hot Searches, Google trends and Twitter trends with entries like Top Chefs, Kelly Choi and Hubert Keller - week one winner. It's amazing how television drives search trends online. I can usually tell what's on TV, not by looking at the TV Guide, but by looking at Google Hot Trends. It seems a lot of people want to know more about the chefs so we've compiled a quick click list below highlighting where you can taste their food.

Do you think Chrysler is going to drive out of this funk? I ask honestly as one of 100-million plus taxpayers funding Chrysler.

I want to be optimistic, but I caught a few seconds of a Chrysler TV ad that said they build mechanical bulls. What-The-Fiat is going on here?

I can admit when I'm wrong. This morning I went on and on with five reasons even why Donald Trump would fire Miss California USA Carrie Prejean. Trump didn't contribute to the unemployment rate and has retained the services of Carrie Prejean.

UPDATE 6/10: Trump Fires Miss California USA

Although, I did caveat what I thought was shut and close case with Trump's comment about Prejean's beauty being the cause of her persecution. Let's over-dramatize and say her alleged beauty is her curse. That lingering comment made me think he would not fire her.

Frankly, with her enhancements, I think she's barely 'pageant pretty.' In full disclosure, I also think Martha Stewart is a hottie so what do I know?

In the future everyone will be famous for 140 characters. Thanks to Twitter.

Twitter is the micro-blogging site where all of your posts are 140 characters are less which is why it's attractive. It's similar to your status update in Facebook which is why it's easy to use - 140 characters I can handle. Logging onto to Facebook and fielding 20 kidnap requests, drinking 40 virtual beers and ducking sea creatures thrown my way is a little exhausting.

Thanks to celebrities, Twitter is going mainstream. Fans can 'follow' a celebrity and stay on top of their (seemingly) every thought and micro-activity. And some celebrities follow fans so it's a give and take

Here's a few things I've learned in my brief time on Twitter:

Britney Spears Must Hate Me
Even though I was one of the only media figures (Chris Crocker doesn't count) supporting Britney through her struggles a couple of years ago, Britney doesn't follow me on Twitter. Britney follows AOL Classifieds and 77, 705 other folks, but not me. Maybe she likes to keep track of Britney items being sold in the classifieds.

I still admire her though, no hard feelings.

Top Shop NYC had its grand opening this morning and considering the months and months of hype, and the fact that I think the Top Shop in London is one of the coolest places on the planet, I was a little disappointed.

You can see in the (lamely narrated) video below at the time of the grand opening, there were around 200 people in line which begs the question, where have all the hipsters gone? Two-hundred may seem like a lot of people but compared to Wal-Mart Black Friday crowds, it's nothing.

I twittered (I know you're supposed to say tweeted) a couple of updates, which were kind of Debbie Downerish especially when other folks on Twitter were claiming there were thousands of people everywhere. I just didn't see that. I expect with Mark Ronson scheduled for later in the day, more people will show up

Rock 'n' roll, in its truest form, needs saving.

The fragmented genre that is supposed to "never die" is soft and facing extinction. There are still some quality rock out there from old and new bands but the majority of what the kids think they are rocking to these days is really pop dressed in wolves' clothing. In fact, pop princess Pink rocks way harder than most of the whiny, bumptious acts with goofy names drawn from a hat.

Enter Blue October.

Blue October is rock 'n' roll first and foremost. There are no modifiers like alternative or pop punk to qualify which kind of rock they create. It's just rock. Other bands try to write songs that would be good for cross-over radio appealing to different audiences, but not Blue October.

Quality rock will cross-over on its own without a prefab formula. Case in point, I was live blogging at the Playboy Club's Bunny Hunt party in Vegas out by the Palm's pool and the DJ played "Hate Me" from Blue October's platinum album, Foiled.