Geoffrey Butler, The Shame of a Nation

Who do you pity more, people who are still participating in neo-nazi rallies in Berlin, or the guy who shows up to protest them wearing an Oklahoma t-shirt? Was the gift shop out of Brigham Young shirts or something?

German neo-Nazis rally outside Berlin Jail (Yahoo News)

Lessons in Hip Hop Marketing

What does it take to market a product to impressionable hip hop listeners of a certain age? Apparently not much of a consistent game plan. For your consideration:

• Jay-Z goes from peddling run of the mill beer with Anheuser-Busch one week to pushing $60 champagne with the intention of hawking it for $300 down the road. And what does it say when Business Week is getting their story ideas off of HipHopGame.com? What better way to promote yourself than drinking non-existent champagne and racing all over the south of France with one person who couldn't even find it on a map, Dale Earnhardt Jr., and one 'racer' who is the Anna Kournikova equivalent of auto racing?

• Diddy's saturation infatuation promoting his new album that displays the talents of everyone he works with and yet somehow not his own gave him his first #1 album in nine years, despite it being his worst first week total to date. Despite making about 14 million appearances in the last month, he only managed to move 170,000 copies of Press Play. Somebody should really do an album sales to PR ratio study on this one.

Being the multitasker he his, Diddy also got a mention in the the Times' Sunday Magazine, promoting an opportunity to smell like him. "An official statement for Unforgivable explains that “the Sean John Unforgivable scent exudes the energy, sexiness and elegance of Sean Combs."" That's right for those of you who've always wanted to smell like Proactiv Solution without paying for it, step right up, your date has arrived!

Surely there's a better way of marketing soccer in North America

While it's nice to see adidas partner with the MLS to try a few outside the box ways of promoting soccer to those less likely to be fans already, advertising on Pitchfork sure seems like a curious way of doing it.

Featuring mashups of mostly independent artists from the hometowns of each respective franchise is at least an avenue for music fans to become interested in the sport (big up to the Spank Rock/DC United combo, who couldn't love that.) But you'd think a site that supposedly knows a lot about music would at least pick up on their advertising partners' spelling mistakes of possibly the most well-known (at least to the majority of people) artists' last names:

It'd be more understandable if they screwed up her first name, but given that her sister is Beyoncé Knowles you'd think somebody with half a brain could at least put two and two together. Makes you wonder if they weren't better off as the San Jose Earthquakes... In any event it got me thinking who would be a good tie-in for Toronto FC if they did this next year. MSTRKRFT, Bedouin Soundclash, something like that would fit the bill.

Of course in a backwards sports town like Toronto promotions like this are often the reason people turn away from sports, meaning MLSE's involvement would probably result in some douchiosity along the lines of The Tragically Hip or Nickelback.

The illusion of Television

If you've ever seen CNBC for any length of time, chances are not many of the faces can be easily recollected at a moment's notice. Sure you may recall one or two if presented a picture, but chances are aside from Jim Cramer the most visible face on the network is probably Maria Bartiromo. Now most of the time you see her on TV from the waist up:

For someone on a cable business news channel you think: reasonably attractive, still quite young, nothing out of place. Then you notice she throws out the first pitch at a Yankees game and all hell breaks loose:

If you can look beyond the her obviously poor technique (even girls who throw like girls tell her she throws like a girl) who ever would have guest this otherwise normal looking host has a thing for Mom jeans! It's enough to get Jeff Karstens to wonder if he's really in New York. How is anyone expected to go out and pitch with any degree of concentration after witnessing such a spectacle? Never before has the gap between a television personality's on-camera wardrobe and offscreen attire been so drastic? Even the dudes in the right field bleachers wearing nothing but a beater are imploring her to dress up a bit.

October 2006 Playlist- Better Late Than Never

Yes it's been a while. The music just never stops, which is a blessing and a curse. As the holiday buying seasons are upon us, disposable income seems to bring some of the biggest bangers out around this time. Yes, I had as much trouble typing out the word 'bangers' as you had reading it.

Big up to those dudes Fluokids and Discobelle for constantly killing it with mixes and other such goodies, if you're familiar with either of those interwebs then hopefully you've already been aprised to many of said selections.

As always click for a larger view. The colour scheme here is atrocious around here. Somebody needs a new coat of paint.