The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 7,900 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 7 trips to carry that many people.
Ryan Gosling
As always, the holiday season offers movie lovers an extra gift at this time of year: serious films aiming for Oscar gold. But there are good movies released throughout the year, and while I like reading the critic’s year-end top ten lists, I like coming up with my own. Based on nothing more than the movies that I enjoyed the most, here is my list of the best 7 movies of 2011 (and yes, I made a similar list last year):
One Day. I was lucky enough to start reading this book just a few eeks before it opened, so timing was perfect: I finished it just before the movie trailers really began to give things away. The movie was directed by Lone Sherfig, the Danish director of An Education, and she brings the same breezy, sure pace to this movie. Jim Sturgess and Anne Hathaway are great in their roles, and the plot of One Day, which may at first seem gimmicky, reveals itself to be a beautiful way to show the passage of time and the persistence of love across the years.
Crazy Stupid Love. There was one big hole in this movie, and it was the character of the babysitter, who is the object of affection of Cal Weaver’s (Steve Carell) son, and who herself is in love with Mr. Weaver. The whole subplot with her infatuation with her much older employer was a little creepy. But the rest of the movie makes up for this, with a great story of an unlikely friendship between the nerdy Cal and the smooth, suave Jacob (Ryan Gosling, deliciously pictured above). The love story that develops between Jacob and Emma Stone’s Hannah is unexpected and delightful, and I loved the supporting turns by Kevin Bacon and Josh Groban. Crazy, Stupid, Love was a winning, original romantic comedy.
Source Code. This one I watched on cable, but I still thought it was mesmerizing. I am a sucker for action thrillers that delve into the philosophy of consciousness, but it is still so rare to find this most niche of movies (though The Matrix and Memento come to mind). Source Code revolves around a secret military operation to continuously rewind time and figure out who planted a bomb on a Chicago commuter train. This is done by Jake Gyllenhaal’s character as his consciousness inhabits the body of a man riding the train that fateful morning. The action is exciting and fast-paced, but as the plot thickens and we learn how Gyllenhaal is able to re-enter the past, the movie becomes more and more fascinating. You’ll be talking about this one for days. A good movie for philosophy majors.
Bridesmaids. I will keep this one short, since I have previously written about Bridesmaids not once but twice, during my month of daily blogging. What else to say besides, it’s funny, it introduced America to Melissa McCarthy, it explored the thorny terrain of female friendship (frenemies) and featured a guest appearance by Wilson Philips. Hell yes.
Midnight in Paris. Who knew Owen Wilson was a good Woody Allen stand-in? Or that a filmmaker synonymous with New York could so lovingly capture the essence of Paris? This movie had me at the very first scenes, which were long shots of Paris. I’ve spent a lot of time in the city, and there is a sense walking through it that you are breathing history, taking in the same views as the great artists of the past (this is doubly true for any stroll through Montmartre). Midnight in Paris captures this brilliantly. For anyone who knows their history of early 20th century art and literature, it is a joy to see the giants of the time portrayed convincingly, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein and a spot-on Ernest Hemingway. Bonus points for Rachel McAdams playing a thoroughly bitchy character.
Super 8. This one is an action movie, a sci-fi movie, a nostalgic homage to 70’s era summer blockbusters (not for nothing is Steven Spielberg a Producer of the film), as well as a buddy movie and a story of first love. The action is thrilling and the characters, all pre-pubescent boys and aspiring filmmakers, are endearing. Super 8 is proof that there is more to a good action movie than big explosions. This one has heart.
The Descendants. The scene of Shailene Woodley sobbing silently in the deep end of the swimming pool after she is told that her mother will never wake from her coma and will soon die is still with me, and I saw The Descendants a month ago. George Clooney stars as Matt King, the scion of a wealthy old Hawaiian family who faces the prospect of saying goodbye to his dying wife and selling his ancestral land in a matter of days. The film provides a good showcase for Clooney to excel at what he does best- not flashy, in your face, give me my Oscar kind of acting, but rather showing how an ordinary man faces a crisis (see also: Michael Clayton). The movie is a serious drama with plenty of laughs sprinkled in for good measure, and the landscapes- Hawai’i, Oahu and Kaui- are breathtaking. Director Alexander Payne shows us the real Hawaii, far from the tourist resorts. For its stellar acting and expert direction, The Descendants is a great movie.
All American Muslim
Newt Gingrich, much to my dismay, is in the running for the Republican nomination, and is currently pandering his way through the Iowa cornfields. One notable recent pander was his claim that the Palestinians are an invented people. What saddened me about the claim was realizing that, while it was offensive to me, it confirms the beliefs of people who believe that all Palestinians are, as Newt later put it, terrorists with no claim to nationhood. The idea that you could make such a statement with no expectation of blowback. Who could object? Well, it turns out, actual Palestinians. The Guardian reports that Palestinian leaders, from lead negotiator Saeb Erekat to Prime Minister Salam Fayyad have condemned Gingrich’s remarks. Even a former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. admitted that “Their aspiration to a national unity and self-governance is the fact we should be dealing with.”
In other Fear and Loathing of Arabs in the News, TLC, which began by airing programs that allowed the home viewer to learn something but has since devolved into midget and sextuplet reality programming, has returned to its educational roots with a new reality show, “All-American Muslim”. I haven’t yet seen the program, but my parents watch and said it is quite interesting. The show follows five Arab Muslim families in Dearborn, Michigan, home to the National Arab American Museum as well as the biggest concentration of Arab Americans in the U.S. My paternal great grandparents immigrated to Western Pennsylvania; somehow our people decided to leave the cool climate of the Mediterranean for more frozen landscapes. In any case, the bad news is that Lowe’s, the home supply big box store, decided to pull its advertising from the show after receiving pressure from the previously little known Florida Family Association. The good news is that Lowe’s has suffered bad publicity since pulling ads from the show. The even better news is that CNN reports that ad time on All-American Muslim is all sold out.
I take an optimist’s view of the two recent news items. A pessimistic view is that there is a sizable portion of Americans that only sees Arabs as crazed, wild-eyed savages, who don’t like having that view challenged. Yet what I see in both of these cases is that the tide is turning. A small “family” organization objected to the reality show on TLC, but their petition may have drawn more viewers to the show than ever, and more importantly, the negative reaction to Lowe’s decision to pull from the show may cause other advertisers to think twice before heeding the petitions of small-minded organizations with an agenda that favors hate more than family. And with regards to Newt Gingrich’s comments, yes, they do resonate with people who don’t know much about history in the region. But how will Newt and his incendiary, to-hell-with-diplomacy style fare in the Republican primaries, or perhaps the general election? My gut says Newt and his shit-eating grin will be fading away soon.
Latino Stereotypes
A friend who enjoys Project Runway as much as I do, with whom I enjoy discussing the show, recently posted on Facebook about the dearth of gays in the media who don’t conform to the stereotype of being effeminate and delicate and work in fields like hairdressing and fashion design. Though perhaps I should have stayed away from the fray, I, along with other friends, offered up the best examples we could think of to illustrate that not all famous gays conform to the stereotype. As my friend informed us all that the examples we were giving were not good enough- Mitchell from ‘Modern Family’ and all past Project Runway contestants were too gay, apparently- I thought to myself, maybe this effort is futile. Maybe most gay men ARE effeminate, and there is nothing wrong with that. Maybe that’s the reason most portrayals of gay men on television- including reality TV- depict the same kind of gay man, because he is out there. Is this the case with all minorities, ethnic as well as sexual? Are we yearning for the depiction of some minority within a minority?
I’ve previously written (and tweeted) about the preponderance of Latino boxers on TV and film (think “Price of Glory”, “Mi Familia”, and Showtime’s Resurrection Boulevard). While there’s no way to know the prevalence of boxers in each Latino family, it is true that the sport is widely followed and watched, although it seems that many young Latinos are abandoning the sport for MMA fighting. There is a stereotype that Latino families are large, and statistics bear this out. The U.S. Census shows that: In 2000, 30.6 percent of family households in which a Hispanic person was the householder consisted of five or more people. In contrast, only 11.8 percent of non-Hispanic White family households were this large. So if you are Hispanic and grew up in a small family, yes, you are a minority within a minority.
Why do members of minority groups want to see the rarities- the manly gay men, the Latino cranberry farmers, the Jewish NBA players– represented? It is okay to admit that there is some truth in stereotypes. I also think that what matters is not the representation itself, but who is creating these representations. As long as minorities have a voice at the table, then I think stereotypical images will fade. I don’t care if a Latino boxer is shown on TV or in film, just as long as he (or she- don’t forget “Girlfight”) is drawn as a three-dimensional character. And if our hypothetical Latino cranberry farmer should come to life, I hope that he is also treated as a real person and not some novelty item. Look at the way gays have been portrayed on TV recently. There is Mitchell on “Modern Family”, a tightly -wound lawyer who is married to a former college football linebacker from rural Missouri. And as for Jewish NBA players? Amare Stoudamire claims to be of Jewish descent, and has even traveled to Israel and adopted a Kosher diet. Now THAT’s breaking a stereotype.
Judy Reyes
This post was actually inspired by a recent rerun of ‘Scrubs’. In it, Carla is frustrated that people think her baby girl is black, when actually, she is half-black, half Latina. This was certainly not the first time I’ve seen this fallacy, but I was surprised to see it come from a black Latina herself. Repeat after me: yes, one can be Black AND Latino, all at the same time.
I blame the frequent terminology mixup to this country’s insistence on simplifying racial categories. I know from personal experience that being mixed can really make people’s heads explode (I’ve found the same is true for being bilingual. “All those languages in one head!”). We like our ethnic categories clear cut in America, so quite often, Latino=Mexican=Spanish. Yes, how often have we heard someone say, “I couldn’t understand them; they were speaking Mexican”. Or the twin to this family of malapropisms, “Look at that family of Spanish people”.
Combine this with the changing nomenclature for Americans who are descended from slaves, and you have some natural confusion as to people like actress Judy Reyes, pictured above. About the whole Americans descended from slaves thing- as ugly terms like negro and colored were left by the wayside of history, two terms cropped up to denote black Americans, black and African-American. Some people perceive the latter to be a nod to political correctness, but I think it is an accurate way to indicate that someone is a descendent of American slaves, since the word Black could refer to Jamaicans, Nigerians, or Brazilians, among others. For that reason, one can be African-American- like Donald Faison, the actor who played Turk on Scrubs, and also Black, while Judy Reyes is Black but not African-American. She is Black and Latina, like Alfonso Ribeiro, Christina Milian, and Rosie Perez. Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. covered this terrain in depth in his PBS series ‘Black in Latin America’.
And just for fun, here are Carla and Turk dancing the tango to the tune “I’m Dominican”.
Google Analytics
Those of us in the digital marketing industry know that we offer the advertiser one distinct advantage over radio, TV and print- a wealth of data about user engagement with the ads. We can not only guess if a user will see an ad, but see when he saw it, when he will be most likely to find out more, where he and others will see it, and more. I recently participated in an online course on how to best take advantage of the features in Google Analytics, and while I was shown how the interface works, I was left with the same question I had before starting the course: with the wealth of data at our disposal, what should we DO with all of it?
Of course, this all depends on what our needs are. The owner of a retail site will analyze analytics to see, for example, which search terms are leading customers to his site, whereas a breaking news site can see what time of day is best to publish stories to attract the most eyeballs. The point is knowing what you need. I know that when I look at Google Analytics, I am easily drawn into minutiae like whether to choose a pie or bar chart, which metrics to overlap with each other- visitors by region, by city, etc. I particularly get a kick out of the In-Page Analytics that crawls any page on a site and shows where visitors go (2% to the About Us page, 24% to the Read More page, etc). In short, it’s easy to spend a long time on Analytics. Which is why we need to get back to basics.
It’s one of those truisms of the marketing world that you must know who your customer is. Once you know who they are, you can then market to them in the right voice; this is why we do market research. Analytics, then, is a free, quick and easy form of market research. What are we looking to accomplish with the site? If we are trying to draw visitors from New York and we see that most visitors come from California, we look at the rest of the site to see how we could draw the right kind of visitor (perhaps with a modest Ad Words campaign). Figure out what you’re looking for- effective search term, time on site, etc.- and then use the information in Analytics to change your site accordingly.
BART protests
From Santiago to San Francisco, protests are all the rage this summer (and winter in Chile), with discontent simmering to a boiling point. As I observe these protests, I notice that my traditional sympathy towards the man on the street has shifted- I no longer reflexively support protesters just for the sake of it. Perhaps it comes from being a city dweller, but I want there to be some order to protests, and respect for those of us who live and work near the city center. Let me explain how the recent BART protests have alienated many in the San Francisco Bay Area.
On July 3rd, BART police shot and killed transient Charles Hill on the Civic Center platform as he threatened them with a broken bottle. If these facts of the case are indeed true, then the response was very disproportionate, period. Tasers were invented to subdue suspects momentarily while not inflicting permanent damage. Nevertheless, I also understand that the police need to react within seconds, deciding on the best course of action to protect themselves and those around them.
And when those who were outraged against the police action decided on the best form of protest, well, you can see the results in the image above. Climbing on top of BART trains to keep them from moving forward didn’t endear BART commuters to protesters. Thousands of people use the system to get from home to work and back every day; messing with their commute and leaving them stranded for now THREE WEEKS IN A ROW does little to bring people to seeing your side of things. As a matter of fact, the BART protesters have engendered quite a bit of animosity among the commuter crowd.
Now let’s look to the Southern Hemisphere and take a look at the student protests rocking Chile. I didn’t realize until a Chilean colleague told me that all universities in Chile are private- there are no publicly funded universities in the country. The students have very legitimate grievances with the government, and have been taking to the streets to protest peacefully. That is, until some protesters began setting fire to historic churches and department stores. Much has been said before by people better-versed in protest movements than me, but it seems to me that veering from a non-violent path alienates supporters. And a large part of protesting is to create awareness of a certain cause. It is always sad when a minority of violent anarchists turn public support against an otherwise worthy cause. March, hold signs, sing songs, join hands, but refrain from getting violent. And people will listen.
Ron Paul
I have seen the posts of friends on Facebook bemoaning the fact that Ron Paul is not getting much media attention, given his fervent fan base. And while I agree with those who say that he is not being covered because he doesn’t have a chance of winning the Republican nomination, I also believe that Ron Paul brings a perspective to the national conversation that is worth hearing. I think he and left-wing firebrand Dennis Kucinich are very similar. They both speak their minds consistently, with no regard to how it will play in the national media. And neither man has the slightest chance of winning national office.
Dennis Kucinich was one of the last Democratic Representatives to sign on to the healthcare reform bill. He was unwilling until the last moment to support the signature legislative achievement of the Democratic President because the plan was not what he wanted- single payer health care. I know that many on the left applaud him for his deep convictions, but he is someone who always proposes the noble idea and yet has very few legislative achievements to his name. I looked into it, and while I have found examples of his convictions in his dissenting votes against the Patriot Act and the Iraq War resolution, he has achieved very little.
Interestingly, he and Ron Paul were the only Congressmen to vote no on the Rothman-Kirk resolution, which called on the UN to condemn Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his statements. So the two mavericks coincide in some areas. Ron Paul has a similar track record of infuriating his Republican colleagues by frequently voting against his party. He has presented a host of bills, most of which do not make it out of committee, such as abolishing the income tax or the Federal Reserve; this year he has co-sponsored a bill with Barney Frank to decriminalize marijuana at the federal level. Paul garners much affection among his admirers for voicing opposition to a muscular foreign policy and promoting a smaller government. Yet I cannot help but look at the records of these two men and see two mouthpieces who have accomplished little.
Perhaps my resistance to posturing that leads nowhere is one reason why I am still a strong Obama supporter. I know that he has been criticized vocally on both the left and the right for not doing things as they would like. But he has an incredibly strong record of achievement for just two, almost three years into his presidency. The website What the Fuck Has Obama Done So Far provides a handy shortcut to listing all of his accomplishments to date. Healthcare reform, financial regulation, troop withdrawals from Iraq, and many more achievements which mostly required, yes, COMPROMISE. The ugly leadup to passage of the healthcare reform bill was ugly, but at least the President left things in the hands of Congress. I admire politicians who are savvy enough to do what it takes to achieve a track record of accomplishment, leaving the system in better shape and improving the lives of ordinary people, even in just small ways. So Congressmen Paul and Kucinich can lead their followers as much as they’d like. I’ll take a doer, thank you very much.
The old Borders in my hometown
I remember going to Borders in high school late at night when there was nowhere else to go, and stalking the bookshelves with my friends, giggling at romance novel covers and browsing the more esoteric sections of the magazine rack (Cat Fancy, anyone?). Borders was a place to hang out in those teenage years, and even in the last few years, whether it was Borders or Barnes and Noble or any other well-lit place where books are sold (Book Passage is a favorite), I’ve enjoyed perusing the newest titles, flipping through them to check out the dedication page, the back page blurbs, and in the case of translated fiction, who the translator was (once a translator, always a translator).
I also like giving books as gifts to friends and family for birthdays or for Christmas. There was a time when you could show your knowledge of someone’s tastes by buying them a CD by a band that you actually knew that they liked or, better yet, make them a mix that they could play on their own. The death of the mixed tape has been well-documented, a relic from a bygone era of The Bodyguard soundtrack and Kennedy and Bill Bellamy as VJs on MTV. The music store as gathering place for music lovers of mainstream pop acts and obscure bands alike is long gone, but I still miss having a place to go to meet like-minded music fans. Yes, I can meet them online, and iTunes and Pandora have an algorithm that knows exactly what I like, but the music store is something I didn’t realize I’d miss until it was as ancient as the typewriter.
I have the same uneasy feeling now about books and bookstores. That they’re fading fast. I have come to see the convenience of an mp3 player- carrying around with me hundreds of songs (no, I didn’t say thousands- my iPod is from Spring 2005). So as I walk the streets of San Francisco, I can listen to a song I bought when I was 15, and then listen to a song that’s playing on the radio today. The iPod provides an ever-changing soundtrack to my life, curated by me. And yet I still don’t understand the appeal of the e-reader. When will I ever need to carry around thousands of volumes of books at once? So I can toggle between War and Peace and In Search of Lost Time? I like to finish one book before starting another. And what of giving a book as a gift- inscribed by the giver with a personalized message, a sort of “I know you’ll enjoy this, dear friend”? It’s not possible with an e-reader.
Closed Borders Soma
I’m sure these arguments will seem quaint in the future, a future where libraries are gone and bookstores are empty and abandoned, just like the one in my hometown Borders seen above (and also the one in my San Francisco neighborhood that closed last October). But there is something convivial about a bookstore filled with browsers that can’t be found in these empty storefronts- or in the glowing screen of an e-reader.
Chinese Language Ad
Is language the glue that holds the Hispanic-marketing world together? One of those perennial questions that Hispanic marketing professionals ponder is whether it is possible to market to a group as diverse as Latinos. Will one marketing strategy effectively reach Salvadorans, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans and Colombians? Young and old? The new immigrant and the second-generation Latino? It turns out that the glue holding these disparate groups together is the Spanish language.
This becomes apparent when you think about the marketing strategies deployed to market to the Asian-American community. Anyone looking to reach this demographic has to have marketing materials translated into the language or languages of their target market: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Hmong, or others. Oh wait, there is no “Chinese”. There is Simplified Chinese, the written language of mainland China, and Traditional Chinese, the written language of Taiwan (Wikipedia explains the difference; Mao Zedong is involved). The spoken language is either Cantonese, the dialect spoken in Southern China and Hong Kong, or Mandarin, which is the dialect spoken in the northern part of China.
Additionally, a marketer has to figure out where their Asian-American market lives. If your campaign is in Honolulu, try Tagalog to reach Filipinos. If you’re in L.A., try Korean. And if you’re in Houston, use Vietnamese to get your message across (Houston is home to the 3rd biggest Vietnamese community in the U.S.).
All this is not to say that the Asian-American community is too tough to market to, so why bother. It is always worth it to reach someone in their language. But the above facts illustrate one reason why Hispanic marketing is a little more straightforward than Asian-American marketing. Language is king. And one last note: although there are some Latin countries with some historic bad blood- Peru vs. Chile, Dominican Republic vs. Haiti, Nicaragua vs. Costa Rica– the countries of the region all share a basic colonial history. All Latin American countries were conquered by Spain. Compare that to Asia, where there is a long, complicated history of inter-regional conflict. Think of that when arguing to someone that Puerto Ricans and Chileans have nothing in common. In Spanish.
The Lebanexican 