I love Entertainment Weekly.  I look forward to getting it every Saturday (or Monday depending on the laziness of my mailman).  What I didn’t love though was Lisa Schwarzbaum’s review of New Moon.  She gave the movie a B+, which is fine I suppose (haven’t seen it yet), but here’s what really disturbed me.  When talking about Taylor Lautner, the seventeen year old kid that plays Jacob, she describes him as “one tasty chunk of vealcake”.  Seriously?  Eww.

Now before you get all “you don’t know, you haven’t read the books, and anyway he’s hawt” on me (For the record, I did read all four books.  Being the parent of two preteen girls will drive you to read some odd lit), consider this:  If a respected journalist decided to write that some female seventeen year old movie star is, I don’t know, what’s the disgusting equivalent of tasty chunk of vealcake, “tender vittles”, how exactly would it be viewed?  All you have to do is look at the furor over that equally vile Miley Cyrus cover and you’ll see.  But since she’s sexualizing a male teen, there’s apparently nothing wrong with it.  If you think I’m taking the quote out of context, here’s another gem from Ms. Schwarzbaum’s review:  “I wish Jacob, endowed with Lautner’s lithe bod and Matt Damonesque grin, had more of a chance with Bella”.

I’ve really enjoyed Ms. Schwarzbaum’s reviews in the past, but this one made my skin crawl.

Yiddish Word of the Moment:

Shandeh: Shame, Disgrace

It seems that in the past nine months or so, Twitter has gone mainstream.  Honestly, we’ve been really dragging our feet jumping into the Twittersphere, mostly because I’m having trouble justifying the time expenditure on it.  PoolDawg has a Twitter account and I try to “tweet” (how much do I hate that phrase) for PoolDawg at least once per day, but when will I see a return on my time investment?

Rather than judge this tool as of having little value simply because I don’t get it, I decided to look at one of the companies that has really embraced the tool – Zappos.  Zappos has dedicated an entire area of their site to Twitter and their CEO account currently boasts over 390,000 followers.  With that many followers, there must be something interesting being said, right?  Apparently not, as the posts coming from this account talk about red eye flights, coffee with mom and spicy pork rinds.  OK, maybe Twitter is a tool to put a personality and a “face” on the company.  I get that.  After all, I spend a couple hours per week trying to blog in the voice of a freaking ceramic bulldog.

I guess that’s the point though.  While Twitter isn’t going to show a clear ROI, what it just might do is improve your customer loyalty.  When customers feel like they “know” a company, they’re more likely to buy from you.  It builds relationships and trust.  Thanks to Twitter, Zappos is not a faceless corporation.  Their customers can see that their employees (everyone is allowed and encouraged to use Twitter) are real people with real interests that their customers can identify with.  If Twitter can help a large company build a rapport with their customers, it just might be worth doing.

Yiddish Word of the Moment:

Goniff
Definition:  A scoundrel, a rogue, you get the idea.
Example:  That goniff Huck Finn tricked me into painting his damn fence again!

Daily Obsessive Google Rank Check:
Pool Cues: #1
Pool Cue: #1

So I was on my way to work this morning and The Mountain played the new U2 song, which I think was called Get On Your Boots.  Ugh.  Now don’t get me wrong, I dig U2.  Joshua Tree is still one of my favorite albums but this new crap was awful.  It sounded like that gawdawful Pop album they put out a while ago.

Even with this awful music experience, it did bring up a fond memory.  When I was much, much younger I went to see U2 live at the Los Angeles Coloseum with some friends for the Joshua Tree tour.  We grab our seats and who should we see in front of us but Alyssa Milano.  Naturally my buddy taps her on the shoulder and says “Hey, aren’t you the girl from Commando?”  A very irritated Milano turns around, glares at us and says emphatically “Ugh.  I’m ‘Who’s the Boss’” and turns back around completely disgusted.  Freaking priceless.