Edgy Mama

I’ll debrief the BlogAsheville par-tay later. In the mean time, go read Jason Herring’s cool flash fiction story on Flasheville.

Smooches.

BlogAsheville is one year old! To celebrate we’re having a big par-tay, at the pnav, with, yes, a band. Jolt Wagon promises to rock the pnav’s very foundations. I believe I’ve talked to several of you who are in the area, but if I haven’t, here’s your invite to the event. At the least, I’ll blog about the party and post a photo or two next week.

Date: Saturday, June 17
Time: 6:30 ish until the beer runs out, or someone starts dancing nekkid in the treehouse, whichever comes first

Place: Pnavistan, home of just a few high-minded North Asheville liberals and two cats (if you’ve never been here, e-mail me for directions at janusatannefittenglenndotcom)

Who’s invited: You. BA bloggers, Asheville bloggers, NC bloggers, their family members, blogger groupies, male strippers.

Dress: The less, the better.

Bring: Food to share. Alcohol, if you don’t want beer. Prizes (wrapped).
A sleeping bag if you plan on being overserved.

The Extravablogiversapaloozathon is a chance to celebrate our achievements, our friendships, our creativity, and our future.

(crossposted from BlogAsheville. Party invite to be posted later for all my groupies. If you aren’t familiar with the BA blogs, go check them out!)

The First Annual BlogAsheville Awards

The Rules: In the comments section below or by email to scrutinyhooligans(AT)yahoo(DOT)com, you can nominate up to three BlogAsheville blogs in each category. You may also add more categories, to which anyone may nominate favored blogs/bloggers. Anyone may nominate blogs in this competition, so please post about it at your blogs and email me the results. Only bloggers on the BlogAsheville blogroll are eligible for nominations. Nominations will close Friday, June 15 at 11:59 pm.

The Vote: On Saturday you’ll receive a ballot and vote for your favorites from the blogs that are nominated. Polling will close when the band starts playing. The winners will be announced at the set break or thereabouts.

All rules are subject to abject changes.

The Superlatives:

Most Likely to Make Money by Blogging

Least Likely to Make Money by Blogging

Best Design

Most Likely to Make You Laugh Out Loud

Best Art/Photos

Blogger you’d most like to see naked

Blogger you’d most like to have a beer with

Best Local Happenings

Best Political

Makes Me Feel Happiest

Most Inspirational

Most in Need of a Redesign

Most Likely to Have New Material

Best BlogAsheville Post 2005-2006

Best Post 2006

Most Deserving of Wider Recognition

Best Writing

Best Overall

From the esteemed Wall Street Journal comes a fun new party trick that illustrates the marketing power of the Internet. Here are a few graphs I’ve excerpted for your reading pleasure:

“Hundreds of amateur videos have flooded the Internet in recent months showing an oddball experiment: people dropping the quarter-size Mentos candies into bottles of Diet Coke. The combination results in a geyser of soda that shoots as high as 20 feet into the air.”

The popularity of the videos - Mentos says it has found some 800 online - is producing a gusher of free publicity for the candy maker, a unit of Italian confectioner Perfetti Van Melle. “We are tickled pink by it,” says Pete Healy, vice president of marketing for the company’s U.S. division. The company spends less than $20 million on U.S. advertising annually. He estimates the value of online buzz to be “over $10 million.”

The company is considering striking a marketing deal with the two men responsible for one of the more elaborate videos - using 101 two-liter bottles of Diet Coke and 523 Mentos to create a dancing fountain like the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas - posted on EepyBird.com, Mr. Healy says.

Coca-Cola Co. is much more blase. “It’s an entertaining phenomenon,” said Coke spokeswoman Susan McDermott. “We would hope people want to drink (Diet Coke) more than try experiments with it.” Coke could use some extra buzz right now. Sales volume of Diet Coke in the U.S. was essentially flat last year, as consumers switch from diet sodas to bottled water and other noncarbonated drinks. But Ms. McDermott says that the “craziness with Mentos … doesn’t fit with the brand personality” of Diet Coke.

Despite Coke’s “Who needs it?” attitude, the phenomenon shows how brands can take on a life of their own, particularly on the Internet. Mentos’ Mr. Healy points out that Coke-Mentos experiments have been around for years, but they have been given a new jolt by the newfound fascination among young people to create video content and share it online.

For Mentos, the video buzz offers an opportunity too good to pass up. The candy maker is considering hiring the Eepybird.com duo to do demonstrations of their fountain trick - perhaps even as the opening act for a music-concert tour, says Mr. Healy.
The men, Fritz Grobe, a 37-year-old professional juggler, and Stephen Voltz, 48-year-old lawyer, from Buckfield, Me., belong to a local theater company called Oddfellow theater. They got the idea after seeing a less sophisticated version online, and “We wanted to make it bigger and better and turn it into something theatrical,” says Mr. Grobe.

After experimenting with different combinations of sodas and candies - establishing that Mentos and Diet Coke produced the most spectacular effect - they posted their film on EepyBird.com, a site they operate, on June 3. By last Friday, more than 800,000 people had watched the video on Revver.com, a broadband-video site. The pair say they have also had calls from several late-night talk shows, including CBS’s “Late Show with David Letterman.”

“It’s all very exciting, it’s been a whirlwind of attention,” says Mr. Grobe. “We would be happy to help Mentos,” adds Mr. Voltz.

What’s the chemistry behind the geyser? San Diego chemist Neal Langerman suggests the answer lies in the higher level of carbon dioxide in diet sodas than other sodas and the porous surface area of a Mentos. Mr. Langerman, the past chairman of the division of chemical health and safety at the American Chemical Society, said similar results wouldn’t be achieved with an M&M, for instance, “which is really solid.” Diet Coke has more carbon dioxide than Diet Pepsi, he says. Coke wouldn’t comment on the comparison.”

Here’s the video from EepyBird:

Who’s bringing the Diet Coke and Mentos to the BlogAsheville one-year anniversary party this weekend?

O, the beach was lovely, lovely. Even with multiple, inter-related small children and babies all around.

The kids and I arrived home still sandy, covered with various wounds, sunscreen stripes, and bug bites (sunscreen stripes are those marks left at the edges of bathing suits when the suits are displaced, leaving red streaks of sunburn where the delicate skin was not properly slathered).

I, of course, have retained my pure vampiric paleness, having covered myself in various sun protective gear and layer upon layer of sunblock. I have opinions about sunscreen/sunblock brand efficacy, if any of you are ever in need of such. But I’ll spare you the lecture at the moment.

Instead, a few word pictures from my trip:

Strings of pelicans with pterodactyl-like wing spans floating over us, then diving, one after another, to skim the waves;

My son digging trenches in the sand while my daughter bobs in the waves. I sit watching, furrowing the sand with my toes while the breeze salts my lips.

Black birds screeching in the palm trees, diving for discarded French fries and disappearing into the trash bins at the Beach Club. One pops out of the trash, just as a kid is tossing in the remains of his lunch. The kid yelps and jumps backwards.

Bronzed, chunky teenage girls in tiny bikinis lying on loungers around the pool, I-pods attached, slathered in oil. A dermatologist’s wet dream.

An osprey circling high above the ocean, wings white dappled out to brown. Several minutes later he rises from the sea, a long silvery fish clasped in his claws. Beating his wings hard to compensate for the extra weight, he heads for a pine grove.

One-year-old identical twin sisters mashing white cupcake frosting into their hair, across their faces, up their tiny arms, on each other.

The almost-full moon rising above the waves, tinted pink by the sun setting behind us.

If there’s one thing Edgy Mama loves, it’s a baby. Baby wrangling. Baby burping. Baby cradling. Hell, probably even baby diaper changing. So we thought it’d be worth it to have a discussion about the most desired little baby in the world right now, the spawn of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

Actually, the baby may not be the most desired, but photos of the little cutie most definitely are. Always trying a find a way to stick it to the stalker press, Brangelina auctioned off photos to the highest bidder. People Magazine won, spending $4.1 million for the U.S. rights to the photos. (Hello! magazine bought the U.K. rights)

So, here’s the baby. Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt. She’s already got her mama’s lips. That’s obvious. And with her parents genes, it’s clear that she’ll be a looker when she grows up. Here’s my question, one I haven’t seen addressed in the avalanche of coverage about Brangelina’s baby. It’s a worst-case scenario question, and we all know how Edgy Mama loves to ponder worst-case scenarios - if Brad and Angelina die in a plane crash, who gets the baby? Billy Bob? Jennifer? This is a vexing question, one that often splits spouses. Which relative, which side of the family, is best equipped to parent the child? HBO’s Big Love did an episode recently where this was the big fight, with the three wives changing their wills over and over depending on how each felt about the other sister wives.

We think it should be Edgy Mama who becomes Shiloh’s mom. What do you think? I say we start a public campaign right now to have EM written into Brangelina’s wills. Edgy Mama needs a celebrity baby. Let’s do this!

What can we say? Edgy Mama loves the beach. ‘Nuff said.