July 2009 – Ethnography.com

I like celebrities that turn out to be, well… normal.

Posted on July 16, 2009 by mark

Jodi Foster is one. She seems normal because she aggressively stays out of the public eye. This is interesting given that Howards Huges self-imposed isolation was seen as anything but normal. On the other hand, that seems to have been borne out. Lately I have been reading the blog WWdN: In Exile. This is the blog of Will Wheaton, most well known to people as the character Wesley Crusher on the television program “Star Trek, The Next Generation” and also, like many, I came to wish the same fate on the character Crusher as many Star Wars fans wished in the character JarJar Binx. …

So long Billy, we walked a bit of the same road

Posted on July 7, 2009July 7, 2009 by mark

billymays I like pitchmen, well the good ones and Billy Mays was that. He was one of the best known pitchmen of the last decade.

You have to understand, for nearly I decade I performed in the streets, festivals and fairs in the U.S. and Canada, and encountered the pitchmen, talkers, hawkers and shills of all manner. Billy was the logical evolution. Were the things he pitched sometimes crap? Of course. Caveat Emptor has been the motto of all performers, not just the pitchman, since people started to barter. …

If a tree falls in the forest and no one posts it on Youtube, does the tree actually have a healthier sense of self?

Posted on July 7, 2009July 7, 2009 by Cindy

As many of you know from earlier posts, I am the mother of a 15 year old. Although I have certainly been aware of the need for constant email, phone, and camera usage everywhere she and her friends congregate, it came to me this spring that although she embraces this practice enthusiastically, it seems to place an unnatural burden on her I am only too glad I did not have in my teenage years.…