The Inkwell

Beyonce is hot, hot, hot! Did you see her performance on the American Music Awards? No doubt it’s on YouTube by now. If you haven’t seen it, go look it up. Beyonce is the new Tina Turner.

I really want to hate her. I think a lot of people want to hate her for her Diana Ross-like ego during the Destiny’s Child days, the Photoshop effects to lighten her skin, her disdain for anyone who upstages her… shall I go on?

Anyway, Beyonce was amazing tonight. I couldn’t take my eyes off her dancers who busted some killer Ike-and-Tina-Meet-Bob-Fosse style moves in five inch heels and leotards. Leotards, people! Nothing was left to the imagination, yet the whole performance was the opposite of skanky.

Beyonce proved she can sing, dance, swing her hairpiece around and totally fire up the crowd. I really don’t think I can hate her, her talent is so blinding.

AlphaInventions.com is crazy. Crazy in a good way! Let me preface this by saying I am not being paid to say this, I’m not one of those people who blogs for marketers. I spent the last couple hours trying to figure out what AlphaInventions is, how it works and what the point of it is.

I still can’t answer those questions. So I’ll just tell you how it all went down.

I was looking at the traffic stats for my personal blog and I saw an incoming link from a place called alphainventions.com . It was an unfamiliar domain so I clicked on the link to see where it took me.

This guy named Cheru has figured out a way to drive traffic to hundreds of different blogs. I have no idea how he got the link to my blog, but after Googling alphainventions.com I gathered that it’s not a scam or bot. It allows bloggers to enter their URL and they drive traffic to the site.

I tried it. I entered the URL for one of my blogs and within minutes I went from those pathetic Saturday single digit hits to 83 hits. I don’t get it, but I like it. I will continue to use it to promote my blogs.

Oh, puhleeze! Are we not fat and lazy enough in this country already? TiVo and Domino’s Pizza have joined forces to allow TiVo broadband subscribers to order and track their Domino’s orders on television. Rob Weisberg, vice president of precision and print marketing at Domino’s Pizza, calls this the “on-demand generation” and has coined this marketing strategy “Couch Commerce”.

No doubt, this new technology is going to be a huge success for TiVo and Domino’s Pizza and a delicious convenience for subscribers. As an advocate for customer service, it makes me sad to see yet another corporate monster (two corporate monsters in this case) eliminating human interaction in favor of clickable technology.

Motrin has attracted exactly the kind of attention they were looking for when they created their “Babywearing” online ad. Moms across the internet are crying “I’m offended!” If you know me, you know I think “I’m offended” is a weasely phrase people declare when they have nothing better to do. Offense should be taken in circumstances of genocide, racism, abuse, etc. Not because someone doesn’t like baby slings.

What Motrin did was create the ideal viral marketing video. One which flies under the radar but then one blogger comments on it then another and another. Pretty soon everyone has an opinion on “Babywearing” and Motrin is being talked about. I mean, who really goes around talking about pain killers on a regular basis? They are now, thanks to “Babywearing.”

People are talking about the phrases, “Supposedly it’s a real bonding experience”, “They say that babies… cry less”, “It totally makes me look like an official mom”. I’m confident no mom wears her baby because it looks cool. It’s ridiculously convenient to wear a baby so he won’t cry while mom vacuums or shops or eats. Motrin is simply saying, “If the sling hurts, take something to cure the ache.”

“Babywearing” critics need to lighten up. By making a fuss over it, they’re merely adding fuel to the viral “Babywearing” fire. The video has already received 5,000 hits on YouTube since yesterday and the Motrin website is down. Seems like they made themselves a household name, just like they planned.

Everyone gets all wigged out about air quality inside airplane cabins. I’ll agree, it isn’t any fun when the weirdo behind you is coughing up tuberculosis molecules for two hours. The reality is, airplane air is fresh air that is drawn in through the engines. What will usually make you sick on a plane are the surfaces.

Let’s first take a look at the tray table. They’re usually only cleaned at their overnight destinations. That means if you’re on an evening flight, a whole day’s worth of gak has accumulated on the tray.

Allow me to share my observations as a flight attendant. I’ve seen all of the following (and more) on those tray tables.

• Teenage feet
• Poopy diapers
• Drool from sleepers
• Vomit (okay, trays obviously get cleaned after someone horks all over the place, but still!)
• Blood (who knows where that comes from)
• Sneeze residue
• Shoes
• ABC gum

The same stuff can be found on the arm rests. I don’t even know if th0se get wiped down regularly.

And have you looked up at the gasper vents? Those are the twisty little air vents by your reading light. I’m pretty confident the airlines take delivery of the aircraft with ingrained grim in the twist mechanism.

Don’t forget to check out the windows and window shades. By the end of the day they’ve probably had at least one sick puppy pawing and pressing his face up against the glass.

So before you go blaming the airplanes air quality for making you sick, consider the surfaces first.

In my twenties I lived in Los Angeles to pursue my career in film and television production and, like every other twentysomething wannabe filmmaker, to be way more fabulous than anyone else. By the time I was 29 I was tired of it all. There was very little about California I liked. The two things I miss are my friends and the climate. Everything else, with few exceptions, is crap.

Today being election day, I realized just how much more voter friendly California is compared to Florida. When I lived in California, I would get my sample ballot in the mail and it very clearly stated just what my vote would mean. On questions and referendums the ballot would state the question, then outline what a Yes vote would do and what a No vote would do. Everything was written in plain English so as not to confuse the voters.

Florida, on the other hand, makes it as confusing as possible. (I know, a confusing Florida ballot? You don’t say!) Everything is written in lawyer speak. For example, Constitutional Amendment 3 reads:

Authorizes the legislature, by general law, to prohibit consideration of changes or improvements to residential real property which increase resistance to wind damage and installation of renewable energy source devices as factors in assessing the property’s value for ad valorem taxation purposes.

Not only do I have no idea what that says, I have no clue what ad valorem means. Does anyone know? Anyone who isn’t a lawyer? It seems to me the only people who know any Latin these days are doctors and lawyers.

Being confounded by the ballot takes the fun out of voting. So allow me to add a third thing I miss about California, the crisp copy on their voting ballots.