E-Pop! Classic March 29, 1999: Pick a Pack of Peeps

The Easter season reminded me of this post, originally published March 29, 1999 in E-Pop! the pop culture  E-zine hosted by Dave Singleton and Cathleen Rittereiser.  It's from  E-Pop! #7   Live from Cafe Luxembourg Booth 11  

Happy Easter from www.gooeysugarydisgustingmarshmallowcandy.com

A few weeks ago I saw a commercial, a glimpse of baby chickens dancing followed by this URL:  www.marshmallowpeeps.com.    

A pop-culture phenomenon bigger than Robert Loggia?  It deserved investigation.

You know Peeps.  Yellow and pink marshmallow chickadees permanently attached like Siamese twins.   With Easter approaching, you can find them packaged in flimsy pastel boxes, piled in supermarkets, drugstores chains and 7-11's.

Ever thought about Peeps?

A peep at the website reveals the Peeps as much more than chewy, sugared blobs of marshmallow.  A typical corporate site featuring dull design and a link to press releases, it nonetheless offers engaging insight into Peeps lore and presents a solid case for Peeps' icon status.   I put together my own set of Peeps FAQ's to show you what you can learn from it. 

Q. How come I never knew much about Peeps until now?

A. "We have witnessed the explosion of 'Peepsmania' throughout the years."  claims the product manager.  "Just Born decided to provide loyal Peeps consumers with an official web site to keep up with Peeps news, trends, events and more."

Q. Where do Peeps come from?

A. Just Born, Inc., a privately-owned company located in Bethlehem, PA., manufactures and markets Marshmallow Peeps and Bunnies, Mike and Ike, Hot Tamales and other seasonal marshmallow confections. The family-owned company celebrated its 75th anniversary in 1998.

Q. What is the Peeps theme song?

A. "Pick A Pack of Peeps".

Q. What's the latest news on the Peeps?

A. Blue Marshmallow Bunnies.  "Blue Peeps were the stars of last year's Easter season. Now, blue Bunnies have been added to our colorful Easter Peep palette and we're sure to see them hopping into holiday recipes and crafts, not to mention taking their place next to blue Peeps in millions of Easter baskets nationwide."

Q. How should I decorate my home for the Easter holiday?

A. Make a Peeps Mobile.  Attach Marshmallow Peeps and Bunnies to clear fishing line and hang at different lengths from a coat hanger that's covered with ribbon. Or, for a whimsical touch above your holiday table,  just hang Peeps on clear wire directly from your chandelier.

Q. What desserts would really impress my holiday guests?

A.  Marshmallow Peeps on a Popsicle: Gently push a Marshmallow Peeps Chick on one end of a clean popsicle stick. (Editor's Note: Ouch!)  Tie a long ribbon under the Marshmallow Peeps and place next to party plates.  Use alternate color Marshmallow Peeps Chick (yellow, pink, white, blue or lavender) and complementary color ribbons.   

Or try...

Marshmallow Peeps In A Cloud.  Decapitate each Peep, melt the body in the oven and then re-attach the head prior to serving.

Q. What else can you do with Marshmallow Peeps?

A. Strange things people like to do with Marshmallow Peeps: eat them stale, microwave them, freeze them, roast them, and use them as a pizza topping.  (There's more, but E-Pop! wants to maintain its PG-13 rating).

Q. And, finally...Will Peeps make me fat?

A. Each Peep has 32 calories (160 calories per five-chick serving) and 0 fat grams.  (Quick, call Sarah Ferguson.  How many Weight Watchers points is that?)

Q. Where can I get more information?

A. Peeps fans are invited to send a self-addressed, stamped, business-size envelope to obtain a free Marshmallow Peeps Holiday Crafts and Recipe Brochure. Interested consumers should send their envelope to Peeps Holiday Ideas, 1300 Stefko Blvd., Bethlehem, PA., 18017-6620.

Peeps, pop-culture icons. Peepsmaniacs check out www.marshmallowpeeps. com,  or the "unofficial" Peeps websites www.geocities.com/Area51/Nebula/1130/peep.html

The Bucket List, Now More than Ever

First thing on the morning of Tuesday January 8th, my Twitter and Facebook friend and muse, Connie Reece, tagged me in her note Connie's Bucket List 2008. Written in response to a tag from Jeff Pulver in a meme he originated, the meme refers to the recently released movie, "The Bucket List".

Jeff puts it this way,

"In the spirit of the movie, and in the spirit of trying to make 2008 be the year that we all start to do some of the things we would like to accomplish one day, I thought it would be fun to reach out to friends across Facebook and ask them to share some of the things on their "Bucket List" they hope to remove during 2008. For some of us, these are not necessarily our "New Year's Resolutions", but rather things we have been meaning to do for some time that we WILL get done in 2008."

Connie, knowing full well my powerful Getting Nothing Done skills, (I still haven't written a post she tagged me for last April) made sure to send me a direct message on Twitter to let me know she had tagged me. I responded that I would take a look, but didn't read her note until Tuesday evening. After doing so, I logged onto Twitter and learned that Ashley Spencer, aka @ashdpreggo, @ashDmama and @ashPEAmama, a 29 year old mother of 2 children, including a 2 month old baby girl, had lost her life in a car accident that morning.

Although Ashley and I followed each other, we did not interact that much, but I cared about her, having read her tweets throughout her entire pregnancy. While I remember thinking at one point that her pregnancy seemed to last forever (so I can only imagine how she felt) I was as happy about the November birth of Lucy as if I were her natural aunt. I felt like Lucy belonged to all of us. My heart breaks at the loss of Ashley and the loss her family has suffered. Ironically, I ended the day exchanging messages with Connie and tagging her with the sad news.

A loss like this makes the idea, not just of having a Bucket List, but of acting on the Bucket List more real and more imperative. Having to think and write about it has become more challenging, since I cannot make light of it --well maybe a little--the way I might have if I had written it Tuesday morning.

With that in mind, I will answer the question from a few perspectives.


1) What is on your Bucket List for 2008?

On January 2nd, I posted the GND: Getting Nothing Done trademarked process for creating New Year's resolutions. Essentially you find the electronic document of last year's New Year's resolutions saved on your computer, change the year to 2008 and save as "New Year's Resolutions 2008", then go back to your regularly scheduled programming. Steph Stockman then asked me through Twitter if I could give her my resolutions and I responded with a comment like, "Here's what they have been since 1993. Lose weight, get a new job..." You get my drift.

Because my new year's resolutions have remained resolute all these years, putting them on my Bucket List for 2008 seems superfluous. Let's just assume they're there. I take this question to mean,

"What do you want to accomplish specific to 2008?"

Bucket List for 2008

• Better integrate my skills and interests into my professional life.
• Leveraging my book to build my network, do more public speaking engagements and get a contract and begin to write more books.
• Apply my growing knowledge of social media, social networks and Web 2.0 to my current job in an industry that has resisted those tools.
  

• Better integrate my skills and interests into my life
• I love my Twitter and Facebook peeps but I need to spend more time interacting face-to-face with people. I hope and expect that some of that interaction will be from meeting more of my Twitter and Facebook peeps in person.
• Continue to develop as a comedic writer and performer and blogger by doing the work.
• Give back in both the online and off line world through the Frozen Pea Fund.
• Recognize that my comfort zone has become my constriction zone and extricate myself accordingly with alacrity.

2) What is on your Bucket List for Life?

I see this as the list of things I want to accomplish before I die, particularly the things I would try to accomplish if I knew I only had 6 months to live. Some of them seem fanciful, some doable, but all worth trying.

• Win an Oscar. (If I had only a 6 months, it would be to go to the Academy Awards in person, probably as a seat-filler.)
• Buy a great NYC apartment
• Travel more throughout Europe
• Learn to play the bagpipes
• Drive the Zamboni at Madison Square Garden during a Rangers and New Jersey Devils game
• Play a round of golf at St. Andrew's
• Become the bench coach for the New York Mets

3) What is on your 1 Day Bucket List?

Ashley Spencer did not know she only had one day to live. Fortunately she spent the last day of her life watching and cheering her favorite college football team the LSU Tigers onto victory. Her last tweet the night of the 7th was,

"So happy I can't stand it! Geaux Tigers!"

So what would I do if I knew I had only 1 day left to live?

I would go out to New Jersey to see my family and spend the day

• Drawing houses and skyscrapers
• Playing house, dolls and hide and see
• Watching my niece perform in a musical comedy
• Cheering my nephew at his hockey game
• Watching Top Chef with my sisters,
• Discussing baseball and politics with my brothers
• Eating my dad's lasagna
• Reading bedtime stories

And very, very important

• Hiding from the wolves and coyotes in the basement
  

What's on their Bucket Lists for 2008? I'm tagging:

• My sister and equally sporadic blogger, Suzanne Anderson.
• CreativeSage, Cathryn Hrudicka
• My Scrabble buddy Kevin Gamble
• Jon Swanson, assuming he hasn't been hit up for this one 100 times already
• PulverHeads leader Annie Boccio
• Jeff O'Hara who has been blogging twice as long as I have known about blogging
• JP Rangaswami, a friend that is a pioneer in integrating finance with social media
  

What's on your Bucket List for 2008?

Foundation and Endowment Investing Book

My book, written with my good friend Larry Kochard, the Chief Investment Officer of Georgetown University, will be published officially this coming Friday December 14th.

Foundation and Endowment Investing profiles a number of accomplished Chief Investment Officers within today’s leading foundations and endowments; chronicling their experiences, investment philosophies, and the challenges they face in allocating assets, managing risks, and selecting from an increasingly sophisticated set of investment opportunities. We believe readers will gain valuable insights into the philosophies of foundation and endowment investment managers, and discover how to integrate their ideas and strategies—from asset allocation to investing for the long term—into their portfolios.

Find the book wherever books are sold including Amazon.com
http://decenturl.com/amazon/foundations-and-endowment

Information also available on the Wiley Publishing website.

The King of Pure Comedy Moments

What is the purest comedic moment you have ever experienced?

Knowing of my budding career as a stand-up comic, Howard Greenstein sent me a link to the newcritics Comedy Blog-a-thon posing that question and wrote, "You should write for this."

Before I actually read the post and learned the Comedy Blog-a-thon requirements, I imagined a contest that demanded I write something funny on cue. Such a challenge would only be funny if accompanied by the picture of my bewildered, deer-in-the-headlights face. It reminded me of the classic interview technique, that fortunately, despite a long career on Wall Street, never happened to me. The man (always a man) interviewing a candidate for a sales job leans over, pulls out a Bic ballpoint pen and barks, "Sell me this pen." Such pressure tactics never make me funny or persuasive.

Upon reading the post, I realized I did not have to participate in a "Be Funny Now" contest, but I initially misinterpreted the question. I thought, "What is the purest comedic moment you have ever experienced?" was challenging me to identify the funniest thing that ever happened to me. Trying to pick the one pure, comedic moment in my life from a group that includes truly funny events, those that eventually became funny and those that only I find funny, seemed like cruel and unusual comedy blog-a-thon punishment.

I soon understood that newcritics really wanted me to describe without over-analyzing the purest comedic moment I had experienced as a spectator or viewer. What moment in stand-up was most funny to comedians? What passages made writers laugh the most? It seemed the moment I chose needed to have influenced me and my art profoundly. Feeling some deer-in-the-headlights pressure, I could only remember moments in big swaths of time or what I call Meta Moments.

One summer in the 1970s, maybe 1971 or 1972, in my Shakespearean scholar period, every Sunday night I would watch the BBC program "The Six Wives of Henry the Eighth" on PBS. (Perhaps my biographers will consider that conceit my purest moment of personal comedy). I loved the soap opera-like story and episodic structure, the handsome lead actor Keith Mitchell and the sumptuous costumes. But I really loved the smug, intellectually superior feeling I got from watching the show. Unlike its latter-day, intellectually inferior, poor imitation replacement on Sunday night, "Desperate Housewives", it lacked comedic moments. Even if they had been there I took the show too seriously to notice.

The pure comedic meta moment came from "Monty Python's Flying Circus" that followed immediately after. Intrigued by the title, I started watching, overjoyed at its ability to make me feel smug and intellectually superior while also making me laugh. So many years later and I still laugh at the memory of John Cleese mistakenly entering "Abuse" and being berated until learning that the "Argument" he wanted was down the hall.

My love affair with British humorists led me to discover the late and still-lamented Marty Feldman. In one sketch this bug-eyed gnome, dressed in his pajamas and nightcap, gets out of bed, telling his hideous, shrewish wife, "I forgot to put out the cat", shuffles out of the room and then dashes off. He dons a tuxedo, gets on a flight and arrives at the luxurious hotel room of his beautiful date where they dance and drink champagne. He then turns around and comes back, all in the time it takes to put out the cat! Even now the idea makes me laugh, especially when a minute after returning and climbing back into bed, he gets up and says, "I forgot to put out the trash"...

Another comedic meta moment happened in the summer of 1976 as the networks broadcast the Democratic Presidential Convention. Describing it now makes it sound like life during World War I. We only had 3 TV networks! Each covered the convention gavel-to-gavel all day long! The convention was actually kind of real and intriguing! The choice of candidate wasn't a foregone conclusion days in advance, let alone a year in advance! The convention did not provide the comedic meta moments (perhaps that's an event that becomes comedic eventually) it came later in the evenings. My brother and I sat through the convention for the reward of seeing "The Honeymooners" at 11pm.

Watching as bug-eyed Ralph Kramden and dopey Ed Norton plotted, schemed and bungled their way through life made me howl with laughter, yet it never devolved into derision. Ralph captured your heart and gained your sympathy when he'd admit to his beautiful, occasionally shrewish wife Alice, "Baby you're the greatest." Not to over-analyze it, but "The Honeymooners" delivered pure comedic moments by making you feel intellectually superior and just as inferior as Ralph simultaneously. When you laugh at Ralph and Ed, you laugh at yourself, because you know you could easily make similar mistakes. Jackie Gleason's pure comedic genius showed in his ability to make the joke always on himself. His comedy had warmth and heart that my beloved British comedy lacked.

I watched the Honeymooners so much that summer and since that I can list many pure comedic moments. I still laugh at Ralph, embarrassed Alice has taken a job, when asked about it replies, "She's a career girl" only to have Alice retort, "My 'career' is stuffing jelly into donuts." (Perhaps most people wouldn't laugh at that but it reminds me of my 'career'). The deer-in-the-headlights moment when Ralph learns the wrong music for the "$99,000 Answer", I relate. Ralph, fearing Alice is having an affair with someone named "Harvey," leaves the Raccoon Lodge and shows up at Harvey's, only to learn she is baby-sitting him. Woken up by Ralph's bellowing, Harvey takes one bleary-eyed look at him and exclaims, "I didn't know Davy Crockett was so fat." I could go on. As much as I'm still laughing years later, I feel sad because as much as I want to emulate him, I doubt we will ever see comedic performers like Jackie Gleason again.

When I drafted this post initially, I planned only to describe those Meta Moments, even though that meant not exactly answering the question. Then I remembered my purest comedy moment.

From the time I was old enough to understand the concept of bedtime, but not old enough to determine it for myself, my parents would make me go to bed way too early for my taste. I would lie there for hours, thinking, fantasizing, fidgeting, doing anything but sleeping. When the book "Go Dog Go" came out and showed the whole houseful of dogs sleeping in one giant bed, my father pointed to the one with his eyes wide open and said, "There's Cathleen." As I got older and wiser, sometimes I would sneak out of bed and crouch on the floor near my bedroom door to try to listen to my parents' conversation or the TV.

One night when I was 8 or 9 years old, my father had cranked up the TV volume louder than usual. I got out of bed, went to the door of my room and stuck my head out to listen. Johnny Carson's guest, I believe it was the comedian David Steinberg, was telling a joke.

"God came to King Solomon and told him he would grant him either Wisdom or Riches. King Solomon had to choose. So he thought and thought and agonized over the decision. Finally King Solomon told God he wanted the gift of Wisdom. As soon as he got wisdom, he knew he should have taken the money."

Years later, I still laugh at that one single, royal moment of pure comedy. It includes many aspects of my ideal comedy writing and performances--intellectual premise, smug superiority and references to history, politics and pop culture--and the career dream of one day sitting on David Letterman's couch and telling him jokes. A comedy moment that rules to this day and has influenced me beyond the Monty Python and Honeymooners meta moments.

When I graduated from college, I thought and thought and agonized about what I wanted to choose as a career. Then I remembered that one moment of pure comedy, David Steinberg and the story of King Solomon.

I went to work on Wall Street.

Cultural Institutions R-E-S-P-E-C-T Media Snackers

Today's New York Times featured an article by Claudia La Rocca entitled Culture Institutions Go After the Short-Attention-Span Crowd that offered further proof of the rise and influence of the Media Snacker.

Describing a beer blast/dance party/art installation called Takeover held over the weekend by the Brooklyn Academy of Music to attact younger art snackers Ms. La Rocca states:

"The highly coveted demographic of younger artgoers, many of whom could be
seen at Takeover flitting from one activity to the next, tends to be culturally omnivorous and often disinclined to sit quietly in a dark theater for several hours."

Comparing the event to an actual takeover, the academy’s vice president for marketing and communications, Lisa Mallory, brings The Conversation offline and into the building, saying

"Transforming a space, taking it over,” she said. “It’s very empowering.”

Mallory offers the example of a popular subscription package for the Next Wave festival called the Short Attention Span Sampler, in which all the works are 90 minutes or less, as further evidence of the respect Media Snackers now command.

“I’m not sure what that means, whether it’s a good thing or not, but it’s a reality that arts institutions must be thinking about. What will the performing arts be like in 10 or 20 years? I can’t imagine that the formal sit down for two and a half hours will be the only way we do it.”

The article continues with a look at several organizations that seem to see having a building and performance or exhibition space as some kind of handicap. La Rocca quotes Stephen Greco of The Dance Theater Workshop.

“Buildings trap as well as enable, we want to make this building as permeable as possible for outside and inside forces.”

Just like tension between online and offline media, arts organizations struggle with the tension between making art more accessible while maintaining an established infrastructure. On one hand Joseph Melillo, the executive producer for the Academy, acknowledges it is a “living, breathing organism,” but...

“I am very respectful that I am the trustee of 1908 architecture.”

Media Snacker R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Jeremiah Owyang, Senior analyst for Forrester Research recently asked on his blog, How do I respect media snackers?

Until today I hadn't thought about it. I had not heard the term "media snacker" although I had a good idea what it meant. When I heard about this meme, first through Chris Brogan and then through a tag from my Facebook and Twitter friend John Johnston, I thought the question was asking "How are you a media snacker?"

Given the chance to think about it, I see no reason for any producers of social media to change their approach with respect to media snackers. I mean no disrespect, but we show respect for all social media consumers by assuming they possess the intelligence and faculties to decide for themselves how, when and where they want to consume media.

Participatory online media, like blogs, podcasts and social network profiles give the creators and audience a chance to connect with new, intelligent people they might never have met through a shared interest or perspective and to build a friendship, a business, a movement or a fun game of scrabble.

Half the fun of producing blogs or other forms of this personal journalism is that it is about YOU, the creator, what you have to say and when you have to say it. People that find you or your topic interesting will make the time to read it. Or they will skip or skim your post if it's too long or too involved for the amount of time and attention they have available. If you aren't getting the audience you want, it may have as much to do with what you have to say and how you say it rather than the venue, format or length of time and space it took you to say it.

If you define respecting a media snacker as giving them little, streamlined bits of content that don't tax their attention span, then I inadvertently respect media snackers by rarely posting to my blog. That's probably because I'm so busy being a media snacker, I don't have time to entertain the rest of them.

In fact I consider myself a media binge-er. When I finally get to my Reader I page through it for hours and jump from post to post. If I get engrossed in a topic I jump from link to link to link and lose track of time. I never go on You-Tube, mainly because my computer is old and takes forever to download video and because I am afraid I would stay there and not move from my seat like that fat lady in the opening episode of last season's Nip/Tuck.

Having said all this, I naturally cater to media snackers because the short form fits my style. I Twitter a lot, not out of respect for media snackers, but because it's a great venue for my specialty, one-liners and wisecracks. I also like that it can be a forum for immediate and timely feedback and interaction. At its best Twitter truly is "The Conversation" everyone converses about, even if that conversation covers lunch menus, real-time baseball comments and Skipper Fridays. I try to craft my tweets to entertain the audience, again, not because they're media snackers, but because I want them to laugh and keep listening. But another important reason I do it is because it entertains me.

I worry sometimes that I tweet too much. Every time I lose a follower I fear I babbled and clogged their text message system. But Twitter is like a bag of Lay's Potato Chips, I can't Tweet just one. And just as I prefer Wise Potato Chips, some people have a different way of using Twitter. Similarly, when it comes to my own media consumption, whether bingeing or purging, if I don't like what the host is serving, especially if he or she doesn't seem to respect my intelligence, I just don't partake.

I see all this media as a big buffet. It's your choice to sample little bits or gorge on all of it. Why not eat 14 pigs-in-the blankets and skip the baby quiches? Whether I'm starving or stuffed, serve your best dish and I will decide how, when and where to eat it. Like the Chef in Big Night, if you remain true to your vision, I will respect you for it.

What do you think? Please post a comment or a post on your blog.

3 Fantasy Twitterers: Replies to @CathleenRitt

On Tuesday I started a Twitter meme inspired by Merlin Mann and tweeted...

CathleenRitt Mixing up the @hotdogladies meme. Instead of picking 3 twitterers everyone should follow, name 3 you wish you could follow

@CathleenRitt got these responses...

CathleenRitt
@PopeBenedict, @YokoOno and @TheGrinch


ceonyc
@cathleenritt started this meme: My three fantasy Twitterers are @SeanConnery, @BillSimmons, and @GwenStefani Yours?


jasonw22
I'd love to Twitter with Brian Eno or John Lennon. (But I'd rather musicians make music than type at me here...) John Cage would Twitter in zero characters

alizasherman
My 3 fantasy Twitterers: @AynRand, @PhilipKDick, @GilGrissom


Aithene
I wish my wife would twitter. make it easier to understand what's on her mind, sometimes. ;)


mikeneumann
My 3 fantasy twitterers: @Pooh, @WinstonChurchill, and @Opus (of 80's, not current, Bloom County fame).

RuudHein
fantasy twitterers: @StephenKing, @DanaStabenow, @BillGates


tmcamp
My three dream tweets: @alanmoore, @paulauster, @dorothyparker


bluescientist
Is there an @hemmingway ?


Warlach
I'd like @EdgarAllenPoe, @WalterBenjamin and @Batman :)


susanreynolds
3 fantasy twitterers for @cathleenritt 's meme @charleskrauthammer @Matthewlesko @rleeermey


bbluesman
@rodserling @wcfields @maxwellsmart..


CathleenRitt
New York Mets fantasy twitterers: @TugMcGraw, @GilHodges, @RonSwoboda


And then tonight....


technosailor
I want to hang with @mannyr, @youkilis and @bigpapi


Find these tweets on my favorites page


As another of my fantasy twitterers @EdwardRMurrow would say, "Good night and good tweets."