Selling Out, Up, Down & Dirty
Worm poop is hip. Just ask TerraCycle, Inc magazine’s 2006 “The Coolest Little Start Up In America.” Started by a Princeton dropout (who found that worm droppings helped “certain” kind of plants to grow well in when he was in college), TerraCycle is so hot they’re selling worm doo in recycled containers at Wal-Mart, Home Depot and Target. We’re talking “liquefied worm poop here.” About this point you’re saying, “Why didn’t I think of that?” They expect to sell $6 million worth of this stuff this year.
I spent my entire childhood around worm excrement working at my uncle’s bait business and never once did I think about selling it. Of course, I never knew anybody who’d buy it. But I didn’t go to Princeton.
Are You Going To Starbucks With Flowers In Your Hair?
It’s been 40 years since the Summer of Love and the anniversary is more of a brandfest than the original. Starbucks has a 40th anniversary Monterey Pop CD set and Rolling Stone will publish a Summer Of Love double issue and branded links are popping up all over (you’ll see them if you haven’t already).
In case you weren’t around then (I was in 5th grade), the summer of 1967 was suppose to be a “Tune-In, Drop-Out” love-in. And it sort of was. But those who wax nostalgic about the good stoned days probably don’t realize just how branded the first event really was. It was an event organized by the music industry to make Pop a legit form of American music, like Blues and Jazz. They were selling, packaging and PR’ing hard to look like a culturally spontaneous outburst instead of being “the man.” Baby Boomers have mastered the art of remembering things more fondly than they really were.
VH1 is doing a documentary about it and Grace Slick will be singing again > although this time she looks more like Maude than the spokesperson for flower power and the white rabbit.
Dangerous Boys
The latest fad in children’s playtime is “going outside and playing.”
Say what?
Say just what you just read.
A new book called “The Dangerous Book for Boys” is so hot only Harry Potter is hotter. It pitches old-fashioned outdoor games like tag and low-tech toys like pogo sticks to kids who are PlayStation pale.
So playing marbles, building a tree house, skipping stones and folding paper airplanes are now dangerous? Are we so soft that such things are now considered dangerous? Seems that way.
When I was growing up, we did some really dangerous things (and if you’ve read more than a few of my stories, you know this). Maybe I should write a book about how not to blow your cousin’s ears off while attempting to light up a firework stand full of explosives. Maybe a “How to run from an alligator” or “avoid rednecks shooting at you with 12 gauges” book would sell.
Marbles? Dangerous? My definition of dangerous goes a little farther.
Get a pickup truck up to 40 mph in a cow pasture (of course we didn’t have a drivers license, we were 13 years old) and jump off the running board and > see how many flips you turn before you land on the next terrace without breaking every bone in your body (don’t try any of this at home kids, or you adults either).
Dangerous?
Go camping in a tornado. Learn to ski in a lake filled with moccasins and gators. Try to paddle a canoe over a waterfall. Use your forehead for target practice with Roman candles.
If you’re from the South, “dangerous” involves anything that happens after you say, “Hey, watch this!”
Somehow, I don’t think I need to read that book.