Rebecca Black sets new cultural speed record

Rebecca Black has set the new cultural landspeed record from nowhere-dom to superstardom. Andy Wharol's fifteen minutes are officially obsolete. As the thirteen year-old Ms. Black told Jay Leno, on the Tonight Show, [paraphrasing] "One day I am coming home from school and it is 4,000 views, the next day its four million, six weeks later I am on network television." Ms. Black rise was unprecedentedly meteoric, even in the age of viral video, yet, in her Leno interview she seems remarkable well-adjusted, even wholesome. Although, perhaps it has all happened so fast that she hasn't yet had the opportunity to become jaded.

She has debuted stronger on i-Tunes than Justin Bieber's latest single.

The feeling here is that Rebecca Black does not so much signal the coming of a new paradigm, she symbolizes the triumph of new modes of cultural transmission that have already quite securely taken hold. From American Idol to Twitter to Google's sponsorship of the World's First Online Science Fair, direct routes to the top of the Q ratings and a global platform have appeared where no such passages previously existed.

And really, just how different is Rebecca Black's single from say that of a Miley Cyrus who took a more traditional route to global superstardom (nepotism).

Taryn Manning

Taryn Manning was not a household name in our office as of last week. But our executive editor has been a Playboy subscriber nearly twenty years, and once in a while an issue arrives, and the cover just knocks socks off. Taryn Manning was one such cover.

She showed up this month in the mailbox and when we threw the mag down on the coffee table, it caught fire.

Who is she?

As an actress; she has starred in Crazy/Beautiful, the Clarion Content favorite, Crossroads, as well as, Hustle & Flow, and she played Eminem's ex-girlfriend in 8 Mile. She has her own rock and roll band, a solo career, and no less of a star than Katey Sagal, of Married with Children fame, says she rocks. Can she sing like Katey? The jury is still out.

We have no doubt she is smoking.

Amusement park nightmare

Unfortunately, all those sad, old carny jokes came true in the most awful of ways last week in Spartanburg, South Carolina at Cleveland Park. A miniature train called "Sparky" left the rails after flying around the tracks at too fast of a speed, out of control. A six year-old boy was killed in the accident and twenty others were injured including his parents and siblings. The South Carolina State Inspector from the Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation later admitted he falsified his inspection report. The ride was not tested at all. Witness reported the train appeared to accelerate faster and faster until it jumped the rails. The inspector was subsequently fired.

Read more here.

You Tube

Charlie Sheen to direct a porno?

Director?

Vivid Entertainment, one of the biggest mainstream porn studious and its boss, Steven Hirsch, sent a letter to Charlie Sheen last week, proposing that they work together on the porn parody. The letter says, among other things, "We think it would be great if you would come in and direct the movie. You pick the scenarios, positions etc... Based on all the publicity you have been getting, I am sure the sales will be outrageous."

The proposed flick is set to star three women who have ostensibly had carnal relations with Sheen in the recent past, Melanie Rios, Cassandra Cruz and Elizabeth Ann.

Read more here.

A slick robbery

A sneaky and creative thief stole $238,000 from the hold of the Air Antilles plane while it was in flight. The ingenious thief had clearly planned ahead. He crawled through the plane's bathroom toilet and into the cargo hold. He must have known that a Brink's security employee had placed three sacks of cash containing a total $1.6 million in there just before takeoff. The thief feigned illness and spent nearly the entire flight in the bathroom, ostensibly getting sick.

Fox News reports that, "[The fellow] asked a flight attendant for an ambulance to meet him on the tarmac. When the ambulance arrived, the man said he felt suddenly better and walked out of the airport without having to go through the normal security checks and disappeared."

The milk tweet was free

Charlie Sheen posted a Twitter photo last week, with the only slightly less famous Bree Olson, wearing a sh*t eating grin and holding a bottle of chocolate milk from Broguiere's Dairy in Montebello, California. Despite Sheen's massive publicity, he did not attempt to cash in from the dairy owner. Some celebs are getting up to $10,000 per endorsement tweet. Sheen, who is winning, did it strictly for the love of the milk.

Gaming company stunt flops

The game is called Homefront.

THQ, a Southern California video gaming company, was in San Franscisco to promote its hyperviolent video game, it ended up instead garnering far more publicity for its pollution of San Francisco Bay. The company staged an event in downtown San Francisco that included the release of 10,000 red balloons with an offer from the massive chain, GameStop, allowing gamers to "receive the resistance multi-player pack, featuring an exclusive weapon."

The game is set in a near-future where the United States has been invaded by nuclear-armed troops from North Korea. Beautiful. For the children, you know. Unfortunately, the balloons and the coupons, not so beautiful. Wind and rain combined to push the balloons toward, and then into San Francisco Bay, by the thousands, almost immediately after their release. Unsurprisingly, in an environmentally conscious city like San Francisco, local denizens were not pleased with the free pollution caused by THQ and GameStop.

Read more here.

Record Lows

As long time readers know, the Clarion Content is not a believer that global warming will destroy the world. Our initial frame of reference was the Club of Rome Report and Ehrlich & Ehrlich. We have pretty much passed the panic stage and moved on to a serene, well, these things happen over geological scales of time. We do believe to the extent global warming manifests itself in our lifetime it will be in the form of weather turbulence and extreme events. (These are real, with human and economic costs, and are not to be taken lightly.)

We are, indeed, fond of chronicling those extraordinary weather events here at the Clarion Content. The latest such moment in time we have read about took place in the San Francisco Bay Area last week. There was snow, at least in the Twin Peaks area of the city of San Francisco, where elevations are about 900 feet above sea level. It was only a dusting though, so it won't count as the first measurable snowfall in the city in thirty-five years.

There were record low temperatures recorded throughout the area. San Francisco got down to 37 degrees, which tied the previous cold weather record for the date set in 1962. Oakland got down to 34 degrees, breaking a record set in 1987 and San Jose tied a record low of 33 degrees, set way back in 1897. Read the whole story here.

15-501 Durham to Chapel Hill

This piece was submitted by someone very close to the Clarion Content's editorial board. And you know how, dear readers, in our efforts to emulate dear old Uncle Ben we like some practical advice here at the Clarion Content.

The key to making good time driving from Durham to Chapel Hill on the 15-501 is put the hammer down, pedal to the metal. An old friend told me the deal a long ago time. How long ago you ask; so long ago that Darryl's was still open at 15-501 and Garrett Road, so long ago that there was isn't even a hint of Kroger's in Witherspoon Rose Culture's backyard, let alone the tower now out in front of it...

My buddy had a small, old, blue truck with a manual transmission. Some joker from the North Carolina Department of Transportation must of thought it a real funny to pace the lights from Durham to Chapel Hill so that if catch but one you have to slam on it to get back on pace. My buddy, he would pounce on it the little truck, leaping out of the blocks, up through the gears, taking off, shooting out of the area where the long since demolished Southsquare Mall used to be.

And, oh, it is possible to make every light, from the ugly "Blue Skyscraper," where 15-501 Business and 15-501 proper merge, rejoining to make the Jefferson Davis Highway run to Chapel Hill, at which point, Franklin Street cuts off to make the trek up the hill that gives the town the latter half of its name.

How many lights is that in all? Can't say I have ever counted, I have only driven it half a million times since then. What makes you think that even once in all those trips I was any less than Lomaned out, drifting over the scape unable to do anything as linear as count. However many lights there are, rest assured, the only way to make'em is to floor it. And if you get caught at any one of them, the only way you are making the next one is to really push it to the floor. It can be done. I have seen it done. In crappy cars, with terrible acceleration. But of course, the speed limit on 15-501 is only 45 miles-an-hour! MF-ing prankster at NCDOT, because you have to go at least 60mph, out of the chute, to make all the lights. If you get caught at one, say like at I-40, even at 5.30am on Sunday, unless you hit it, accelerating as fast as you can to on the plus side 60mph, you are bound to catch the next light, too.

You must come out of the blocks fast. Whether you are coming from Durham or Chapel Hill. Punch it. Make that first light. Slam on it further from there. If necessary, slide right. That third lane goes almost all the way through now. The right lane is the new fast lane these days anyway. No one will mind. You can make tracks.