You might think that the best way to gauge the success of Craigslist’s Missed Connections is by the number of people its gotten together. But no — in fact, the true measure of that online meat market’s effectiveness is its late role as creative raw material:

Billed as “ripped straight from the online pages of Craigslist,” “Missed Connections NYC” was an evening of 13 eight-minute plays based on the listings, and it ran for a week at the Ars Nova Theater on West 54th Street in Manhattan last month. The Ars Nova troupe’s group of emerging playwrights used the subject headings of posts — “Submit Party — From the Couple Having Sex Everywhere” (above left), “You Were a Mexican With Friends” (center) and “Doritos Boy” (right) — to devise literal or fantastical interpretations of the situations described. “It was really fun, really interesting, to see how the writers tackled the challenge,” said Emily Shooltz, the troupe’s associate artistic director. “I think the appeal was that everybody knows someone who was — or at least thinks they were — referenced in a Missed Connection.”

More or less an update of the old dadaist photomontage technique. Probably a more worthwhile endproduct than the improbable hook-ups that may or may not happen.

In a fairly staid commercial lineup for Super Bowl XLIV, the clear winner for me was this utterly improbable pairing of David Letterman and Jay Leno (with Oprah in the moderating middle):

Maybe even funnier than the ad itself is the lengths taken to keep its inception secret:

The spot was shot last Tuesday afternoon, under the strictest of secrecy which involved both Mr. Leno and Ms. Winfrey flying in surreptitiously to New York, and arriving incognito at the [Ed Sullivan Theater], while Mr. Letterman was in the midst of taping his show for that night. It also involved Jay wearing a disguise: hooded sweatshirt, glasses and faux mustache. If you happened to be on Broadway between 53rd and 54th street last Tuesday about 4:15, you might have seen a man fitting that description slip into the theater by a small entrance under the marquee.

All that for a “Late Show with David Letterman” promo. And it basically topped every other $3-million, 30-second spot of the night. Dave might have been complaining about his “worst Super Bowl party ever”, but it produced the best commercial break during the whole game.

Of all the days out of the year for my cousin from Greece to visit her cousins in New York, why did it have to be Super Bowl Sunday?

Such is the lot I’ve drawn today. I really don’t feel like leaving the house; even if it weren’t for the big game, it’s bitterly cold outside. And besides, there’s a peach of an NHL game between the Penguins and Capitals this afternoon to serve as sports-Sunday preliminary. All this is, of course, lost on my relatives, who aren’t aware of the secular-holiday nature of the day.

So, off I go in a little bit. I’m hoping to be back by the evening so that I can catch the bulk of the Saints and Colts. Not that I’m severely fired up for Super Bowl Ex-Ell-Eye-Vee (aka No. 44) — I don’t care much about either team, and indications are it’ll be the type of high-scoring shootout that I generally don’t care for in NFL contests. And screw the ads, frankly. But an event is an event, and I’ll be damned if I miss out on it completely.

I don’t chew gum.

So why is there a picture of Dentyne gum in this post? Simple: Dentyne’s marketers reached out to me for some blog-vertising action (just one of a recent spate of requests to come this way). They sent on two “bottles” worth of the gum, so I guess I’m obliged.

That’s one thing: “Bottles”. Dentyne refers to these plastic containers as bottles, even in ads. And yet, with their wide-mouth lids, they’re clearly more like jars. Maybe “jar of gum” sounds like an odd packaging description, but “bottle of gum” doesn’t sound much better.

Such packaging isn’t new in the gum/candy game. It’s been around for years now, obviously geared toward car-cupholder placement. But once again, I’m not a good fit: I don’t own a car. And even if I liked gum, I don’t know about having a jar (yeah, I said it) taking up valuable space inside my everyday man-bag.

So is there anything I like about this freebie? Just one thing: That wild artwork on the container’s outer wrapping. It’s a commissioned design by Anthony Yankovic, part of a series of color-themed designs for Dentyne’s flavors. Those intricate line-drawings are mesmerizing. I particularly dig that psychedelic triple-eyed owl, the centerpiece of this mini-mural.

As it happens, Yankovic and I share a bit of a connection: He currently resides in St. Petersburg, Florida — the same town I made my home in for 15 years. In fact, as near as I can figure, Yankovic moved to the ‘Burgh just about the same time I moved out, some four years ago. Small world.

In any case, after this review, I’m left with a couple of 60-piece counts of sugarless peppermint gum in a cool-looking container. Nice to look at, but ultimately, I’ll have to give them away, fanciful art and all.

Once upon a time, the announcement of a new telephone area code was a big deal, especially in a major city like New York.

Now? Ho-hum. Between number overlays and location-independent cellphones, those first three digits don’t mean an awful lot anymore. Sure, a metropolitan-based telephone prefix certainly retains some luster, especially the iconic (212). But it’s a fading currency. The cultural impact of telephony protocol touches us less and less, it seems.

So the rollout of the new outer-borough (929) code later this year won’t change much. Other than giving rappers a new callout-combo for geo-rhyming. Or making bridge-and-tunnelers that much more self-conscious when slipping their phone numbers to new acquaintances.

Ponder the inequities of existence, condensed into my Chinese-food dinner last night:

My fortune cookie had not one, but three fortunes tucked inside it. Meanwhile, the empty fortune cookie remains bereft of any paper-slip of wisdom (plus lucky numbers on the back!).

Then again, my triplicate-bearing treat was quickly gobbled up by yours truly. The EFC, though split in half, lives on. Plus, the restaurant where I was dining was almost completely empty. So lots of see-sawing on the apportionment scale for a Friday night.

While blogs are routinely identified as part of the social media landscape, they’re losing ground among the youngsters:

Two Pew Internet Project surveys of teens and adults reveal a decline in blogging among teens and young adults and a modest rise among adults 30 and older.

What’s behind this trend? Basically, blogs represent too much work for those versed in online short-form:

The explosion of social networking is one obvious answer. The Pew survey found that nearly three-quarters of 12- to 17-year-olds who have access to the Internet use social networking sites, such as Facebook. That compares with 55 percent four years ago.

With social networking has come the ability to do a quick status update and that has “kind of sucked the life out of long-form blogging,” says Amanda Lenhart, a Pew senior researcher and lead author of the latest study. More young people are also accessing the Internet from their mobile phones, only increasing the need for brevity. The survey found, for instance, that half of 18- to 29-year-olds had done so.

Correspondingly, shorter attention spans are becoming the norm. Not that older folks aren’t as impatient with reading more than a hundred or so characters at a clip. If anything, this points to more of a distinction between online communication and online media consumption — status alerts and such are more in-the-moment pieces of information, while blog posts are more asynchronous and (intended, at least) for archiving and posterity.

None of this is any surprise. From the start, blogging has been a minority pursuit, best cut out for those comfortable with filling content wells, mainly with writing (sorry, podcasters/vloggers). Maybe by the time telepathic status updates are the norm, blogs will finally wither away and join stone tablets in the ol’ dustbin…

Once the province of boxers in training, raw eggs have been a chic ingredient in New York City cocktails for the past year. So it was only a matter of time before the city cracked down on all this eggshell-cracking mixology:

Nevertheless, on that fateful evening, an inspector from the New York City Department of Health cited Pegu Club, at 77 West Houston Street in SoHo, for serving the [Earl Grey MarTEAni] without telling the customer who ordered it that it contained raw egg. The notice said it was a serious infraction that required a court appearance.

I’m all for adventuresome imbibing. Still, I’m kinda glad that the brakes are being applied here. When I’m ordering a martini — even a tea-infused one, which I’d totally dig — I’m not necessarily looking for another avant-garde additive in the glass. Although the rationale is enlightening:

“The tannins in tea, alone, can build up on your palate and exhaust it — which is one of the reasons why many people drink tea with milk and lemon,” she said. “The egg white in this drink achieves the same feat, without the potentially coating effect that you’d get from milk or cream. The raw egg white adds an ethereal mouth feel, much like a foamy mousse — the raw egg white has the ability to aerate into a much greater volume than pasteurized could.”

A heady mixture, indeed. But I’ll stick to the less-modulated chemical reactions that come from alcohol intake, sans chicken ovum. The eggs will still be there the next morning, to do their job in cutting through the hangover haze.

Here’s one man’s reaction to a sneak peek of a CGI-rendered Smurf, from the upcoming animated feature film:

AAAAAAAA KILL IT WITH FIRE

A little extreme; I’d say the false sense of scale is making Prototype Smurf look abnormally large, and thus faux-monstrous. But anything that elicits such mock-horror doesn’t deserve any screentime around this blog, so I won’t inflict it on my audience. Let’s just hope the character designs are de-creepified by the time they hit the silver screen in 2011.

Underwater homeowners are voting with their wallets, and paper (i.e., the house deed) is losing out to plastic:

In the past, strapped consumers typically would let their credit cards slide and make sure their mortgages were covered, said Sean Reardon, the [Trans Union study's] author and a consultant at the Chicago-based credit bureau. But those priorities flipped in the first quarter of 2008, according to the study, and the trend has been picking up steam…

Why the change? A “perfect storm” of deteriorating housing prices and rising unemployment is likely the reason, Reardon said. It’s much easier for consumers to walk away from mortgage payments when their homes aren’t building equity, he said, than to neglect their credit cards when that may be the only way they’re covering daily expenses.

Preserving the pocket-sized line of credit over the four-bedroom spread really underlines the upside-down valuations that have taken hold. At least national spending levels will remain high — even if there’s no place to store all the purchases.

True story, via my tweetstream today:

I’m dealing with someone who’s dyslexic when it comes to Roman numerals. Yeah, really.

The catalyst for this backward-Latin enumeration: Saw VI, which my collaborator keeps mis-communicating to me as “Saw IV“. Luckily, we’re really only dealing with the later sequel, so no permanent confusion; but still.

I haven’t had a chance to ask her why she keeps flubbing that VI as IV. I wonder how common this malady was in ancient times — did Romans routinely mix up their numbering system, leading to massive daily miscalculations? Maybe that’s what led to the Empire’s ultimate decline and fall.

By the way, this post’s title is probably not proper Latin (this Latin translator was of little help). But it sounds good, so I’ll swap linguistic accuracy for artistic license. And it’s better than the inevitable alternative.

One of the more popular stories in the local paper of record last week involved the simultaneous deaths of two much-beloved doggies on the Upper West Side.

With all due respect to the outpouring of grief up on West 86th Street, I submit the accompanying photo as proof that the Lower East Side really knows how to mourn the passing of Man’s Best Friend. Not to get all crosstown-rivalry, but what’s a more fitting tribute: A toast of hoity-toity Champagne, or a kick-ass cornerstore mural?

This security-shutter painting, “In Loving Memory of Drew, Love the LES”, is a familiar sight on the corner of 1st Avenue and 2nd Street. Despite the rush I was in and the chill in the air, today just felt like the right day to finally whip out my cameraphone and take the shot. It turned out surprisingly better than I’d hoped.

I never knew Drew. Judging from his regal bearing, I’m sure he was more than deserving of this public commemoration.

This past weekend’s tussle between Amazon and Macmillan over the right to set pricing on ebooks included some curious phraseology by Amazon:

We will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles…

A “monopoly over their own titles”? In other words, Macmillan does, indeed, control the wares that it provides for sale — just like any other company that puts together products for mass consumption. And somehow, Amazon in implying that this is wrong. The term “monopoly” here is intentionally loaded: It makes the publisher seem exclusionary and greedy — again, for simply asserting the right to set its own prices. In other words, just like any other wholesaler or manufacturer (i.e., the “manufacturer’s suggested retail price” that’s an accepted part of retail).

Sour grapes, basically. It also reflects Amazon’s roots as a Web company, and the general ethos that intellectual property should be free for the taking, business be damned. It’s hard to see how you can sympathize with Amazon at all, given this attitude.

While it’s probably true that “there’s an app for that” — no matter what “that” calls for — it’s not surprising that most people stick to a tried-and-true handful of favorite icons:

The average iPhone or iPod Touch owner uses 5 to 10 apps regularly, according to Flurry, a research firm that studies mobile trends. This despite the surfeit of available apps: some 140,000 and counting… The next generation of gadget users might prove different, but for now it is clear that people prefer fewer choices, and that they gravitate consistently toward the same small number of things that they like. Owners of iPhones are no different from cable TV subscribers with hundreds of channels to choose from who end up watching the same half-dozen.

For me and my iTouch, I figure I’m on the low end of that estimate. I play two games almost exclusively (although I’ve just picked up a new one, Bird Strike, that I anticipate will keep me occupied for a while), use Twitterrific pretty regularly, and fire up WifiTrak most days. Then there are the apps that come pre-loaded: I use Mail, Safari, Weather, Clock, and Notes all the time — but I’m not sure they count in this context.

When it comes to acquiring new apps, I do have a self-imposed restriction that keeps the additions low: They must be able to run while simultaneously allowing the iTouch’s music library to play uninterrupted. You’d think that would be a no-brainer, yet it seems like most apps — particularly games — don’t work this way. But since my primary use of the device is to listen to music, it’s a dealbreaker. Therefore, that simple requirement keeps me from overloading on page after page of apps.

But it’s nice to know that extra doo-dads are only a short download away. Even if I’ll never try, or even see, 99 percent of them.

So, yeah: The iPad.

I can’t say I’m not tempted. In some ways, this was the type of device I was wishing for when I contemplated buying the first-rollout iPhone in 2007, just for the wireless Internet.

That was before Apple followed up with the iTouch shortly thereafter. I snapped up that gadget shortly after its debut, and haven’t regretted it. But the lack of always-present Web access has been a mixed blessing, which is why I think I’m finally going to pony up for an iPhone in a couple of months.

So given that, I can’t really justify laying out $600-800 for an iPad. The bigger screen size would certainly be nice, but I like having the pocket-sized portability that an iPhone/iTouch provides. Of course, I’m constantly lugging around my man-bag anyway, but that’s beside the point…

I have little doubt that the iPad will be a success, without my participation. In some ways, it is just an overgrown iTouch — although, crucially, the built-in 3G signal makes it a true mobile Web device. But the capabilities Apple is packing into it — notably, the reworked iWork productivity suite — hint at bigger aspirations. Frankly, given the prior examples of trendsetting advances, I figure that Apple is giving us a solid preview of what the standard personal computer is going to look like some 5-10 years from now. As it is, the iPhone platform is already considered a “30-percent computing solution” for some; the iPad starts the march toward something closer to 100 percent.

So, given that, I can wait until the iPad and its descendants become truly mainstream. Not that I won’t be drooling with envy in the meantime.

While Manhattan has just successfully spurned the potentially-disruptive Federal trial of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, my upstate hometown is ready to take the rebound as the new venue.

The offer is not driven by a sense of justice, so much:

“If they want to have it here, we’ve got the state-of-the-art courthouse,” [Newburgh, NY] Mayor Nicholas Valentine — a Republican — told radio host Curtis Sliwa this morning. “I’ll offer it to them, but there’s got to be money attached.”

He cited the figure of $200 million floated by New York City officials.

“Two hundred million and something dollars to Newburgh would completely change this city around. It would double my police force. It would pay off my debt,” Valentine said. “Maybe it’s just crazy enough that we could pull something like this off.”

Given the town’s previous brush with quasi-Islamic terrorism, I’d say the “crazy” rating is pretty high in this instance. A money-grab for hosting a media-circus public tribunal? I think we can slot this proposal under the “this is why the terrorists hate us” category.

It’s nearly a decade old now, but this techno-tuned song about Russian leader Vladimir Putin is still going strong:

How strong? In keeping with the cult-of-personality theme in Putin’s political career, consider the winning of hearts and minds via urban sing-a-longs:

It’s winter in Russia. At night, Muscovites crowd the clubs and request their karaoke favorite, “A Man Like Putin.” I want a man like Putin, who’s full of strength. I want a man like Putin, who doesn’t drink. I want a man like Putin, who won’t make me sad.

The techno-pop tune by the duo Singing Together first appeared mysteriously in 2002 and quickly topped the charts in Russia. It went on to become a Putin theme song, still played at his rallies. Catchy and ironic, this was a new kind of propaganda song.

Popular propaganda has morphed into pop-prop — certainly a long way, stylistically, from old-wave Soviet agitprop. And to underline that shift, it appears that “A Man Like Putin” was written and produced on the strength of a $300 bet, then later co-opted by pro-Putin boosters. I guess free-market sensibilities are verifiably ingrained in Mother Russia now…

Between this lyrical adulation and his feats-of-strength outdoorsman photos, one wonders if Putin didn’t engineer his rise to power just so he could pick up chicks easier. Sort of a Bill Clinton blueprint for political deftness.

Above is a typically clutter-ful Web ad, featuring Brett Favre holding a magic 8-ball — er, make that a 4-ball.

Er, make that, not really holding that ball. Because it couldn’t be more obvious that the hand in the foreground is utterly out of anatomical sync with Favre’s body in the background. Unless he’s just been mangled by a sack, there’s no way Favre’s arm is contorting in such a way to hold up that ball that way. Truly a poor example of Photoshop hackery.

And yet… This is far from a rare instance of the disembodied-hand look in visual advertising. I see it all the time. And so do others: Witness this fan-forum critique of Sophia Bush’s fake hand in a Flip video billboard. It’s rampant.

It’s easy to figure out how such a travesty happens: The directive is to highlight the primary visual element — the product, the celebrity, the gimmick — above all else. So the image gets subdivided against itself, with everything other than the focal point being relegated to mere background. Realism is sacrificed to the sell-job.

Still, I can’t figure out how this became such a widespread aesthetic. Is it assumed that the viewers “get” that this is supposed to be an unrealistic, collage-like presentation? Is there an attempt at subtle comedy in not finessing the off-position hand? Or are legions of art designers simply not up on human-body depictions? Whatever it is, it’s not a good trend.

While it’s terribly predictable of PETA to capitalize on this upcoming Groundhog Day, it’s surprising that the organization proposed a constructive way to preserve the holiday:

Gemma Vaughan, Animals in Entertainment specialist for the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said in a letter to organizers of the annual spectacle in Punxsutawney, PA, that groundhogs, which are normally shy and spend much of their time in burrows, “become stressed when they are exposed to large, screaming crowds; flashing lights from perhaps hundreds of cameras; and human handling.”

Vaughan suggests using “animatronic animals” instead.

A robotic critter to handle the hoopla of the February 2nd shadowcasting? A daft idea on the face of it. And yet, I have the perfect candidate, pictured here: The gopher from Caddyshack!

Hey, a ground-burrowing rodent is a ground-burrowing rodent. No need to quibble on specific species. It’s not like there’s an imminent sequel in the works that would occupy Mr. Gopher. A steady annual gig would probably be most welcome. He can throw in his gopher-dancing moves to really jazz up an otherwise staid event.

And to add another pop-cultural layer to all this, consider: Bill Murray, who shared screen time with the gopher on Caddyshack, also made his mark as the star in Groundhog Day. Given that connection, I’d say subbing in a gopher for a groundhog would fly.

In the (regrettably) long history of book-banning, it’s a wonder why more literary crusaders haven’t bypassed the piecemeal approach of targeting single titles in favor of taking down the ultimate source of all those evil words:

The Menifee [California] Union School District is forming a committee to review whether dictionaries containing the definitions for sexual terms should be permanently banned from the district’s classrooms, a district official said Friday.

The 9,000-student K-8 district this week pulled all copies of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary after an Oak Meadows Elementary School parent complained about a child stumbling across definitions for “oral sex.”

I’m guessing this same parent will have a downright conniption the day Junior’s classroom learns about oral tradition…

As original as you’d think it is to ban the language’s entire lexicon, in fact, it’s been done:

Joan Bertin, executive director of the New York-based National Coalition Against Censorship, whose members include the American Library Association, said dictionary bans have happened in the past, although none has been reported since the mid-1990s.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, there were efforts to ban the American Heritage dictionary at schools in Alaska, Indiana, Missouri and California, she said. The Merriam-Webster’s dictionary came under scrutiny in New Mexico in the mid-1990s.

“It’s rare but not unheard of,” Bertin said.

I guess the kids will have to pick up those sanctioned definitions of sexual acts on the streets now. Which, actually, seems more normal than looking them up in alphabetical order.

The lyrics to Lady GaGa’s “Paparazzi” contain these lines:

It don’t have a price
Ready for those flashing lights

For some inexplicable reason, I keep expecting that bit to go thusly:

It don’t have a price
Ready for the paradise

Considering that the entire tune is photography-themed, “those flashing lights” makes eminent sense within the song’s context. So I can’t quite figure out why I’m mentally forcing the issue with my odd replacement wording.

But then, “ready for the paradise” does have a unique ring to it — almost like a rallying cry. And I see that it’s pretty much an unprecedented piece of phraseology.

So I’ve unexpectedly coined a new expression, much like I did only a couple of weeks ago. Only this time, I had inspirational help. I’ll take all I can get, so long as the result is something fresh.