Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

 

There are few things in the universe more evil than carnival food. Check out Newsweek's list of the 7 most unhealthy carnival foods.

7. Cotton Candy
One large cone of spun sugar is 200 calories. It's practically health food.

6. Snow Cones
The sugary syrup used is 100 calories an ounce. A 12 oz. snow cone will end up being 550 calories, depending on how syrup-heavy you take it.

5. Corn Dogs
a.k.a the "nitratesicle" contains 375 calories and 21 grams of fat and 1170 mg. of sodium.

4. Deep Fried Twinkie
One deep fried Twinkie contains 420 calories and 32 grams of fat. That doesn't include any sugar or jelly topping.

3. Deep Fried Oreos
Each cookie contains 157 calories and 10.1 grams of fat.

2. Funnel Cake
An 8.3 oz. cake contains 760 calories, 44 grams of fat, 80 grams of carbs and 20 mg. of cholesterol.

1. Deep Fried Candy Bars
Everything from Snickers, Mars, Milkyway and 3 Musketeers is deep-fried and slapped on a stick. A king-size, deep-fried bar has over 700 calories and 44 grams of fat.

What's your favorite carnival food?

Kindle launched big, but will it keep flying? I first read about Amazon's new digital book gizmo on a Wall Street Journal section front heading into the Thanksgiving holiday. Then, on my first venture out into the holiday retail whirl, the device slammed me upside the head courtesy of its Newsweek cover story. Talk about a Christmas coup! At every book store and big box I visited there was a mob of spend happy consumers, there was Newsweek and there was Kindle on its cover. Jeff Bezos, reward your marketing team by waiving their Amazon shipping fees ... forever!

At the health club, I got around to actually reading the Newsweek piece. Maybe it was just the gym-generated adrenaline, but I was jazzed. All those thousands of book titles at my fingertips. A more environmentally-friendly way of distributing the written word. A design that recalls the shape and feel of a paperback, giving the gizmo an instant retro twinkle before it even catches on. Talk about preemptive strike!

But then, when I was back on the shopping trail, I got to thinking about the appeal of good old fashioned books. My holiday gift list includes at least a dozen books for mom, dad, brother Ramone and the like. I bet only a quarter of those books will actually be read. The others will just stand handsomely on a shelf. And that doesn't bother me, because displaying a book is part of the pleasure of owning a book. The trophy book. We all have'em. An ad buddy has a whole army of terribly hip and just plain terrible marketing books lined up in his office, supposedly read and digested but frankly not looking very dog-eared.

After a laudable launch, can Kindle overcome the decidedly non-digital joys of buying a real book?