What's in the Monday Bag of Tricks?

Couple of quick items:

- Not sure if I mentioned it before, but I live 1 block from one of the NYU dorms. So yesterday (Sunday) was move-in day for the freshman and let me tell you, this could add some humor to my neighborhood for sure. How can you pick the freshman out from the crowd? Actually, that's a trick question since the freshman are the crowd -- they travel in packs of twenty. I found this amusing when they'd all wander up and down College Avenue in State College, PA, but to see them wandering on 3rd Avenue in Manhattan, in large groups... that is just priceless. By the way, the parents looked they had a wonderful time dealing with the traffic and congestion of the East Village during the move-in. And we all thought East Halls was bad....

- For what it's worth, I spotted film director Wes Anderson (Royal Tenanbaums, Life Aquatic, Rushmore) walking down 14th Street. He looked just like he did in that MasterCard commercial, but much taller in real life.

- The Jessica sent me an article with some blogger statistics. Let's see how many the RPR falls into:

In case you have been living under a rock or something, blogging is now a
big part of Americans' lives, or so says a survey by Pew Internet & American
Life Project. Here are a few findings from the phone survey of 7,012
people:
· Thirty-nine percent of U.S. Internet users, or about 57
million Americans, read blogs; 8 percent, or about 12 million Americans, write a
blog; and more than half of bloggers are under the age of 30.
· Pew
found that 37 percent of bloggers cite "my life and experiences" as what they
blog about, while only 11 percent cited public issues as typical topics. Sixty
percent of bloggers are white, while 74 percent of the country's Web users are,
according to the data. Fifty-five percent of bloggers write under a pseudonym.
· Fifty-four percent of bloggers say that they have never published
their writing or media creations anywhere else; 44 percent say they have
published elsewhere.
· Women and men have statistical parity in the
blogosphere, with women representing 46 percent of bloggers and men 54 percent.
· Seventy-six percent of bloggers say a reason they blog is to
document their personal experiences and share them with others. Sixty-four
percent of bloggers say a reason they blog is to share practical knowledge or
skills with others.
· Seventy-seven percent of bloggers have shared
something online that they created themselves, such as their own artwork,
photos, stories, or videos. By comparison, 26 percent of Internet users as a
whole have done this.

Tobi Elkin is Executive Editor, MediaPost.

- Additionally, in case, you haven't seen this one, Julie sent me a link to a Forbes magazine write-up on America's Drunkest Cities. Not much of a surprise that Milwaukee and Minneapolis-St. Paul came in #1 and 2 since there isn't much else to do in those cold areas besides booze it up. Shout-out to Austin, TX, for landing at #5. Also, let's hear it for Pennsylvania, as Pittsburgh and Philadelphia came in at a respectable #8 and 9.

- I'll do a little write-up about this past weekend in an upcoming post.