Life’s a Niche

I locked myself out of my apartment last night en route to the laundry room. Fortunately, my neighbor Kenny (also known as “Dog”) works in the building, so he called his co-worker to say we had a “911” on the 23rd floor.  My sister Aliza – who was coming over for dinner at this exact moment – and I then waited in Dog’s apartment, where he and his friend were watching the VH1 show For the Love of Ray J.

“Who’s Ray J?” I asked. “See!” Dog’s friend said emphatically. “This is just what T.I. was talking about in that interview. Nobody knows who these people are outside of the hip hop community.” “That is exactly my problem with classical music!” I exclaimed, shaking my head and wildly gesturing with my hands. The room nodded in support.

We went on to discuss the Chris Brown/Rihanna situation; are they married, were the bruises worse the next day, why would anyone go for the ear-bite, and – perhaps most importantly – where were we all getting our details from. Aliza had gotten her information from Perez Hilton. Dog had gotten his information from a friend of Chris Brown’s cousin who lives in the neighborhood. Dog’s friend had gotten his information from World Star Hip Hop. I had gotten my information from Aliza. A general gossip blog, a specific industry blog, a source with a few-times-removed relationship with the artist, and a friend/family member; here we have evidence of at least how many different platforms a story has to hit for it to be generally known by everyone. It is also interesting to note that none of us got our information from a newspaper or television.

N.B. In addition to various publicity lessons, this tale also teaches us how easy it is to break into a New York City apartment with a hammer and a metal rod while keeping a lock completely intact.