It’s too hot to concentrate. I’ll be going every which way with this post, trying to stay cool by moving around.
I wrote a piece about sex for HuffPo. Doesn’t everybody who blogs for HuffPo do that? Your hits go way up – not like if you write about chickens.
Going Nutty Over Older Women's Bodies
I thank my lucky stars I've lived long enough to go nutty over older women's bodies. It's not anything I ever thought I'd go nutty over…
Tampa Bay Times Staff Writer Patti Ewald recently wrote a funny, trenchant column about sex – and referenced my piece:
Still turned on to idea of sex
"There's this popular public perception that as women age, sex becomes unimportant and that women just stop having sex as they get older," said Holly Thomas, a University of Pittsburgh researcher. "From our study, it looks like most women continue to have sex."
At the moment, the article above says I’m seventy-four. I asked them to change it to my correct age (sixty-three). However, you’re only as old as you feel – so maybe they got it right…
AARP talks travel:
- AARP Online Travel Study
Eight out of 10 persons age 50 or older use websites to plan as well as book their non-business travel. - Currently those 50 and older use, on average, 4 websites to plan and 3 websites to book their non-business related travel. Almost a quarter would prefer to use fewer websites to plan or book non-business travel.
Golly gee, did we need to do a fancy-shmancy research study for this info? I could’ve told you the same things. In fact, I did. Over a decade ago:
From my book Advertising to Baby Boomers ©2005, 2007:
Pouncing Mouses
Many sociologists and futurists are predicting a few more radical social and political upheavals triggered by Baby Boomers before we’re packed off in coffins and urns, sprinkled over mystical mountains and mundane golf courses, or blasted into outer space so we can eternally commune with the cosmos.
On the other end of the spectrum, we’ll also be revolutionizing the tourist industry for the next thirty years, taking hundreds of millions more vacations before the ultimate holiday. Travel companies are having big problems trying to figure out what to offer—and how to reach us. We’re not lining up on docks for meaningless cruises on silly ships, nor are we allowing ourselves to be bundled into cookie- cutter cavalcades so we can gawk at decaying castles from the lumpy seats of double-decker buses. Nobody is going to tell us what a vacation is. We’ll tell you.
There’s a cottage industry out there preying on the blubbery and frightened tourist industry, making wild guesses as to what Baby Boomers will want to do with all our free time. I won’t list them all here. They range from ecologically correct junkets to health-nut boot camps to intellectually and culturally themed excursions to the beating down of well-publicized, well-traveled “unbeaten paths.”
This book deals with advertising to Baby Boomers, but I’ll over- step my bounds and propose a business model: Boomers are internet- savvy. Boomers are not passive. We do not want to simply slap one key and have our vacation pop up on a screen. We want to rattle lots of keys, have our mouses pounce and bite off appetizing chunks of graphic and description from all sorts of sources––and build unique, variegated vacations.
Some smart dot-com entrepreneur will partner with thousands of travel companies, resorts, hotels, museums, airlines, car rental companies, and build a modular travel and reservation website. Myriad tempting experiences will be offered. The website will calculate the price of each activity, cataloguing and coordinating everything. It will be a package you fill with goodies.
Planning it will be half the fun, and immediately entice and involve the site visitor. For a few days you’ll be lying on a beach. The next day you’ll travel to a large city and take in whatever sights you wish, perhaps joining a guided tour. In the morning you’ll be driving to a tennis resort for a day or two. After that will come a scenic road trip to a local winery for a prearranged private tour. Keep driving, and you’ll check into a secluded lodge, and hike in the mountains for a few days. Then you’re off visiting another city in another country, mostly to just goof around. Finally, check in your car, hop on a train, and before long you’re naked and slumping into a vat of hot mud at a famous health spa, followed by a shower and reservations at a five- star restaurant.
You could even spend an afternoon in lumpy seats on a double- decker bus if you want.
4 November 2005
My Favorite Cyber-Myth
Hitwise found that visitors to the top travel search engines were by far likely to be over 55 years of age. Hitwise attributed this to baby boomers …
Enough about travel. I got carried away.
Last up is tech. Just for fun, here’s a link to my latest HuffPo piece:
I Am a Digital Dinosaur
For years, I've been hearing about how old I am based on what I remember. Phonographs, rotary phones, white-out, carbon paper, air-raid drills, fizzies -- the items are endless.
Now there's a new way to categorize absolute oldness: Being a Digital Dinosaur…
… the nation’s largest advocate for 76 million baby boomers, today announced RealPad, a first of its kind tablet device built to address the specific needs of 70 million Americans 50+ who are yet to fully embrace tablet technology to help them stay connected.
… You should stop thinking about the next big thingamabob and whose will be best. In five or ten years there will be all sorts of thingamabobs for just about everything. You’ll have two or three or ten thingamabobs. Tablets/Smartphones will be big, small, thin, simple, complex, active, passive, out the door in your purse or pocket, lost in your couch cushions.
Just for fun: 
Golly gee. According to these surveys, advertising is in its death throes.
![[image[42].png]](http://lh6.ggpht.com/_n77PqIjyySk/S_LeD4JAH4I/AAAAAAAAD3o/XpkdnvIjKN0/s1600/image%5B42%5D.png)
01 November 2006
