I am officially canceling American Cliche. I know that’s not a surprise for any of you, but I thought it best to put some closure to a six year project. That said, I feel I owe you more than simply shutting the doors on a show that I worked so hard on for so many years. With that in mind, I am planning a final run of four shows to close it out. I’m tentatively eyeing June 22nd as the start date. Once they begin, they will be consecutive.

I’d like to try and include you guys as much as possible. That means I’d like for you to send me audio clips, emails and Facebook messages that express whatever you’d like to say or communicate about the show. I also want to try and get Brian and Jason back into the fold to contribute one final segment to the program. They were a big part of the show early on and it wouldn’t feel quite right to close things without them.

At this point I’m not doing these last four shows for monetary gain. I’m doing them because this brand and the community matters to me. But, if any of you would like to kick something into the tip jar to help the cause, I wouldn’t turn it down.

Thank you to everyone that still cares about AC after all these years. I’m going to try and send it out with a bang.

I did want you to know I was alive and I still keep my eyes open for stuff that I think you guys will enjoy. For those that didn’t watch Tina Fey host Saturday Night Live this week, you missed out on a great show. This SNL short was certainly a highlight.

So, I’ve had another thought… I know that many of you are small business owners, bloggers, podcasters, aspiring filmmakers, musicians, artists etc. What if you could sponsor American Cliche for as little as $50 per episode? There are several ways we could approach it, but the bottom line is that your spot would be heard by as many as 40,000 listeners!

This is our best and only shot at taking control of our advertising situation and getting the show back on the air. If you’re interested, send an email to: theamericancliche AT gmail DOT com and we’ll get started.

Finally today, I want to express my thanks to one amazing listener that made a sizable donation to the show. She’s asked to remain anonymous, but I still wanted to acknowledge her generosity.

I wanted to post a quick note to let you know about my new blog that I’ve launched over at scottparent.me. Most of you probably won’t have much interest in it, but for those that are in the field of marketing you may find find it useful. I’ll be writing about social media, affiliate marketing, branding, customer retention, reputation management and a slew of other things related to digital marketing. I hope you’ll take a few minutes to check it out.

Have a great weekend.

On another note of bad-assedness, is this a new theme or has Anderson Cooper always called out people and companies in such a succinct way? Nicely done.

“We have serious problems to solve and we need serious people to solve them and whatever your particular problem is, I promise you, Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things and two things only – making you afraid of it and telling you who’s to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections.”

Now watch this latest ad from Ben Quayle:

Besides being for lower taxes and decreased spending, he doesn’t say a single thing that he’d actually do if elected. The ads spends two seconds on what he’s actually for and the other 29 seconds telling you who to be afraid of in this election. Are we really that short on leadership that we have to entertain electing the candidate that makes us fear something the most?

To be fair, I’ve seen Democratic nominees do this as well. How about dedicating air time to explaining how you’d solve problems instead of who’s to blame for them?

Maybe they’re onto something…

Dying To Live from Matthew Allard on Vimeo.

October is Down Syndrome Awareness Month. You can check out the Jacob’s Turn web site to learn more about his story.

I posted a 140-character version of this rant on Facebook this morning and got the attention of Amy Vernon. She posted the following:

I thought about what fired me up so much about this Ping announcement and I recorded my thoughts below. It’s very stream of consciousness, but I think you get the idea.

What do you think? Will you use Ping, or will you stick to Facebook and Twitter? Please leave a comment below.

In The Know: Are Tests Biased Against Students Who Don’t Give A Shit?

Am I right in my thinking? How do you view what’s happening in social media – especially Twitter’s latest foray into advertising?

Update: While Best Buy didn’t share Brian Maupin’s sense of humor, it appears that Paramount Pictures does. Nicely done Brian!

Watch it and let me know what you think.

Happy 4th of July America. Now, let’s hear some rock n’ roll Mr. Vai!

Let’s say you follow your favorite baseball player on Twitter and you’d only want to read about his tweets relating to baseball – Twylah will help you do that by sorting a any Twitter profile by most-tweeted keywords. Cool right?

Maybe you want to create a mini-blog out of your Twitter stream – you can do that too. In fact, I can use my Twylah page to mix in blog posts longer than 140 characters with my existing Twitter updates. Register yourself a domain name and point it to your Twylah page and BOOM – you’ve got yourself a blog.

I recently interviewed Twylah founder Eric Kim for Relevantly Speaking. I think you guys will find this interesting.