Generalities

Brooke Hammerling, the well connected tech publicist and founder of Brew Media Relations, is working out of the agency's Santa Monica office today. She had a little mishap with the phone system. We'll give her a pass on this one, since it seems from her Twitter feed that she's been in about 18 different time zones in the last few weeks.

RELATED: Brooke Hammerling on NYT Story: Reporter Did an "Excellent Job"

In this Halloween edition of Friday Fun, Darth Vader visits the Voce Communications San Francisco office, where he answers the phones, delivers on client strategy, and tries to eat a burrito (unsuccessfully).

Mediabistro is offering two of our most popular courses, Intro to Public Relations in New York, which starts November 4th, and Public Relations: From Crisis Communications to Social Media, an online class, which starts November 9th.

We mention this because today we're running a special one-day promotion: 30% off multi-week courses. Use promo code SAVE30 when submitting payment to receive your discount. Do it!

It's Friday so we thought it would be a good time for an update post on pitching PRNewser. First, we always welcome your emails. Send them to prnewser at mediabistro dot com so both Jason and I can see them.

Second, you can also usually get us on IM. Jason mans up prnewser and I am joeciarallo. Third, the anonymous tip box on the right is exactly what it says it is: anonymous, so if you'd prefer to share news and tips that way, that is fine with us as well. It is completely, 100% anonymous. We promise. Fourth, a lot of pitches we get involve account wins and new hires. Keep in mind we usually do these in weekly round ups, but of course there are always exceptions.

We hope this helps. Don't be shy!

FishbowlNY editor Amanda Ernst appeared on the "Today" show today as part of financial contributor Jean Chatzky's "Mini Money Makeover" series.

"When the four-and-a-half minute segment got underway, Kotb and Gifford really drove the conversation and it was all I could do to just hold on and get a well-formed response out of my mouth," Ernst said. "But in the end, I hope I made the point I went there to make: if a fired writer like me -- with no freelance experience and just a handful of contacts in the industry -- can make it work, so can you."

If you know someone who would like to be made over, Chatzky is looking for more people to be featured on the segment. Read Ernst's full post here.

PR pro Don Osmond, son of 70s icon Donny Osmond, muscled through a huge field of scientists, adventurers and travel buffs to come in a respectable 4th place in Quark Expedition's Blog Your Way to Antarctica contest.

In this particular blog-off, tech trumped PR. Luis Monteiro, a 29 year-old Portuguese IT guy pulled in 16,000 of the 80,000 votes cast according to the release today.

Don blogs for the Utah Deseret News site, and is syndicated on MormonTimes.com where he also writes "Cresting 30". His bio lists him as a PR pro in Salt Lake City, AND a professional bobsledder in Park city. Who knew?

Don coincidently, was born in 1979, the same year Donny & Marie went off the air. Wikipedia pegs it as the beginning of Donny's image issues. Did this affect his son's career choice?

In 2004, Donny told the BBC about a choice bit of PR advice he declined:

"I remember hiring a publicist who figured out this whole campaign to get me busted for drugs and change my image .. he said you should start drinking, at least get caught with a drink in your hand, go to some parties, get some pictures with some booze in your hands. And you know, I considered it for five minutes."

You can see Donny & Marie perform at the Flamingo in Vegas until 2012.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, functional parody is the stuff of post-media meta PR. What is functional parody? It's when you poke fun by building something that actually works. A great example is the fax function Facebook built specifically to punk TechCrunch.

With the launch of Regretsy.com, hipster craft marketplace Etsy gets a love bump through the highlighting of truly awful and disturbing creations among a sea of beautifully photographed craft goods.

What's incredible about Regretsy's prairie dog foot necklace ($22), corn poo soap ($5), and catnip fetus toy ($6) is the listings redirect to actual Etsy stores. The foot, and "unicorn" taxidermy (pictured above) are found in the gruesome Dead Things category.

The four year-old Etsy broke out this year with an avalanche of mainstream publicity--most tied to the need for people to make extra cash during the recession--including GMA, Today Show, Rachael Ray, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, NPR and many others. Gross sales are way up to $100 million this year, with the holiday season still to come.

No PR firm needed. According to Etsy's Adam Brown, all PR is crafted internally.

Regretsy.com is registered to something called Idiot Savant Productions. I wish Etsy was behind it--that would be award-winning strategy.

Warning: the language in this video is not safe for work (a few F-bombs are dropped.) However, we couldn't resist sharing it with you as you hopefully get ready to close up shop for the week.

Hey, remember when we said we were going to update the blog roll and asked your for suggestions as to which new blogs to include? Yeah, well we finally got around to that. Check it out below to your right.

We will plan for another update later this month, so if you have more suggestions, send them our way.

What do you think of the new Twitter homepage? PC World states the obvious: "The decision to put search front-and-center gives further evidence of how Twitter hopes to monetize in the future."