It's hard being a kid. Teenagers across America say they're stressed out, and many report feeling "overwhelmed, depressed or sad." No wonder. Many of them are not drinking coffee.

A new father in Pennsylvania lit a joint in the local hospital's smoking section to celebrate his child's birth. He told security, "I'm having a baby and wanted to get a buzz," which seems reasonable, if not responsible. [via LehemSteel]

In your rumormongering Friday media column: rumors of Newsweek's bleak near future, another Rupert Murdoch paywall, buzzy broadcasters revealed, Dennis Kneale reportedly leaving CNBC, and Doug McKelway gets canned.

KFC's nasty Double Down sandwich was the buzziest product rollout since KFC's Oprah-sponsored Grilled Chicken fiasco last year—which helped KFC lose $4.9 billion in sales and 1.7 market share points in 2009. This time is different, though. [AdAge]

If there's anyone who grasps the secrets of cultural "buzz," it's Spatial Information experts employed in academia. There's a new "Geography of Buzz" map that scientifically proves that "buzz" is centered...where events are held.

To hear iPhone-app developers tell it, VCs are circling and the end of days is nigh. Some developers can push out at an app in four months for less than $5,000, so why play with other people's money at all? "Fuck the VCs" says indie developer John Casasanta, of Tap Tap Tap. "What we’re about to experience in the iPhone world is going to be a bubble along the lines of the one in the late '90s/early 2000s." Echoing that is Mike Lee, cofounder of iPhone app development team Tapulous, who raised $1.8M in angel funding this summer. This week, Lee, one of Tapulous's nine employees, was told to exit his own company. Lee left a depressingly cocky send-off to his team in his wake. It's hardly the rallying cry to go it alone that he meant it to be.

Nerds may be polishing up their plastic light sabers and dusting off their Darth Vader helmets in anticipation of the new, animated Star Wars movie The Clone Wars, set to open in August. But you know who's not awaiting the movie? Pepsi, Kellogg's, and and Burger King, traditional Star Wars sponsors! Why not? "A spokeswoman for Pepsi, meanwhile, was unaware that a new 'Star Wars' movie was being released." Ha, this flick has BIG BUZZ going for it. Luckily for nerds, McDonald's and Toys "R" Us have stepped in to fill the void with all types of action figures fit for stockpiling by grown men. But it's never a good sign when key parts of corporate America don't even know your movie exists. Prediction: a big, animated suckfest. Still, fans are planning to line up at Toys "R" Us just for the release of the toys. Let's hope that Triumph the Insult Comic Dog makes it out to that one:

The Atlantic is a magazine about news and culture and stuff. It has been continually published for thousands of years—its founding editor was Babylonian ruler Nebuchadnezzar. Now, though, the internet, which has made Americans forget how to read, is killing it. They struck back recently by putting on their cover a woman who is famous for being mentally disturbed, and now they've gone so far as to bring on brand consultants. Folio reports that Atlantic Media hired "an integrated marketing agency to handle its rebranding." They're redesigning the magazine and relaunching the website! Next fall they will "roll out of a full-scale marketing campaign to communicate the brand message." This is "something the Atlantic has never done" because it is a thing that was invented by marketing agencies ten years ago. [The Atlantic]

At long last, Cloverfield, Slusho Beverage Corp.'s bold foray into the sci-fi disaster genre, had its first screenings last night. Hours later, members of the fanboy journalist elite lucky enough to have had first, unfettered access to the mysterious creature at the center of all the monument-decapitating mayhem, took to the internets. Below, a round-up of the buzz. [Ed. note: We'll try to avoid spoilers, but promise nothing. You've been warned.]
· If we are to believe the Kingdom of the Fanboys' semi-merciful Lord and Ruler Harry Knowles, it was a watershed moment in giant-fucking- monster-stomping- through-Manhattan cinematic history: "The movie is fucking brilliant. It's what we were told it was going to be. An intimate perspective on an impossibly grand scale human disaster beyond most human levels of comprehension." Slashfilm reminds us, however, that this was a guy who thought the Godzilla remake was peaches. [AICN, Slashfilm]

Today's Wall Street Journal looks at the fourteen Diana Spencer books coming our way this summer for the ten year anniversary of her death. Tina Brown's entry, "The Diana Chronicles"—the WSJ hilariously calls Tina "the former high-profile editor of the New Yorker and Vanity Fair"—is riding high in that crop. But it's all about the pre-orders. A bookseller in Winnetka, Illinois, has pre-ordered two, and is thinking about "a few more." Ka-ching? At least a bookstore in Fairway, Kansas, has ordered a whopping 20. The print run is 200,000. Time to buy that advertorial spread on Amazon!