Be my guide: Reader-driven road trip from New York to Los Angeles

To mark my transition from intern to full-time journalist with the L.A. Times, I started a cross-country drive on Monday, which I have been blogging for the L.A. Times Daily Travel and Deals Blog.

But this isn't your grandfather's road trip. I didn't even take a paper map.

Instead, I'm relying on an iPhone and a laptop, with tools such as Google Maps for directions to each city and crowd-sourced suggestions from readers, Twitter users, blog commentators and review site Yelp for places to stop.

Online social media have proved an invaluable tool for getting an array of travel tips from locals without actually being in that city. And because I'm a huge music fan, websites such as Upcoming are helping me to find rockin' concerts along the way.

The next stop on my two-week road trip from New York to Los Angeles is Detroit. If you have tips for music venues or other hot spots in Hitsville or any other city along the way (click "Read more" to see my itinerary), post comments on this blog post, send tweets to @mmilian or e-mail mark.milian@latimes.com.

To follow my road trip status live, visit twitter.com/mmilian. For daily recaps, visit Be My Guide on the Travel Blog.

-- Mark Milian

Why the Internet loves bacon*

A sizzling skillet with bacon. Credit: robotsari via Flickr

There is a topic that has been wrapping itself around the Web's collective consciousness for some time. And within the last year or so, this meme has become so potent that it can no longer be ignored.

The sizzling phenomenon? Bacon.

If the innumerable blog posts about the salt-cured meat are to be believed, bacon can be added to just about any food, used in place of cotton and leather, and is enshrined on restroom blow-dryers around the country.

What can bacon do? Apparently, it can serve as a lampshade, an iPhone carrying case, a watch, an alarm clock or the building blocks for a creepy-looking "bacon man" shrine. Are people actually carrying around bacon briefcases? Let's hope not.

A meme -- the flavor of the week that propagates quickly through e-mail and chatter on social networks -- can come in many forms: a feline that speaks with poor grammar (Lolcats), a goofy '80s pop singer (RickRoll) or a chubby kid bopping to a Romanian dance song (Numa Numa).

Bacon is as popular as any. Even as I was writing this piece, I was interrupted by a Twitter update containing a link to a photo of a bacon bra.

Yet, no matter how many new bacon products spring up, it seems as though a new one is always a day away -- waiting to delight StumbleUpon users, provide a chuckle for Diggers and appear in dozens of Twitter feeds.

Not that Twitter needs any more fodder for bacon chatter. A common complaint about the short-blogging service is that it's just an avenue for people to tell the world what they're having for lunch. Unsurprisingly, you'll find ...