This month's issue focuses on the role of color in media. If it's okay with you, I'd like to confine this column to just one - the color green. Let's face it, it's the color that's been on all our minds as we put this magazine to bed, though the color red also seems to be lurking in the background - not to mention hopes for the resurgence of a shade of black. Mixed metaphors aside, I'm talking money here - and/or the lack thereof. How could I not?

Why is black always cool? No matter what year it is, no matter what part of the country you live in, no matter what kind of people you hang around with, you'll always fit in wearing black. It's not just that black is classic - that it's the color of tuxedos, limousines, business suits, grand pianos and go-anywhere dresses. It's also the color of beatniks, biker gangs, punk rockers and Goths. It's the uniform of "The Man," and the T-shirt of the rebel. More paradoxically still, this has held true for several generations of rebellion.

Do you feel weak? Maybe that's because you had a Rice Krispie treat for lunch. Or maybe you're undergoing the physiological effects of pink. We don't mean to suggest that you are suffering from an eye infection, listening to "Get the Party Started," or that you're wearing a pair of sweatpants with PINK emblazoned on the rear. While you may very well be doing all of those things right now, we were hoping that the color of these pages would make you feel like a 12-year-old girl in an interrogation room.

"I think everyone should wear more orange," my friend said, decisively, and I looked at her again, a woman with dark hair and fair skin and freckles and a slight flush on her cheeks, and I saw that she looked amazing in orange - as pretty as Kelly Kapowski on the '90s sitcom Saved By The Bell, everyone's favorite girl, sweet and glowing in a tight orange minidress, innocent in a low-cut orange unitard with a white jacket over her shoulders - orange just lit her up, my friend, I mean, though Kelly Kapowski looked pretty awesome, too.

Early this year, Danish sculptor Jens Galschiot and his art workshop, Art in Defense of Humanism, decided to make a statement at the Olympics in Beijing against China's human rights violations. Since overt activism was essentially banned, Galschiot, ever the artist, turned to color as a covert protest. He and his followers encouraged everyone - athletes, spectators and organizers - to wear or carry something orange in a country that revered red. The Color Orange Project garnered modest support at the Games, including from runner Usain Bolt, who wore an orange bracelet during his legendary 100-meter sprint. But sadly for …

The TBWA/Chiat Day/Tequila office in Los Angeles has bright yellow beams on the ceiling to make the creative teams think and work harder, jokes Justin Prough, creative director responsible for Nissan's campaigns.

When Steve Pougnet ran for mayor of Palm Springs, Calif., last November, he turned to color and branding strategist Paul Haft to help him win the election with visually compelling graphics that would support his platform and forge an emotional link with voters.

Guns N' Roses fans have waited 17 years for a new album, but technology has not. In October, Universal Music was rumored to be hunting for an interactive agency to market Chinese Democracy, due out this month (and they really, really mean it this time). Around the same time, fan sites lit up with the news that Best Buy was taking pre-orders online. And this summer, a blogger was arrested on suspicion of posting nine unreleased tracks (nine! almost the whole album!) online.

As Sarah "Drill, baby, drill!" Palin toured Midtown Manhattan photo ops, two charismatic biodiesel missionaries were preaching renewable energy at NYU - along with the spirit (and namesake biodiesel) of Willie Nelson. Nik Bristow and Brian Pierce, copywriters for Fitzgerald & Co., prepared Willie One, a Volkswagen Jetta fueled by BioWillie, for the first-ever "green" cross-country Cannonball Run, dubbed WillieRun.

Some things are just universal. In the case of teenagers, for example, it's pretty much expected they'll spout off incendiary things at their peers, parents and anyone else unfortunate enough to stand within a 50-foot radius.