Friday, February 29, 2008
Monday, February 25, 2008
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Friday, February 22, 2008
Baby Birth Inspires Monster Maker
This is really interesting. To offset the costs of a new baby, a dude named Len started something called Monster by Mail, where he offered to draw 150 unique monsters for cash.
"Well, I did it. I finished 150 original monster sketches to complete the first phase of Monster By Mail. To commemorate, I did a special LEN TV of the final one being drawn. This is seriously the most I have ever drawn in my life. Even when I worked as a professional illustrator, I didn't draw THIS much. To meet the demand, I drew 4-12 monsters per day for three weeks straight. It was brutal, but it was a lot of fun and yes, I will be starting the cazy process all over again very soon. So you too will be able to get your own hand drawn monster! Thanks again to everyone who ordered a monster and who helped me out. I can't thank you enough for the support. Anyway, enjoy the show!"
Word on the street is he met the 150 mark within a week. You can see all the monsters here. And check him out drawing the last one. Congrats on the new baby.
"Well, I did it. I finished 150 original monster sketches to complete the first phase of Monster By Mail. To commemorate, I did a special LEN TV of the final one being drawn. This is seriously the most I have ever drawn in my life. Even when I worked as a professional illustrator, I didn't draw THIS much. To meet the demand, I drew 4-12 monsters per day for three weeks straight. It was brutal, but it was a lot of fun and yes, I will be starting the cazy process all over again very soon. So you too will be able to get your own hand drawn monster! Thanks again to everyone who ordered a monster and who helped me out. I can't thank you enough for the support. Anyway, enjoy the show!"
Word on the street is he met the 150 mark within a week. You can see all the monsters here. And check him out drawing the last one. Congrats on the new baby.
Snide Advertising Is Bad for Business and Society
"The presentation's tomorrow, so let's make sure we know our usual responsibilities." In an oft-broadcast FedEx TV ad, a so-on-top-of-it junior executive fluffs up his staff in reverse: "Jeff, you keep feeding me old information. Dean, I need you to continue not living up to your résumé. Sue, you're in charge of waffling. Rick, can you fold under pressure for me?"
Rick, it turns out, can indeed fold "like a lawn chair," while our protagonist sets off for FedEx Kinko's to do what his dysfunctional staff clearly cannot. The ad by BBDO New York is clever. It is also snide; employing the nasty tone that seems to dominate advertising as America slouches toward the terminus of the Bush Age.
There are few barometers so reflective of modern life as TV advertising. It makes sense. Take the culture's most facile minds, challenge them to pry cash from an increasingly tapped-out audience, and what do you get? Commercials built on sadism, on derision, on one-upsmanship -- in a word, "snide."
If you look up "snide," you find synonyms such as "sarcastic" and "malicious." Snide advertising possesses a governing syntax that demands, to begin with, sacrificial victims. Consider another FedEx ad in which the boss contemplates using the package service internationally. "Bill," the exec tells a subordinate, "put a pin in China." After several egregious misses, he chides the geographically challenged young man. "You have no idea where China is, do you Bill?" Bill, of course, does not, and he collapses to the floor, writhing in humiliation.
Physical aggression
Another building block of snide advertising is physical aggression. Consider the quite literally shocking ad for Priceline.com in which William Shatner enters the house of a frustrated online vacation shopper and stuns him with a Taser before sitting down at the man's computer. "Did I zap your daddy?" Shatner coos at the man's disquieted child. "Yes, I did," he admits, "but I saved him lots of money." "Clockwork Orange" ultraviolence is similarly top-of-mind in a recent ad for Chevrolet's new Malibu. In it, a female jogger runs blindly into the side of a parked car. She gets up and runs into it again. This carnage will stop, the voice-over assures us, because "soon there will be a car you can't ignore."
Snideness is the leitmotif of sexy slapstick that predominates in ads for domestic beer bottlers, the bottom feeders of American advertising. A recent ad for Budweiser features a pool-playing babe who lines up a shot and knocks out her opponent with a ball to the forehead. She then brings him to with a whiff of foreign "stinky beer" borrowed from a nearby swain who is clearly not going to be getting any tonight. "Are you all right?" the babe whispers to her reeling but Bud-sanctified victim. "I've never been better," he says, head seemingly whirling with thoughts of the pleasures that await.
The bottom line of snide advertising is a kind of Darwinian "survival of the snappiest," requiring that you get the last word in any exchange and that it be a "gotcha." "Can you handle it?" taunts a black-leathered vixen as she exits her black Suzuki XL7 sedan and throws the keys to a similarly garbed male model in the process of trading his motorcycle for her car. As he tosses the keys back, he growls with the nanny-nanny boo-boo that passes for wit these days, "Can you?"
Sophistication is clearly out of fashion in the Zen of snide advertising, as in the Comcast cable ad featuring a helicopter hovering over heads of cabbage bobbing in the ocean. As the vegetables are pulled up in a rescue basket, the narrator intones, "Save a lot of cabbage," which is both brilliantly on message and breathtakingly dumb.
Going for dumb
In snide advertising, dumb is a good thing, something frequently partnered with "cheap," with ads relying on static, ridiculously simple figures like the "Roaming Gnome" lawn ornament or, as in ads for the U.S. Postal Service, everyday inanimate objects engaged in allegedly ironic riposte.
Simple-minded is also the mode of choice for the soundtrack of snideness. Why hire expensive orchestras or prickly composers when the tackier, less original the music, the better -- particularly when set to a rumba beat?
While imbecile scenarios, shoddy visuals and cheesy music are a good start for snide advertising, it is ultimately the announcer who seals the deal. Over the past decade, the very vocal timbre of announcers in advertising has shifted. Where male announcers once were avuncular baritones connoting weight and trust, sonorous Don Pardo voices today have become exaggerated Saturday Night Live shorthand for "We're in on the joke, dummy; aren't you?"
The replacement is a younger, less plummy advertising voice that, in the case of the male, has gone up a good half-octave while the female advertising voice has descended a similar fourth. They seem to be merging into a whiny, unisex modulation, the better to convey a deconstructed, Ty Pennington, "too-cool-for-school" ambience.
Voice of dismissal
Here we come to the crux of snide advertising: the ability to communicate that you and your product are too hip to so much as work up a spit to actually sell the merch; that the very process of making the ad, like most other human endeavors these days, is barely worth the effort.
"No, the question isn't whether you car has features like a 40-gig hard drive. It isn't about sunroofs, sapelli-wood accents, pop-up nav screen or any of that," sing-songs actress Kate Walsh in a voice redolent with dismissal for the very features that differentiate Cadillac from Chevy. "No," Ms. Walsh drones, "the real question is: When you turn your car on, does it return the favor?"
Poor General Motors is simply out of its phenomenological depth on this one, although the campaign's affected ennui does explain the three-day beard growth that is a requisite for male advertising models these days. Earth to art directors: Lose the stubble. Gillette is going broke and your boy looks grubby, not cool.
Nowhere is snide advertising's stubbly syntax more weirdly on display, however, than in ad campaigns of fast-food chains such as McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King and Taco Bell. They all command us to "think outside the bun," doing so in gravelly locutions that are as dyspeptic as they are unappetizing. How these colicky, adolescent voices increase sales of Nachos bel Grande may be apparent only to members of the righteously pissed-off generation at which the high-pitched, dog-whistle of snide is directed.
It was once considered commercial gospel that the relative affluence of America could be deduced from the length of women's skirts: The more skin that season, the higher the Dow Jones was likely to go. We had all better hope that the descent into snide is not a reverse indicator, welcoming us to hard times with ad campaigns based on a hardening spirit, a lack of tolerance and an egocentric meanness that characterizes so much of today's advertising. Ultimately, historians will look at TV advertising as an original art form, one that, for better or worse, helped shape the modern American mind. This being the case, it behooves marketing professionals to understand the difference between subtle irony and idiot snideness and aim for an advertising denominator cognizant of the maxim that expansive, confident consumers part with their cash far more readily than do angry, fearful ones.
by Richard Rapaport
Rick, it turns out, can indeed fold "like a lawn chair," while our protagonist sets off for FedEx Kinko's to do what his dysfunctional staff clearly cannot. The ad by BBDO New York is clever. It is also snide; employing the nasty tone that seems to dominate advertising as America slouches toward the terminus of the Bush Age.
There are few barometers so reflective of modern life as TV advertising. It makes sense. Take the culture's most facile minds, challenge them to pry cash from an increasingly tapped-out audience, and what do you get? Commercials built on sadism, on derision, on one-upsmanship -- in a word, "snide."
If you look up "snide," you find synonyms such as "sarcastic" and "malicious." Snide advertising possesses a governing syntax that demands, to begin with, sacrificial victims. Consider another FedEx ad in which the boss contemplates using the package service internationally. "Bill," the exec tells a subordinate, "put a pin in China." After several egregious misses, he chides the geographically challenged young man. "You have no idea where China is, do you Bill?" Bill, of course, does not, and he collapses to the floor, writhing in humiliation.
Physical aggression
Another building block of snide advertising is physical aggression. Consider the quite literally shocking ad for Priceline.com in which William Shatner enters the house of a frustrated online vacation shopper and stuns him with a Taser before sitting down at the man's computer. "Did I zap your daddy?" Shatner coos at the man's disquieted child. "Yes, I did," he admits, "but I saved him lots of money." "Clockwork Orange" ultraviolence is similarly top-of-mind in a recent ad for Chevrolet's new Malibu. In it, a female jogger runs blindly into the side of a parked car. She gets up and runs into it again. This carnage will stop, the voice-over assures us, because "soon there will be a car you can't ignore."
Snideness is the leitmotif of sexy slapstick that predominates in ads for domestic beer bottlers, the bottom feeders of American advertising. A recent ad for Budweiser features a pool-playing babe who lines up a shot and knocks out her opponent with a ball to the forehead. She then brings him to with a whiff of foreign "stinky beer" borrowed from a nearby swain who is clearly not going to be getting any tonight. "Are you all right?" the babe whispers to her reeling but Bud-sanctified victim. "I've never been better," he says, head seemingly whirling with thoughts of the pleasures that await.
The bottom line of snide advertising is a kind of Darwinian "survival of the snappiest," requiring that you get the last word in any exchange and that it be a "gotcha." "Can you handle it?" taunts a black-leathered vixen as she exits her black Suzuki XL7 sedan and throws the keys to a similarly garbed male model in the process of trading his motorcycle for her car. As he tosses the keys back, he growls with the nanny-nanny boo-boo that passes for wit these days, "Can you?"
Sophistication is clearly out of fashion in the Zen of snide advertising, as in the Comcast cable ad featuring a helicopter hovering over heads of cabbage bobbing in the ocean. As the vegetables are pulled up in a rescue basket, the narrator intones, "Save a lot of cabbage," which is both brilliantly on message and breathtakingly dumb.
Going for dumb
In snide advertising, dumb is a good thing, something frequently partnered with "cheap," with ads relying on static, ridiculously simple figures like the "Roaming Gnome" lawn ornament or, as in ads for the U.S. Postal Service, everyday inanimate objects engaged in allegedly ironic riposte.
Simple-minded is also the mode of choice for the soundtrack of snideness. Why hire expensive orchestras or prickly composers when the tackier, less original the music, the better -- particularly when set to a rumba beat?
While imbecile scenarios, shoddy visuals and cheesy music are a good start for snide advertising, it is ultimately the announcer who seals the deal. Over the past decade, the very vocal timbre of announcers in advertising has shifted. Where male announcers once were avuncular baritones connoting weight and trust, sonorous Don Pardo voices today have become exaggerated Saturday Night Live shorthand for "We're in on the joke, dummy; aren't you?"
The replacement is a younger, less plummy advertising voice that, in the case of the male, has gone up a good half-octave while the female advertising voice has descended a similar fourth. They seem to be merging into a whiny, unisex modulation, the better to convey a deconstructed, Ty Pennington, "too-cool-for-school" ambience.
Voice of dismissal
Here we come to the crux of snide advertising: the ability to communicate that you and your product are too hip to so much as work up a spit to actually sell the merch; that the very process of making the ad, like most other human endeavors these days, is barely worth the effort.
"No, the question isn't whether you car has features like a 40-gig hard drive. It isn't about sunroofs, sapelli-wood accents, pop-up nav screen or any of that," sing-songs actress Kate Walsh in a voice redolent with dismissal for the very features that differentiate Cadillac from Chevy. "No," Ms. Walsh drones, "the real question is: When you turn your car on, does it return the favor?"
Poor General Motors is simply out of its phenomenological depth on this one, although the campaign's affected ennui does explain the three-day beard growth that is a requisite for male advertising models these days. Earth to art directors: Lose the stubble. Gillette is going broke and your boy looks grubby, not cool.
Nowhere is snide advertising's stubbly syntax more weirdly on display, however, than in ad campaigns of fast-food chains such as McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King and Taco Bell. They all command us to "think outside the bun," doing so in gravelly locutions that are as dyspeptic as they are unappetizing. How these colicky, adolescent voices increase sales of Nachos bel Grande may be apparent only to members of the righteously pissed-off generation at which the high-pitched, dog-whistle of snide is directed.
It was once considered commercial gospel that the relative affluence of America could be deduced from the length of women's skirts: The more skin that season, the higher the Dow Jones was likely to go. We had all better hope that the descent into snide is not a reverse indicator, welcoming us to hard times with ad campaigns based on a hardening spirit, a lack of tolerance and an egocentric meanness that characterizes so much of today's advertising. Ultimately, historians will look at TV advertising as an original art form, one that, for better or worse, helped shape the modern American mind. This being the case, it behooves marketing professionals to understand the difference between subtle irony and idiot snideness and aim for an advertising denominator cognizant of the maxim that expansive, confident consumers part with their cash far more readily than do angry, fearful ones.
by Richard Rapaport
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Extras: Patrick Stewart's Fantasies..err..
Extras is a BAFTA, Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning British television sitcom about extras working on film sets and in theatre. The series is co-produced by the BBC and HBO, and is co-written and directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, both of whom also star in it.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Friday, February 15, 2008
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Err..my bad..
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Kanye West 2008 Grammy Performance
Kanye West performs his hit song "Stronger", followed by a song dedicated to his deceased mother, during the 50th Annual Grammy Awards on Sunday, February 10, 2008, in Los Angeles. Seriously, you can almost hear jaws dropping across the world. Where broadcasted of course..
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
A lesson learned? A lesson learnt?
Some people understand life better, and some of these people are called "retarded."
At the Seattle Special Olympics, nine contestants — all physically or mentally disabled — assembled at the starting line for the 100-yard dash.
At the gun, they all started out not exactly in a dash, but with a relish to run the race to the finish and win. All, that is, except one little boy who stumbled on the asphalt, tumbled over a couple of times, and began to cry. The other eight heard the boy cry. They slowed down and looked back. Then they all turned around and went back — every one of them. One girl with Down's Syndrome bent down and kissed him and said, "This will make it better."
Then all nine linked arms and walked together to the finish line.
Everyone in the stadium stood. The cheering went on for several minutes. People who were there are still telling the story. Why? Because deep down we know this one thing:
What matters in this life is more than winning for ourselves.
What matters in this life is helping others win, even
if it means slowing down and changing our course.
Remember:
A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle.
At the Seattle Special Olympics, nine contestants — all physically or mentally disabled — assembled at the starting line for the 100-yard dash.
At the gun, they all started out not exactly in a dash, but with a relish to run the race to the finish and win. All, that is, except one little boy who stumbled on the asphalt, tumbled over a couple of times, and began to cry. The other eight heard the boy cry. They slowed down and looked back. Then they all turned around and went back — every one of them. One girl with Down's Syndrome bent down and kissed him and said, "This will make it better."
Then all nine linked arms and walked together to the finish line.
Everyone in the stadium stood. The cheering went on for several minutes. People who were there are still telling the story. Why? Because deep down we know this one thing:
What matters in this life is more than winning for ourselves.
What matters in this life is helping others win, even
if it means slowing down and changing our course.
Remember:
A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle.
This could be useful..
DICTIONARY FOR DECODING WOMEN'S PERSONAL ADS:
40-ish..................................49.
Adventurous......................Slept with everyone.
Athletic................................No breasts.
Average looking.................Moooo.
Beautiful.............................Pathological liar.
Emotionally Secure..........On medication.
Feminist..............................Fat.
Free Spirit..........................Junkie.
Friendship first..................Former Slut.
New-Age.............................Body hair in the wrong places.
Old-fashioned.....................No B.J.'s
Open-minded......................Desperate.
Outgoing..............................Loud and embarrassing.
Professional........................Bitch.
Voluptuous..........................Very fat.
Large frame........................Hugely fat.
Wants soul mate.................Stalker.
DICTIONARY FOR DECODING WOMEN'S ENGLISH:
Yes.........................................No
No..........................................Yes
Maybe....................................No
We need...............................I want
I am sorry.............................You'll be sorry
We need to talk...................You're in trouble
Sure, go ahead....................You better not
Do what you want...............You will pay for this later
I am not upset......................Of course, I am upset, you moron!
You're attentive tonight.........Is sex all you ever think about?
DICTIONARY FOR DECODING MEN'S ENGLISH:
I am hungry..........................I am hungry
I am tired..............................I am tired
Nice dress...........................Nice cleavage!
I love you..............................Let's have sex now
I am bored...........................Do you want to have sex?
May I have this dance?....................I'd like to have sex with you.
Can I call you sometime?...............I'd like to have sex with you.
Do you want to go to a movie?.......I'd like to have sex with you.
Can I take you out to dinner?..........I'd like to have sex with you.
I don't think your shoes go with that outfit..............I'm gay.
40-ish..................................49.
Adventurous......................Slept with everyone.
Athletic................................No breasts.
Average looking.................Moooo.
Beautiful.............................Pathological liar.
Emotionally Secure..........On medication.
Feminist..............................Fat.
Free Spirit..........................Junkie.
Friendship first..................Former Slut.
New-Age.............................Body hair in the wrong places.
Old-fashioned.....................No B.J.'s
Open-minded......................Desperate.
Outgoing..............................Loud and embarrassing.
Professional........................Bitch.
Voluptuous..........................Very fat.
Large frame........................Hugely fat.
Wants soul mate.................Stalker.
DICTIONARY FOR DECODING WOMEN'S ENGLISH:
Yes.........................................No
No..........................................Yes
Maybe....................................No
We need...............................I want
I am sorry.............................You'll be sorry
We need to talk...................You're in trouble
Sure, go ahead....................You better not
Do what you want...............You will pay for this later
I am not upset......................Of course, I am upset, you moron!
You're attentive tonight.........Is sex all you ever think about?
DICTIONARY FOR DECODING MEN'S ENGLISH:
I am hungry..........................I am hungry
I am tired..............................I am tired
Nice dress...........................Nice cleavage!
I love you..............................Let's have sex now
I am bored...........................Do you want to have sex?
May I have this dance?....................I'd like to have sex with you.
Can I call you sometime?...............I'd like to have sex with you.
Do you want to go to a movie?.......I'd like to have sex with you.
Can I take you out to dinner?..........I'd like to have sex with you.
I don't think your shoes go with that outfit..............I'm gay.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
The Folly of Attacking Iran: Lessons from History
If more Americans knew about this li'l piece of (misplaced) history, could their leaders blather on about supporting freedom and democracy in the Middle East they way they do? Would news media take them seriously if they did so? Would American pundits be so cavalier about the idea of bombing Iran, in flagrant violation of international law? Could people make fun of Senator Barack Obama for supporting real diplomacy with Iran and get away with it?
From Huffington Post
From Huffington Post
Kit Kat Livens Up Cubicle Workers Depressing Day
JWT France has created a spectacularly engaging three minute video that encapsulates the life of a lowly cubicle worker, the mocking he receives from his coworkers, the glowering he receives from his boss and the relief he receives when he takes a break to grab a Kit Kat.
In the video, our lowly cubicle worker leaves behind the taunting co-workers, the menacing boss and even the office hottie (who the animators clearly had fun creating) for a life atop his office building which has grown to spacious heights offering a view of a solar system full of, yes, Nestle candy.
Once at the site, additional videos are available to view along with lushly photographed shots of Kit Kat creation complete with oozingly beautiful chocolate. It's all in French but it's one so well it doesn't matter what language it's in.
In the video, our lowly cubicle worker leaves behind the taunting co-workers, the menacing boss and even the office hottie (who the animators clearly had fun creating) for a life atop his office building which has grown to spacious heights offering a view of a solar system full of, yes, Nestle candy.
Once at the site, additional videos are available to view along with lushly photographed shots of Kit Kat creation complete with oozingly beautiful chocolate. It's all in French but it's one so well it doesn't matter what language it's in.
Beijing Olympics 2008, ADIDAS - Together
With help from Stink and TBWA\China, Psyop put together "Together" for Adidas and the '08 Olympics. Tagline: "Impossible is nothing." It's very Nike, with a little power-to-the-people in concentrate.
This hand-drawn spot builds on "Together" with Zhi's narrative about how the 2008 Beijing Olympics will redeem his people from loss. Disembodied wings carry the Chinese into the clouds. The Chinese, and some feathers, fall out of the sky when Zhi describes the 1999 game. Despite the tripped-out depressing imagery, the story ends on an up note. Deep. Or at least really abstract.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Three Amazing Kids!
Watch and be amazed! Michael (8) and Sullivan (10) play the mandolin and guitar with their sister Molly.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
White Guy Gets Ass Kicked by Asian Girls (and Aunty)
You're in the Chinese laundry. Some hotshot white executive walks in and starts heckling the pitiable Asian owner in front of his family. He makes the nasty requisite Pokemon and Hello Kitty jokes, does the grating "oriental" accent. Things are clearly spiraling out of control.
Suddenly, a black dude in the background takes a call on his Jawbone Bluetooth headset -- and in a noise-canceling orchestration Bose would be proud of, nothing can be heard beyond his conversation.
In the safety of silence, two Asian girls get up, put a plastic bag over the white collar exec's head, and start beating the living crap out of him. Their mom soon joins in. No sight of dad, not that it matters anymore; you're just staring in horror at the guy's face, which is getting redder and redder and redder in his little plastic bag.
Somewhere in the background, you hear the black guy making sexy-talk with his wife.
The (literal) punchline? Jawbone eliminates noise. Oh fucking ouch.
Suddenly, a black dude in the background takes a call on his Jawbone Bluetooth headset -- and in a noise-canceling orchestration Bose would be proud of, nothing can be heard beyond his conversation.
In the safety of silence, two Asian girls get up, put a plastic bag over the white collar exec's head, and start beating the living crap out of him. Their mom soon joins in. No sight of dad, not that it matters anymore; you're just staring in horror at the guy's face, which is getting redder and redder and redder in his little plastic bag.
Somewhere in the background, you hear the black guy making sexy-talk with his wife.
The (literal) punchline? Jawbone eliminates noise. Oh fucking ouch.
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