pfcblogs

The Best Part of Waking Up is...Lego In Your Cup?

2011-12-08T15:03:00.001-05:00

OK, this is bugging the hell out of me.

This commercial for Lego Duplo is running in pretty heavy rotation right now on Nick Jr. right now. There's nothing wrong with the spot, it's fine. And Lego Duplo looks like something I might actually buy for my 3 1/2 year old. She'd probably like it a lot.

The problem I have with the spot is that the music sounds really, really like the Folger's music. You know the song...

"blah blah blah blah blah,

blah blah blah blah blah,

the best part of waking up

is Folger's in your cup"

Oh, I know it's not exactly the same, but it's close enough that by the end of the spot, every time, I can't help humming to myself, "the best part of waking up is Folger's in your cup."

Which really bothers me because I hate that song.

Also annoying is the announcer, who seems to have taken the afternoon off from her phone sex job to record this AVO. She is so breathy and and urgent and... eager. Is this supposed to feel intimate and approachable? Like "I'm telling you a secret about Duplo"?

To me it just says "hand job in the alley."

And we're back...

2011-12-06T18:00:00.000-05:00

So I saw a couple of things recently that I thought I wanted to write about, so I signed in to my trusty ol' blog.

Maybe I should say my dusty old blog because lo and behold, can it really be almost a year and a half since I've written anything? "Oh my gott!" as our cleaning lady would say. That's a long time.

So let's rectify that straight away with this first little tidbit.

Now I'm not a big fan of the Real Housewives. New Jersey, Atlanta, Beverly Hills, Uzbekistan, wherever they're from I just don't give a shit. Really. Believe me, I've got plenty of guilty pleasures, but the Real Housewives is not one of them.

My wife, however, does watch the Beverly Hills episodes from time to time and she called out to me the other day, "Paul, Paul, come here quick, you've got to see this!"

So I scampered into the living room lickety split, because that is what you do when your wife calls out to you from the other room.

Here is what she showed me:

"Wow, you look amazing!"

"You look gorgeous too"

"And I've got my finger jammed so far up my ear I'm giving my brain a good rogering."

This poor woman, who bears an unfortunate resemblance to the late Buddy Hackett, will be forever perserved in the annals of entertainment in this extremely unflattering manner.

I'm sure she's a perfectly nice person. Just a case of the wrong place at the wrong time. Or the right time, depending on your point of view.

Thank you producers and editors of Real Housewives for choosing not to cut around this colorful and delightful moment.

An Open Letter to Don Draper

2010-07-25T02:32:00.001-04:00

Mr. Donald F. Draper

Sterling, Cooper, Draper & Pryce

c/o Pierre Hotel

New York, NY

July 25, 2010

Dear Don,

Don't suck. Just please don't suck. I'm going to see you tonight for the first time in almost 9 months, and I want it to be great. I've missed you and I don't think I could bear it if tonight is anything less than brilliant.

So please don't suck, ok?

I've thought about you a lot in these past 36 weeks. Where is your office? You must have moved from the Pierre by now. Where are you living? Are you seeing anyone? Is your divorce final?

Oh Don, so many questions. And you, holding all the answers.

It's funny, when I first met you I thought you were the king of cool. A cigarette perpetually dangling from the corner of your mouth, rye whiskey and broads aplenty. Ring a ding ding, baby, you know?

But as I got to know you a little better, I began to see how much more complicated you are than that. For instance, you're an excellent creative director, but a jerk to work for. And you're a terrible husband and father. Yet still I find myself rooting for you, interested in your life, wanting you to triumph and succeed.

I see what you've run away from, how you've worked so very very hard to erase the past and create a new persona. But let's face it, Don, you've fucked some shit up. And now you're going to have to figure it out.

So I'll be waiting, Don, and watching. I'll always be here for you.

Just don't let me down, ok?

Sincerely,

Paul F. Cammarota

Bye Bye Baby

2010-07-21T01:06:00.001-04:00

Friday is rubbish day in my town. That's the day, once a week, when along with your normal household garbage you can put larger items out by the curb. Furniture, old TVs, mattresses... you name it. Since Friday morning is when the garbage men pick up the rubbish, that makes Thursday evening prime time for...

the Night Pickers.

Night Picker? What the fuck is a night picker?

Night Picker is a phrase coined by my dad and sisters and me to describe the folks who walk or drive around the neighborhood the night before rubbish day and pick through the trash in hopes of finding some treasure to cart off and call their own. It's not dumpster diving; it's got nothing to do with food. It's about taking that perfectly good something that someone three blocks away is throwing out, bringing it home, cleaning it up and calling it your own.

I was raised in an upper middle class neighborhood, and that's the kind of neighborhood I live in now. You'd be surprised how much perfectly good stuff people simply throw away.

The next town over from me is wealthy. You should see the amazing shit they put out by the curb.

I think the fact that people are so quick to discard things has much to do with our very conspicuously consumptive society and what middle class means today. Years ago, something like a bike was a treasure. A decent one cost a good amount of money to buy, and it got handed down from kid to kid. Too bad for you if you were the last kid in your family. If it broke, either your dad fixed it or you took it to the bike shop. But you didn't throw it away.

Now, more often than not it seems people just toss that same bike out and buy a new one. Why not? Bikes and TVs and DVD players have become so inexpensive that it almost makes sense. Plus, I think we have gotten so used to buying new stuff to replace our other stuff that fewer and fewer people know how to actually fix anything anymore.

I am not ashamed to say that I have night picked a thing or two in my time. An end table with beautiful wooden inlays that was missing only a small detail on one of the legs. I placed that side against the wall. Another time, as I was walking our ridiculously tiny dog I spied a Weber grill that someone across the street was throwing away. Mint condition. Although I made quite a racket wheeling it across the street, scared the hell out of the dog and probably woke up several neighbors in the process, I still fire up that grill in the backyard today.

The legions of night pickers are many, and the treasures to be gotten are legend.

But this is not about night pickers, at least not directly.

Nope, this is about little girls growing up.

Because last week I myself put something out on the sidewalk Thursday night for pickup on Friday.

I put out the high chair.

The high chair that endured countless yogurt spills and still has a little piece of spaghetti stuck in that crevice that I just couldn't reach no matter how hard I tried.

The high chair that bears the the faintest remnants of scribbles from markers and pens because no matter how I scrubbed, it never all came out.

The high chair that witnessed thousands of laughs and giggles and almost as many tears.

The high chair that heard me make every sound imaginable, from airplanes to elephants, that might encourage a little girl to open her mouth and take one more bite.

The high chair that held a baby safely while her daddy got a sorely needed cup of coffee.

The high chair that wobbled a little near the end, who's seat cover never fit quite right again after I took it off that first time to wash it.

The high chair that has seen two little girls begin to become big girls.

Yeah. That high chair.

The trash men come at around 8:30 in the morning. I could easily have put it out then. But I didn't. Somehow I couldn't bear to see them throw that little piece of my girls childhood into the back of the truck.

So I put it out the night before.

And sure enough, by 6:00 am Friday morning it was gone.

I'd like to think that someone took it home, cleaned it off, and called it their own. Maybe some dad somewhere else is making elephant noises to his little girl right now.

Bonne chance, Night Picker.

Bonne chance.

Kleenex, the Anti-Green

2010-04-29T16:12:00.018-04:00

This commercial is amazing to me.

Admit it, you thought this was going to be a spot about how we should use a cloth towel instead of paper towels because it's better for the environment, right?

Of course you did.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. We're bombarded by this mantra every day. Whether you choose to do your part or not, it's not like the Green movement is a fringe thing. It's an inescapable message that one would have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to be aware of. The very ideal driving society today, the impetus behind hybrid cars and Sigg water bottles and turning off the water when you brush your teeth is to consume less, and pollute less.

So how is it possible that Kimberly-Clark, the parent company of Kleenex, could think that it was a good idea in this day and age to introduce this line of disposable hand towels... a product that is designed to be used exactly once and thrown into the trash? Am I the only person who thinks that this is incredibly wasteful?

It's not like they're exactly urging judicious use of these things, either. In 30 seconds both these bathrooms see more traffic than a Penn Station toilet. I'm surprised this thing isn't hanging on the wall.

Not including the dog (who I'm not counting because that's just stupid), the cloth towel gets used 15 times in this 30 seconds.

The Kleenex hand towels? Twenty-two uses. Which must mean that consumers who would buy Kleenex hand towels are more sanitary and wash their hands about 45% more than those who don't.

Really.

You are going to use this product and throw it in the trash, which is then going to get put into a plastic bag, which is then going to spend all eternity at the bottom of a landfill. But isn't paper biodegradable, you say? Yes, it is. But not when it's encased in a plastic bag at the bottom of a landfill.

From the Kleenex website FAQs:

Is Kleenex® Facial Tissue biodegradable?
Kleenex® tissue is made with biodegradable cellulose fibers. Because the tissue is made with an additive to make it strong, it will not break down as rapidly as bathroom tissue. Therefore, we suggest you discard Kleenex® facial tissue in the trash.

Even Kleenex instructs us to make more garbage by sending these babies straight to the dump.

The hand towels are featured on the landing page of the Kleenex website, and when you dive a little deeper you get a slew of factoids about how single use towels are more sanitary than your cloth hand towel (which apparently is never ever clean, no matter how many times you wash it). You can even see just how the dispenser will look in your bathroom. I thought the upside down hanging box was just to make a point in the commercial, but it appears that if you want that public restroom look in your own home, it is easily achievable.

The copy in the commercial states that "...your hands are only as clean as the towel used to dry them." This may be true.

You know what we do in our house when that towel gets dirty?

We put it in the washing machine and hang up a clean one.

Not exactly rocket science, and likely what most people do. Which makes Kleenex Hand Towels smack even more of a product created to fill a need which doesn't truly exist.

From ugly and wasteful, we move to "at least we're trying."

Great idea. I think that at least Frito Lay is really making an effort here, even if they are missing a little bit.

From the SunChips website:

We dream of a world with less waste. That's why we've introduced a bag made from plants so it's fully compostable. Every 10 ½ oz. SunChips® package is designed to fully break down in just 14 weeks when placed in a hot, active compost bin or pile. If it takes a little longer, don't worry about it. Mother nature will get to it soon enough.

Do you have a hot, active compost bin or pile at your home?

Didn't think so. Neither do I.

It's an awesome effort to develop biodegradable packaging. The problem here is that if you're a good citizen, you will follow years of indoctrination and put your chip bag in the trash, which is then going to get put into a plastic bag, which is then going to spend all eternity at the bottom of a landfill.

Which is not a hot, active compost bin.

That kind of defeats the purpose of the biodegradable bag, don't you think? And all those SunChip bags you'll see on the streets of Manhattan, and along the roadside? Well, they'll break down. Eventually. It'll take a lot longer than 14 weeks, but "Mother nature will get to it soon enough."

It's not perfect, but I do give Frito Lay an "A" for effort, in the hopes that this technology can be put to use in a way that will make a difference, and will make the world a little greener.

So I think that from now on, after I wash my hands, I'm going to dry them on a SunChips bag and toss it out the window.

Hey, at least I'm trying.

Do I look fat in this?

2010-03-31T00:23:00.001-04:00

Do these jeans, this dress, this shirt, these shoes make me look fat?

This, friends, is the Kobayashi Maru of relationship questions.

Like the Kobayashi Maru, it is a no-win situation, a question with no correct answer. It is designed, consciously or unconsciously, to test you, to gauge your reaction, to take your measure.

The reason this is a no win situation is because by the time the question is posed to you, your significant other has already answered it. She (and I'm going to use "she" here because let's be honest, this is a question asked by wives and girlfriends, not husbands and boyfriends) has already looked in the mirror and decided the answer, and that answer is "yes".

For you there is no right answer to this question, no reply that gets you out the door and to the party, no response to which she simply replies "ok, let's go."

Let's say she does looks fat in that. You want to be honest, right? She asked you the question, didn't she? You don't want other people talking about how she looks unless it is to say how unbelievably and incredibly awesome she appears tonight.

So you say "yes".

Sure, if you are an idiot or a masochist, or just plain mean you say "yes". But even if it's the truth, the last thing she wants is for you to agree with her.

And don't think you can be crafty and say "yes" without actually saying "yes". It doesn't work that way.

INT, MANHATTAN APARTMENT - EVENING (circa 1999).

A young WOMAN exits the bedroom carrying two pairs of slacks. The MAN sits on the couch, waiting.

WOMAN (to MAN)

Which ones do you like better?

(This is code for "Do these pants make me look fat?" One of the pants makes her ass look square and dumpy. The other makes it look curvy and nice. The MAN picks the curvy pants.)

MAN

The second pair.

WOMAN

Why?

MAN

They make your ass look better.

WOMAN

What do you mean, "make my ass look better?"

MAN

(a little nervously now)

I don't know, they're more flattering.

WOMAN

More flattering? Why are they more flattering? Do these other pants make my ass look fat? So you're saying I'm fat.

This all happened very, very fast.

So you can't say yes... well maybe on the inside, but definitely not on the outside.

OK, let's say she does look fat, but there's no way you're gonna say "yes". So you say "no".

Smart, right?

Wrong.

She just looked in the mirror. If she didn't think she looked fat, she wouldn't be asking. Now you're a liar. She can't trust anything you say.

So don't say no.

What if she looks great? Super incredible fabulously smoking hot? "Do I look fat in this?" she asks. You, supremely confident in the truth, answer "NO"

Simple, right?

Wrong.

See above. If she thought she was rocking her outfit, she wouldn't be asking in the first place.

You? Still a liar.

So "yes" is wrong for obvious reasons and true or not, "no" apparently, is also wrong.

Maybe you try the smooth route. "Baby, you are the most beautiful and sexy woman in the world to me."

Just for the record, the "to me" is not going to help you here. She is supposed be the most beautiful and sexy woman in the world to you, so that's just stating the obvious. And "to me" also means that you don't care what anybody else thinks, and you don't care about her flaws, which to her are that she looks fat. You can leave off the "to me"... doesn't make a difference. It's implied.

Also, you sidestepped the question. And she will know that.

Maybe you will try to change the subject... "C'mon honey, hurry up we're going to be late." That's right cowboy, just crack the whip and put some more pressure on that little heifer. She's already feeling insecure, and now in her head it's "Ohmigod we're going to be late and I can't find a thing to wear and I'm so fat."

Actually, you can change the subject, but it has to be on such an epic scale, and so completely off topic that it renders the original question totally forgotten. This is when a monsoon or an earthquake in a foreign land comes in extremely handy. Barring that, I usually bring up something I was asked to do, but forgot. This list is endless, so I can usually mine a nugget that utterly shifts the paradigm, then whisk my lovely wife out the door as she's changing gears.

I'm also clumsy, so sometimes breaking a dish or a glass is effective. Injuring myself by falling down or bashing my finger with a hammer has also been known to work.

If all else fails, I suggest dinner at my parent's house.

That usually seems to do the trick.

What a Charmer

2010-02-25T00:58:00.003-05:00

The inner monologue of this cheap doofus really bothers me.

This guy looks to be about 30 years old, and this must be a first date because he doesn't seem to know much about the girl he's with. At 30 years old though, TGI Fridays is not where I'd be taking a girl on a date. Maybe when I was 17. But 30? Not so much.

Anyway, the girl says, "I'll have the green bean fries", and this douchebag thinks to himself, "Nice, a light eater. I'm getting off easy."

Green bean fries are a $7 appetizer at Fridays. Does this guy really think that $7 is the sum total of what he's going to spend on her dinner tonight? Oh, wait, $7.25 with the sizable tip this prince is sure to leave the server.

She continues, "And for my entree, I'll have the sizzling chicken and cheese."

He begins to panic. "Entree? Chicken... Whoa!"

"Chicken...Whoa." Really? It's not like she ordered a 2 pound lobster, you dick.

And finally, his date decides that "...for dessert, I'll have the cheesecake."

Wincing now, he whines, "What am I, a bank?"

Yes, you dumbass, you are a bank. You are the bank of $21.99, which is approximately what your date's meal would cost at a typical TGI Fridays.

After he realizes she's ordered from the special "3 courses for $12.99" menu however, he becomes relieved and happy.

He should be relieved and happy, relieved and happy that an attractive girl like this would even go out to dinner with a cheap loser like him. (Although if she continues to eat fried beans, cheese and cheesecake, she may not remain attractive for too much longer.)

I don't have a problem with Friday's. If you can get a 3 course meal at a sit down restaurant for $12.99, that's awesome.

No, the problem I have here is that the message (3 course meal for $12.99) is completely obscured by the creative, which is so far off base it's like casting Gary Coleman in The Shaquille O'Neal Story.

A $12.99 price point appeals to very young people or people with families to feed. Not 30 year old guys on a first date. So if this guy is a teenager, then this scenario makes sense. Maybe he's there with his date and her 3 kids. Then it makes even more sense. But if he honestly can't pony up the $45 that dinner for two at Fridays would cost then why is he there at all? Why didn't he take her somewhere else, like Pizza Hut? Or why not just ask his mommy for the money, since it's likely that a clueless loser like this still lives at home with his parents.

Look, not everyone can afford the fanciest restaurant in town. So if Friday's is the place you can afford for your dinner date, that's cool. But if you go there, you actually have to spend some dough on the girl. Because that's part of the point of the date in the first place. You have to let her see that she's important enough to you that she can order from the regular menu. But all this skinflint can think about is spending as little as possible on this girl and this meal.

I'm surprised he's not paying with a coupon.

You Kiss Your Mother With That Mouth?

2010-02-05T16:58:00.001-05:00

INT. JAKE'S LIVING ROOM - DAY (1950)

JAKE (to Joey)
What's that kissing on the mouth shit?

JOEY
What? I just said Hello. Since when can't I kiss my sister-in-law?

JAKE
Ain't a cheek ever good enough for you? I never even kissed Mama on the mouth.

JOEY
Well, you're not supposed to kiss your mother on the mouth.

JAKE
Well, that's what I mean.

This exchange, between Jake and Joey LaMotta, occurs around 3/4 of the way through the screenplay of 1980's Raging Bull. Afterward, LaMotta smacks around his wife and goes on to beat his brother into unconsciousness.

In 1980, this made perfect sense to me.

The kissing part, not the beating part.

I did not grow up in a family of mouth kissers. There were plenty of hugs and kisses, but the kisses were always on the cheek, which seemed right. A kiss on the lips seemed far too intimate for family.

And that's the way it was for many years. Until I had a baby of my own.

And everything changed.

After I saw that perfect little baby and held her in my arms, felt her warmth and life, heard the little squeaks and sighs she made as she squirmed around in her sleep, I just had to kiss her perfect little baby lips. Kissing her lips felt, in some way, more protective. Like it would keep her safer somehow. And she would know that Daddy was there to take care of her.

I figured when we got her home from the hospital and the new kid novelty wore off that I'd stop doing it. But I didn't. It felt perfectly natural, and come on, when it's your kids, they're irresistible. And those sloppy, slobbery, spitty kisses you get back are great. My wife also did it right from the beginning. My mother thought it was weird at first... now she kisses the kids on the mouth too.

Friends of ours have two boys, and their mother recently remarked to me that though she would miss it terribly, she was going to have to stop giving her boys the big smooches on the mouth she calls "movie star kisses".

So I know it's not just me.

Not every kiss is a lip kiss. There's plenty of cheek kisses too. Oedipus and Electra aside though, I know that just as our friend will kibosh the movie star busses, eventually I will have to stop kissing my kids on the lips. I've already pretty much stopped with my older one. But no matter how old my girls become, when I look at them part of me will always see them as those sweet, innocent bundles I carried home so gently and carefully from the hospital.

They will always be my baby girls.

So, did you kiss your mother on the mouth?

And do your kids kiss you on yours?

What, me Grammy?

2010-02-01T16:51:00.011-05:00

Did you see Alfred E. Neuman on the Grammys last night?

I like music, but the Grammys is not a "must see" for me. It is for my wife though, so that means we were watching last night.

I'm glad we were, because when Jay-Z and Rhianna made their way to the stage to collect their Grammy for Best Rap Collaboration they were joined by none other than Alfred E. Neuman. That's right, Alfred E. Neuman of Mad Magazine fame.

Here they are, on their way to the stage...

Getting closer...

Ah ha!

He's a little shorter than I thought he'd be.

Karen Walker, meet George Costanza

2010-01-05T10:04:00.004-05:00

Sometimes God just does you a solid.

Like at the end of Animal House, when that kid is sitting on his bed reading a Playboy magazine, and out of nowhere, a Playboy Bunny flies through the window and lands on his lap.

And the kid looks up to heaven and exclaims "Thank you God!"

So when I saw this, all I could do was look to heaven and say...

Thank. You. God.

Oh, and there's a :30 cut down, too!

I honestly can't believe it has come to this for Megan Mullally. Will and Grace was a pretty good sitcom, and the Karen Walker character that Mullally created, the smart mouthed lush with the jiggly rack and penchant for prescription drugs was an absolute classic. The lines that came out of her mouth were almost always so wrong that it made them so absolutely and incredibly right.

So what happened? Since Will and Grace, Mullally has seemed to suffer from the Seinfeld curse. She's a talented actress, comedic, funny, no reason she shouldn't be able to get a show. But much like Michael Richards and Jason Alexander and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, for Mullally... not so much.

Ok, ok. Julia Louis-Dreyfus has a show on CBS and it's doing well. But it took her 6 years after the fall of Seinfeld to get there. Michael Richards isn't going anywhere, I guess, since he forked himself at the Laugh Factory.

And Jason Alexander... well, it looks like the cheap, petty and amoral George Costanza may have been the career acme for Alexander, unless 1996's Dunston Checks In suddenly re-awakens to spawn a slew of sequels and spin-offs.***

Karen Walker, meet George Costanza. Two memorable characters created by two talented actors, who became victims maybe, of the personas they helped create. Or maybe it's just a question of bad management and representation.

But "Turn the Tub Around" ?

The first time I saw this I thought it was meant to fall under the heading of "so bad it's good."

Obviously I was mistaken, because this is just so bad, it's really, really bad.

There's just something ... off... about the look of this thing, like a cheaply produced music video which has been shot on video, then had a lot of heavy filtration added in post to try to hide the video-ness of it.

There's no one else in this unusually dark and creepy supermarket except Mullally and these 5 stock boys. I'm pretty sure the supermarket is so dark because most of the production lights are trained on Mullally's face, which after 10 seconds suddenly explodes into an overexposed, blown out, soft focused mask. Lighting and camera tricks like this date back to classic Hollywood, when they were used to photograph leading ladies to help to hide wrinkles, bags and other imperfections. The same techniques are also used in beauty ads, with a healthy, healthy dose of Inferno thrown in for good measure.

Maybe that's a good thing though, because before the lighting change Mullally bears a striking resemblance to Teri Hatcher's botox practice dummy.

Tyce DiOrio is the choreographer of record on this. Shame on you, Tyce DiOrio.

Shame. On. You.

You are a talented choreographer. America knows this to be true because we watch "So You Think You Can Dance" and the choreography on that show is always fabulous. So what happened here? There you are on the website, going on about the Turn The Tub Around signature move. Signature move? It's a Cabbage Patch followed by a Running Man. I think I put those two back to back and invented your signature move in the early '90's.

So then I thought maybe this was supposed to be campy.

But this isn't camp. This is crap.

Camp has a point. It is overblown, overdone, ostentatious and purposefully bad, and it often pokes fun at or takes the piss out of its subject. To do camp really well, you have to have mastered the genre you are attempting to lampoon. You have to know how to direct a really good music video to direct a music video that's so bad it's good. You have to know which camera angles work and which do not, where to place the camera, and how to move it. You need to know the best stylists and hair and make-up people. You have to understand dance, lip syncing and performance and know how to shoot them. Only then can you start fucking around with those conventions to turn out something which is good in its badness.

Camp, at its best, is entertaining and funny. But just because you think your storyboard is funny doesn't mean you simply hire an unremarkable comedy director with little or no music video experience to direct it.

This is not for amateurs, people.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but camp is not traditionally the purview of heterosexual males, and this video has "straight guy" written all over it.

***In an interesting side note, Matt LeBlanc of Friends fame, another "where are they now?" actor at the top of his game in the mid-90's, also co-starred with a monkey in Ed, which was also released in 1996. I wonder if Matt and Jason held hands as they jumped the shark together.

Bowling for Freaks

2009-11-16T18:04:00.011-05:00

So I'm sitting here on Virgin America, 35,000 feet up in the sky, posting to my blog.

The experience can only be described as... groovy.

If you've flown Virgin, you'll know what I mean. This is my first flight on Virgin (insert Virgin "virgin" joke here). The service is impeccable, the amenities top-notch, even in coach (or the "main cabin" as the airlines like to call it).

And yet, spoiled little shit that I am, 15 minutes ago I was sitting here getting all tweaky because the interactive screen that plays the movies and music and games and TV, and lets me order food and drinks and chat with other passengers was frozen, and the wi-fi wasn't working.

Can you imagine? The wi-fi wasn't working.

Boo hoo.

How self important I am, what an sense of entitlement I feel to actually get bent out of shape because technology that wasn't even available a couple of years ago is now a little sluggish when I've got my ass in the seat.

It is amazing, it should be amazing and never stop being amazing that any of this works at all.

So for my next act, from 35,000 feet up and without a net, I am going to download a couple of spots that I thought it might be fun to share with you.

I love the Geico ad, and I'm not ashamed to say that I love the cavemen.

Geico, (well the Martin Agency, really), has developed a brilliant strategy of running completely different campaigns, concurrently, for the same product.

Yes, yes, I know that each campaign focuses on a different feature of the brand. The googly eyes are about saving money, the cavemen about ease of use, the gecko about name recognition.

But while almost every other advertiser would attempt to cram all of these messages into the same :30 second bag, Geico and Martin don't. They create singular spots about a single idea. How refreshing.

Stories unfold. Characters are developed. Laughs ensue.

They have got that soooooo right.

Then this little gem of a Metro PCS spot, which I also love. The only thing that could make this spot better would be a talking unicorn. It's so "what the fuck-y" it can't help but break through, and it does.

But it's the location for both spots that makes them really good, I think. Why does it feel so right for the quirky freaks in these spots to inhabit bowling alleys?

Because no matter how you tart it up, no matter how top shelf the booze you serve, or how fancy the menu, a bowling alley is still a bowling alley.

A bowling alley is the ultimate "come as you are" venue. A place where you can be yourself. Have a few beers with a few buddies. Whoop a little bit and throw some high fives. There is no preponderance of etiquette in a bowling alley. No golf whispers. No one puts on airs.

You can accept each other, and be accepted by others, for who and what you are.

Like an alien can accept a giant. Like a neanderthal can let his inner caveman come out for a little while.

And don't forget the beer.

Ice. Cold. Beer.

My Early Alzheimers

2009-10-30T16:13:00.012-04:00

I can sometimes be absent-minded.

My wife keeps mentioning early Alzheimer's. Maybe that's so, because much like someone with Alzheimer's, I can't remember what I ate for dinner yesterday, but I have no problem at all remembering small details from nine or ten years ago.

Which is why, when I saw this spot, I thought "RockyMortonFoxSportsNet". (I really thought it like that... one long word with no spaces.)

But the spot was not directed by Rocky Morton, and it is not for Fox Sports Net. This one was...

...and so was this one.

The first spot, for the Game Show Network, is Shoot Online's "Top Spot of the Week".

By the way, is "Spot of the Week" not superlative enough that it needs to be modified with "Top"? Are there other spots of the week? I never got that.

Anyway, is it just me, or is this "Top Spot of the Week" really, really similar to the other (funnier) work?

I wrote a post in July about two spots with strikingly similar creative, wondering if it was possible that the same basic idea could be developed independently, without the second agency being aware of the work another agency had done before.

I guess it is possible.

This, however, is a blatant rip off, and it is executed in a painfully clumsy way. The tag line is exactly the same. I mean come on, at least change the words around a little.

What makes this even worse is that in an effort to make the plagiarism less obvious, the very thing that makes the joke work has been changed so that now there is no joke at all. In the Fox work, the protagonist is saved from a compromising situation by a sports question, hence the line, "If only every question was a sports question".

If only indeed. The sports question just saved a hapless slacker from explaining why Fluffy is licking his nipple and there's a boner in his pajamas.

In the GSN spot who would want the question to be a Newlywed Game question? The boss? Why? The employee? I don't think so... in the next scene she'll be getting written up by HR, wishing she'd never opened her mouth.

When you change the structure so that somebody doing something ordinary is asked a funny question the construct falls apart. Plus, the question isn't funny anyway.

So tell me, please, is there something about this spot that I am missing which makes it the "Top Spot of the Week" ?

No, I didn't think so.

For the love of God, if you're going to steal someone's creative, at least don't fuck it up.

Updated: Creepier than creepy

2009-10-28T13:00:00.005-04:00

Updating this post to showcase a longer version of this spot, which is even more unsettling than the one I originally posted:

This is the creepiest commercial I have seen in a long time, which is appropriate, because it's about the creepiest subject I can imagine.

I first viewed this on the company reel of Absolute Post. On DVD the detail is incredible and this posting comes nowhere near doing it justice.... the texture of the skin, the veins, the hair, even a mole or two... this disgusting cock/snake/tentacle looks absolutely real.

It's only missing a glans and a urethra, and that probably only because even in Germany the line about what is suitable for broadcast must be drawn somewhere.

Somehow that makes it even more loathsome. The way this blind meat snake appears to almost sniff its way forward. It has no eyes yet you know it sees without seeing. It has an intelligence.

It is completely and utterly malevolent and evil.

Scent of a Hobo (or Minnie Mouse and the Astronaut)

2009-10-26T17:42:00.016-04:00

At 4:52 this morning I sat down to watch Sunday's episode of Mad Men.

I'm not a masochist. I don't enjoy rising at 5AM.

Well that's not entirely true. I leap straight out of bed at 5AM when I'm going to catch the 6:35 American flight from JFK to LAX.

But it ain't the 6:35 to Los Angeles that gets me out of bed these days. No, I crawl out of bed between 5 and 6 every morning because that's when my daughter wakes up. And since you can't explain to a 15 month old that Daddy really needs another couple of hours of solid sack time, when she's up, I'm up.

While the rest of the house is sleeping, while there is a chill in the air because we're trying to wait as long as possible before firing the furnace up for the season, while she drinks her bottle and I make coffee, those hours between 5AM and 7AM are time we get to spend together. We spend that time talking (although I have no idea what she is saying) or playing or, like this morning, catching up on TV.

That's how I came to be watching Mad Men in the wee, small hours.

As the show opens, Don is in the kitchen talking to his kids about Halloween. Sally wants to be Minnie Mouse and Bobby wants to be an astronaut.

Sally says to Don,

"...they sell it at Woolworth's.. There's a section that says "Halloween costumes.""

To which Don replies,

"You'll wear it once. Plus, its made out of plastic and it's crap."

Thanks, Dad.

I knew exactly what Sally was talking about, and immediately I was 6 years old again.

Before you could buy a Buzz Lightyear costume on the Internet that was made of fabric and padding and actually looked like Buzz Lightyear, if you wanted to purchase a costume from a store, you'd head to Woolworth's or your local five and dime.

Do you remember these costumes from the five and dime? They came in a box made out of thin cardboard, with a cellophane covered cutout in the lid where the mask was displayed. The mask itself was a piece of molded plastic painted to look like Batman or Aquaman or Mickey Mouse... whatever. Two staples fastened a thin piece of elastic to the mask, and this slender, stretchy lifeline clasped the mask to your face. The rest of the costume was a plastic jumpsuit, that tied in the back, printed with the uniform or outfit of whoever you had decided to be.

The one size fits all-ness of the mask made it impossible to get it positioned just right, and by just right I mean with your nose in the nose part of the mask so you could breathe, and the eyeholes in front of your eyes so you could see.

In the choice between breathing and seeing, I usually chose seeing. Which meant, on a cool October night the mask would quickly become moist inside, as the vapor from my exhale built up on the inside of the cool plastic. And so, clad in a plastic bag, half blind, with a cold, wet plastic shell pressed up against my face I'd run from house to house, pillowcase grasped in a candy fueled death grip. Trick or Treat!!!

God, that was fun.

We almost never got our costumes from Woolworth's. Mostly because they were made out of plastic, and they were crap. And partly because we would only wear them once. But the real reason for our family, I think, was a money thing. It's not like we were poor. We weren't. But a Halloween costume from the store must have seemed like a frivolous expense to my parents when a perfectly good one could be made at home.

So usually, we'd end up making our Halloween costumes. Sometimes my mom would sew them.

Sew them?

Who the hell knows how to sew anymore? Not put on a button or repair a hem. Shit, I can do that. I mean really sew. Cut out a pattern and pin it to some fabric. Stitch the whole thing together on a sewing machine. Who even knows how to operate a sewing machine? Who even owns a sewing machine?

But sew them she did.

At the end of the day though, Sally Draper doesn't go trick or treating as Minnie Mouse, and Bobby Draper doesn't go as an astronaut. She's a gypsy and he's a hobo.

A hobo.

I'd often thought that a hobo and a tramp were the same thing, but apparently, hobos are drifters who work, and tramps are just drifters. Both, apparently, are higher in stature than a bum, who neither drifts nor works.

When I was a kid, a hobo was a perfectly legitimate Halloween costume. Get an old shirt and pair of pants from your dad. Stuff some newspaper into a bandanna and tie it on the end of a stick. Set a cork on fire and rub the burnt end on your face for that authentic hobo five-o-clock shadow. Simple.

You don't see many hobo costumes these days. I suppose this is because it's no longer politically correct or desirable to dress your kid up as a homeless person for Halloween.

I'm just wondering how it was ever desirable or acceptable to dress your kid up as a homeless person for Halloween.

You Can Make Movies!

2009-10-16T16:33:00.017-04:00

Here's a charming little video about the vendor/client relationship.

I came across this gem while perusing the Denver Egotist. If you're not familiar with the Denver Egotist, you should check it out. It's a great blog about advertising in general, and the Denver ad joint specifically.

Anyway, at the end of the video it says "if you can type, you can make movies. Xtranormal.com"

I can type, so I went to Xtranormal.com to check it out. Here's a little something I rustled up first time out of the box.

It was fun to create and the site is super-easy to use. Just pick a scenario, then type in your script. If you select "MagicCam", the site will even pick the camera angles for you.

But we're not going to let the site pick our camera angles, are we?

Because deep down inside, the director in us knows that we could do a better job than the website. After all, we're artists, right? And here's our chance to make our commercial the way we want it, without account people and clients and directors who just don't get it sticking their noses in and fucking everything up.

Uh, did I say commercial? I meant to say video.

Heh. Yeah.

Video.

So, um, as I was saying, there are animations, expressions, sound effects and camera angles you can choose to make your film everything you want it to be. Just pick what you like and then drag and drop it in the script where you want it to be.

Then hit "preview" and viola! Your own little creation.

But wait a second, wouldn't it be better if you cut to a close up for that line? Ooh, a fart sound effect. That would be funny.

Ok, hit preview again.

Just want to make that expression happen a word or two later.

Hit preview again.

Maybe a different music track.

Preview again.

What? How could I possibly have been tweaking this thing for 3 hours already?

Didn't I have some work to do today?

I hate you Xtranormal.

I love you Xtranormal.

Worth $1

2009-10-01T06:01:00.020-04:00

I think there's probably a guy like this in every city in every country in the world. You know, the oddball you see strolling down the street with a snake draped around his neck?

I came across this pet lover a few weeks ago outside the Coffee Shop in Union Square.

Aaaah, the Coffee Shop, where tourists go to eat Cuban sandwiches, and models go to become waitresses.

Anyway, I snapped a couple of photos of this guy before he noticed me and hit me up for a dollar. Hey, if that's how this dude makes a living, that's cool with me. I was happy to give him the buck. At least he's providing some entertainment for it, more than the garden variety NYC panhandler. And it looked like he could use the single more than me.

For the most part though, I find the panhandlers in NY to be pretty low key. They understand the nature of the transaction. They ask you for some dough, and you either give it or you don't. The business ends there and they understand that the transaction is over.

There are some gambits that I hate, though. Like the guys who hit you up on the subway between stations. Look if I'm walking down the sidewalk and you ask me for a handout, it's easy to just keep walking if I choose to. There's a whole lot of room on the sidewalk. But the subway is different. I'm already making some sizable concessions to my personal space to begin with, locked in that tiny metal box with a couple hundred close, personal friends.

So the doors close and then, the pitch. Someone at the head of the car begins, in a loud voice, to make his case. Sometimes it's entertaining, like the guy who used to ask if anyone could spare $100. His reasoning being that he could do a lot more with $100 than $1, and why not aim high, anyway? I had some respect for that guy because he wasn't gaming anyone. He knew he was begging, I knew he was begging, there were no secrets, no made up sob stories. I used to drop him a buck or two.

After the pitch, the speaker will walk the length of the car, cup in hand. On most lines in midtown, it doesn't take very long to get from one station to the next. Usually it's under a minute. And I'm always sure that this is the time he'll time it wrong, that there's no way he'll finish talking and walk the whole car before the doors open again. Like I'll be able to escape at the next station before he makes it to me. But as always, he's timed it perfectly and reaches me before the doors have opened to vomit out the current human cargo, and swallow up the next batch of meat.

Come to think of it though, these guys would make great ad men. Consider it. They have perfected the art of the elevator speech. I know some highly paid people who could take a lesson or two from their subway brethren.

The other scheme that really irks me is the "I just need $xx.xx to get home" game.

There used to be a girl who sat outside of Grand Central station with a neatly lettered sign that read, "Please help. I need $12 for a train ticket home". The sign was very nice. She'd obviously put a lot of time into making it. Like she was going to be using it for a while.

She was there every day. Could it be taking her this long to collect the twelve dollars? If she didn't yet have the money to get home, where did she go every night? She was always neat and clean, sporting a different outfit every day.

After about a week, I felt like just giving her $12 and ripping up her sign. I mean, after she got the money she wouldn't need the sign anymore, right?

Elsewhere in the city...

I thought this little bit of street art was pretty cool. The paper on the floor says something about Twitter... I didn't get a great look at it.

This reminded me just a little bit of the Black Cherokee. If you've ever driven south on the Harlem River Drive, just before it turns into the FDR Drive, right by where the traffic slows up for the Triboro or RFK or whatever the fuck that bridge is called now, there is a triangular bit of pavement off to the right.

And here, on this little Isosceles island, maybe you've noticed something something unusual. Perhaps a shopping cart turned upside down with a watermelon perched on top. Maybe the detritus of the highway, discarded tires and mufflers and side view mirrors, collected and piled haphazardly yet carefully into a sculpture that defies logic, and sometimes gravity.

If you have noticed these unusual assemblies, you have viewed the art of Otis Houston, the man who calls himself Black Cherokee. Sometimes you will even see Otis himself, sitting or standing, motionless, a part of his own art.

Check out Otis next time you're in the neighborhood.

I don't know what half his art means.

But I know it must mean something.

Buy a Dictionary, please.

2009-09-22T14:34:00.021-04:00

I've had more than one boss, be it a Head of Production or an ECD, tell me that they don't like their staff to get "too comfortable."

Really? Don't like your people to be too comfortable?

Managers who want their staff uncomfortable believe, in some fucked up logic flow, that a person who is constantly worried about losing his job is motivated to try harder. That he or she will spend more time working, and somehow produce more or better product.

There is a term for an employee who is anxious, perpetually worried that his boss will come down on him, and always afraid of losing his job.

That term is "job seeker."

A person who spends so much time worried about losing his job doesn't spend his time doing his job. He spends his time looking for a different job. Which is too bad. I'll bet agencies lose a lot of good people that way.

Maybe you don't want your staff to become self-satisfied, unconcerned and lazy. That makes sense.

But self-satisfied, unconcerned and lazy is not "comfortable." It's "complacent."

There's a difference.

Look it up.

I've managed groups, and I've always found this to work pretty well:

1. Create an atmosphere of trust
2. Take all that other shit off the table
3. Let people become comfortable.

When people are comfortably un-worried about losing their job, they become free to concentrate on actually doing that job. They relax, view problems in a more holistic manner, and find solutions they might never have lit upon with a foot wedged up their ass and a monkey on their back.

If you've hired the right people they will be grateful of this, and not take advantage of your good nature.

Managing people is a lot like training dogs. Both species are basically good natured and loyal, with varying degrees of intellect. And both species possess many of the same motivational triggers. To wit...

Reward
Obey command, get treat. Dogs like treats. Simple.

This works pretty much the same with humans. Do job, get compensated. Do excellent job, get excellent compensation. This is good in theory, although I'm willing to bet that many of us do an excellent job and are not excellently compensated.

However, money talks, and most people will put up with quite a bit if they're getting paid enough for it.

Fear
The dog is terrified and will do whatever is asked because the alternative is worse... the scolding, yelling, and in some cases beating, is more horrible to endure than simply obeying the command.

Fear mongers try to keep you terrified in the belief that it will scare you into doing a better job. There is scolding, yelling, and in some cases beating. Of the mental kind, anyway. Although I'm sure the physical kind happens too.

I used to work for a guy like this. With him, everything sucked. All the vendors sucked. They were too expensive and too slow, and their work was terrible. The talent sucked, the director sucked. The editor sucked. The rough cut sucked. You sucked.

He used to send e-mails about this. Mean ones. We called them "you suck" e-mails. The more he sent, the less effective they became, until finally I just ignored them. I didn't like him, and I didn't like the way he tried to intimidate me.

I did my job, but he didn't get an extra ounce of anything from me... which sucked for him because I've got plenty extra to give.

I've always thought that guys like this lose big, because they don't get anywhere near the best that their people can give. When people loathe and despise you, they don't particularly want to please you. How often do you hear someone say, "I hated that asshole, and I did some of my best work for him."

Love
The dog loves his master and will do whatever is asked because it makes his master happy... the praise and satisfaction mean more to his little doggie heart than anything else he could possibly imagine.

Sometimes you like and respect your boss so much that you want to do good work for him. For the agency and the client too, but also for your boss.

These are the guys who are not afraid to hire smart people, the smartest ones they can find. They don't fear that these hires will have newer and better ideas than they do, they bank on it. When someone trusts you and respects your opinion as a professional it is empowering, and extremely motivating.

I've worked for guys like this, and it doesn't suck.

So, love or fear... which works better? (Let's just forget about "reward" for now, agencies don't work like that)

In 1993's A Bronx Tale, Sonny, the local mafioso, waxes philosophical to his young protege...

Sonny: Is it better to be loved or feared? That's a good question. It's nice to be both, but it's difficult. But if I had my choice, I would rather be feared. Fear lasts longer than love.

Machiavelli posed this question in The Prince. In 1532 he came to the same conclusion that Sonny would come to 477 years later. It's nice to be both, but forced to pick one, he chose "feared".

Maybe this is the right answer if you're running a country, or the Mafia.

When you're running an agency, not so much.

James Dean Lives

2009-09-18T17:25:00.022-04:00

THANK GOD!

For a while I was beginning to worry that resurrecting dead celebrities for use in whoring goods and services was a dead art. Thank you Allan Gray for reminding us that this particular brand of creepiness still thrives in the ad game.

Actually, this is not so creepy. There are excellent production values, and it's easy to see the team has really tried to be true to the construct of "if James Dean had lived, what might he have accomplished?"

I know we love to romanticize James Dean, but I just find it hard to believe that had Dean lived to be an older man, he would have looked exactly the same as he looked as a 24 year old, except with white hair. A skinny dude with an unlined face and a big shock of white hair.

Who's to say that an aging James Dean wouldn't have been paunchy and balding? Maybe he would have taken a page from the Sean Connery book...

Sean's thickened a bit and the hair is gone, but I think the consensus is that he's still an attractive man. No reason Dean might not have aged the same way, right?

In Giant, Dean ages about 40 years or so, from a youthful ranch hand to an alcoholic playboy who's done his share of hard living

No Stan Winston or Rick Baker prosthetic miracles here. He looks like a kid made up for Halloween, but then so do Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor in the same film. I guess back in the day you didn't want to make the star talent look too aged. The studios deified these stars, and the public came to worship at that altar. And who wants to worship a broken down old god?

But at least he looks somewhat older, there are some years on his face, some bags under the eyes. Then again that may simply be Dean, the actor, living the part.

Regardless, it's 2009, a different era. We're savvy enough to understand the commercial , even if they'd chosen to put some mileage on Mr. Dean. Perhaps given us a little more to think about.

By the way, if you're going to flat out steal a shot from a film, I guess you might as well steal it from a good film, like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, right?

But, at the end of the day, the Allan Gray spot is still pretty good. I think that's because the team chose to cast an actor rather than create a digital Frankenstein of movie outtakes and bits of newsreel footage, held together by hours of digital manipulation.

And they resisted the urge to go for the big music. Instead, a lone piano picks out a melody, sweet and sad at the same time.

This, however, is frickin' creepy.

The Sterling Cooper Advertising Agency... Anti-Semites in Very Nice Suits

2009-09-16T16:41:00.015-04:00

What is up with the Sterling Cooper Agency?

They've been dissing Grey Advertising for three seasons now, and I just don't get it. Did Matt Weiner work at Grey at one time? That might explain it!

I worked at Grey for thirty-eight percent of my life. Not thirty-eight percent of my career. Thirty-eight percent of my life. Not counting sleeping, most weekends and some vacations, from the moment I exited the womb till just now, thirty-eight percent of those years were spent at Grey.

And most of those years were pretty good ones.

So when I started to hear the word "Grey" pop up on Mad Men, it got my attention. The first time was a quickie, one character mentions to one another that a colleague is "at Grey now." I shouted to my wife, "Isn't that cool... they just mentioned Grey on Mad Men!"

Don Draper runs into Rachel Menken while he's catting around with Bobbie Barrett. Remember Rachel Menken, the Jewish department store client who briefly sized up Sterling Cooper as an agency before Draper's dick got in the way?

Don says something like, "How's things at Grey? Those guys still taking credit for our work?"

Hmmm, Grey again. What does Draper mean by that? Is he implying that Grey stole the work from Sterling Cooper? Would he have said the same if the Menken account went to a Wasp shop like BBDO or JWT?

Grey used to be known as a Jewish agency. I know this to be true because of a story told by a family friend. She relates how, in the early 60's she sought a job at an agency. Since she is Jewish, someone suggested she apply at Grey because it was a "Jewish agency." Aghast at the thought that she would use her religion to gain a position, she declined to apply.

Which I found interesting, because if someone told me there was an "Italian agency," I'd have my reel over there quicker than you can say "Chef Boyardee."

Now Duck Phillips, newly at Grey, has invited Pete Campbell to lunch. Campbell, who perpetually looks as if he is aware of a ghastly odor that only he can smell, arrives to find Peggy Olson there as well. Which causes Pete's already pained visage to pinch up by such a degree that one would think Duck had presented him with a turd on a silver platter.

In an effort to calm him, Duck tells him to sit down and "...have a nosh."

To which Campbell replies, "Two months at Grey and you're already having a nosh?"

This retort, and the expression of utter disdain which accompanies it, leaves no question about how Pete Campbell feels about a nosh, people who nosh in general, and people who nosh at Grey specifically.

Make no mistake, it's a Jewish thing... imagine the scenario like this:

Duck: "...have some lunch"

Pete: "Two months at Grey and you're already having some lunch?

Not quite the same.

As I watched this, it occurred to me that Duck Phillips is now working with some of the same people at Grey that I would work with, albeit some years later. Which is a little trippy, like some Back To The Future parallax of reality and entertainment.

To be fair to Mad Men, I think the show is simply (and honestly) portraying the realities of the New York ad business in the early '60s. Like most big agencies of the day, Sterling Cooper is the Wasp-iest place on the planet. The only black person there is Hollis, and he's the elevator operator. Look around the creative department of any big agency today. Not exactly a hotbed of racial diversity, and the more senior you get, the more the color bleeds away.

The only other person at Sterling Cooper with even a trace of ethnicity is Sal Romano and poor Sal has bigger issues to deal with. (I loved the look on Kitty's face when Sal, in full flounce, acts out the Patio commercial and the light slowly goes on for her that, oh my god, my husband is a homosexual).

There's one other very funny thing which occurs in this episode. As Duck attempts to woo Pete and Peggy he says, "At Grey an account man is expected to have ideas, and creatives are expected to be geniuses. You'll be sitting on velvet pillows, showered with riches, rewards."

I believe this is the exact same recruiting verbiage used by Grey today.

Back to School

2009-09-13T14:13:00.014-04:00

It's now mid September, and for the last 2 or 3 weeks American families have been going through the familiar, time honored traditions and rituals of going back to school.

I remember the feeling of summer drawing to a close... the 8 or 9 weeks that had stretched endlessly before me on the last day of school dwindling down to the last few weeks, then days, hours, and precious minutes till freedom was over and prison began again.

I remember the feeling of new school supplies... marbled composition books, fresh, clean binders, a ream of loose leaf paper, yellow unsharpened #2 Ticonderoga pencils, all laid out and ready to go, like ammunition before a battle that would last for the next 10 months.

I never quite understood the marbled composition book, though. If you tore out a page, a page somewhere in the back of the book fell out. For every action an equal and opposite reaction... the yin and yang of education, I suppose.

This year my daughter has started a new school. It was a big decision, taking her from the tiny, private school womb into the larger, more feral world of public education. But the local elementary school is a pretty good one, and lord knows we can save the monthly tuition for college, or something else.

But anyway, there we were in the schoolyard on the first day of 2nd grade, small knots of parents chatting each other up, kids milling about in the frenzy that is the first day of school, and my daughter.

A little girl with a big backpack.

I was prepared for tears from my daughter... maybe my wife. My little girl surprised me.

My wife, not so much.

I was so proud of my daughter... a huge building, hundreds of kids, new people and faces and routines. And scariest of all, no friends. No classmates from last year, no kids from the neighborhood in her class. I could see how nervous she was, but she sucked it up and marched in like a trouper.

And that was it.

Where was the drama? Where was the run up of tears and anxiety before the first day at a new school? Where was the acting out, the irrational and unexplainable behavior that we as parents were supposed to sagely interpret as the inner feelings of turmoil that she, as a 7 year old, would be unable to express in words?

Could it really be that easy?

No, of course it's not that fucking easy.

Only 4 days into the school year, some kid is picking on my daughter. Tugging at her backpack, talking shit to her on line each morning in the schoolyard. And this morning, finally, the tears came. They came in the schoolyard... probably the worst place of all, in front of her teacher, her class, everyone. My wife called to tell me about it.

I'm a rational dad, not prone to violence or flying off the handle. So naturally my first instinct was to go down to the school and smack this kid. I don't care that it happens to be a 7 year old girl. She made my daughter cry. Only I am allowed to make my daughter cry.

You don't think it's appropriate to talk about smacking the brat who's picking on your daughter? Then you don't have kids. Anyone who is reading this, who is a parent,

knows

exactly

what

I

am

talking

about.

According to my wife, smacking this kid is not an option. So she told the teacher, who promised to nip this in the bud. Great. Sometimes that works. Sometimes it makes the little shit try even harder because she is obviously achieving the desired effect.

I'm working from home tomorrow, so I'm gonna drop my daughter off at school, and pick her up at 3:00. I'd like to get a look at this kid and her parent(s) before I meet them in the Principal's office.

If she comes from the right kind of family, her parents will do the smacking for me.

Mow the Lawn

2009-09-02T21:45:00.010-04:00

I was first made aware of this spot by a friend of mine. I'll call him Steve.

This is convenient, because his name is Steve.

Steve was asked to review this spot for a monthly trade publication; I won't spoil the surprise by saying which one. But I read the review and I thought it was witty and funny and spot on.

OK, so you've watched the spot, and you get it. It's for a special razor women can use to groom their most special of special places.

Each lady's grooming style is represented by a bit of shrubbery, and there are several different coifs portrayed... the Landing Strip, the Patch, the Trimmed Natural. There's one glaring omission, though (no, not Brazilian, although that is noticeably absent).

When at least one woman passes by one of these shrubs, shouldn't all the leaves just fall off?

I mean, that's not an uncommon 'do, and it certainly is achievable with this product. So what gives? We know that plenty of women will be baring it all with this razor. Why be bold enough to construct this innuendo but too timid to follow it all the way through?

Same product, different country. Here's the commercial that airs in the UK...

Wow. Different vibe for sure. But what did you expect from the country that gave us Benny Hill?

There are some great lyrics in this song. A couple of my favorites...

"...all that's left for me to see are tulips on the mound..."

and of course...

"never feel untidy, just spruce up your Aphrodite..."

I also love how the furry cat in her lap at the beginning (get it... the cat in her lap) is hairless by the end of the spot.

It would appear that in the UK, they are not afraid to let the leaves fall off the bush.

Same War, Different Sand.

2009-09-02T19:21:00.012-04:00

In 1953, this was pretty hot.

Hell, 56 years later it's still pretty hot.

Love during wartime, Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster, swelling violins, crashing waves. It's got to be one of the most dramatic scenes ever captured in the sand.

Until now.

Take 8 minutes and 33 seconds out of your life to watch a drama of an entirely different kind unfold in the sand.

I'd never heard of sand animation, and I'd never seen anything like this, at least not created live as a performance.

The artist, Kseniya Simonova, performs this piece on the finale of "Ukraine's Got Talent". Yes, there really is a "Ukraine's Got Talent", and Kseniya Simonova is 2009's winner. The piece depicts the loss and devastation of the Ukraine during World War II, where almost one out of every four Ukrainians lost their lives. It is clearly a deeply emotional topic for this nation, as many in the audience who would not be born until twenty, thirty or even forty years after this conflict are moved to tears by the love and loss depicted in Simonova's work.

Simonova herself proves a dramatic performer. Her "brushstrokes" are swift, sure, and precise. This 24 year old tosses handfuls of her medium with gusto and bravado, an Itshak Perlman of beach sand.

Oh yeah, it also doesn't hurt that she is smoking hot.

Here's another performance she gave during an earlier round of the show. I've since viewed other sand animators on You Tube and the Internet but to be honest, they seem like amateurs compared to Simonova.

This is unique. It is true performance art on every level... the performance itself is artistic, invoking an uncommon talent that creates and re-create a canvas every moment, one scene morphing to another before our eyes. The routine is painstakingly choreographed and rehearsed, images and actions timed precisely to the music. And of course the images themselves are art, the same but different every time.

The constraints of the choreography make this all the more artistic, to me anyway. Simonova is a soloist playing in a different medium. She's not making it up as she goes. She can no more change the pictures in her routine than Perlman or Yo-Yo Ma can change the notes in a Mendelssohn concerto. Lots of people can play a Mendelssohn concerto, very few can play it like Perlman or Yo-Yo Ma.

Lots of people can draw pictures in the sand. Very few can draw them like Kseniya Simonova.

The Dumbest Kid in Advertising

2009-08-26T12:35:00.008-04:00

How many times does this kid need to be told?

They don't expire... they're rollover minutes.

I mean after half a dozen commercials doesn't this kid get it yet? I think his Mom has had enough. Look at her face... she can barely contain herself. She is practically quivering with rage.

If another one of these spots gets produced and this kid still can't understand that one AT&T minute is just as good as another, I think the Mom is actually going to beat him senseless.

It's funny to watch how she becomes more and more unhinged from spot to spot... a couple of years ago she's mildly annoyed, then begins to get more frustrated, starts becoming unhinged, then positively paranoid.

Beat it kid.

I like these spots. They're well written and the casting is great. The Mom is a real quirk, the Dad is like an actual person, not the doofus dad we're used to, and the kids are close enough to real teens to be convincing.

Only one problem, though.

See, your AT&T rollover minutes actually do expire.

They do get old, and after a year they expire. Says it right there on the bill... "Unused Package Minutes Expire After 12 Billing Periods."

So cool it Mom.

Turns out your kid is the smartest kid in advertising.

Dead Baby Alert

2009-08-18T14:01:00.017-04:00

Yep, that's a spoiler alright.

At least it is if you're the type of person who is disappointed to know in advance that this video contains, among other things, images of a dead child.

For the rest of us, it's more like forewarned is forearmed.

This video is an excerpt from a 30 minute film co-produced by the Tredegar Comprehensive School and the Gwent Police. It is a graphic and disturbing illustration of the consequences of distracted driving.

There are a million potential distractions in your car that you can't do much about. Crying babies, barking dogs, arguing siblings. Those things are part of life. But no matter how cacophonous screaming kids can be, they do not usually compel you to take your eyes off the road.

The car stereo does. Back in the day, everybody knew someone, or knew someone who knew someone who was in a wreck because they were fiddling around with the radio and took their eyes off the road for too long. Or maybe the driver of the other car did. Either way, there was a wreck and you heard about it.

But that was just the car stereo. And 20 years ago, that's all there was. Today we bring other, more insidious distractions into the car.

Blackberrys and cellphones.

No matter how brilliant of a texter you are, even if you can text without looking, there is one thing you cannot do. You cannot read texts and e-mails without looking at something which is not the road in front of you. You cannot keep one eye on the road while reading with the other. Sorry, not possible. We are just not designed that way.

So what do we do instead? What is our workaround for this problem?

Simple. We get into our cars and get up to speed. Maybe 65, 75 miles an hour. Seriously, no one drives 55, not you, not anyone. Then we take a teeny, tiny device out of our pocket or purse. This teeny, tiny device has a teeny, tiny screen, and teensy, weensy keys which are about 1/4 of the size of your pinkie fingernail. Isn't that the cutest thing! And now, every few seconds, we will switch our focus back and forth from the road and cars all around us, to the 3 inch screen in front of us.

This sounds like an excellent idea so far.

There are two basic techniques one can use going forward from this point. If you're a Blackberry kid, you're accustomed to typing with both thumbs. So you'll press the Berry up against the top of the steering wheel, at the 12:00 position, support the back with your index and middle fingers, type with your thumbs, and grasp the wheel with your ring and pinkie fingers.

Out of 10 fingers you've got a full 4 of them on the wheel. Atta boy, sport!

Now this sounds like a good idea, because the Berry is right up near the windshield so it'll be easy to glance back and forth between the road and the screen, right? Your eyes barely have to move at all, right? You can even use your peripheral vision to sense the cars in front of you, right?

So when your Spidey-sense detects a car cutting in front of you, the 4 weakest fingers that you possess are going to be able to quickly and securely steer you out of harms way, in a split second.

Right?

The other technique is the "one hander". Used mostly by veteran texters, you will cradle the phone in the palm of one hand and manipulate the keys with your thumb, while grasping the wheel firmly in the other.

This also sounds like a good idea. If you held the phone out at arms length in front of you, right up by the windshield. But you're not gonna do that. You're gonna hold the phone down near your lap, the back of your hand supported by your thigh. So now you look through the windshield for a while, then eyes completely away from the road down to your lap for more seconds than you realize, then CRASH! YOU'RE DEAD!

I think we all would agree that texting or e-mailing while driving is not a great idea. I admit I've done it, usually in the morning when I'm running late for work. Which is usually always. But it is a terrible, awful, dangerous behavior. I won't be doing it again after today.

So why do we do it? What is so compelling about our messages, or the thought that we might miss something that can't wait till we get there? Tell me, please. Is any of it worth dying for?

Screw that. You can die for it. You can kill yourself if you want to. But killing your family, or friends? Stealing children from parents, or mothers and fathers from babies? That's fucked up, and so supremely selfish that if you do it, you deserve to die. Hope you do.

Have a nice day.

A long walk spoiled.

2009-08-15T22:32:00.007-04:00

I've produced so many commercials over the years that I've become accustomed to all dialogue being delivered in one or two line bits. It's difficult to remember that actors sometimes are called upon to do more difficult things, like walk and talk at the same time.

You think it's easy to walk and talk at the same time? Try this.

Could you do that? I know I couldn't.

I've watched this half a dozen times and I keep getting nervous for Robert Carlyle, like he's somehow going to screw it up halfway through and have to start over. And each time he delivers the last line and walks away from camera, I feel like he must be heaving a sigh of relief thinking, "Thank God I got through it that time!"

I know Carlyle is a trained professional, and I know the amount of choreography and rehearsal that must have gone into this. But still, one take? I think that's brilliant. And the Red camera is gorgeous here.

How far was the walk, do you think, from beginning to end?

I'm not above being manipulated. Christ, I've spent my career trying to do it to other people. So even though I know I'm watching a commercial, and a 6 1/2 minute commercial at that, I don't mind it in the least. It is so well executed that I've got to appreciate and respect the craft that has gone into it.

Except for one minor thing. One teensy weensy little thing.

WTF with the 60 second credit roll at the end???

See, now this is where everyone gets a little off track and begins to confuse art with commerce.

"Look at this beautiful piece of art we've created. It's like a little movie, isn't it? By God it is a little movie. Oh, look at us lads, we've made a little movie. Why, we must attach our names to this because everyone who sees it will want to know who we are. They will want to know the name of the Props Buyer, and the Caterer, and the Brand Manager. Because we are important. We are the important people who create these beautiful little films and bring them to you."

Does anyone care who the Johnnie Walker Brand Home Manager is? I don't think so. It's a commercial for chrissakes. Get over it.

This unfortunate lapse in judgement does not negate the fact that Johnnie Walker has a history of really smart, beautifully directed and produced spots. Here's another one of my favorites.

A Collection of Things I Like

2009-08-13T12:50:00.008-04:00

Been looking for something to write about but it's been a pretty dry week. Nothing's jumping out at me, and I really need to feeeeeeeeeeel it, you know? Otherwise what's the point? Gotta have passion in everything we do, right?

But the header of the blog does say "a collection of things I like"... it's not solely devoted to spots and production. So here's three items I've come across in the past few weeks that I find generally wicked cool.
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iPhone: I don't know about you, but I'm just not as fast messaging on the iPhone as I am on a Blackberry. Not having actual keys to press still fucks me up sometimes, there's simply no tactile feedback to let me know that I did indeed press a key, or the space bar, or whatever. But the real pain in the ass is switching between keyboards to add numbers and punctuation.

So here's how to make that go faster. When you want to add a number or other mark to your text, press and hold the ".?123" key, then drag your finger to the mark or number you want. When you lift your finger it should insert the mark and switch back automatically to the alphabet keyboard.

Just think what you can do with all the time you'll save.
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Drop.io: As a freelance producer, I never cease to be amazed at the minuscule attachment sizes allowed by most agency and client e-mail servers. I understand that nobody wants to clog up their e-mail server with a lot of huge files, and no one deletes anything anyway until their mailbox is full. But sometimes you just need to e-mail a rough cut, you know?

Enter drop.io. This is a great tool for freelancers, agency producers, anyone who needs to move large files around and doesn't want to deal with managing those files when the job is over.

There's plenty of drop box services, but drop.io has a couple of features that make it particularly user friendly. First of all, it's free. Your drop box is 100MB, which is a decent size, but you can have as many drop boxes as you want. So it's really unlimited. The most excellent bit, though, is that you can set the length of time that the files stay active. Default time is one year, but you can set the expiration for different lengths. So your vacation photos or client materials won't be floating around the Internet forever, and you don't have to remember to delete the files or the site when the job is over. To me, that's huge.

There are some other great features that you won't find on other drop box services. You can fax to the drop, and it creates a pdf of the file. You can e-mail directly to the drop. You get a phone number; people can call the drop and leave you a voice-mail. And you get a conference bridge to boot. It is a pretty useful tool.

I'm gonna go drop something in there right now.
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This is kind of trippy and creepy at the same time. Open up this picture and take a good look at it. Actually it works a lot better if you download it and make it bigger. Like fill up your whole screen with it, or print it out. Now get up from your computer and walk across the room and look at it again.

Aaaaaaaah!

Is that crazy or what? Apparently it's got something do with how our eyes pick out different resolutions (sharp lines vs. blurry ones) and process that information over distance and time. It's part of some work being done at the Computational Visual Cognition Laboratory at MIT.

There's some more of these creepy pictures here. If you are so lazy that you cannot get up from your desk, or if your office is really small, these movie files will simulate the experience for you.

You know it's funny...

2009-08-07T14:01:00.002-04:00

A little something for Friday, apropos of nothing.

I do so love the Japanese.

Where's the joke?

2009-08-05T13:53:00.027-04:00

Have you see this spot?

I get this. The guy hears his wife talking on the phone about all the delicious goodies in the house. Apple Turnovers, Boston Creme Pie, Key Lime Pie. But where are they? He can't find them. Where could they be?

Ahhh they're the yogurts!

Duh-oh! What a dumb ass!

Another commercial where the man/dad is a dope. I don't particularly care for it but I get the joke.

But the next one makes no sense to me at all.

Is this sequel supposed to take place on the same day as the first spot? The guy is wearing the same shirt but different pants. The woman is wearing a very similar sweatsuit, but with a different T-shirt, and her hair is now in a ponytail.

If it is supposed to be a different day, the wardrobe would be obviously different, not sort of the same, right? Is it later that same day? Later that month? Next week?

And the relationship between these two? She doesn't respect him; every look she gives him pretty much says "what a idiot I married". He is obviously scared to death of her... he's afraid to talk on the phone when she's in the room. Is he in trouble now for talking on the phone, or eating the yogurt, or both? Was he supposed to ask permission? Did he eat her favorite flavor?

I don't get the joke.

The first spot follows the familiar, unfunny formula where the woman/mom is smart and the man/dad is a hopeless doofus. It's a terrible construct, but we're inured to it, so it goes by largely unnoticed. It's usually executed in a good natured manner, no one gets hurt.

I guess the second spot follows the formula too, but there is nothing good natured about it. It's just uncomfortable to watch. And not funny, either.

Did the first spot sell so much yogurt that a second one had to be produced? Maybe the demographic for this is "women who think their husbands are idiots."

Hmmm, that's probably a pretty big segment of the population. Maybe they've got something after all.

The beginning of the end

2009-08-03T17:29:00.006-04:00

My morning routine goes something like this:

-Wake up to the sound of our daughter over the baby monitor.

-Roll over and groan… can it really be 5:30 already?

-Pick up baby, smile, give many kisses.

-Put baby in high chair, make a pot of coffee, make baby bottle.

-Sit down on couch, put on morning news, administer bottle.

This Saturday morning was a little different, though, because after I made the bottle I uncapped it, put it in front of her, and watched.

She knows how to drink from a sippy cup. But a bottle is a little different. She needs to hold it at a specific angle so that the nipple fills with milk and she gets liquid, not a bunch of air.

So on this particular morning she picks up the bottle, puts the nipple in her mouth, then throws her head back and begins to drink. And I am delighted. “Yay! What a big girl!”

And then it hits me.

This is the beginning of the end.

This is the beginning of a process that ends with my baby girl not needing me anymore.

I've got 2 kids, so I've given hundreds of bottles in my lifetime. Maybe a thousand, even. And every time I had to drag myself out of bed at 3 AM it was a colossal pain in the ass. But by the time I’d settled into the chair, and got that little baby nestled in my arms just right, that was always gone. There is a closeness, a bond between you and that half sleeping baby. She needs you. She needs you to care for her and look out for her and wake up in the darkness and feed her. She needs her Daddy.

Now she can drink it on her own. She doesn't need me for that anymore. And while the advantages to this are huge, I am happy and sad at the same time. It is a milestone marking a dependence that has begun to slip away.

We want our kids to grow up and become strong, independent individuals. We want them to sleep through the night and get potty trained and dress themselves.

But on some level, we want them to stay little forever. To depend on us, to need us in this most fundamental way. To know that when they are frightened, we will be there to hold them, when they are sad we will make them laugh, and when they are hungry in the nighttime, the bottle, and the Daddy, will always be there.

Peacock of the Walk

2009-07-30T12:59:00.006-04:00

I sometimes hear women complain about how males age so much better than females.

About how it's unfair that many men keep their looks longer, about how a white haired gentleman is viewed as distinguished and experienced and sexy, while a white haired woman is viewed as... old.

Why do men age better than women?

Simple. Men age better than women because women don't like to have sex with ugly dudes.

Calm down. You know it's true.

For the most part, a woman can have sex anytime she wants to. She just has to let it be known that she's into it and she'll pretty easily find some takers. But a man can only have sex when a woman wants to. So unless he's Brad Pitt he's really got to put some effort into it, put himself out there, and still face rejection more often than not.

So the good Lord gave men a little helping hand in the genetics department. Take a look at the tawny mane of the male lion, the lustrous cape of the silverback gorilla, the ornate antlers of a big male elk, or the riotously colorful tail of the male peacock. These ornaments exist to make these animals more attractive to the ladies. So they can get it on.

Bronx Zoo, about 3 weeks ago. While I was waiting for my wife and daughter to emerge from Madagascar, I witnessed this impressive display.

Come on, baby.

This poor guy is working his ass off. He's dancing and shaking it and getting his feathers just right and she won't even look at him. Just turns up her nose and walks away. Now this is a pretty good looking peacock. Hell, I'd do him. But he can't even get the time of day from this disinterested peahen. I guess she went off to look for a bigger dude with a more impressive fan.

So, rejected, he will continue to try to woo this peahen, and if not her then another, and if not her, then maybe one of those pigeons strutting around on the roof.

Women, do you see how hard we have to work just to be with you? If this fine specimen of manhood can't get laid, what hope do any of us have?

So please, grant us this one little advantage.

And that is why men age better than women.

Execution... eh. Concept... total dunkslam!

2009-07-29T00:18:00.007-04:00

You'll see what I mean.

I am working on introducing "Dunkslam" into the vernacular... it's so lame that it is actually very cool.

I love this next spot. It's getting a lot of write ups and it's very funny. The casting is spot on. Who knows what this guy does... sales rep, construction, manufacturing, whatever, it doesn't really matter. What does matter is that he's pissed, like an angry red pimple about to pop!

Funny, yes. Will it air? No. This is an agency or directors cut. It has to be... it's 43 seconds long. Who airs a :43?

Agency and directors cuts are the lazy way out. It's easy to take all the best bits from your shoot and put them into a spot that can never air because it's an odd length, or so edgy that the client will never buy it. The real challenge to all of us, writers, art directors, producers, account people, is to make the on air cut and the agency cut one and the same. A cut so good that the agency is proud of it and the client loves it. Otherwise what's the point?

It's doubtful this spot could ever air. Despite all the careful bleeping, it's completely clear what this guy is saying and I don't know what network, cable or otherwise, is going to air a spot in which the main character says, "I will rip off their fucking heads... I will shit down their fucking throats." It's funny, don't get me wrong. I just won't be looking for it on the air any time soon.

Maybe this :43 is for the internet. That would take time and content constraints off the table. However, there is a :30 of this spot somewhere... haven't seen it yet, but if it's for broadcast it's probably a bit different.

No matter, it's still f*%king funny (see how I bleeped myself but you still knew what I was saying).

And I loooooove those sideburns!

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

2009-07-24T15:52:00.010-04:00

I always find it interesting when this happens.

Last summer Capital One Bank ran a big spfx spot featuring gigantic push pins which fall from the sky and impale various items on the earth (a cab, the sidewalk, a fire hydrant).

It's treated in a offhand manner, the people on the street don't seem to mind too much that school bus sized death spikes are hurtling from the heavens causing huge property damage and a threat to human life. A guy walking down the sidewalk even bumps his head on one while he's texting (so cute!) Actually, I do that sometimes too, and I don't even have huge skewers falling from outer space in my neighborhood.

The big, behemoth push pins tie in with the cute little push pins on the map to show the myriad locations of Capital One banks.

Cut to a year later, and the Governor's Highway Safety Office of Tennessee has released this spot.

"This summer if you're speeding, driving under the influence, or driving without a seatbelt, you're gonna get nailed."

Then big, giant nails fall from the sky, impaling the hoods of the offending vehicles and stopping them dead in their tracks. Get it? You're gonna get nailed.

There's not a lot of people in this ad, but from the way it's shot and the effects are handled, it's pretty clear that there are serious consequences for the drivers of these vehicles, especially when the window rolls down at the end and we meet the Tennessee State Trooper. This alone is plenty of incentive for me not to speed, drive under the influence, or not buckle up. I simply do not want to meet this guy.

If you haven't noticed, the basic premise in each of these spots is strikingly similar. Maybe the creatives on the "Nailed" spot saw the Capital One spot. It was hard to miss, it was all over the air last year. Maybe they didn't and came up with this on their own. It doesn't really matter.

The question is, which spot is better? And make no mistake, one is better than the other.

Do you like the one with the cutesy visuals which powerfully illustrate that there's a bank on almost every corner?

Or do you like the one with the lame pun which powerfully illustrates that if you speed in Tennessee you will get fucked up?

You don't have to be Tom Kuntz to direct a good Skittles commercial

2009-07-24T14:33:00.004-04:00

See?

Although I have to admit, "Pinata" and "Touch" are truly great... I might go so far as to say brilliant. The casting, the direction, the characters that are developed in short span of the spot...

OK maybe you do have to be Tom Kuntz to direct a good Skittles commercial.

One square acre = 4840 square yards

2009-07-21T13:27:00.026-04:00

I looked that up because of a post I read recently about something that took place 67 years ago.

In 1942 fear ran high that America's west coast might be attacked by the Japanese, particularly airplane manufacturing facilities like the Lockheed plant in Burbank, California. So the Army Corp of Engineers, with the help of scenic designers, painters, art directors, landscape artists, carpenters, lighting experts and prop men from MGM, Disney, 20th Century Fox, Paramount and Universal did something about it.

They made Lockheed disappear.

Well, it didn't disappear from the earth, but it did disappear when viewed from the air, where Japanese bombers would have been looking from. The entire plant was camouflaged to look like farmland and a rural housing subdivision. Now remember, an airplane manufacturing plant is not one simple factory building. It's a complex consisting of many buildings. There are buildings for fabricating parts and assembly, huge hangers for aircraft, offices for designers and support staff, runways, and parking lots for the thousands who work there. It's spread out over acres and acres. Lockheed was at least 25 acres. So this was a huge undertaking.

Which brings me back to the title of this post... if one square acre = 4840 square yards, then twenty five acres equals...

wait for it...

121,000 square yards.

One hundred and twenty one thousand square yards of camouflage, rolled out and tented over every building, parking lot, runway and road in the place. By hand. And painted to look like haystacks, barns and split level ranch houses.

This is stunning, completely stunning in its simplicity. I can hear the briefing now...

"Colonel, how are we going to do this?"

"Well General, we'll get a hundred thousand yards of fabric, and paint it to look like a bunch of houses and farms. Then we'll roll it out over everything and hold it up with a bunch of sticks"

"Sounds good Colonel. Dismissed!"

It sounds crazy, but you know what? It worked. It worked brilliantly. Look at the pictures.

This is before...

And this after... almost the same angle as the before picture. Where did Lockheed go?

Lockheed was under all that stuff... see?

So simple in execution, yet so effective. This was the cutting edge technology of the time. Chicken wire, glue, wood, nails, some paint, and hard work. I don't guess this would hold up today, but in 1942 it was perfect.

Could you tell the difference from the air?

Couldn't have said it better myself

2009-07-16T14:46:00.010-04:00

Check out this post by Dave Tutin about the current state of automobile advertising.

Dave is a creative director I had the pleasure of working with at Grey for several years. He is smart and talented and a bit of a Renaissance man, so when faced with the choice to stay in the ad biz or get the hell out, he chose the latter. He now lives in a beautiful house in Santa Fe with his lovely wife, and writes songs all day (as near as I can tell!)

I agree with Dave's POV about the gratuitous use of violence and speeding in car ads, and the message that these ads are sending.

I'll go one further, though. In the Mercedes spot that Dave writes about, the car is the character, you don't see the driver. There is no person to identify with and the experience is not personalized. It could almost be the video game fantasy that Dave refers to.

But what about when you do see the driver? Take a look at this Lexus commercial for their 2010 IS line of cars:

These cars are speeding through city streets... looks like Los Angeles to me. In New York, the local speed limit on most city streets is 30mph, and I don't think Los Angeles is much different.

These cars are going a lot faster than 30mph. Even if in actual fact they are not, they have been filmed to appear as if they are, which is essentially the same thing. The tires are spinning, leaving rubber, the back ends fishtailing as the drivers round corners at excessive speeds.

It's not like this city is deserted. You can easily see people on the sidewalk. And the drivers are screaming, screaming with the orgasmic thrill of piloting their vehicles dangerously and recklessly through the intersections and crosswalks.

Here now, are actual drivers, real people that the viewer can identify with. "Hmmm, they're having fun. Maybe I should buy a Lexus."

Here's another brilliant ad:

In this one, a Mustang GT peels out and leaves rubber, just like the start of a drag race. The car comes to a halt, we cut to the interior where a father turns to his son and sternly lays down the law "Now that's what I'm talking about," he says. "This is not a toy."

Great, here's a dad teaching his kid about responsible driving. The kid nods seriously.

Then the dad smiles conspiratorially and says "Wanna go again?" And off they go in a cloud of smoke and rubber, leaving all that responsibility and common sense in the dust. And a big bold graphic and voice over tell us about bold moves that happen everyday.

This is bold? Noooo, this is stupid. Anyone who buys this car for his kid has got to know that at one time or another, the kid is going to drive exactly like this. This dad goes so far as to teach his kid how to do it, then tell him not to, then wink and let him know that it's really OK.

"Oh, but they're in a deserted parking lot," you say. "There's no one around. No one will get hurt." Doesn't matter. The lesson is the same. The lesson is that it's cool to drive like this. And as soon as the father gets out of the car, the kid is going to pick up a bunch of his buddies and head down to the local strip to show off his new toy.

Oooh, maybe they'll pick up some beers on the way.

Up On The Roof

2009-07-16T12:58:00.006-04:00

I don't get out to as many parties as I used to... I guess I'm getting old, or maybe rushing home for the chance to see my kids before they go to bed holds a greater appeal for me these days. But every once in a while I like to show up somewhere for a couple of drinks and to see who's out and about.

So a few weeks ago I stopped by a little soiree at an edit/post company. Ran into some people I knew, had a few drinks and saw this out the window:

I don't know who this girl is, or how she got out there, or if she was even a guest at the party. But it had just begun to rain, and as I watched this unfold I was sure that she was going to slip off this roof and go straight down into the street. It was a bit like watching an ABC After School Special, where the good kid who's trying to fit in at the new school gets high on "the pot" and has a "bad trip". "Look at me Mom, I can fly, I can fly!!!"

Splat.

This would have been unfortunate for her, but would have made the party a very much talked about event. Eventually she climbed down, I suppose, because no police or paramedics ever showed up.

Remember kids, drugs kill. Stay off the pot.

Soylent Green factory in Greenpoint, Brooklyn

2009-07-08T15:03:00.013-04:00

The locals say it's a sewage treatment plant but we know better...

I'm pretty sure the egg shaped chambers are where the magic happens.

The people are fed in from the top, processed, and extruded from the pipes at the bottom.

Then the extrusion is rolled out into chips and dried in the flat moisture removal ovens in the foreground.

Trucks roll in and out every once in a while.

You know what I'm talking about.

What's the deal with the soup spoon?

2009-07-07T10:24:00.012-04:00

When did the soup spoon become the de facto spoon at the deli?

Soup spoons are great for one thing... eating soup. Well, three things if you also count that picnic race where you have to transport an egg from one place to another in a spoon, and tunneling your way out of prison.

But for spoon borne foods that are not soup, the soup spoon is an awful choice. It is meant to be held to the lips and drunk from, not inserted entirely into the mouth. It's simply too wide and deep and round for that. If you've ever eaten a yogurt or oatmeal with a soup spoon you know it's almost impossible to get all the food out of it without turning it over and licking the inside with your tongue. And who wants to do that?

The humble teaspoon is my hero spoon. It's shallow and tapered and fits easily into the mouth. It's not so deep that your lips can't wrap around it and pull off the food. And the tapered shape makes it easy to scoop out that last bit of yogurt or pudding from the bottom of the cup.

So why is it that every time I buy a yogurt or an oatmeal at the deli, they throw a soup spoon in the bag? They might as well put a spork in there for all the good it does me.

I think it's a convenience thing. Like whoever orders the plastic cutlery only has to order one kind of spoon, not two. Maybe they think they'll save some money that way. I guess the reasoning is "a spoon is a spoon, let's just get the one that does everything."

But I think they've got it wrong. The teaspoon is the more versatile spoon. The one that does it all. I'd rather eat soup with a teaspoon than anything else with a soup spoon any day.

The Gloved One and a couple more

2009-06-30T11:45:00.015-04:00

What a crazy week it was.

Only hours after Farrah Fawcett had gone, the bomb that is the death of Michael Jackson exploded on the world. I don't care who you are or where you live, if you've been alive since 1969, when the Jackson 5 really hit, Michael Jackson was a part of your life. He was a extraordinarily talented entertainer and his contributions to pop music and music video inarguably changed those two art forms forever.

He was also one strange dude.

My wife has always asserted that his strangeness was completely natural. Her point being that this was a kid who from the age of 8 was a prisoner of his own fame. Imagine if you couldn't open your front door and step outside because you'd be set upon by a screaming mob. Can't go down to the corner for a Coke. Can't go to the movies. Can't do anything that is not documented and photographed and scrutinized. I mean, here's a guy who had an Elvis level of fame at 8 years old. How do you deal with that?

And the work. The relentless, ongoing work, the practicing and performing, the traveling, the packing and unpacking. Michael Jackson spent his childhood in a studio or on a stage. Not in a playground. Not in a park. This guy's childhood was taken from him, and I think he spent the rest of his life trying to get it back.

Granted, he acted strangely, and for me the jury is still out on his relationships with little boys. But there is no doubt he was a genius. He brought joy to millions of people who loved his music. He inspired people, made them laugh and dance, consoled them when they were hurting and sad.

So that begs the question... if his father, Joe Jackson, hadn't driven Michael and his brothers so hard, hadn't kept them in the studio rehearsing till the wee hours of the morning, if he hadn't stolen all that time from them, would we ever even have known who Michael Jackson was at all? If the Jacksons went to school, played in the yard, did their homework, and rehearsed only a few hours a week, would they have attained that skill level, the incredibly tight singing, dancing and musicianship that rocketed them to the top of the charts?

Or would their career have consisted of a few gigs at the local fairgrounds each summer and a couple of high school dances?

I think if Joe Jackson hadn't pushed those kids so hard, they never would have achieved that level of fame. And we never would have heard of Michael Jackson or the Jackson 5. We would have lived without "ABC" and "Dancing Machine" and "I'll Be There" and "I Want You Back" and "Ben" and "Thriller" and "Billie Jean" and "Rock You" and "She's Out of My Life" and a hundred others.

So is that right, what Joe Jackson did? At the end of the day he stole his kid's life and gave it to us. Thank you Joe... I think.

I didn't have a poster of Ed McMahon hanging in my room (did anyone?), but there is no doubt he was a part of my life, at least as far as TV and entertainment went. From "Heeeeeeeeeeere's Johnny" to the Publisher's Clearing House, Ed was always there. Kind of like that friendly neighbor who lives down the block. You're sad he's passed, and you remember him fondly. And then your life goes on.

I miss Billy Mays already. Billy Mays did a Rula Lenska on America, just walked right up to the camera and "Hi, Billy Mays here for Oxi Clean" as if he'd been there all along. As if we had any idea who he was or what the hell he was talking about. He just pulled up a chair sat right down at our dinner tables as if we'd been watching him for years, and you know what... we bought it. And then we went out and bought a crapload of Oxi Clean and Mighty Putty and Kaboom and whatever the fuck else he was selling. He created an instant authority for himself and it worked. At first people were, "well I don't know who Billy Mays is, but he seems to know what he's talking about." And then 5 minutes later it was, "well, if Billy Mays says it's good, it must be. I gotta buy me some of that."

The first time I saw this clip I didn't think it was that funny. The second time I watched it I laughed out loud. Now I start laughing immediately. Is it the most fitting homage to Billy Mays? I don't know, but fuck it, it's funny.

Goodbye Farrah

2009-06-25T14:49:00.008-04:00

Today, after a 3 year battle with cancer, Farrah Fawcett left us forever. In the words of her co-star Jaclyn Smith, "...now she has peace as she rests with the real angels."

Oh Farrah. In 1976 you were every 13 year old boy's dream. I had your iconic poster and am proud to admit that it hung prominently in my room forever. I can't begin to imagine the number of hours I spent simply gazing at you. By today's standards it was an extremely tame image... innocent, even. Just a casual snap of a beautiful blond woman with a 10,000 watt smile. The swimsuit wasn't very revealing. It didn't have to be. It was filled with you and that was simply...enough. You weren't bursting out of it, not enhanced or implanted or botoxed, just a sweet slice of Texas with an incredible blond mane. Often imitated, never duplicated.

I had never seen a creature quite like you. I was awed by your beauty and to those who said you couldn't act, well the hell with them. You acted wonderfully as far as I was concerned. It was a bit of a bummer that you were married, but you were married to the Six Million Dollar Man! I mean come on, if you were going to be unavailable, who better to be unavailable with? It's like if Santa Claus was married to the Tooth Fairy.

Maybe you were a little typecast, maybe no one took you too seriously, maybe being Jill Munroe was a cross you had to bear for your entire career. But for a brief moment in time you were the ultimate fantasy for millions of young men, and that's got to be worth something, right? You were mine for a time, and now you are gone, so today I am a little sad.

Goodbye Farrah. I hope you do rest with the real angels for all eternity.

Never charge your phone again... ever.

2009-06-17T11:01:00.008-04:00

Most of us spend a good deal of time with a cell phone glued to our ear, producers especially. And all of us have been stuck at one time or another with a desperate need to make a call, and a dead or near dead battery. Even if you happen to have a charger on you, an electrical outlet is usually not available in a cab or on the sidewalk. The clever engineers at Nokia may have solved this problem forever, with a self charging cell phone. Yes, you read that correctly, a phone that charges itself with no need to plug it in anywhere.

I used to work on Nokia, and I always found their product line to be extremely innovative, incorporating gadgets and features just not found on other phones (a heart rate monitor, a flashlight, a phone the size of a lipstick tube). We don't see these phones in the US, because our selection of phones is limited to what Verizon or T-Mobile or AT&T decide they want to offer us. But in other countries where you shop for the phone, and not the service, you can get some pretty sweet handsets.

Anyway, this phone charges itself by harvesting ambient radio waves that are bouncing around in the air, invisible to us, and turning those waves into electricity. I've often wondered what life would be like if we could see all the different kind of energy waves we are surrounded by on a daily basis. Radio waves, TV signals, cell phone signals, microwaves, WiFi... there's enough of these waves just hanging out around us to create usable power. If each one of these had a color and was visible, we probably wouldn't be able to see an inch in front of our faces! It makes me wonder what effects this daily wave bath will have on us in the long term.

This technology won't be rolled out for 3 to 5 years, but when it is, the "I forgot to charge my phone" excuse will be as relevant as a 1 hour photo booth.

i don't know what to say...

2009-06-13T07:42:00.005-04:00

"Being a big guy certainly has its advantages... and disadvantages"

What is the one advantage about being a "big guy" that trumps the ability to wipe one's own ass?

Guess I did know what to say after all.

Kind of Geeky but Crazy Cool

2009-06-12T18:22:00.010-04:00

Look at this web video.

Looks good, right? I bet it looks even better when you find out that it was shot with this camera:

That's right. You can shoot HD video with this Canon EOS 5D digital SLR. The VW piece was directed by Neil Tardio at Chelsea and the Bandito Brothers. And a lot of people are doing it. Granted this camera costs around $3000, so maybe we're not all going to run out and buy one today, but you can shoot 10 minutes of HD video on the memory card, even more if it's SD. And it will take any Canon lenses, it's really small, light and unobtrusive... are you feeling it? Here's a music video that was shot by Hydra at Humble using this camera.

I don't know, I just thought this was crazy cool.

This Is Beautiful

2009-06-10T17:17:00.003-04:00

I don't have a lot to say about this spot except for the fact that it is beautiful and brilliantly, flawlessly executed. This tiny little posting doesn't come close to doing it justice, there is just so much detail and nuance in there. Do yourself a favor and download the Cinematic version at the Passion Pictures website. I've watched this thing 4 times now, it just keeps getting better.

No rain, no rainbow.

2009-06-09T12:06:00.011-04:00

I like Sprint's "What if --- ran the world?" campaign. There's one for delivery people, and this one for film crews.

Like most things on TV, this is a dumbed down version of a film set created for the general public. I've been on a lot of sets, and it's not quite like this. But there's one thing they got totally and completely right. Did you ever notice that on any shoot you've ever been on, no matter where the location, and no matter how cold the temperature, there's always one guy on the crew, usually a grip, wearing shorts? Once I was shooting in Canada, in January, by the side of a country road..at night. It had to be about 28 degrees, and the agency was issued these incredible production service down parkas. Those coats were like Admiral Peary at the North Pole parkas... they were thick and stuffed so chock full of down, each one weighed about 30 pounds. And still we were freezing. Yet there was that one grip skipping around in a fleece and cargo shorts.

Granted, the Sprint spot looks like it was shot in Malibu in the summer, but even so there's our boy in shorts. Looks like he's art department but still, thank you Sprint (actually Jim Jenkins and O Positive) for the nod to reality.

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God Bless the USA
Recently I've been working at an agency in New Jersey, which means about 2 hours a day commuting back and forth on Rte 80. It's not a bad drive, and occasionally I'm rewarded with something like this:

I don't know who this guy is, or what line of business he's in, but obviously he's getting things done, whether I like it or not. You can just make out the pair of golden cojones dangling rakishly from the trailer hitch. I love how this guy has decided to forgo matching the chrome on the balls to the chrome on the truck, and has instead opted for the more Jersey-ish mix of gold and silver. I think that really puts an exclamation point on the whole thing, don't you? Having said that, I would be quick to point out that I am hardly one to judge, since this photo was taken as I was piloting the vehicle pictured here...

Brewhaha

2009-06-04T21:29:00.006-04:00

A terrible pun, I know, but aren't terrible puns the best? No? Ok, nobody here thinks so either. But there does seem to be an awful lot of fuss about this web spot for Bud Light:

It's pretty obvious how this innocent shlub is going to spend his Friday night... and of course things go terribly, horribly wrong. They have to, otherwise there's no commercial. Bud Light is no stranger when it comes to pairing that bland golden lager with adult reading materials... see 2001's "Centerfold" directed by Mike Wang (yes, a director named Wang shot a spot titled "Centerfold").

But for the all time best example of things going terribly, horribly wrong in the most outlandish way imaginable, I think Brian Buckley's "Emergency" for Dr. Pepper (aka "Butt Naked Boy") takes the cake. I mean, if I had any cake. You could take it. Or I would share it with you.

I'm having a hard time getting behind this one

2009-06-04T06:38:00.004-04:00

I don't deny any guy the desire or opportunity to take his wife out on a date. But when that date includes Air Force One, 600 police officers, and untold layers of visible and invisible security, that's a pretty expensive date. It's not the cost that bothers me, honestly that date won't make one bit of difference in the trillions of dollars of national debt, or my taxes, even. It's the idea that this date couldn't wait until the President was in NY on official business, so that all this trouble and expense wouldn't be incurred unnecessarily. It's a little bit like rubbing this privilege in the face of people who can't afford to go out to dinner or a Broadway show, and using my tax dollars to do so. And that's not cool.

This ad from General Motors makes me feel the same way. GM didn't go bankrupt by selling intelligently designed, fuel efficient cars that people wanted to buy. Apparently they've finally figured that out and produced this spot to tell us what other car companies have known for years. The production and media costs for this ad are certainly in the millions of dollars. Is that the best way to start spending that shiny new government money? GM should wait until they've got something to show us, like new models that define their message of "leaner, meaner, faster, smarter". That would be their official business. Then they can spend millions of dollars on advertising, which would be their date night. You and I now own an infinitesimal bit of GM, and this feels like my face getting rubbed by GM spending my money irresponsibly.

Also, GM might want to check with Ford before touting themselves as the re-birther of the American car, since Ford is not bankrupt, has not filed for bankruptcy, and has been quietly building hybrids and fuel efficient models, getting the whole car building thing a lot better than GM or Chrysler recently.

I love kids...not really...well sometimes...maybe?

2009-06-03T23:54:00.005-04:00

I'm watching the 3rd night of Conan on the Tonight Show, and it's a pisser.

But I digress.

Here's a writeup on screaming in advertising, courtesy of AdFreak. It notes a new VW ad from France which features a screaming kid, along with Career Builder, Bridgestone and Heineken ads. All great examples of screaming. But if you want to see the best screaming kid ad ever, this is it.

And for the spot that defined the genre, look no further...

...true.

What a twitchy git

2009-06-02T17:34:00.006-04:00

Here's a UK spot for Oven Pride. It's the typical dumb dad scenario... the man appears to be a helpless tool who's not much good at anything, and his wife is glaring at him like, well like he's a helpless tool who's not much good at anything. Sometimes I get annoyed by this stereotypical portrayal of the dad, but in this case I've gotta side with the wife. Look at this guy. He is twitching and jerking and grinning like a monkey with Tourettes. No wonder his wife wants to smack him in his head. I want to smack him in his head. Is this is selling a lot of oven cleaner, do you think? Thanks AdFreak for this one!

In blessed and marked contrast, here's another UK ad that really gets it right. Completely different product, different budget, different target audience. I'm not comparing the two ads, I just think this one is really well written and produced. Although I'm not a gas fitter or a dish fitter, it does makes me want to storm the local saloon for a beer. AdRants, you rock.

A few things for Friday

2009-05-29T13:50:00.009-04:00

Here's a few things I'm digging from this past week.

Check out this spot... I don't think there could be any better demonstration of this product's key claim/benefit...

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Here's another spot from this week that I kind of like for Jack in the Box. I started to get all wrapped up in the logic here... If the cows are miniaturized, wouldn't the horses and cowboys herding them be too? Because even those tiny horses and actors are way out of scale to the cows. But finally the track won me over and I told myself to shut up already and stop trying to apply logic to a situation that obviously requires none.

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One of the key benefits of bathing in the sink is moments like this... some days I wish she could stay like this forever.

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Goodbye ConEd
I have got to get me one of these... actually maybe a half dozen of these and put them up on the roof. Hey, it couldn't hurt. Check out the website.

Jellyfish Wind Appliance

Why the $5 bill just became my favorite piece of paper money

2009-05-22T13:58:00.008-04:00

For money I actually carry around on a regular basis, I used to love the ten dollar bill. There's something uncommon about it. I've always got a pocket full of Washingtons and Lincolns and Jacksons, but Hamilton is a little more elusive. I don't know, maybe there are less $10's in circulation than the other guys.

Take some cash out of your pocket and have a look at it. Washington looks kind of pissed off, and Lincoln has one eyebrow slightly arched, like he's checking out something in the distance. Jackson looks like he's about to cry. And Hamilton has this cocky little smirk on his face, like he just took the clothes out of your gym locker and hid them while you were in the shower. And all the guys are facing to the right, except Hamilton, who is facing to the left. What an oddball. Maybe that's why Burr put a bullet into him. Either way, when I've got a ten I try to keep him around for a while.

Until today. Because today I finally found out what it is that Lincoln is looking at in the distance. Take a peek.

This spot is for Bontrust, a German financial consulting company. Lincoln's friend is Clara Schumann, the famous German pianist who appears on the 100 Deutschmark. And the new man in town is played by the inscrutable Mao Tse-Tung, face of the Chinese Yuan. Even without any titles, the message is pretty clear. Your money needs to be working hard, in markets all over the world, to create more money. Lincoln is clearly unafraid to work hard. And that is why the $5 bill just became my new favorite piece of paper money.

Credits to Optix Digital Pictures in Hamburg for a job well done.