I didn’t steal this from the fail blog. I stole it from real life with my magic digital image capturing machine!
May, 2009
A Conflict of Interests
Friday, May 29th, 2009Google Maps can tell you how to get to Sesame Street, but you’re gonna need to be a lot more specific
Thursday, May 28th, 2009Google maps has no less than 10 entries for Sesame Street (six of them in Florida), who would have thought? In related news, Sesame Street just turned 40! Newsweek has a great article about how amazingly awesome Sesame Street was/is and how it literally changed the way we think about early-childhood education on a global level. Not too shabby for public television.
I specifically remember this clip from the many hours of my youth that I spent transfixed by Sesame Street. I have no idea why it made such an impact on me.
OMG, the making of crayons? Sign me up! I vividly remember this clip, as well. It’s still wonderfully hypnotic.
Oh the cuteness, it it too much. I am powerless against it.
…and this is just straight up funny.
‘zine of the times
Tuesday, May 26th, 2009In a former life, I used to run into the most random magazines ever. It’s the kind of thing that gives you a somewhat unwelcome, yet wildly fascinating look at the human condition.
Correctional News ran ads for suicide-proof clothing that I swear used homeless people as models for their stylish, life preserving foam tubes. Some of their ads (the scans of which I have sadly misplaced) also featured former competitor eater and football player, William “The Refrigerator” Perry, hawking extra durable cafeteria trays.
Warmth AND modesty!
There was also Landscape Online, which once ran a story (although, technically they got it from the AP) headlined: Iraqi’s Struggle With Tree Care. This was back in the early 2000s when times were different, but I imagine that even today, tree care still remains the least of their worries.
In Barnes & Nobles, I recently came across America’s Civil War magazine and it caught me off-guard. Perhaps it was the cover shot, sans leg. Or the article entitled: “How Lincoln Freed the Sioux (well, some of them).”
On their Web site you can read such highly controversial fare as: “Visiting Stonewall Jackson’s Left Arm at Chancellorsville” or “The General’s Mount: a Poem on General Forrest’s Horse“– that one spans three pages.
In other news, the demand for information about fashion dolls is high enough to warrant a quarterly magazine, but apparently not sufficient to warrant bi-monthly distribution. Fortunately, B&N have deemed it worthy of gracing their shelves. A victory for literacy and fashion doll enthusiasts everywhere!
Newman!
Thursday, May 21st, 2009No sooner had Wall-e’s credits started to roll then I was online trying to find the film’s soundtrack. It was a professional and personal necessity that it occupy both my iPod and my mental landscape. The magnificient score was created by Thomas Newman (with a bit of help from Peter Gabriel). No surprise then, that many of the tracks would immediately join Paper Writing Music, a playlist largely built on the foundation of the Newman’s soundtrack for American Beauty. Hit it boys!
Thomas Newman & Peter Gabriel – Define Dancing
Thomas Newman – First Date
It’s madness, madness I tell you!
Tuesday, May 19th, 2009The NYT ran an article last week about how marketers and advertisers have tapped into the anger everyone is feeling about how we’ve all been shafted one way or another during the current economic meltdown. I think on cable news they’ve taken to calling it “populist rage.”
“The campaigns take an outspoken, provocative tone that is unusual for mainstream marketing messages, which typically try to avoid aggrieved attitudes for fear of alienating audiences. The change reflects the significant shift in sentiment as the public reacts to the wrenching and, at times, frightening financial events of the last year.”
As one of the legions of millennials (depending on who you ask), I think the success of these ads, or really their relevance in general, has to do less with tapping into some kind of rage and more of simply speaking the truth. No more sugar-coating, ads are going organic! The article cites the Post Shredded Wheat commercials, which I think are brilliant. But I don’t buy the argument. Sure, you could describe the ads as “fired up” but I think it’s kind of a big leap to go from the distaste for credit default swaps to a mistrust of innovation in your breakfast foodstuffs.
What I think Post has done instead is “own” their essence of their product. Rather than portraying the brand as sunshine and lollipops with old people having tender moments with their grand kids as they eat shredded wheat in the breakfast nook as sunlight streams in through the window, they go a different route. They say, guess what: we’re boring. We know it. You know it. We like being boring. That’s what makes us awesome. We’re not going to change. We’re not going to pretend we’re something we’re not. We’re going to own it, and in so doing, become awesome. It’s classic high school psychology. *ahem* Napoleon Dynamite, anyone?
Yes, advertisers are focusing on the feeling of seething anger, but maybe they’re also just saying what everyone is thinking. I’d argue that this whole “mad ads” thing is really just advertisers being more authentic, albeit authentic in the same way reality tv represents reality, but still. Isn’t that what all the market research says millenials are in to, authenticity? With the way tv, youtube, podcasts and entertainment et al are following that notion doesn’t it stant to reason that eventually commercials would come around too?
In other news, it bears mentioning that the picture that accompanies the article is classic. I like to pretend that the guy is showing us how much beer he bought to quell his rage. Either that or he’s worried that the government is going to steal his beer for some reason or another. I’m not quite sure what the narrative should be, but I’m certain you could write a fairly entertaining novella based on the picture alone. Alert your local creative writing class.
Can you hear me now?
Monday, May 18th, 2009I feel like the terror of reading aloud in class is one of those experiences that people thought only happened to them, but it turns out is pretty much universal across the board. I know that I was so nervous reading aloud that they stuck me in the remedial reading group for a session. Which, apparently, haunts me to this day.
The New York Times has an interesting op-ed piece bemoaning the dying art of reading aloud that targets audiobooks as a lonely medium partly responsible for the demise. As much and I prefer actual books, like, seriously? You’re gonna beat up on audiobooks? It feels like whining about electricity because candles are so romantic, when people are really just in it for the light.
In any event, there’s actually a Web site out there, LibriVox.org, that seems to address a number of concerns raised in the article. A happy medium if you will. Here’s how it works: free audiobooks, read by volunteers. You can read aloud to your heart’s content or, if you prefer, listen to audiobooks that aren’t read by stodgey professionals with their fancy voice over credentials. Look technology is connecting us again! The world is flat and small and a wide web! yey!!
Case No. 47: You literally fell down drunk and died.
Thursday, May 14th, 2009There’s a fantastic article by Joshua Wolf Shenk in the June 2009 issue of the The Atlantic that’s ostensibly about happiness, but is really about the history behind a lengthy psychological project known as the Grant Study. When I say lengthy, I mean qualifying for AARP, keeping your teeth in a cup next on your nightstand, yelling at kids to get off your lawn lengthy.
The researchers followed 268 men for 72 years and counting. Oh, and one of the guys in the study just happened to be JFK (which apparently is a big reveal in and of itself, but we don’t get anything really juicy in the article because his files are sealed until 2040–mark your calendars!). The piece is long, educational, completely engrossing and beautifully written. You will need to consult your dictionary at least once before you finish reading it. As a bonus, all the case studies address the subjects as “you” (a la the title of this post) which pulls you into the lives of all the men in really weird ways.
A few delightful excerpts and choice quotes to whet the appetite:
“They met in Mexico City, where she was the daughter of a prominent expatriate American banker and he was a hotshot archaeologist working on pre-Columbian Aztec digs.”
“…when we encounter a challenge large or small—a mother’s death or a broken shoelace—our defenses float us through the emotional swamp.”
“The study began in the spirit of laying lives out on a microscope slide. But it turned out that the lives were too big, too weird, too full of subtleties and contradictions to fit any easy conception of “successful living.” Arlie Bock had gone looking for binary conclusions—yeses and nos, dos and don’ts. But the enduring lessons would be paradoxical, not only on the substance of the men’s lives (the most inspiring triumphs were often studies in hardship) but also with respect to method: if it was to come to life, this cleaver-sharp science project would need the rounding influence of storytelling.”
I think you have that backwards…
Monday, May 11th, 2009
The newest title from the Novella press "Sports in the Carolinas: From Death Valley to Tobacco Road"
When I was a kid, all the anti-smoking people told us that Tobacco Road leads to Death Valley, not the other way around. But then again, I grew up in California and people stopped smoking there back in the 90s.
Where the sun don’t shine
Friday, May 8th, 2009So Sunny Delight has this terrible song in their new commercials with lyrics that go a little something like this “Shine onnnn, Shiiiinnee onnnn.” I believe that’s the entirety of the song. Well hold it right there, we’ve got the makings of an ad campaign face off because Jimmy Dean has been using “Shine on” as their tagline for quite some time now.
As unofficial arbitrator of this head-to-head battle I award Jimmy Dean the point on this one.
First, Jimmy Dean’s commercials are not only infinitely better than Sunny D’s (not a high bar there), but they’re really, really smart. The art direction on the print ads is a nice reinterpretation that evokes the commercials without trying to replicate them. Nicely done. Plus, they make use of costumed people which, though I can think of no examples off the top of my head, is a trend I somehow believe is gaining real traction.
Second, Jimmy Dean told all the haters where they could put it when they said that not using the real life Jimmy Dean as the star of his eponymous sausage commercials was a bad idea. To my knowledge Sunny D has had no such triumphs. In fact, the only Sunny D commercials I could find on youtube are from the 80s and are there purely for comedic effect.
Finally, Sunny D and Jimmy Dean sausages are more than likely both fake foods, but Sunny D seems more fake. (In other news, since when did Capri Sun start marketing itself as a breakfast drink. Come on, America, I think we can do a little better than that.)
Magic Happens, Shelf Appears
Wednesday, May 6th, 2009This past Christmas, my dad got my brother wood and some tools to make a shelf, but not just any old shelf. Oh, no. The “Newport Shelf,” complete with instructions. Pure genius. Happy birthday, dad!
Q.E.D.
"I can see both views of the ocean from either side, wow!!"