Blog taking vacation south of south of south of the border to scope out some of NZ’s emerging hip-hop artists. TTYL.
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NZ Bound
Saturday, December 25th, 2010Today in North Korean Politics
Tuesday, September 28th, 201027 or 28-year-old Kim Jong Un, known to North Korean insiders as “Unny,” was named Vice Chairmen of the Workers Party.
Am I disappointed I didn’t get the position? I don’t know–I feel my application was strong, and while I know I didn’t ace the phone interview, you always think you have a good chance at these things. Unny is a smart kid, and I’m not taking anything away from him, but it’s not like he invented rainbows like his father. That’s all I’m saying.
Anyways, congrats Unny. Good luck sinking South Korean boats, devaluing your currency, and trading enriched uranium for lettuce.
Happy National Punctuation; Day
Friday, September 24th, 2010Today is National Punctuation Day! While purists contend the holiday has gotten too commercial: I still enjoy the sense of togetherness, the music, the food, (and yes, the bountiful punctuation gifts we exchange under the ampersand tree). Call me a punctuation snob if you will [but] this is one holiday I can get behind–
So happy “punctuation/ day”. one and all?
This week in misused technology
Sunday, August 29th, 2010A man is tweeting the Bible one line at a time. This is actually not so far off from how the Israelites first received the word of god, which Moses had to painstakingly cary down Mt. Sinai on thousands of stone tablets that could only fit 140 words each.
Judge ruling paves way for more illegal immigrant marriages
Wednesday, August 4th, 2010In AZ, they gnash their teeth as the overturning of California’s ban on gay marriage increased by 200% the potential combination of illegal immigrant unions (señor-señora, señora-señora, señor-señor).
Non illegal-immigrants will also be affected.
Humanities’ capacity to complain about minor annoyances trumps really cool apps
Thursday, July 29th, 2010Phones no longer fit in our pockets. The goddamn indignity of life continues.
What Would You Do For An Original Idea?
Friday, October 2nd, 2009
One definition of advertising is: Popular culture, plagiarized, then made worse. As evidence for such a definition, I offer the latest ad campaign from Klondike Bar, which manages to copy, almost exactly, the chest waxing scene in 40 Year Old Virgin (so blatantly that I suppose one could guess it is intentional–the fact that the ad runs widely in movie theaters supports this idea), then makes it less funny by “upping the ante” and implying the man also has his balls waxed. Copywriting genius.
But the implied waxed balls are nothing compared to the balls Klondike has by ripping off not one, but two Apatow movies in the same campaign by tagging this ad (not seen in the clip above), with their new website, the Mancave. If that term sounds vaguely familiar it’s because it’s ripped straight out of Apatow’s, I Love You Man. Apparently there’s a copywriter somewhere who is really into Apatow, so much so that he wanted to honor his work by removing it from a humorous context and putting it within a thinly transparent plea to get Men, 18-34, interested in ice cream bars.
A bigger point should be made that the iconic trademark (“What would you do for a Klondike Bar?), which is the only original aspect of the ad campaign, doesn’t even make sense. Why are people being forced to suffer needlessly to get their hands on Klondike bars, when they can be found literally overflowing from the shelves of any major grocery store? Does anyone believe this memorable tagline has actually helped sell ice cream? Well, of course in the world of madvertising, there’s always a way to spin the numbers to make even the lamest campaign a smashing success. As in, the following.
Call me cynical, but I’ve always thought Eskimo Pies tasted better anyways.
Cracking the CW Code
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009
I have cracked the formula for the CW’s primetime television lineup which includes such shows as Gossip Girls, 90210, and Melrose Place. With this formula, one should be able to predict with some 72% accuracy how individual shows will develop as well as what future shows will look like.
Here is the key.
- Plot begins with an unfortunate misunderstanding resulting from a key character drawing a wildly inaccurate conclusion after misinterpreting a piece of data. [Example: Skinny Blond High School Girl (SBHG) walks into her boyfriend’s room and discovers a scrunchie that looks similar to one her old friend, Skinny Brunette High School Girl (SBrHG), wore in 6th grade and thus, becomes convinced her boyfriend is sleeping with SBrHG].
- A strange coincidence occurs which prevents the very simple misunderstanding from being cleared up. [SBHG confronts SBrHG to see where she was the night previous. SBrHG cannot tell her because she happened to be at a restaurant where she saw SBHG’s super rich father making out with the high school principal and doesn’t want to blow his cover because he promised her he’d help her get into some terrible Ivy League School that no one would ever really want to go to. Accusations and tears follow]
- The conflict is unnecessarily heightened by a third party that, for some reason, benefits from the misunderstanding. [SBHG’s sister, who really is sleeping with her boyfriend, encourages SBHG to stab SBrHG or at least write mean things about her on Twitter]
- Irrational anger and bizarre happenstances allow the simple misunderstanding to continue through many, many episodes. [Desperate to clear her name, SBrHG goes to tell SBHG the truth, but SBHG cuts her off, refusing to talk and calls her something so horrible that SBrHG changes her mind about telling her the truth and instead decides, for whatever reason, to actually sleep with SBHG’s boyfriend, which is fine with the boyfriend who is really only a prop in this show anyways].
- A new bad girl comes to town and does bad things that complicate everything. [She probably smokes and steals things. Later we will see her softer side in an emotional episode where we learn she used to be poor.]
Of course the formula is flexible. So with the new series The Vampire Diaries we can expect the added element of people also getting bit by vampires and maybe flying. But the basic structure shouldl hold true.
PS (I have drawn this conclusion based on extensive research which includes watching 2 ½ episodes of Gossip Girls, 1 full episode of 90210 and the trailers for Melrose Place. Plus I went to the CW upfront back when I worked in advertising in 2007, where I just so happened to win a free recyclable tote bag. So yeah, I kind-of know what I’m talking about here).
On Vaccation
Tuesday, August 4th, 2009The blog and I are going on vaccation for the week to Chicago. So while I’m drowning myself in Itallian Beef sandwiches and ice cold pop, please take this time to pass along this blog to one friend. Remember, sharing is caring.
Also–littering–what’s the deal with that?
xoxo
Gossip Girl
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High Art and Its Interpretations
Monday, August 3rd, 2009
“Broadway Boogie-Woogie,” a seminal modernist work by painter Piet Mondrian, has been interpreted by many as an attempt to capture the alienated and conflicted grid-like structure of urban life. On a literal level, one can imagine the painting as a portrait of city traffic as seen from the top of a skyscraper. Notice, for example, how in the upper-right hand corner, the blue box appears to have just cut off the red box without so much as a turn signal or, god forbid, a hand wave because who cares about the safety of your fellow drivers when you can save precious seconds by driving like a complete jackass. Yeah, that’s right blue box, you hear what I just said? Yeah, well f@ck you and your goddamn new blue paint job. Want to know about paint jobs, I hear your mother gives great paint jobs if you know what I mean? Ooooooh, you didn’t like that did you? Well, why don’t you step out of that mother fu@cking car and get ready to have your goddamn cubist-piece-of-shit-inkblot of a box fu@ked in the fu@cking #%*ed@# and &za!#@-hole by the bottom of my fu@cking red boot! Oh, that’s right, roll up your window and drive away you pansy-ass bitch. Not so tough now are you? Are you??? @%%&*###!!!
In any case, the painting is very popular.
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Monet is perhaps best known for being one of the key leaders of Impressionism, which in 19th century French, was slang for near sighted. In one of his most famous sequences, “Haystacks,” Monet depicted haystacks in different lights and conditions, proving a long held theory of physics that no matter the external variables, a stack of haystacks will remain boring. Monet was known as a “lover of life,” so much so that he was often found making-out with carbon-based vegetation. Notice in the above painting “Downtown Buffalo, New York,” how the haystack on the right is larger than the haystack on the left, creating the “impression” that if you had to live in one of these haystacks, the one on the left would be more comfortable, but the one on the right will probably appreciate in value quicker.
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“Starry Night,” is often considered the legendary painter Van Gogh’s masterpiece, and why not. Just look at all those stars in the sky! I mean, you can really tell that he’s painting a night sky filled with stars as the title of the painting implies, and that’s so important in painting. Too often the title is something incomprehensible like “Red #7,” and then it’s like—uh, what the hell is this a painting of? Not so here. You can really see the night, indicated by dark colors, and the sky, indicated by the yellow things up in the upper part of the painting, which I have interpreted as stars. It’s open to interpretation of course, but I’d say the shapes below are meant to represent houses. Again, it’s a painting and there is no wrong answer when interpreting painting, but one can imagine that Van Gogh wanted us to look at this painting and say, “I can totally relate to this! I’ve been outside at night before too!” The one criticism is that it can be a little confusing to see where the sky ends and the ground begins and whether the landscape his mountains, or water or what. Some of the images aren’t exactly clear, but Van Gogh was probably busy so you can’t expect all the details to be right. When you consider he didn’t even have a computer, you realize how talented a painter he really was.