Happy Thanksgiving!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMwO9PX4_7c

This is what usually happens when I present ideas

Scary Puppet Show

On that note, look for the official launch of the Brandy Agency shortly. It's coming.

One of my favorite politisms:

[on the phone] "OK, Tiffany, I'm gonna let you go."

Translation: "I'm cutting this conversation off because I can't or don't want to talk to you anymore."

It sounds like courtesy, but it's the opposite. Our culture is weird.

What a sweet deal

From Facebook:


Wow, Starbucks, really flexing some philanthropic muscle there.

We worked on this while I was at Wieden. This is a stupid idea. Five cents per drink is not going to get people in the door. This killed a beautiful campaign that my friends did for them. Good luck, BBDO.

Add your ad

Following today's theme of technovations, here's something cool out of Stanford.

ZunaVision

Click over to the ZunaVision website to try it out for yourself.

The ability to put insert new images or video into an existing video is nothing new; advertising's been hot on it for a year or more now, from Dexter to Toyota Matrix to Barack Obama to even the last year's CP+B holiday gift site. But what (apparently) makes this cool is that it democratizes the process by making it easily generated by any user.

I'm not sure this is a great thing as it could eventually lead to even more clutter and ad overload, but it may be an easy way for YouTubers to make some cash. Undoubtedly the technology isn't far off where you'll be able to designate an area in your video as ad space, and it will be served advertisements, just like banners are served now.

Let's get digital, digital

This technology has been around for a little while. (If you haven't seen it then it's obviously pretty new and exciting to you too.) Before, this type of interaction has to be run through a PC-based program, but this new version runs through Flash which opens up a lot of possibilities.

Essentially, Papervision uses your webcam to read a symbol on a sheet of paper and generates the images on-screen. Code can also be written so that two symbols interact with each other when placed in close proximity.

Very cool stuff. Still in its infancy though.

Papervision - Augmented Reality (extended) from dpinteractive on Vimeo.

If you want to try it out for yourself, click over to Digital Pictures Interactive, print the symbol and then allow Flash to read your webcam in the second player down the page.

Thanks to Ken Slater, digital person extraordinaire, for the tip.

Speaking of melding the digital and physical, there's a pretty good article in last month's Wired about how our technology now is actually a pay-off on the promise of virtual reality that was all the rage in mid-80's teen comedies all the way up to the late-90s. Check it out here.

Remember Virtual Boy from Nintendo? That red-interfaced contraption your pressed your face into and played tennis?


Virtual Boy promo

I remember being 11 and calling BS on that. I also I remember going to a car show with my dad about a year early. Besides the cars they had several virtual reality game consoles the size of a Yugo set up. For $5 and a 45-minute wait, you could strap yourself in an be immersed in a totally virtual world for about 90 seconds. I remember feeling rather underwhelmed at the experience but having to feign excitement because my dad has just dropped a pretty hefty note for a stupid video game on it.

The amazing thing about technology is that we've developed it to the point within the last 15 years that we're able to do some amazing things on-screen. The new frontier is how this on-screen technology integrates into our physical lives: augmented reality, semacodes, OLEDs, e-paper, NFC, NTT and more.

Lastly, check out this new "spatial operating environment" from Oblong Industries called g-speak. It's based on the famous Minority Report sequences. Awesome stuff. I just wish they hadn't put the clip to such ominous music. It makes me a little less excited and a little more scared. Couldn't have sprung for the new Beyoncé track or something?


g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

Soon, we'll be be to collect on all those promises sci-fi movies made to us.

Google, related searches: meanies

Just now I was doing some Google image searches. I searched for "shack" and saw this:


That's sort of messed up, Google. Just rubbing it in the faces of people that are surfing the internet from their shacks. Inappropriate.

Even if they're racist, you've got to admit, they're pretty creative

I was reading an article over on LAtimes.com about the rise in racially motivated crimes after Barack Obama's election. Then I came across this paragraph:

What?! Sounds like the KKK just went and saw the new James Bond or something. So bizarre.

If they were, you wouldn't be wearing that shirt

I saw this picture yesterday on blog post of girls with ridiculous t-shirts, and it made me deeply, deeply sad.



Just study that image for a moment. I imagine who that girl is, what her life is like, how she talks, who her friends are, the hat she wears. It all makes me very sad. Hapless flailing about, going to outdoor country music festivals. Sad. That's all I see.

Synecdoche, Colorado

Leaving the office on Friday evening it didn't seem as though I'd need to come in this weekend. We had busted all week--on only four to five hours of sleep a night and one big all-nighter--to get ready for four different client presentations. But we got through it, got it all done, and it was looking like I wouldn't see the interior of 6450 Gunpark Drive for at least another collective period of hours.

But I've also learned recently to be less presumptuous than that. I was just waiting for a nine o'clock DING on my Blackberry with an email from one of the CDs saying that we need to come in to crank out another set of idea. And sure enough at 8:52 this morning my little device dinged. I got out of bed, fearing what awaited me on the screen was the announcement of the untimely passing of my weekend. Instead what I found was a message rather inspirational message to get out and see the world. So, I decided to take the advice.

Ah, to see a movie. Let's see. What's out there? No, no, no. Ooh, Synecdoche, New York. And a mantinee showing. Perfect.


So, off I head to the theater. Usually the idea of seeing a movie alone makes me feel sad, but today it was an excitement, an excursion, a diversion to be away from the rush and people and things and deadlines and just absorb a work.

I love Charlie Kaufman's work. I think he's an amazing creative, unparalleled in almost all respects. He is to word what Gondry is to image (albeit entirely more full of himself and a his own mortality than the French director). Adaption. is still my favorite screenplay. Absolutely brilliant.

As with most of his films, Synecdoche sludges through the jumbled slough of the protagonist's unconscious, bumping directionlessly like a bumper car on a carnival ride. The driver tries desparately in vain to control his life and steer it in a meaningful direction, only to find that there's no start of finish to the ride, no path to follow. Instead, he drive his car madly in one direction until he hits another's car and jolt their chosen trajectory into disarray. The pattern continues until the ride simply is called to a end by the man behind the controls.

That's how I characterize this and essentially all other Kaufman screenplays. Brilliant, near-autobiographical scripts that vividly capture the essences of loneliness, depression, helpless and (fleetingly) love. This latest attempt, takes this issues on in the most grand scale of any of his works to date. Before his stories were microcosms unto themselves, and in Synecdoche, that microcosm has literally been transplanted onto the entire world (or, in fact, the literary term synecdoche).

I won't go into more detail about the film because it's a jumbled, non-linear mess that could never be done justice except to actually see it. Yes, the movie is tedious at points, heart-crushingly sad, devilishly fun and perhaps drags on a bit too long. But then again, Kaufman's point is to show life how it truly is (or at least that's what the protagonist Caden Cotard claims). It's not a great movie, but it's amazing. These two things seem contradictory, but I promise that, with Kaufman at the wheel, contradiction is the whole point.

The thing that most shocked--and amused--me about watch the film was the actual watching of it. I seemed to be the only patron in the theater without a membership to AARP. Seriously. There were probably 35 people in the theater and 34 of them were over the age of 55. I can't imagine how horrific of an experience that movie must have been for them. The grand proportion of the film is spent worrying about various ailments and death. In fact, the film is almost entirely about human mortality.

There were two very old ladies sitting in front of me, talking back and forth throughout the movie, trying to decipher what was happening. (Not only is Kaufman unfriendly to the elderly audience in terms of subject matter, but his films are verbally, visually and chronologically untethered from reality. I have no idea why there were old people there, other than the fact it was a 1:40 showing. Perhaps it was an ill-advised nursing home field trip?) Anyway, these two yammering Ednas finally decided to get up about halfway through and walk out, unable to follow what was going on.

But the eldery weren't the only ones left unsatisfied. The only other person in the audience who was relatively young was a man of about 38 or so sitting in the bottom seats in the center by himself. As soon as the film was beginning to slowly fade into the end, he started to, very loudly, put on his jacket. It went over his head, up the air, with all sorts of clasps and ties clanging obnoxiously in the dead silence of the theater as the screen was gradually fading to a white glow. Before the credits even rolled he stood up and trounced out. He was obviously very pissed that he had pissed away $7.50 on this stupid waste of time. It was awesome to see.

Then, an older lady (I'd say 57 or so) seated next to me on my aisle began singing along with the song played over the credits. She sat there, by herself for what I'm guessing was the entire credits (I got up and left) singing to herself. It was surreal.

On the way home I passed people and places, all of them off on their own tangents in life. I got lost in a maze of parking decks. I saw a little girl on her with little training wheels with her family beside her. I saw someone on the side of the road taking a small harp out of its case to show a friend.

Kaufman's films have a way of affecting me. They make you hyper-sensitive of the world around you. Slowly, as you return to the "normalcy" of a hurried life full of deadlines and having to get things down for one reason or another, you'll become desensitized to your awareness. But even for a brief moment, they offer you the chance to see life through the eyes of someone who sees and hears nearly everything, who absorbs it all and can't tell you anything of what it means but can at least show you the beauty in it.

Even the box was organic

This will only be funny those of you who know Dan Kelly and his proclivity for receiving care packages from his parents filled with any time of sugar-based goody you could imagine. Imagine Halloween having a set of twins in a cardboard box while being mailed from Cleveland. It supplied the Nasty Dandylion (our apartment) with many a late night snack.

I returned home from work this evening to find my own care package from my parents. It too was filled with snacks. But as you can see below, it was very different.


Yes, that is papaya and apple muesli, honey roasted almonds, a cranberry-cherry-pecan mix, a California trail mix, all-natural plantain chips, organic fruit bars, organic gummy bears and even gum made from natural rainforest chicle. My parents aren't hippy like that at all. Really random.

Sorry. I don't think is is amusing to anyone but me, but I'm having a blast. See ya.

Certainly colour like no other

Zune Paint from Sibling Rivalry on Vimeo

Just the wrong company.

Deceptacon Airlines

"THAT CRAZY PLANE IS ATTACKING THE CITY!"

(Found while searching for "laser" on Google Images. Obviously.)

Diddy meets doody

I gotta be honest. This is kind of how my day has been. "Yeuh. we're cool, we're cool . . . Hey, what the—!"

It like peeing your swimsuit in the ocean as the tide's rolling in

Just in case anyone wanted to know what it's like having a mustache, this sweet video should catch you up to speed.

Suez ad by La Comunidad, Buenos Aires

That puppy won a Gold at Cannes this year.


Fittingly, this is the blog's 200th post. I feel like I've done so much with my life. Yet so, so very little.

A very special logo

Working on some comps tonight, my partner Tim brought up a good point. How messed up is the Special Olympics logo?!



Conversation at the design agency:
- "Hey, the Special Olympics just called. They want us to design a logo for them."
- "Hold on, I just got it. They're all freaks, right? Let's make it a circle of six-armed kids."
- "Yeah, that sounds great. Let's go to lunch."

At least that's how I imagine it went.

Or maybe the Special Olympics is merely a cover for an international ring of spider-people bent on world domination. I kind of hope that one's actually true.

Winter Storm Surprise '08

This one is for all the homies back in Hotlanta. I woke up this morning, looked out my front window and saw this:


Checked the side window, still there:


And yep, even from the front of my house:



At the risk of sounding Southern (which I'm not . . . despite having lived in Atlanta for the last 12 years), I must say, I was pretty excited. And this is why.

I wasn't excited at the mere fact that there was snow outside. I've seen a good bit of snow in my life; I grew up in Michigan. No, I was excited by the fact that I had not expected there to be snow at all. It was a complete surprise. And it's been a while since I've been surprised by snow.

Living in Atlanta, you tend to hear about the dangerous blizzard that is predicted to blow through town about three weeks ahead of time. It's going to knock out power, close churches and school, cause a run on bread, milk, batteries and firewood. The news stations will tout their coverage as Winter Storm Watch '08. It'll be really dramatic. And then, when it does come, it'll be a light sprinkle that melts the moment it touches the ground. It may be thrilling if you've lived in Atlanta all your life, and that's all you know of snow. But to someone who grew up sledding every day after school until the sun went down, it can all seem a little ridiculous and disheartening.

That's why, when I awoke this morning and saw the unexpected white visitor that blanketed my neighborhood, I was thrilled. I had no idea that it was to snow overnight, did not see it coming in the least. It was a return of innocence to snow for me. Gentle, quiet, still.

I'm sure in a month when I'm trying to de-ice my windshield in subzero wind chills as I drop my keys in a snow drift, this will all seem like a distant memory. But for now, I'm excited to see the snow.

Michael Crichton reincarnated

Thanks to my buddy Andrio over at 33rpm in Brkln for this one.

I think we all know the manswer to this one . . .

ME.

What's with all these posers out there? Pitt's is pitiful excuse for facial hair. And Clooney's looks like he cloned an eyebrow.

Ouch. Puns must stop.

(Found while doing some research on the US Weekly website. Hence all the puns.)

Get quacked up

This duck's looking for a party.

And she was probably bleeding when she did it.

I love failblog. And this is why.

Specifically, maltese

I didn't realize that was a stereotype about us. What are other some other white people stereotypes I'm unaware of?

(This lovely discovery was found by our own very Polish Kasia Haupt.)

It's actually in response to a far more offensive finding posted on reddit this morning. And that's not Photoshopped. You can click over to Google and actually see it. Messed up.

But also, wet dogs?

Oh, the irony of being named the Best Man

I really wanted to use my post today to write something meaningful about Tuesday's election and our socio-digital landscape. But, I've had four hours of sleep in the last three days, and I just found this clip which is way funnier.

Clumsy Best Man Ruins Wedding

The audio is amazing.

AHHHHHHbama!!!!

This is awesome.

Peruvian shaman for Obama

Do you think they got those sweet posters printed at Kinko's?

"to roll over in one's grave": a phrase meaning that the deceased person would be horrified to know what has transpired following his or her death

In an earlier post about Ian Fox the Copywriting Master I mentioned that I don't like to cut other folks down. It's not nice. Everyone's trying to do their own thing.

But then every once in a while, something so jaw-droppingly inexplicably offensively bad comes along. Well, today's your lucky day, my friends.

My partner, the ever-talented Timtastic, shared this with me the other day. Apparently for the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Ogilvy agency, employees of the Athens office decided to make a tribute ballad to David Ogilvy. The results are breath-taking.

Ballad for David

How awesome is it when that dude comes in? Who is he? Antonio Banderas? Or perhaps that bee from the Nasonex commercials? Also, I love the poor English translations. And they are a plenty. The pronounciation of "avid" is pretty suspect. I'm not sure was "A to V" means either.

So, these are people that are supposed to be making mind-blowingly creative advertising. Hm. I think the best comment on the YouTube page is "This would've been a great SNL digital short."