Mac vs PC: Time Machine

The slaughter continues...

Pitchmen

First Mad Men, then Trust Me, now Pitchmen. The first two shows are dramas that give an impression of what the advertising industry is like; one takes place in the 50s and 60s, and the other is in the present day. Pitchmen, however, is a series on the Discovery channel that features Billy Mays and Anthony "Sully" Sullivan, two of the most famous infomercial "pitchmen," and it captures a behind-the-scenes look on how they take the inventions and innovations of everyday people and sale them for 19.99 (or whatever the price is).

It's pretty interesting because I've learned that demonstration advertising can be some of the most effective advertising (think about the commercials for Toyota Tundra, the iPhone, or ShamWOW). Infomercials are pretty corny, and it can be annoying having Billy Mays screaming at you about the power Oxy Clean...but the commercials are pretty successful (at selling at least). I just think advertising commercials could be so much better if the effectiveness of infomercial demonstrations can be tied in with more creativity.

Sara Bareilles ‘Gravity’: Music Video

Motion Theory founder and director Mathew Cullen did a great job on this video. Check it out.

Sara Bareilles - New Music - More Music Videos

Stop motion with wolf and pig

NHL Playoffs

If hockey games would actually come on tv, I would watch it. But they don't, so I don't...but somehow I always know that a dominant, furious red team from Detroit will always be in the mix (the Red Wings, for all my sports-challenged friends out there).

I saw this commercial for the NHL playoffs today on creativity-online done by The Brooklyn Brothers. It was pretty cool, until the last second of the commercial when that "Versus" logo popped up. Little things like that throw off the mood... It's still good though:

The Colbert

Apparently, there was a poll to vote for the name of a NASA space modular. You could write in any name, and I guess Stephen Colbert had his viewers and a bunch of other people vote on "The Colbert." So, watch this video and see what the results were, I don't want to spoil it.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Space Module: Colbert - Sunita Williams
colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor NASA Name Contest

Chocolate Calculator

I was forwarded this email today that has to do with math and predicting your number at the end. It worked on me. Try it out, it's pretty cool...and supposedly it only works in 2009, so try to do it before the year is over. (you may need a calculator)


1. First of all, pick the number of times a week that you would like to have chocolate (more than once but less than 10)

2. Multiply this number by 2 (just to be bold)

3. Add 5

4. Multiply it by 50 -- I'll wait while you get the calculator

5. If you have already had your birthday this year add 1759...If you haven't, add 1758.

6. Now subtract the four digit year that you were born...You should have a three digit number

The first digit of this was your original number (i.e., how many times you want to have chocolate each week).

The next two numbers are your age.

Elizabeth Gilbert: A different way to think about creative genius

This is an instant goosebump-maker. I think this can be appreciated by anyone not in a creative field. The TED Conference usually has good talks, but this one was great. Trust me, it won't be a waste of time.

Paul Sahre

As I was doing my daily checkup of new postings on my favorite blogs, I found a posting of my former teacher, Paul Sahre. Paul was definitely responsible for my sensibilities and eye as a designer; I was formally introduced to design by him freshman year, with a class called Principles of Visual Language. We didn't do anything in color until the second semester. Black and white was our palette, and for the longest we only designed with various sizes of black squares. So it was pretty much the most basic you can get. Very good class. 2 years later, Junior year, I took his Typography class, and I learned a hell of a lot in there as well.

The presentation that was posted on swissmiss.com (which i won't post on here, because it was way too long), was entitled A Designer and His Problems. I think most designers face the same problem of working hard on a project, and then a client hating it. Paul described this by saying, "It's not like digging a hole." Digging a hole is pretty basic: you dig a certain amount, and you're done. Design is the complete opposite; It takes rounds and rounds of major and minor tweaks to make things damn near perfect. The funny thing is that no matter how many revisions you do, it could probably still be better.

In the presentation, he goes through some work that he has done, and tells brief stories about each piece. Below are some screen shots of the presentation, and if you're up to the challenge of baring this extremely long video, check it out here.

To Twitter or to not to Twitter

I've been thinking about starting a twitter page, or creating a twitter account (I'm not sure what the correct lingo is yet). I've seen that a lot of celebrities are doing it now, and a lot of people are promoting themselves with it as well. Like Jadakiss. His new album "The Last Kiss" just came out last week, and he's been pushing it hard. He was being interviewed in a youtube video that I just saw, and he was asked what's the difference between this album, and the album he had 5 years ago. He's reply was, "Nothing. The biggest difference is that the internet is more prominent now, than it was 5 years ago." And as we know, that's because of twitter, facebook, myspace, blogs, etc. I haven't checked out his album yet, but I know that all the videos and promotional things I've seen for it, at least make me somewhat interested in seeing how it is.

I don't really have much to promote, but I'll let you know if I start a twitter thingamagig or not.

Gatorade: John Wooden Commercial

This another instant goosebump-maker. If you don't know who this man is below, it is John Wooden one of the most winningest coaches in college basketball; let's just say this, he coached Kareem at UCLA (which really shows his age). Anyhow, enjoy this commercial done by our sibling-company out west, Chiat, LA.

Little Red Riding Hood Reinterpreted

Viral Marketing...cool as hell

Anomaly, which doesn't refer to themselves as an ad agency, created this "viral marketing" campaign for converse that features some guy named Charles Charles MaGalls of MaGalls Industries who is challenging Dwyane Wade to a 1 on 1 basketball game to 10, gotta win by 2. Check out this youtube video below, and become Charles' fan on facebook.

Questions and Answers

This past weekend, my brothers and one of my boys were in town, and with me living here, they of course had questions on where this and that is, or how to get to such and such. I know the subway pretty well, so giving directions for that was easy, but when it came to other stuff, I didn't do as well.

As small or as simple as this situation is, it reminds me of something discussed in church a while ago. The pastor spoke about how if you're a Christian and people know that you are, you will always be faced with questions: either about Christianity in general, the bible, church, etc. And because of this reason, it is very important to already know some of the questions that are going to be asked, so that you have a ready answer. And what's true for Christians, the same is true for New Yorkers (this is the first and last time I'll actually call myself a New Yorker).

Next time I hope to be able to have the answer to, "Where can we go to get something cheap to eat?"....even though this question is almost unanswerable.