Boozin’ in the Hudson

rock out with your torch out, in tha Hudson

So as my Graduation weekend wrapped up to a close, I found myself stuck in traffic outside the Lincoln Tunnel to New York City. This is especially torturous because we all know that by the time you get to Lincoln Tunnel, you already have ants in your pants to just be in NYC already, but this time was worse than others, for I was going to ride a boat around the Hudson. A booze cruise, if you will. Not just an ordinary one, but one in which my new favorite band Passion Pit would be playing.

we're sad cause we're missing our legs

Passion Pit has a chronic toxicity to their music. The kind you find yourself listening to over and over again because its Spring, getting to be summer, and everyone is losing their heads and their pants with excitement for a multitude of reasons. Whether its continuing being an undergrad with ill intentions of drinking away your summer, a graduate like myself who has a degree that says I know what I’m doing when I have no clue at all, or just someone who knows summer in Philadelphia is a hell of a lot more fun than the winter. Anyway, I’m at an exciting point in my life, and this music echoes that excitement for me. Chunk of Change, their LP, has been on repeat in my apartment since the end of April. The story behind the LP is that the singer/keyboardist Michael Angelakos originally recorded a set of songs for his then girlfriend. I wish someone made this album for me. Lucky lady.

The boat was rockin’ and rollin’ to some of their new songs off their soon to be released record, Manners. The first single, The Reeling, was recently thrown up onto YouTube, with a great collage style and rapid cuts that mimics the quick beats and rapis synthisizing of this band. Obviously, I’m friggin’ crazy about this band. Also, the guys who made the video seemed to be a pretty awesome group of dancers on the front of the boat.

So if you read this, a year from now, you can say you were listening to them before they were huge. They are also starting a long, long tour, you can check for dates here. A little bird told me theres an August date for Philadelphia.

-posted by samsquared

Bromantic Comedies

bromance original recipe

Unless you have been under a rock, you may have heard the word Bromance being thrown around. For those of you who may be confused by the abstract idea, it involves two guys, probably between the ages of 16 and 36, who have a best friends forever  type of relationship. This friendship can also deter women from getting involved with either guy, since he’s already in a monogomous relationship with his BFF, thus, Bromance.

summer lovin': happened so fast

I watched The Wackness yesterday. Ben Kingsley plays a perv, and pervs Mary Kate Olson, and does a lot of pharmaceutical drugs to early 1990s rap jams.  I especially enjoyed the parts that make fun of the inadequacies of high school guys in the bedroom. Anyway, I realized by the end of the movie, the two main characters shared a special summer Bromance in NYC in 1994. How cute.

Bromantic Comedies have been popular since before the word Bromance existed. Take Weird Science for example. This is especially interesting because they create a woman, who helps them eventually get other women. The whole premise of this is romantic in  that they solve their romance problems together. They would probably like my idea of a four way marriage. This comprises two men and two women. So when you get sick of one husband you can have another one, and it’s less responsibility for everyone involved. Plus in hard economic times like this, its better value for your money.

the right idea

If you aren’t up to the responsibility of a long-term Bromance, or even a summer Bromance, you could try just a weekend bender sort of thing. You should make sure your boss invites you to his sweet weekend house by the beach. When he accidentally dies the first day,  make hilarity ensue with your bromantic counterpart by pretending your boss is still alive. Instant memories.

it's such a perfect day, I'm glad I spent it with you

So I guess all I’m getting at is if you want to make a really good movie, it should be based on a Bromantic story. This is a guranteed success, with males and females alike. Although, if you are lucky, it will only be popular with males, and you can make like, 100 more bros to share bromantic adventures and times with.

-posted by samsquared

Non Sequiturs, Vol. 2: Verizon culture wars

- posted by russellmania3000

This isn’t really my attempt to be clever or write Twitter-style without using Twitter or whatever, these are just things that if I were in a more self-indulgent mood, I would try to stretch into full written pieces but I’m not so here they all are.

On the subject of Twitter, I registered a few accounts on Twitter for my name and working alias, and one for Redikulus more as just a joke for Sam. I came down pretty hard on Twitter before, and I haven’t entirely had a change of heart, but the issue comes down to one of 1) protecting your name/personal brand, and, especially for design and marketing people like myself, 2) cultural/tech/media literacy. Twitter may be stupid or turn out to be a passing fad, but it’s important to be familiar with the new ways people chose to communicate. You may not like TV or fashion mags either but you won’t go far in design and marketing if you don’t understand or at least make an attempt to learn the nuances of the media you deal with. Besides, if you meet someone you want to have in your corner and they ask if you’re on Twitter, you don’t want to be the guy who obstinately says “I don’t do that.” You don’t have to use it, just have it available for a rainy day. It’s just a good idea in the same way registering the URL for your name or having a Gmail account using your name is a good idea.

I used to feel guilty or slack-ass for not writing more blog, and Sam and I would get on each other’s case about it, but since we’ve lost a little interest and don’t have the time or sense of urgency as much as when we first started, I assuage my anxiety by convincing myself that the relative rarity of our posts makes our blog more valuable, more like a quarterly journal of literary review or something.

I’ve got the cheapo freebee kind of phone (12-button keypad, not a full qwerty keyboard) so when I send text messages, its inordinately difficult to use profanity. The mode that guesses what word I want refuses to admit that I might be interested in cursing and hammering that shit out manually is just stupid and time-consuming, especially because I have to switch from guessing mode to manual and then back to guessing mode when I’m done. People who pay more for phones get the added benefit of the Verizon moral police leaving them the hell alone. Fuck that shit. What business does Verizon or Samsung have making it more difficult for me to use in private conversation words that the FCC unilaterally decided aren’t appropriate for public broadcast? Speaking of, if this digital TV transition ever actually happens and over-the-air goes away, wouldn’t that leave no reason for the FCC to exist?

It just occurred to me that while at first skydivers seem really impressive, what’s more impressive is the skydiving cameraman. Clearly he’s performing the more challenging activity of the two. I don’t necessarily mean skydiving, maybe rock climbing or hang gliding or skiing or other dangerous/physically demanding activities where some people do it and then some other guy does it too but with camera in tow and manages to get some good shots.

I’m not a big soda drinker, but here’s the key to enjoying a carbonated beverage: ginger ale/Sprite-ish stuff tastes much better close to room temperature but cola/root beer/Dr. P is better refrigerated. I say refrigerated and not chilled because putting ice in soda is just about as bad as putting ice in good scotch. I don’t want to hear anything to the contrary.

Self-indulgence is the new black

~or~

If you think now is a good time to write an article about Twitter or Facebook or “social media,” you’re high as shit

- posted by russellmania3000

Because really, the last thing I want to hear or see is someone else just now catching on to one of the dumbest things to get big on the web. How about you write me an article about 10 things I should be doing on Twitter and I write you an article about 10 things you should be writing about instead of Twitter? Does that sound like fun? By the way, if you think the fail whale is an ok tattoo because it’s a cute piece of illustration despite what it means, you should know that the same dude also has an Adobe AIR logo tattoo, which is…ugh nevermind.

The Sr. VP of Biz at work sent me this the other day, not as like a joke or a sarcastic musing, but as her way of saying that even though she doesn’t really get Twitter or Facebook, she’s excited that our organization is involved on those platforms. Thanks to me. And I don’t feel great about it, but if I didn’t get them on Twitter, I wouldn’t be doing my job. And that’s the sad state we’re in. What’s sadder than that? My old intern Zack just interviewed with the San Antonio Spurs for a social media position. I’m not familiar with their front office, and maybe they have a new media team that runs 7 deep like the Suns, but I doubt it, and seeing as how their team site isn’t a gleaming example of modernity, I’m not convinced that spending money to lose focus is the right idea.

I’ve been making a concerted effort to avoid own-industry-bridge-burning-slash-mud-slinging, but fuck it, I’ve always wanted to drive a truck or be a cop or something. Here we go.

This is Chris Brogan, and he is high as shit. He writes about social media marketing on his blog, makes good money banking on his reputation, and has all kinds of followers on Twitter. He writes disposable bits about personal branding or storytelling in marketing or how to not be a toolbag when attending a marketing conference, forgetting of course that attending the conference in the first place is grade A toolbaggery. He has no sense of humor. He formulaically ends his posts with cute little open-ended/rhetorical questions like “Now that we’re done discussing turd-polishing, what do you think? What turds have you polished lately? Are there turds you’re leaving unpolished when you should be scrubbing away?” with the intention of generating discussion, or probably more likely the intention of getting some CEO to think “gee wiz I’ve never thought about our business that way. He’s good. We should pay him to polish our turds”, but in practice it reads like he’s writing to third graders or belittling his audience, as in “what did you ever do? Nothing! I invented the piano key necktie.”

The other day I was having a beer with my friend Becky, a card-carrying member of the North American Society of People Who Couldn’t Go 5 Minutes Without Touching Their IPhone Even If They Had No Hands Or Feet. I love Becky, but she’s one of those people who, when you’re hanging out with them, you’re not really hanging out with them, you’re just sort of sharing the same physical space while they tap away at their phones. It’s a whole different thing than people who are always talking on their phone, because at some point the phone call ends and you can reasonably assume their attention has returned to the here and now, at least until the next one begins, but for compulsive texters/emailers/Twitterers/Facebookers, the time spent not tapping away, you know, existing fully in the temporal plane, it’s really just a lull spent in anticipation of that noise that used to mean “your CD is done ripping” but now means something entirely different and I’m not sure exactly what because my phone is the cheap-o free kind that you get three more of when you buy one for like $20. The other pertinent bit of information that makes this whole thing make sense is that she had recently fornicated with a guy whose girlfriend was pregnant and so Becky was currently being ostracized by this particular circle of friends, and understandably so. Mid-beer, roughly the following words were exchanged:

Becky: “I hate those guys, they never tell me what’s going on.”

Me: “Huh?” (I wasn’t paying attention because she had spent the last 5 minutes burried in IPhone)

Her: “They put where they’re going on Twitter, but you know how you can put, like, @-someone? They never put @-me.”

Me: “Why don’t you just follow them? Isn’t that the point of Twitter?”

Her: “I guess, but don’t you think that’s kind of desperate?”

My job is in new media marketing, just like Chris Brogan only I’m not high as shit. I don’t mean to pick on Chris; there are hundreds if not thousands of others just like him but I’m not readily familiar with too many because I don’t live in San Francisco. I know what’s up in the web/tech world, most of the time. Personally, I don’t use Twitter, but I do on behalf of the professional sports franchise that employs me. I thought I was aware of most of the mores and norms of this platform, but apparently not. The new thing I learned that day: actually following your friends on Twitter, you know, using it as it is intended and most effectively used, is so faux pas.

Let’s stop picking on Chris. This is John Chow, who, as he puts it himself, “make[s] money online by telling people how much money [he] make[s] online.” The fact that he can state such openly and still be taken so seriously and make so much coin is a good indicator of just how much Kool Aid is being passed around at the new media cult meeting, I mean party. He is, in point of fact, high as shit, though not in the same way some other guys like Brogan are high as shit (Whoops. Sorry Chris. It just comes so easily.), because deep down I think he gets that what he does is simple Simon nonsense, and to a certain extent he’s honest about it. He also made an adorable video about parenting.

This time I’m going to try really hard not to make fun of Chris. This is Guy Kawasaki. He’s a former marketing guy for Apple, now doing stuff far less interesting, and this is going to shock you, but Guy is high as shit and luuuvs Twitter. Like I mean, he really hearts it, so much so that he’s so busy going to conferences to talk about Twitter that he doesn’t have time to actually do it so he pays other people to do it for him, not like for his business, for him personally like you might pay someone to do your food shopping or dog walking. And this is I believe a good illustration of the internet meme You’re Doing It Wrong(sic). Can you tell I’ve been reading Infinite Jest? But that’s not why I brought Guy up. Guy gave a talk on Twitter at SES recently. I wasn’t there because I’m not a toolbag, but I heard he went on a tangent about how he doesn’t understand why Padmasree Warrior, Cisco’s CTO and holder of the world’s second most awesome name (first being Moxie Crimefighter Jillette), was on so many people’s recommended-to-follow list on Twitter and he wasn’t. Guy, if you’re out there, the answer is because maybe you’re the kind of guy who gets upset over Twitter. That and you don’t work at Apple anymore. Cisco is important and Alltop isn’t. Twitter also probably hates Hawaiians.

The VP of Technology at our team’s parent company sent me this article, right before he sent me a bunch of other stupid articles about social media. Probably around 90% of the people who write for Ad Age are high as shit, but their niche is in being staggeringly behind the curve and painfully speculative, vague and obvious, so one can only fault them so much. But the point is already there are ad agencies that offer placement in Twitter feeds, and Twitter itself is developing paid account features. Like hell it can’t be monetized. That’s exactly what happens when a platform’s user base nearly doubles in a little over one month.

Facebook recently changed the way most of their pages look and behave, and while the word on the street is they’ve gotten enough complaints that they’re already rethinking and making changes, the makeover is a tell that while the network isn’t over yet in the way that MySpace is over, it will be over sooner or later. Facebook’s ui is now clunkier, inelegant, straying from the near-perfect identity that made it such a success. But the upshot, I suppose from Zuckerberg’s view, is that it’s now more like Twitter. That idiot turned down all kinds of ducket in a buyout offer a couple years ago. In a couple more he’ll be kicking himself.

Here’s the thing about Twitter. It’s not all the rage because it’s simple or easy to use or “enables you to communicate in new and interesting ways” or any of that new media cult jargon. For one thing, it’s not simple. If you want to use Facebook, where do you go? Facebook.com. If you want to use Twitter, where do you go? Twitter.com? Amateur. Excuse me. Noob. There are enough third party desktop apps, feed aggregators, publishing tools and tracking utilities to make your head spin. All the really neat/lame/neat again/lame again shit people are doing with Twitter isn’t built in at all. And it’s not even that it’s compatible with mobile devices. There’s this arcane technology called email that’s been on phones for years. Hell, you wouldn’t believe, but phones actually make phone calls, or voice chats if you will, so you can fucking communicate in real fucking time and keep in touch with people and let them know what the fuck you’re doing.

Remember when you used to really like mentally invest yourself in thinking up the perfect song lyric that ever so poignantly expressed how you were feeling, right at that moment, man, so you could put it in your away message on AIM? Don’t lie, yes you do. Remember sitting around just sort of looking at other people’s away messages for the better part of an hour? Or coming home and checking your computer and the surge of pride and validation you felt when you saw all the people who responded to your away message while you were out, or the pang of disappointment you felt when no one responded, not even the person you expressly crafted the message for in the hopes that she would read it (you little emo fucker) ? I have to reach back about 7 years for that kind of warm and fuzzy memory but some of you might not have to go so far. Hell, some of you might have done this same sort of thing a couple months ago with your Facebook status, before you took up, in a nostalgic throwback to crafting AIM profiles, writing lists of 25 things that no one wants to know.

Then again, you might not have to go back that far either. If you’re a Twitter user, chances are you participated in this same sort of time-honored fishing-for-attention ritual earlier today. What Twitter really brings to the table is a diabolical tightening in and expanding upon the core of what makes self-indulgence and voyeurism so appealing to so many while stripping away all the extraneous features of social networks that might cause you to lose focus on yourself. Don’t have digital camera? Can’t edit video worth a damn? Screw that shit, relegate it to links to other sites. Can’t formulate cogent thoughts and arguments in written English? Fuck it, 140 characters is no place for nuance, complete sentences/spelling/punctuation optional. Don’t have any hip interests or feel weird lying about what bands/books/movies you like? Profiles are a thing of the past. Don’t have any real friends to friend? Plenty of people you don’t know will follow you for no reason. Your life is so stunningly uninteresting that your Facebook page is a barren waste of inactivity? Tweet on behalf of your pet. Or real people who have better things to do. Bored by friend counts or unable to generate comments? The following-to-follower ratio provides a brave new paradigm for competing for status.

From a business standpoint, I totally get the whole Twitter cult. There’s no compelling reason not to join and that’s why I helped get our organization on board. People might ask how much money you’ll really make or traffic you’ll generate or engagement you’ll create in your audience and the answer is I don’t know, but however much it is, it’s more than you would get by not doing it. And even though I don’t have a personal account, I can see the potential value for the individual. I just don’t see the potential being put into practice all that much. The kind of people who use Twitter in valuable ways are the kind of people that would get the same shit done if Twitter didn’t exist. They’d be awarded the same jobs, have the same reach to the same audience through blogging or something else, contribute to the same communities, and so on.

But for the laymen, the students, accountants, bankers, (ahem) fabric designers, media figureheads, entertainers and scores of other people who have joined the cult, something vile and absurd and uncomfortably revealing about what it is to be human is coming out of them on Twitter. It is a gateway drug, an enabler of a kind of short and not-at-all-sweet celebration of self, or the celebration of circuitous, silly shit, like tweeting about how to use Twitter better. It’s another way to shout at the world about nothing of consequence, another way to wear ourselves obnoxiously on our sleeves, another mirror for us to look into. It teaches us to use characters efficiently at the cost of using language well. It encourages us to believe the way to be interesting is to be proliferate rather than thoughtful. I mean for fuck’s sake, athletes are Twittering at halftime instead of listening to their coaches and Congressmen are Twittering instead of listening to the President speak. I don’t know what that speaks volumes about more: how little respect they have for Obama, how much Congressmen are shitty people, how much they don’t really care about how fucked this country is, or how clear it is that, even though we might like it and much like a lot of other things we happen to like, Twitter isn’t a good thing for us.

The things I chose to keep to myself

- posted by russellmania3000

To the best of my knowledge, I had thought Sam was either in France or dead of bowel cancer, and for my intents and purposes, there isn’t a big distinction between either scenario. But she’s back States-side and if I know her at all she’ll be riding the I-hate-it-here wambulance for a spell, so I guess we’ll see if any further contributions from her are forthcoming. I’ve been terrible busy and working on and off on a long-form piece on Jim Henson, but this is more temporally pertinent, and if I were to go another week without writing anything, I may as well give Redikulus up for keeps.

Until earlier in March, I hadn’t gone to see anything on First Friday in several months; all too often I’m too late getting there or too disillusioned from the last time I went so I skip the galleries and go straight to the bar. This month, I avoided Old City altogether and opted for a few spots I’d never visited, which didn’t really help with the disillusionment but at least it wasn’t ass-to-ankles crowded.

First stop: Juanita & Juan’s for the launch of Megawords issue 10. In case visitors didn’t want to physically handle a zine, a copy had been unbound and the pages had been tacked to the wall, which really deprives you of the experience of paging through 112 pages of in crowd ego stroking that “reflects upon the exhibition’s thirty-one days as a physical outlet for creativity in a melange of color and black and white photographs, reproductions of storefront plans and proposals, and written reflections about the project.” In other words, a scenester scrap book, in effect a publication whose subject is itself. I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that this was perhaps not their strongest issue.

Second stop: Vox Populi had a exhibition called Bivouac which included: creepy drawings of Snow White; photos of constructivist/readymade-ish sculptures; film of guy telling molestation story while molesting wad of clay; film of naked Juggernauts; film of hands paging through book. There was also a performance/installation piece called Rented Time, consisting of: balloons; giant cigarette carton spinning on wall; guy in Halloween costume making funny noises, breaking in and out of character. Also three really scrawny guys talking about their weightlifting routines in the corner. Next please.

Third stop: Tiger Strike Asteroid. No link for this place, not a huge surprise, because the name should be a dead giveaway that it was just some art students’ loft. In one room they had hung what looked to be someone’s projects from a freshman year design curriculum, over-performing homework assignments but under-performing pieces of art.

Fourth stop: Toy Factory. Again no link, but again this was just another loft apartment with a name, and in some extra space adjacent the kitchen were a couple found object sculptures and some pseudo-Giger-ish drawings with Game Boys, Transformers and a smattering of other pop culture ironies-du-jour. The antique movie camera converted into a music box was a hugely redeeming factor to an otherwise lackluster display.

I should also mention something about the ambiance of these last two places. As if going into smaller spaces doesn’t already sometimes feel like you’re intruding on a private engagement, entering these last two spots, glorified residences as they were, definitely felt like I inadvertently stumbled into the wrong room. Tiger Strike Asteroid was confined and crowded and full of chatter, the place was pretty sparse, most signs of inhabitation had been tidied away, and there were definitely, like, senior citizens there, presumably done with Vox Populi and just poking around, so that wasn’t so jarring. But Toy Factory was far more awkward in that the place was larger, emptier (of people) and had all the trappings of a very cozy, comfy home. Lived in, is the phrase. A small crowd was to one side and speaking quietly amongst themselves if at all, lounging about rather than huddling together like you do when in unfamiliar territory, and one guy was in an adjacent living room watching a skateboard video like it was Tuesday. And there was a blind dog with cataracts the size of dinner plates. It felt too personal for comfort.

Contemporary art, like much of all art, is self-indulgent to an extent, but usually it comes off as an adverb, as in “this piece self-indulgently but successfully renders so and so” or “this guy paints really well, albeit a little self-indulgently.” But this month more than any other I can remember, the work I saw seemed to embrace self-indulgence in a new and profound way, as sort of the object noun/central thesis/raison d’etre. You know violence for violence’s sake or sex for sex’s sake? Well…yeah. How exquisitely postmodern. More on this to come.

Bonus round: Khmer Art Gallery. You know how in like every kung fu movie there’s some smarmy Brit who’s stealing truckloads of Chinese artifacts and selling them to “the institute” for major ducket? This place is like that dude’s hideout, only substitute Chinese for Cambodian and smarmy Brit for portly, middle-aged hippy lady. I mean, their collection is so extensive it feels pillaged.

Bonus round 2: More recently I popped over to the PMA, because, you know, what the hell, can’t be worse than First Friday. They have an exhibition on called Cézanne and Beyond which is quite possibly worth the $24. Among others, there’s some lesser-known works by Picasso, Matisse, Jasper Johns, Max Beckmann, Giacometti, Gorky, Braque and Mondrian, all of which I thoroughly enjoyed. There was also some Japanese photography and a small Gehry exhibition, which is neat if you’re into Gehry.

Crazy Affirmation: Animal Conversations

Sadly, I didn’t receive any requests for me to affirm anything for anyone this week. I would just like to say congratulations to all of you, for being so self-affirming. I’m proud of you. But the weekly post must be posted weekly, and so we press on. This week, I am going to address the phenomena of people who talk to animals. Those who are animaphonic (capable of speaking to animals) are a strange and mixed group.

Exhibit A:

I may or may not have view Dunston Checks In this week.  My point here is this. Some times talking to animals (usually monkeys who are robbers) can be hilarious. There are a slew of monkey movies out there that follow this framework, namely Monkey Trouble with a young, boyish Thora Birch and some more obscure movies like Funky Monkey, MVP: Most Valuable Primate, and MXP: Most Extreme Primate.

Exhibit B:

On the other hand, most people who talk to animals are a few marbles short, and you probably want to stay away. I also may or may not have seen a portion of a made for TV movie about Oliver Twist.Since most of you probably aren’t familiar with this version of Oliver Twist, in which a character named Fagin speaks to a crow in his rafters. He’s exceedingly creepy, and to drive the creepiness home, here’s a picture of Timothy Spall as Fagin in this movie. You may have seen him in Harry Potter: Prisoner of Azkaban, Lemony Snickets, or Sweeny Todd being additionally creepy.

Timothy Spall is a professional creeper

Exhibit C:

We also have the Wicked Witch of the West.Now this woman had all kinds of issues.  She may have spoke with monkeys, but they were flying monkeys.

everyone seems to be enjoying themselves here

If you haven’t at one point in your life wished for a legion of flying monkeys to do your bidding, you’re doing it all wrong. This is where the talking to monkeys thing stops being funny, and starts being freaky and sort of awesome. But I guess dressing in black and having green face doesn’t really get you too far, might as well embrace it.

Exhibit D:

Then we have the case of Alice in Wonderland. Ah yes, Wonderland. I still want to go here, and if talking to a OCD white rabbit with severe concerns about being punctual takes me there, I’ll talk to him. I’ll even sing him a song and dance. That is clearly the correct hole to fall down, even for all the troubles it causes her. Alice is simply one of those characters in a story who doesn’t understand how to make the best of a poor situation.

running so late, he forgot his pants

This goes for characters like Sara in the Labyrinth as well. Marry David Bowie, and his purple package. I don’t see the downside in the situation. He clearly states, “Forget about the baby.”  Win, win.

Okay. With all the evidence before us, I feel it’s safe to make our affirmation. I would like to affirm that its pefectly acceptable to talk with animals under a few conditions. It can be that it is hilarious. Its always good to do things for a laugh. It’s also acceptable if the animals understand you and do your bidding. Lastly, I find it acceptable to talk to the animals if it is going to be beneficial to you. (i.e. becoming Goblin Queen/wife of David Bowie) Never fail to be an oppourtunist. The only way talking to animals isn’t okay is if you are really crazy and creepy, or if someone is going to see you doing this and have you comitted. Now go make some friends, I’m sure there’s some pigeons or squirrels near by.

-posted by samsquared

Affirmation Station: Ginger-vitis

I have decided to do a weekly affirmation. If I am ever going to get my cult going, I am going to have to start addressing people’s concerns and issues. So if you feel something needs to be reaffirmed, feel free to send us an email. I’ll do my best to affirm its place in the world. Oh, it’s also for random bits of knowledge, because I’m really good at seeking out some weird stuff. I decided, since feeling down earlier this week, to reaffirm why I am awesome, and in particular, why Gingers are awesome.

we ain't goin' down like that!

Gingers are rather enigmatic. Some of us are gorgeous (I like to think I fall into this category) and some of us, are.. not. We do have lots more in common than just the recessive genes that gave us the ginger color. For example, I don’t know one Ginger who really enjoys references to our fiery colored pubic hair. For one, pubic hair isn’t something anyone really likes to focus on. That’s why waxing and shaving is such a big market, people are never going to want to stop getting rid of body hair. So what if it’s a new color variety you haven’t seen before. Second of all, don’t knock it til you tried it. I know you’re jealous because that hair coloring kit you bought in Summer Sunset tells you not to use it down there. But lets get back to why we are awesome, and subsequently not going extinct.

Yes, the new rumor, that we are all dying off. You know what the rumor used to be? That’s right, rumors about redheads have been thought up since the dawning of time. There was plenty about the “Redbeards” who took over America, floating in on their clouds, to wreak havoc on super advanced civilizations. I especially like the rumors from those days about how we came from space, and the ones where we are the spawn of Satan. That’s right. Hail Satan bitches.We are not dying off, but scientists get sick of talking about how the Earth IS dying off, and fat people are not.

ginger smarts

While watching the inauguration, someone said I might understand why everyone was crying once a Ginger became president. Tough shit, there already was one! Thomas Jefferson. And technically, all those old fogies at the beginning of our nation wanted another Ginger, Benjamin Franklin, to be president. He politely declined and suggested George Washington. There’s all kind of righteous redheads, and we have to do a lot of cleaning up for the redheads, who are well, not so righteous.

Where was I? Oh yes, redheads who make up for shiteous redheads. I won’t put myself on the list, or people I know, but there’s a few of us out there, flaming proud. Ours is a light and it never goes out!

since when was I hot?

We somtimes forget where we are...

I'm hot when I don't date Marilyn Manson

we wish you were still this hot

We also have the fakers, or the unsures, or the trainwrecks who aren’t doing anyone any good.

please leave

please make the pain stop!

I think this shows that despite a few of God’s, we’ll call them ‘mistakes’, gingers have been relatively successful and attractive humans. Gingers generally affirmed.

Also, if you missed it, Jim Gaffigan made a guest appearance on Flight of the Conchords this past week. Aside from him knitting, he refers to his ginger down low as a fire belt. Murray refers to his hair color as electric copper. This was a special episode you need to catch, especially if you have ginger love.

A conversation we have all of us had

- posted by russellmania3000

It begins something like this:

Act I, Scene I: The scene opens to the cold light of dawn. Two middle-aged men exit a makeshift trading post/tavern made of rotting beechwood located on the desolate main drag of a lonely rural mining town. Their skin is leathery and worn full of crevices such that a close-up photograph of one of their cheeks might look like a topographical image of the Himalayas. They walk together, blowing steamy breath into clenched fists and speaking in hushed tones. They wear silly fur hats.

Dmitri: What is this, this Sonic? Day after day I see their advertisements on the moving picture box, teasing and tempting me with their patties of ground beef, and slushie happy hours, and tots! Oh, the tots! But here, in the frozen wastes of the Urals, such an establishment there is not. Believe me comrade, I have looked, for my eyes long for the sight and my tongue for the taste.

Vladimir: They are places of legend, my friend, for in all my wandering I have happened upon nary a one for many moons. You will not find Sonic and her fresh bounties within 500 leagues of this place. But I have many fond memories of a carefree childhood in Omsk, for it was there that my family took my sister and me weekly to market and, after a long day of trading and peddling our wares in the village square, we ate a hearty meal of breakfast burritos and onion rings. Those were happier days. But here in the mines of Narodnaya, for us there is only sweat and dust and the meager root stew.

Dmitri: But why, Vladimir, tell me, why do they mock us with promotional messages for goods which we cannot procure? Surely such a ruse is not worth the price!

Vladimir: It is a strange and cruel fate that we should be cast so from the light and warmth of the simple pleasures we desire most.

Exeunt Dmitri and Vladimir stage left. End scene.

Or in 3-panel strip form, if you prefer it.

Like many of you, for years I have seen Sonic ads on TV, shaken my fist at the heavens, spat at almighty God and persevered. Or just went to Five Guys. I don’t want to make pithy banter with a balding friend or dumpy-looking wife or chubby Paris Hilton lookalike and even more busted female. And by busted I don’t mean she has nice mammaries or resembles a plaster cast from the shoulders up. I mean that when photons bounce off her body and are recorded by a camera, and this recording is played back so that more photons in the pattern of her visage scurry in the direction of my ocular cavity, the net result is an unpleasant sensation in my cerebellum. No, I just want a burger.

Last week some coworkers and I took a little 20-minute excursion up I-95 to get to the nearest Sonic, which was out in Bensalem in a run down industrial area that I would have no reason to go to otherwise. This kind of thing isn’t uncommon for us; we’ve driven a half hour to get to an Arby’s because, let’s be honest, time out of the office is time out of the office any way you slice it. Sonic’s website says “[t]here are more than 3400 SONIC® Drive-In locations across the country.” Just none where you live. Especially if you live in a city. Bensalem is not a city. In any case, if you haven’t been or even seen one (both my seeing and tasting cherries were popped with one thrust), Sonic is indeed delicious, though it would have been more delicious if a girl on roller skates brought out our food on one of those trays that hooks onto the car door.

But all this skullduggery does have an explanation, and a method behind the apparent scattershot advertising strategy. National cable advertising is, at certain volumes, cheaper than regionally targeted advertising, so that’s a no brainer right there. But the genius of the whole thing is that it drives people mad with wonder and envy. How flabbergasting it must be, as say, a resident of metropolitan New York, to find yourself jealous of some yokel from Georgia or Tennessee or where-bumblefucking-ever because they have a Sonic and you don’t, and you have to pay out the ass for McDonald’s in NY. They’ve stumbled upon the holy grail of marketing, sort of. They’ve achieved the kind of viral, word-of-mouth-driven national discussion that everyone wants, over the subject of “where the fuck is there a Sonic,” simply by advertising something that’s not available. Now, whenever they open a new joint, they get all kinds of media coverage and blog hype and lines around the block because they’ve been advertising for years to people who want to be customers but can’t.

This is not a new strategy or phenomenon. Companies have been doing this for decades in areas where they plan to launch. You’ll notice the ambiguous “Respekt” outdoor ads for Cricket mobile phone services around Philadelphia presently. They’re not available here yet, but they will be soon, and at that point they’ll start to demystify their messaging and identify that top-heavy K with their wordmark/logotype (a befuddling design choice). The difference here is Cricket isn’t offering any specific deal or even saying who they are, which is…I don’t know, who cares. But Sonic is offering free tots and gigantic slushies for under $1 to anyone in the nation lucky enough to live by or drive by one and that’s apparently been pretty rabble-rousing. The more significant difference is that Cricket’s hype/awareness campaign, and most things of that nature, will last maybe weeks or months. I’m not positive but Leap, their owner, has indicated they hope to that by the end of this year they will have rolled out service in all 27 markets they won bids on in the 2006 FCC auction. By contrast, Sonic has been advertising in Philadelphia and other major metropolitan areas for years and have yet to announce any new locations there. In fact there may never be a Sonic in Philly. But their incessant advertising has given them a legion of customers-in-waiting who are ready for a cross-country road trip, or like me, the opportunity to take an extra long lunch.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that, as a marketing guy, I am delighted that a protracted campaign designed to frustrate and drive people bats might actually work really well. It would sure be fun to try.

PS: holy balls.

It’s bigger than hip-hop

- posted by russellmania3000

Damn, son. Fuck coffee, I’m awake now, ready to go 12 rounds. My employer is a professional sports franchise that will go unnamed, whose mascot is an outsized mutant rabbit named Hip-Hop and he has a supremely gay theme song. I’ve been trying to get it changed to Dead Prez for a while, but to no avail. Something about being family-friendly or whatever, I hear them talk about kids and I tune out. By the way, in our office we can use “gay” as an epithet as much as we like without being sent to sensitivity training or whatever. So if that’s your beef, I really don’t want to hear it.

I work in interactive marketing so I check out the Google competition for anything I’m involved in, just for kicks. I checked for Redikulus a while back and there used to be a lot more that has since dropped off the face of the nets. There was a pretty cool clothing company that I can find neither hide nor hair of anymore. But there are two interesting things of note.

The first result, regrettably, is for a misspelling of Ridikulus, a Harry Potter spell. Christ, we are in poor company. But more importantly, as luck would have it, there’s a rapper who goes by same, and why shouldn’t there be? We really asked for it when we chose this spelling. Listen Mr. I Started Rapping At 6, I don’t care if your pops is in jail or what part of Las Vegas you’re from. I watched CSI and it seems like a goofy as all hell kind of place. If you so much as even think about purchasing redikulus.com, you will be in for a world of hurt, mon ami. No wait. What I meant was: perhaps we can come up with a business arrangement that will benefit both of us…

The other and infinitely more compelling item of interest with which we share a name is Redikulus Dae, an annual street fair/shopping festival in Rhinelander, WI. Sweet crackers, there’s even a second annual Hodag Roaring Contest. I am so there. Back up a minute. Hodag, you say? Yes. Think of it as a Midwestern chupacabra. There’s not enough drugs in this city for me to make up shit like this. American folklore is truly fascinating and batshit crazy.

Anyway…as you were.

Non sequiturs: vol. 1

- posted by russellmania3000

The problem with reading on public transportation, other than that it can put you to sleep and cause you to miss your stop, is that you can’t look up and check out whether other people are impressed with what you’re reading. Because if you’re looking for around for potential people to chat up, you’re not really reading, are you? Don’t give me this I-read-for-enjoyment/self-betterment crap. Books are fashion accessories, same as everything else on your person.

Is it just me or are keffiyehs the new buffalo plaid button-downs? In fact, in the last couple days I’m pretty sure I’ve seen some oversized purple or aqua buffalo plaid neckerchiefs with tassels, which pretty much qualifies as keffiyeh in the same way Chipotle qualifies as Mexican food. And we wonder why they hate us.

The thing about walking downhill on ice is that it’s really easy to start moving diagonally but once moving diagonally it’s really hard to straighten out again. Walking uphill on ice won’t put you in the same quandary.

A woman getting cat called and a man getting stared down by a gay guy are not the same kind of uncomfortable. They’re just not.

The thing about getting idea for a project is that most of the time you just accumulate the idea but never really follow through on it. Maybe you return to it a few months later and realize it’s a terrible idea. If you’re lucky. If you’re unlucky, you start thinking you’re some kind of great idea man when you’re not and maybe you turn it into a start-up and lose some VC firm’s coin and ruin the show for everyone else.

I know that deep down I’m an awful person because I’m not that upset about all the lives drunk driving has claimed, but I am upset that Charles Barkley is off the air. Police are such cockblockers. This segment in which Bob Costas talks 2008 with John McEnroe and Sir Charles on HBO is amazing. No disrespect to Chris Webber, but for the last several years Charles has been the best basketball pundit in business, and outside of Bill Simmons and Nathaniel Friedman a.k.a. Bethlehem Shoals perhaps the best pundit in sports.

A while ago Sam was talking about viral marketing and mentioned Ray-Ban’s cow-birthing-a-dude spot. So the guys from Never Hide Films actually contacted us to mention they had 2 new spots out, which is, I mean, hey thanks I guess but we don’t care. Even though Disco Ballers is marginally amusing, once you have a guy coming out a cow vagina all covered in amniotic fluid and chunks of gross, you’ve pretty much maxed yourself out in advertising and you might as well pack up and hit the beach. I think Sam’s tongue-in-cheek/backhanded compliment might have been lost on them had they read her piece at all, but I don’t think they did, which makes me wonder how many times it occurs that a blog pokes fun at – or outright tears new rectums in – a particular ad or product or institution or whatever and said entity’s marketing/web team gets wind of the fact that they’re mentioned in the post but doesn’t pay attention to the context and tries to cozy up to said blog without even realizing they are poor bedfellows.

For some stupid reason I decided not to watch the AC Milan game on Sunday and instead go to the Punk Rock Flea Market, which was so crowded that even if I had wanted to buy something, I doubt I’d have been able to reach for my wallet without groping three asses that were way too young for me to be groping. Every third person smelled of reefer or of just plain body stank. I spotted a mug shaped like a tree trunk with an owl peeking out of a knot in the side, which was actually kind of cool and surely one of a kind, but no, the girl working that table told me she was only selling that in a set of six. So what she meant by that was she wasn’t going to be selling them at all.