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Barack Obama Wants You to Have Cupcakes!

noreply@blogger.com (Max) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 23:01:00 +0000

My friend Bryan Leblanc turned me on to this little bit of absurd political geniusness: BarackObamaIsYourNewBicycle.com. How do you take the effortless charisma and implied linked goodwill of the possible next President of the US and translate it to the web? Simple, just think of those things that make you feel good, and have them all start with Obama.

Apparently, he made me a mixtape.

As a side note, a lot of these cute messages imply a sort of friendly connectedness and do so by referencing Facebook actions or other tech-related items, which I thought was interesting. Whenever I get asked (it's more like accused, really) by people about how the Internet may be reducing our ability to create "real connections" with each other, I always like to point out how many of us use our on-line social networks to provide little bursts of joy to a large group of people in a way that is just impossible off-line. In fact, the aforementioned Barack site was Bryan's status update today, so there you go.

I'm front-page news!

noreply@blogger.com (Max) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 03:34:00 +0000

I had the great pleasure of making a speech to APEX (the Association of Public Service Executives) last week. And because of this, I made the front page of my hometown paper.

Sort of cool: the Ottawa Citizen covered this conference and my speech was pretty well received. A reporter wrote this story about it (which also reflects to contents of the speech pretty well).

I get a fair amount of media coverage, but this was extra-special. One, because I grew up in Ottawa, but more importantly because I really believe that government needs to do more to engage young people. I was really honoured to be able to present to four hundred or so high ranking Public Service executives and get my message out to them: I also love telling goverment folks that teenage Canadian workers essentially have taxation without rerpresentation, because it's true. You can work - and therefore pay taxes - when you're 14 (12 in Alberta!) but you can't vote.

Anyway, it was some very nice coverage and made my family proud. Next up is getting some work with the Feds to try and effect some change. But this was a great start.

You can put my head on your heart!

noreply@blogger.com (Max) — Wed, 28 May 2008 21:45:00 +0000

Or a picture of it, anyway.

For a while now, I've been wearing a blue t-shirt with a hand-drawn image of a guy named Fred on it, with his name and hometown scrawled underneath his head. Don't know him, never met him, but I love him.

Or I love the idea of him: this t-shirt is one of many available through Joy T-shirts. It's pretty simple: you buy a shirt with someone's face on it, and in doing so get a code, that allows you to access their website and upload a photo of yourself. Eventually, they draw you, and then put you on a t-shirt. Why? well, in their words:

"Every face on a Joy T- Shirt has been inspired by a real person. When you wear your shirt you are encouraged to think about that person and how your everyday actions can affect others and the world we live in.After you purchase a shirt you may then upload a photo of your own visage via the participate link to have your face drawn by hand and worn on the hearts of others. It is about taking an active stance against racism and discrimination while being an advocate for peace and equality... because in someway or another, we are all connected!"

You can see me here and, should you choose, buy me and wear me on your heart. Or someone else, should you choose: after all, some of you know where my head's been and won't want it anywhere near your vital organs. And then someone will wear you, and so it goes. Fred, by the way, has a passion for "soccer, video production, movies, hip hop, spending time with [his] family, carib lager, jerk chicken, lending a helping hand, banging on the drums." And I can get behind pretty much all of those things.

I love this idea for its simplicity, and the truly viral nature of the message. Every time I wear the shirt, someone asks me about it, and I spread the message. It's fun, it's smart, and it's direct. so a massive shout out to Jeff Woodrow, the smartypants behind all of this. And thanks to him for not making me look too much like Fred Savage in the drawing.

Zig-a-zig-ah!

noreply@blogger.com (Max) — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 19:26:00 +0000

Last Spice Girls shows, ever, for ever and ever, until the end of time, and forever, and ever* were this week in Toronto. I went to one, and it was probably the most fun a human being can have and still be legal.

Almost as great was getting referred to as a Spice Girls "expert" in Eye. Read this!

*band reserves the right to reform for a boatload of money at a later date.

This is sincerely great, but I am not good with sincerity.

noreply@blogger.com (Max) — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 15:56:00 +0000

I'm as PoMo-ironic as anyone, but this is amazing.

We live in the age of self-help: we have the luxury, in the West anyway, of thinking about ourselves and our problems - our mostly internal problems - more than any other group of people in history.

For the most part, we don't till the land. We live long lives. We have food, and shelter, and the basics. Even those of us who live in comparative squalor - not the very poor or the homeless, but people who, economically speaking, are in the lower classes, do okay compared to say, your typical African today, or your typical North American 150 years ago. You're reading this, and that means that you've got the Internet, and some time, and some space. Those things are all pretty amazing and pretty luxurious compared to what our lives could be like.

I mention this briefly because, in the strictest, most Maslowian sense of it all, out hierarchy of needs is pretty well developed. We have the luxury - or the curse - of a massive amount of self-reflexion, and because of that I think we focus on problems that we shouldn't focus on.

Which brings me back to the whole self-help thing. the good part of it is that most of the industry just repeats essential truths, and these are things we need to hear over and over and remind ourselves of often. Life is okay. Be good to people. For the most part, the work you put in is directly correlative to the result achieved. these are good things to know and to hear. But we move away from these things as we get more and more wrapped up in this quest for self-knowledge: we spin more and more intricate webs of self-thought, and all of a sudden we are thinking about our problems too much, until we become our problems. the fundamental truths, the really simple things get lost, and the problem becomes the thing, instead of the solution.

So I find it really amazing when someone can present these truths, these same lessons, the things we should all know but convince ourselves aren't as important as our problems, in a way that cuts through all the crap. Here's a guy who's done it.

His name is Randy Pausch, and this is his "last lecture," a tradition in which an academic hypothesizes the last lecture they would ever give if they knew they were going to die.

Randy is going to die. He has inoperable cancer and a few months to live. About a million people have viewed his full, hour-long lecture online already: this is an 11-minute version, and I found it genuinely inspiring. Now, it's from an episode of Oprah: she is both the best and worst aspects of the self-help industry rolled into one ginormous brand, but this, for me, is what it is: a man with everything who is going to lose it all and chooses to live each day focusing on what he has, not what he is going to lose. I find that genuinely inspiring, and I'm not moved by much. If he can do it - this guy who is going to leave his three young children soon for no good reason other than his pancreas sucks - then I can too, right?

So I recommend that you watch this. If you've got an hour, you can see the full-length version here. In case you don't have the 11 minutes that this shorter version takes, here are the big lessons in a nutshell: choose people over things; work hard and the rest will come; decide to have fun every day; live your life the right way and things will sort themselves out for the most part.

I don't know why I need a dying man to tell me that, but I'm glad he did.

Grammys 2008: Softer, Worse, Slower, Weaker

noreply@blogger.com (Max) — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 17:35:00 +0000

I promised I wasn't going to blog about this, but the Hancock apologists are getting to me. Here's why the Grammys suck. Or mostly suck.

Look, I realise that this is a nearly impossible job for the people at NARAS: 400 awards are given out in all sorts of categories and there is simply no way to please all music lovers. And I get that. Heck, there's no way to even give out ten percent of the awards live. Most are presented in the form of an on-screen text update, like a sports ticker or those weird notes that appear over an interview on the Larry King show.

The Grammy organizers are painfully aware of how tough their job is every year, I think: everything about this year's show was about bridging the old and the new. Stars from different eras performed together; modern interpretations of classics were celebrated; and this new-fangled "text messaging" techgnology was promoted, for a contest, by someone who was once on "Silver Spoons." Come together, right now, over Jason Bateman.

But my goodness, they have to figure something out. There has got to be a better way. I may be a little too focused on the value of newness to music, but there is a reason for that: the awards are given out for the best recordings of the year and the sort of music that gets me excited is something that feels fresh to my ears.

Not that I don't have an appreciation for the classics. I'm as big a fan of vintage Abba as the next guy. But let's take a look at the show.

The broadcast kicked off with a duet between Frank Sinatra and Alicia Keys. One of these people is dead; the other should know better. This isn't just a bad idea: it was a bad idea when Natalie Cole did it fifteen years ago and a bad idea on each of the Sinatra Duets albums (it was only his career that was dead at the time). But the industry, so beleaguered of late, would come off a little better to me if it didn't kick off its biggest night of the year by reminding us that the business was healthier 50 years ago. They actually left Frank in black and white, which is something: had the Grammys been on a Ted Turner network, he probably would have colorised. And let's be honest: Frank would never stand behind someone else's piano. He'd have sucker-punched Keys or had someone do it for him and taken centre stage.

Carrie Underwood - a big winner last year and one of the bright lights in the music industry - performed "Before He Cheats," one of the all time great justifications for vandalism. Carrie is incredibly pretty: so much so that she can single-handedly make football players lose games, but even she can't carry off a shiny one-piece shirt/shorts combo. The folks from Stomp were on stage with her to help perform: I guess it's not such a big leap, to go from playing a washboard and whistling into a jug to banging garbage can lids around. Still, weird. But I do love that finger-tap-on-top-of-the-microphone that Carrie Underwood does, now: it's her signature move and it requires very little exertion. That's how you keep up a relentless touring schedule, kids.

Prince presented the first award of the evening to Alicia Keys, and she thanked God. Prince is God to me, so it seemed a bit redundant. My goodness, though, for a woman in her fifties Prince looks pretty good. Ba-dum-bum.

What's weird its that The Time then perform for the first time since anyone cared about them. This is super-odd for a number of reasons. One, Jimmy Jam is actually playing a keytar. Two, there are about five million bands who we'd be more excitied to see a reunion of. The Police reuinited this year! Led Zeppelin got back together! Men at Work haven't performed together in years! And we're getting a one-hit wonder. Oh, and three, I'm loving this version of "Jungle Love,". Oh-ee-oh-ee-oh! And then the recurring theme of old and new is introduced, again: Rihanna plays with them, bridging their song into something called "Umbrella" thatI had never heard before and then "Don't Stop The Music," a song of hers that samples another 20-year old song. Again, just to remind us that the past is present.

Rihanna, by the way, appears to be wearing an entire dead bird.

Tom Hanks then comes out to talk about space. No, wait, World War II. No, wait The Beatles. Oh, Tom, is there a boomer-era piece of cultural history you're not interested in? There is a tribute to The Beatles, both from Cirque du Soleil and the movie "Across the Universe," and shortly thereafter George Martin wins a Grammy. And it actually takes some people a few seconds to figure out whether or not they should stand and give an ovation. George Martin, people! Produced everything The Beatles ever did! Show some respect or they are going to let Ringo speak!

They let Ringo speak.

But no one lets Yoko speak, so that's good.

Miley Cyrus presents with Cyndi Lauper. To those of you who are under 30, Cyndi Lauper was once bigger than Madonna. To those of you who are over 30 and don't have tween daugthers, Miley Cyrus is the biggest star on the planet right now. Hit records, number one movie in America, popular TV show. She shines so bright she has actually managed to resurrect her Dad, Billy Ray Cyrus' career. This is the pop culture equivalent of losing someeone on the table and then getting them back.

Then Kanye West performs, with such energy that the lights have to be dimmed because he is quite literally glowing. Kanye is talented, and dangerous, and awesome. He is rock 'n' roll, if rock 'n' roll had rap in it. There is a massive pyramid-structure behind him that I originally thought
was there just to contain his ego, but it in fact contains Daft Punk. Everyone rocks out until Kanye finishes with a truly emotional performance of a song for his recently departed mother. The hottest moment and the most touching, from the biggest force working in music today. If he asked, I would be his black Kate Moss. Tonight.

Cher introduces a duet between Beyonce and Tina Turner: if the Scissor Sisters were on hand it would be a gay perfect storm. Or maybe we could get Elton John on piano. There is a massive "Tina and Beyonce" marquee over the two of them as they perform, as if once needs to be reminded of who they are. There is a really weird sort of spoken jazz intro thing, as Beyonce does some weird sort of tribute to Tina Turner before she comes out. Of course, included in her little intro is a line about how, in the history of African-American female singers there was only one "queen," that being Tina.

So I think to myself, how does the "Queen of Soul," Aretha Franklin, who is scheduled to perform on the same stage in less than an hour feel about this? Well done, Grammy people! Next time, show the woman some R-E-S-P-E-C-T!

Get it?

That being said, I don't love Beyonce, but I think she is the quintessence of star power, and may be the most joyous performer working in music right now. She just appears so very happy to sharing the stage with Tina. This is why it's a great thing for our pop stars to have workaholic, emotionally abusive parents. All the joy they never get to feel in life comes out on stage. Tina, by the way, is almost 70 and just extraordinary. This has been a good year for her: Ike Turner died and...no, that's it.

Too soon?

Okay, Andy Williams presents, flanked by Nelly Furtado and Rosalyn Sanchez. and not all the Viagra in the world can help him. Three classical musicians have a chance to play with the Foo Fighters and America texts in votes for...the hot violinist chick. Shocking. Kanye West accepts his award for rap album of the year, reminds everyone that he's the greatest, still throws out props to Mark ronson and Amy Winehouse, shames the orchestra into not playing over him while he thanks his mother, while simultaneously releasing three more singles and baking a cheese souffle.

Aretha Franklin leads a gospel choir in a tribute to Cab Calloway, dressed in yellow. Actually, she looks more like a giant grapefruit from the old Fruit of the Loom commercials, but whatever. She may have eaten Beyonce for that earlier slight.

But goodness, can she sing. I may well convert to whatever religion it is she's singing for, I'm so impressed.

Stevie Wonder then introduces Alicia Keys and she gives her second performance of the evening - but this one is for real. "No One," one of the biggest songs of the last year, starts of small and then gets bigger than it's ever been. This performance is so good it survives the introduction of John Mayer and that "I just came" face he makes when he plays the guitar.

We get more Ringo, at this point, but it's okay. He gives an award to Vince Gill who quips, "I just got an award given to me by a Beatle...have you had that happen yet Kanye?" and the place goes nuts.

There's a classical-slash-jazzy Gershwin tribute, Andrea Bocelli and Josh Groban sing together so I watch a little "American Gladiators," because it's anything is better than that, and soon enough Amy Winehouse is performing live...via satellite, from London. Now, not that someone with a history of abusing stimulants should ever be forced to perform at 4am their time, but this sort of works. Partially it's the sheer danger of it - Amy could knock it out of the park, or collapse, or pull an eight ball out of her hairdo and snort the entire thing. She does pretty well, and looks genuinely stunned to win Record of the Year for "Rehab" minutes later. Or maybe the three synapses left in her head can only produce the one facial expression.

So we've had our moments of danger, and sex, and newness, but they are few and far between this year. The show ends with a performance from John Fogerty, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Little Richard. Legends all, don't get me wrong. Lewis looks like he's grown an extra set of jowls (the better to hide a 14 year-old cousin in) and Little Richard has the greatest mullet wig I have ever seen on him. It's probably made of two separate pieces that each have their own brain, like an Octopus' tentacles. Shortly thereafter, Herbie Hancock wins Album of the Year for his jazzy reinterpretation of Joni Mitchell songs, "River: The Joni Letters."

Look, this may be a great album. I doubt it: it came in at number 81 on the Village Voice's year end aggregate critics' "Pazz and Jop" poll, which is a pretty good indication of what the intelligensia are thinking. I get that this is entirely objective, what people feel about music, but the Grammys totally blew it...again. Kanye West's album deserved to win, almost the same way "The Return of the King" did for the Lord of the Rings trilogy. A strong work in its own righ,t it was also the culmination of an impressive artistic triptych. And so it was with Kanye West's "Graduation." But the people at NARAS have an amazing history of making safe choices for Album of the Year. Ray Charles beat Kanye three years ago. Steely Dan (STEELY DAN!!!!) beat Eminem a few years before that. And now, Herbie Hancock (a legend in the industry, etc.) wins for an album almost no one bought and no one championed. Yes, Herbie's great. I hear you all. He's been doing this for forever, he's a jazz pioneer, and "Rockit" had that great video and nearly inspired me to break my neck on a piece of cardboard while trying to headstand. I say nearly: my common sense prevailed. Not so at the Grammys this year. Voters, many of whom I might guess didn't even hear the album, voted for the safest choice, and it bothers me. Vintage Joni Mitchell wouldn't have stood for this: they paved paradise, and put up a parking lot.

Sarah Silverman is F*ucking Matt Damon!

noreply@blogger.com (Max) — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 18:38:00 +0000

This is legitimately funny (as opposed to most of the children I've fathered, who are illegitimate and not very funny.) Sarah Silverman, on Kimmel last night (that's what she said!) performing a little sketch about...well, you know.

Two larger trends here: one, there is an increasing meta-level to comedy that requires the viewer to understand larger pieces of context. Silverman and Kimmel are dating, of course, and that's a big part of the joke. She's telling her boyfriend, with some help, that she's screwing the Sexiest Man Alive (tm) on his own talk show; and two, the internet-driven ddemand for short pieces of forwardable (or bloggable!) comedy.

Regardless, it's very funny, and cements Matt Damon's status as one of the best A-listers out there. Never been in rehab, doesn't do the paparrazzi thing; married and apparently faithful; makes good movies; and makes fun of himself. I'll take it.

Damaged Goods

noreply@blogger.com (Max) — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 17:10:00 +0000

I already know you didn’t watch the two best dramas on TV last year. Were they too tough for you?

I’ll cut to the chase: the two shows were “Damages,” the erstwhile legal thriller starring Glenn Close, and “Mad Men,” the early-60s drama set in a Madison Avenue ad agency. No hour-long dramas were better last year. But you didn’t watch them: these programs had small ratings, even by American cable standards: especially “Damages,” the darker of the two (it will be out in Canada later this year; "Mad Men" has been available to those of you who get AMC). And I’m guessing it’s that darkness that kept you away.

You see, as much as most of us claim to have a taste for some shadowy fare in our pop culture, this isn’t often the case. And it’s most difficult in the case of television – most of us don’t want to let these thoughts and feelings (or these people!) into our living rooms. Watch “House,” all you want, and pretend that he’s some gruff bastard, but just as sure as he’ll come up with his most brilliant diagnosis ever on the next episode, you know that at his core he’s a good guy. You root for him. And it’s always been this way, from the fat, working-class TV bigot, Archie Bunker – a fundamentally decent family man who eventually learned to accept people – to the other fat, working-class TV bigot, Andy Sipowicz – a fundamentally decent man who eventually learned to accept people.

Sure, we accept a little bit of darkness on “The Sopranos,” but Tony, our antihero, is a mobster. He kills people as a matter of course in his business. “Dexter” is pretty grim, but he’s a serial killer, so if it were as happy as an episode of “The Teletubbies” something would be terribly wrong. The genius of these shows is that they make you identify with the tiny good parts – or sometimes just the raw humanity – of bad people who do bad things. But we don’t really connect to their evilness: we’ve all got these darker thoughts, and, in fact, while “Dexter” and “The Sopranos” can be incredibly tough, they’re both safe prospects. These people are defined by their badness, and it’s easier to have killers and thieves be irredeemably bad than it is our lawyers and admen. I’d make a joke about lawyers and admen being worse, but I can’t start picking the low-hanging fruit yet.

So back to “Damages” and “Mad Men.” In the former, we meet Glenn Close’s Patty Hewes – a protagonist who we’re supposed to think will be part of that great TV lawyer tradition, a Perry Mason or Jack McCoy type – and she does the unthinkable: she ( oh, spoiler and sadness alert!) kills an innocent puppy to get a witness to co-operate. A puppy! On a scale of one to evil, that’s a 10! Still, Patty has a real job, a husband and a son. She’s might be a sociopath, but she’s a borderline sociopath, and it’s that part that makes us uncomfortable. We’ll never meet a Tony Soprano, and we’ll never meet a Dexter (well, we’ll never meet them twice.) But Patty Hewes? What if this woman was our lawyer? Worse, what if she was us?

John Hamm’s Don Draper, lead adman on “Mad Men,” isn’t quite as dangerous but he’s just as dark. He makes ads for a living, and his industry suits him perfectly: he’s entirely a construct, just an image of what he thinks a man should be. His name is fake, as is his backstory, and the way he presents himself: Don is running away from something and we’re not totally certain what it is for most of the series. He’s unable to really connect to his wife or kids even though it’s what he wants more than anything. He’s a shell, something hollow on the inside. In a way, he’s even scarier than a dog-killing lawyer, because he’s even more possible, more realistic: he’s the everyman, but the one who can’t quite tell the people close to him who he really is, what he’s feeling, where he’s vulnerable – and he doesn’t get redeemed.

We, and he, are never more aware of this than during his last pitch: to Kodak, for what at the time they refer to as "the wheel," the carousel slide projector.

Sure, that’s not as graphic as a mob hit or a killer with a scalpel, but it is possible – you could be that guy - and that’s even scarier. Maybe the reason you’re not watching is that you don’t need to: there might be a little bit of that darkness inside you, and you don’t want it reflected back.

Vote for us! We're freaky!

noreply@blogger.com (Max) — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 03:52:00 +0000

Adfreak, one of the big US ad blogs out there, picked our LostJaw anti-tobacco campaign as one of its choices for freakiest ad of the past year. So please click through, and vote for us (we're ad number 10, about an eighth of the way down the page as of this writing). It's a great campaign, and we're proud to have been a part of it, and we're super freaky.

R.I.P. Jacques Hébert.

noreply@blogger.com (Max) — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 22:09:00 +0000

Jacques Hébert passed away, at the grand age of 84. The man was notable for a bunch of youthy initiatives in Canada - he essentially created Canada World Youth and the unfortunately named Katimavik: these two programs were created in the 1970s and quite groundbreaking in the opportunites they afforded Canadian youth. He believed, as we do at Youthogaphy, that young people could effect massive change if given the right sorts of opportunities and learning. While I wasn't a fan of everything that he did - his 1986 21-day hunger strike to protest Katimavik's funding being dropped was a clever bit of pre-Atkins weight reduction but really over-dramatic and quite unnecessary, I think, in a country where there are so many other ways to protest - but these two programs sprung from the mind of a man who really felt that young people could be a valuable resource for world change. Rest in peace, Sir.

Dude, my mutual funds are awesome!

noreply@blogger.com (Max) — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 19:48:00 +0000

Here's an article in Maclean's magazine from this week's issue in which I am quoted. It's about an investment company targeting young people, called Thrasher Funds. Check out their website: the splash page is sort of funny, in that they seem to have covered all the youth stereotypes ("Hip-hop dude? Check. Hipster girl in skinny jeans? Check."). I'm not sure how viable this is in the long-term, and it's certainly not how I would market a product like this (the marketing is both generic and a bit transparent) but it is interesting to see someone trying to make a play in this space.

The Montreal Metro is Gay!

noreply@blogger.com (Max) — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 00:45:00 +0000

My friend Shane sent me this video of the first ad campaign for the Montreal Metro. If you love French jingles, porn mustaches, and random, synchronised dancing the way that I do - and who doesn't? - then you will believe this to be the greatest ad of all time.

As someone who works in the industry, I gotta say: if the advertising industry of the 60s was fueled by booze and cigarettes, and in the 80s it was dominated by cocaine, the 70s had to be all about LSD, ecstasy, peyote, and some sort of fish paralyzer mixed in equal amounts.

Vive le Quebec Libre!

Liking Alicia Keys

noreply@blogger.com (Max) — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 08:11:00 +0000

...is not something that I should admit to, but I will anyway. My friend Matthew would be aghast at this - not that I like Alicia Keys, although who knows, but at the fact that I wouldn't be comfortable admitting it. Matthew has a sort of relentlessly hip taste in music - he's the sort of person who might have a blog that dissects every single Bjork song ever (and by "might have" I mean "actually has"). But he made a good point a while ago when I mentioned that Kelly Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone" was a guilty pleasure: he said that there should be no such thing. And he's right (well, maybe heroin should be a guilty pleasure, but that's someone else's blog.) So I'll say it: "Since U Been Gone" is probably the second best pop song of the millennium, and I like the new Alicia Keys album.

There, I admit it. The first single, "No One," is the sort of radio-friendly singalong that no one should be ashamed to sing along to (much like, well, the aforementioned Kelly Clarkson track) and there are plenty of other eminently hummable tunes. I first caught win of the record almost by accident: Ms. Keys performed on "Fashion Rocks" this year and I was so taken by her live version of "The Thing About Love" that I assumed it was actually a cover.

So, there, I've admitted to it. There's more on the album, too: a great jam called "I Need You," and something called "Teenage Love Affair" that should be awful but isn't. I may be sacrificing whatever little hipster cred I have managed to hold on to until now by writing about this, but I don't worry, 'cause everything's gonna be all right.

New Spice Girls Video!

noreply@blogger.com (Max) — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 00:10:00 +0000

Sure, why not? I think the idea behind the video goes something like this: get Geri to do a million crunches and three hundred thousand hours of Pilates; deprive Victoria of food for five years; but Mel B on a reality show where she actually has to run around for eight hours a day; take the just-delivered-a-kid Emma and emphasize the fact that her rack is really big; and hide Melanie C in Ann Wilson's old clothes.

Seriously, what is this, a Wilson Phillips video from fifteen years ago? Put the thin girls in the band in their underwear and throw the other one in in one of Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation era three-quarter length jackets?

Still, I like the fact that they haven't made any weird attempts to update their sound: no spare Timbaland beats, here. It's the same Stannard and Rowe (Standard and Rowe?) pop balladry that we got on "2 Become 1," or "Viva Forever," or "Goodbye." Hopefully, there's a more dance-friendly, uptempo new single one the Greatest Hits album. The DJ threw "Stop" on at a bar I was at last week, and we all sang along and did the cute little dance from the video. Hmm. That may have been the gayest sentence I've ever written.

Break me off a piece of that Chrysler Car!

noreply@blogger.com (Max) — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 22:29:00 +0000

This is fantastic: a perfect storm of comedy, marketing genius, and mash-up inanity. The Office? Great, as always. Andy, one of the characters thereon, being unable to remeber the end of the Kit Kat jingle after he calls it the best ad in the world, ever? Even better - especially since it touches on a real-world fear of marketers who are afraid of "good" commericals that don't create any link to the brand. And the fact that someone mashed up all of Andy's incorrect answers with actual Kit Kat commecial footage? Well that's just effing genius.

You don't have to throw out your television!

noreply@blogger.com (Max) — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 16:33:00 +0000

Joss Whedon is back. The man who brought us Buffy the Vampire Slayer - the greatest television show in the history of the medium - is returning to TV with a new show called Dollhouse, scheduled for next year. Best of all, it will star Eliza Dushku, who played Faith, the rogue Slayer, on Buffy (although some of you might remember her as Missy, the rogue cheerleader in Bring It On; if you're a teenage boy you may know her from a three-minute period in your nighttime routine, right before you drift off to sleep).

I won't pitch the show to you in any great detail, as I find Whedon shows need to be experienced, rather than high-concepted (Buffy was about so much more than slaying the freak-of-the-week, and Firefly was hardly just a western). But for those of us who have been waiting for a couple of years now, it doesn't really matter what the show is about: Joss Whedon is back doing television. Fire up your TiVos, folks.

Evolution is a law, and not a theory.

noreply@blogger.com (Max) — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 19:18:00 +0000

From something Clive Thompson wrote in Wired this month: an article in which he suggests that we stop calling The Theory of Evolution a "theory," and instead star referring to it as a law.

It's an interesting piece, and something relevant to all of us in the communications business. I remember seeing (name-drop alert!) Bill Clinton speak this summer, and he related a few very funny but very pointed examples of how the Republicans are "better branders" than the Democrats: they are certainly more aggressive, but also seem to have a better understanding of the simple truth the that success of any piece of communications, or language, rests in how it's received and not in how it's presented. If you want your message to be understood, it's better to be "wrong" but clear to a large number of people than "right" but clear to a smaller number of people. This is the reason that "incorrect" words become a part of our generally-accepted lexicon: "impact," for instance, is not a verb, but everyone uses it as one now. It's reached a tipping point, and we can't pretend not to understand it anymore.

So back to evolution: calling it a "theory," which, in the scientific sense is technically accurate, makes it a lot easier for Creationists to attack it. A law - like the Law of Gravity, as Thompson points out, something that has been proven - only gets called a law when there is a 100% belief in it. Scientists, especially as a group, are cautious and precise by nature - thankfully! - and therefore will only refer to something that they are 99% certain about as a "theory," as something else may come along and disprove it.

Which is great ammunition for all of those Intelligent Designers and Creationists, no? Thompson makes the excellent point that the culture wars are fundamentally about language and communication. Call it the "Theory of Evolution," and while that's technically accurate, it's less "true" in that people view a theory as something unproven - which this isn't. There is more evidence and support for evolution than there is for any other explanation as to how we got to where we are today. Call it the"law of evolution," even though it isn't, and you're closer to how the scientific community feels about it.

That being said, the comments section following Thompson's article illustrate this perfectly. Some asshat takes Thompson to task for his use of the term "law," and wants it to be called a "hypothesis" of evolution., instead, totally missing the point of the article. Sigh. Call that the theory of idiocy, I guess.

Tonight, I'm a Marketing Star!

noreply@blogger.com (Max) — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 19:13:00 +0000

Here's a profile of me at marketingcrossing.com, part of a regular feature they run called "Marketing Star." I'm not all that certain I want to be considered such a thing, but there you go. You'll notice, though, that I choose bacon over ice cream, even when I've not been given the choice.

Back to it, and a good ad for the non-Amy/Britney/Lindsay sort of rehab

noreply@blogger.com (Max) — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 07:50:00 +0000

I took a Colorado Rockies-like break from blogging for a while (too soon?) so that I could spend all my time with facebook instead. Now that I have almost 500 friends - at least 25 of whom I would recognize on the street - I feel better about myself and I can get back to making fun of other people, as well as places, and things. Nouns, I guess. I make fun of nouns.

But here's something to chew on: a really good ad from Toronto Rehab (link opens your media player in a new window). So much of the best work in advertising - Canadian advertising, especially, I find - happens on the not-for-profit side. This is no exception. I am a little surprised that we haven't gotten any backlash to this one (or at least none that I've heard of) but it's early yet. Anyway, the ending really worked for me, and hopefully it does for you too.

Hairspray!

noreply@blogger.com (Max) — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 06:58:00 +0000

What sort of a weird cultural world are we living in where a movie becomes a musical and then becomes a movie version of that musical? Well, this world, of course.

I got to see 20 minutes of footage of the movie Hairspray today, at a special screening for potential distributors, media types, and socially active gay men right here in Toronto. The director, Adam Shankman, introduced the "Frankenmovie" as he put it - 20 minutes strung together - but I think I really got a taste for what this film will be like. It was fun, funny, packed with music, and features the single weirdest thing that John Travolta has ever done - and that includes Battlefield Earth. Travolta plays Edna Turnblad - he's the mother of the movie's lead - and no, you do not need to re-read that last sentence.

I am not totally certain what Travolta is doing here - he's not playing a man in drag, he's playing a woman, and a large one at that. It's a strange thing to see - surrounded by all sorts of stars who are playing their roles in a far more conventional fashion, he really stands out. Queen Latifah plays a sassy singing matriarch; James Marsden is a toothy pretty-boy; and Zac Efron is a teen dream. These are all like Evil Knievel versus the Axis of Evil - they're no-brainers.

But Travolta is a...housewife/laundress with a massive appetite? I guess one out of three isn't bad. Still, the movie does contain the line "I'd make every day Negro Day!" and I think that's worth the price of admission alone. In a very crowded summer, full of special-effects laden sequels, this one may end up being this year's The Devil Wears Prada: a campy, funny, adult alternative to all the special effect-laden sequels that are out there.

Facebook equals Crack Cocaine. But much, much worse.

noreply@blogger.com (Max) — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 03:40:00 +0000

You've all heard about Facebook, the latest and greatest social networking site. You may not know how incredibly popular it is in Canada - more so than anywhere else in the world, actually, even though it started in the US and was unavailable to a lot of Canadian schools (school networks being the only way to join Facebook until last fall). What is it about Facebook in particular that seems to be resonating so strongly with Canadians? My guess is that we like community building tools more than others and that we appreciate the relative Spartan-ness of it as well: it's very simple to connect to and keep up to date with everyone in your network using Facebook, more so than with any other social networking site.

All that being said, we're now using it at Youthography for everything from our own group, to housing a promotion we're doing called Rockstar Hotel, to our own personal pages.

Whether or not it lasts remains to be seen: after all, it wasn't too long ago that Friendster was occupying the same space for many of us, and it's simply not as popular with young Canadians as it once was. We've been speaking forever - or, at least, for a few years, about the blurring between our off-and-0n-line lives, about the increasing connection between personal lives and work, and about the breaking down of barriers that used to keep different parts of our lives separate from each other. Facebook is just the next step forward: a single place, online, that lets you connect to all of the things that matter to you.

For Youthography's official perspective, check out our latest newsletter. The numbers are amazing. And it's only a matter of time before someone makes the owners of this thing an offer they can't refuse: as it stands, there are rumours that it's bringing in $50 million a month in revenue right now (through sponsored groups and other forms of marketing) and that they have already refused an offer for three quarters of a billion dollars. Which may be the most amazing number of them all.

They tried to make me go to rehab...

noreply@blogger.com (Max) — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 18:29:00 +0000

Britney Spears has shaved her head. Really. it looks like someone drank an industrial-sized bottle of crazy, no? I'm actually interested to see if this career can be saved - we're heading into Michael Jackson territory here, and that's certainly not a good thing.

But at least now we know that the carpet matches the drapes.

In Her Language

noreply@blogger.com (Max) — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 21:01:00 +0000

If you're one of the few who haven't seen this, here's Amanada Baggs' film "In My Language". Ms. Baggs is autistic, and has made a short film (with the help of a text-to-speech program that makes her sound like a gentler version of the Radiohead song "Fitter, Happier") about her "language," as it were. This is amazing.

I traffic in language for a living: not just in the job that I do, but basic communication built around words, and around speaking, especially, is how I live my life. I need to be able to speak to people; I need to be able to make jokes; sometimes I just need to be heard and understood. But I've also had thoughts around where I could and could not live or work, for instance, based on my facility with language and I remember meeting a great looking girl, once, who my sister thought I should ask out, and thinking that it would never work, because she didn't speak English too well and would therefore never get me. Oh, as if that would have been the greatest of our problems. But I don't feel good about myself - I don't feel like I can be myself, even, without language, without a commonality of language that connects me to other people.

So what if you "speak" - see, even that word seems wrong - in a language that no one else really understands? This video is - in spite of the filmaker's declaration that it isn't - a window into the way that the autistic mind works (and there is real value in that). But more to the point, it's an argument for communication, an argument against specificity in the definition of personal and inter-personal cognitive connections, and an indication that there is just so much, so much of everything, in other people but we're limitied in our own abilites to see that.

As the director says: "The first part is in my "native language," and then the second part provides a translation, or at least an explanation. This is not a look-at-the-autie gawking freakshow as much as it is a statement about what gets considered thought, intelligence, personhood, language, and communication, and what does not."

Grammy Thoughts

noreply@blogger.com (Max) — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 03:15:00 +0000

It's the five hundredth Grammy awards, or whatever. Already, it looks like the music industry is apologising as best as it can to the Dixie Chicks. A couple of awards, and the night is just over half done.

But here are some thoughts:

Justin Timberlake will rule the world. Eventually, I think, we'll do nothing but spend time on Google and listen to Justin Timberlake albums. We'll eventually forget to take bathroom breaks or eat or wash ourselves, and future civilisations or aliens will discover us slumped over our keyboards listening to "My Love" or watching "Dick in a Box" with a Google news feed giving us constant updates on Justin and Scarlett and Cameron.

Smokey Robinson can no longer blink. He just performed before Lionel Richie ("Hello," which is so far at the edges of the "terrible song/great video" intersection graph that scientists can't actually measure it) and Chris Brown. The three of them took a bow together with Brown in the middle of an awful plastic surgery sandwich. That poor kid: he did a back flip; he had six year old dancers; he slid down a massive slide in a weird mask - and still he winds up being surrounded by the ghosts of R & B past. It's as if the picture of Dorian Gray was standing to his left and his right.

John Mayer performed with Corrine Bailey Rae and John Legend. Dude needs a haircut, but more to the point, I wish I liked any of his music at all, because he seems genuinely funny and self-deprecating and seems to understand that he's pretty much won the lottery. That being said, when he plays blues guitar he makes one of those scrunched-up white boy faces that makes me think that I know what he looks like when he's having sex. Or passing a stone. As if Jessica Simpson can tell the difference.

Oh, and then the deathroll. My favourite part, because there is an endless supply of country and blues legends that I've never heard of and a couple dozen of them die every year. And the applause is polite, until someone people have actually heard about flashes on screen. Then the place goes crazy, because there's a lot of pent-up mourning there. And then someone leaves James Brown's cape on a mic stand and the thing fades to black, and no one watching who is under 30 understands what the hell just went on. JB is in a better place, though: I guess he's beating his wife and fining band members $50 for not keeping time at the great big Apollo theatre in the sky.

But Keith Urban managed to avoid being a part of this list by getting himself to rehab. And here he is, performing, with a warmth that threatens to melt even Nicole Kidman.

Mary J. Blige is performing with Ludacris and one of the guys from Earth Wind and Fire who clearly ate the rest of the band. Mary is always a fashion disaster - her choices sound like they might work in theory, but in practice, she looks like someone who is styled by Beyonce's mom after a horrendous bender. Oh, wait, that's Beyonce. Anyway, Mary J. is singing in a red haltered-catsuit that she had altered with a camel toe implant. It's classy. Luda, on the other hand, looks great in a fantastic dinner jacket and white vest combination. On his arm, Mary J. looks like an escort. Still, she's fierce and fabulous and other things that gay men say about women they will never get with.

Some girl named Robin Troup just won a competition to sing with Justin Timberlake and after a quick run through of "Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone" designed to show the world that Justin can play guitar, they launch into "My Love". The girl is doing a good job of not wetting herself, I'll give her that, and she wisely steps out of the way when TI comes in to rap. Why do I not think this is the last time she'll find herself between those two guys this evening?

Tony Bennett and Quentin Tarantino are now out to present together. My television is going to explode. Bennett just did the Bat Dance, I think, and asked QT for work, meaning he'll play an aging hitman's assistant with a predilection for light S&M and a Vicodin addiction in his next movie. Tarantino feels the need to editorialize as he announces each nominee, saying cute things like "Three Nice Girls From Texas" as he announces the Dixie Chicks are nominated. What does he think this adds to the proceedings? Does anyone need context like this? If Quentin likes the sound of his own voice so much, he should just rent Pulp Fiction like the rest of us, except he wouldn't fast forward over all of his scenes.

Oh, look, as the Red Hot Chili Peppers finish their song, reams and reams of treated, shiny ticker tape are dropped on the audience. How wasteful. And here to introduce the next award, it's Al Gore, Mister Environment himself. Ain't that ironic.

But here is the nut of it: The Most Beleaguered Industry in the World (tm) did something right tonight, by giving Carrie Underwood and Justin Timberlake as much airtime as they wanted. These are two legitimate crossover artists with enough star power to draw in viewers, and will at least give the industry a couple more seconds on life support. Which is no to say that the industry is in trouble or out of touch or anything - what can you say about a group that calls one of the prestige awards of the evening "Record of the Year"? Listen up, N.A.R.A.S - it hasn't been records for a long, long time. But congrats to the Dixie Chicks for winning MP3 of the year. Not too bad for Three Nice Girls from Texas.

No-so-hidden Agenda.

noreply@blogger.com (Max) — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 22:21:00 +0000

Steve Paikin, host of TVO's "The Agenda," is really good at his job. I was part of a panel on ethics in advertising - before you comment with "is there such a thing?" let me tell you that five hundred people have already beaten you to that joke - that aired in December, and it is now available as a podcast on the TVO site. Happy listening, and happy New Year.