Without Further Comment:

Jews for Jesus Jobs

It's been a long time

But finally, a director with a clue and without a finger up their ass made a political ad.



I've always been shocked by how bad political tv ads are -- especially on the national level. The people who make them seem to have no art or finesse. What they don't seem to realize is they're selling a product, same as any other ad. And so one would imagine they would try to have a little Escalade / Grey Goose / Macintosh / Calvin Klein type feel, trying to create an emotional response. Instead, most political ads feel like Flowbee / Topsy Tail / Avacor spots -- "This is the product and this is what it does." Candidates are brands and brands that are affective have strong feelings attached to them.

One of the CEOs in the SUV show said, "a brand is a promise." He's right. But the promise needs to be more than "I'll work hard on behalf of all Americans....etc. etc." That really has no meaning.

The clip above is a step in the right direction, but not nearly far enough to be truely effective. It breaks out of the traditional ad mold, is self conscious (and self-depricating) and creates a great brand image for the candidate. But he's still telling you exactly what he does (or, more precisely, doesn't do). A more effective spot would have you feeling something intangible and positive about him. Madison Avenue knows how to make audiences "feel" rather than think when it comes to picking between two nearly identical detergents on the shelf -- I'm surprised this skill hasn't filtered down.

Bonus feature -- My favorite political ad of all time -- Johnson's "Daisy" spot -- leaves a strong friggin' impression:

I Heart My Soulless Job

Every time artist Packard Jennings gets a prepaid business reply envelope with his junk mail, he sends it back...with a little picture book he put together. Definitely worth checking out (click on "Business Reply Pamphlet").

(via the "new pop-culturey" Gawker)

{EDIT: click on "Bible Sticker" It's pretty hilarious, too.}

Apparently

Italy won something this weekend.

(From the final PK, the horn honking and flag waving lasted a good three hours. Who knew there were that many Italians in Astoria?)

Something to do

When you're at home all night on Friday.


A&E Biography: Robin Williams

New Phone

Last month, I got a new phone. Let's see what pictures I've taken:


Very cool Empire State Building and moon. Pic doesn't really capture it. You had to be there.


Big ass swans and cute fuzzy swan chicks in Prospect Park. (Out of frame: Asian couple taking wedding photos who we were sure were gonna get some swan-whoop ass from getting too close.)


Bri going her Geoff impression.


Boobies!


The Most Brooklyn Image Ever: A trio of 10 years playing Ramones songs at a Park Slope block party. Their band's name: Care Bears on Fire.


I was home in Connecticut for the weekend, so I decided to send Bri a picture of my cock. (Actually, to make things even sadder, this is my mother's cock.)


Anneliese on her roof mit sparklers.


Coolest guy ever. With that jaunty hat, even I could get away with reading Hustler Fantasies on the subway platform.

Nerds Love Persecution

There is (according to some) a minor trend in the works:

O'Reilly editor Brian Sawyer pointed to an interesting observation over at kottke.org: "If I were Apple, I'd be worried about this. Two lifelong Mac fans are switching away from Macs to PCs running Ubuntu Linux: first it was Mark Pilgrim and now Cory Doctorow. Nerds are a small demographic, but they can also be the canary in the coal mine with stuff like this." link

Now, I've gone through and read these guys' litany of complaints about Mac OSX...and really, they're grasping at straws. What's really happening is what I talked about in my Fifth Ave Apple Store post -- they no longer feel like a persecuted minority as a Mac user, so it's time to move onto Linux. It was like suddenly all the jocks and cheerleaders were playing D+D in the caferteria, so it's time to move back to the rear stacks of the library to start playing Magic.


"Hold on, G-ster!" you're probably saying. "That's a little unfair! These are people who care passionately about software issues and that whole dirty-hippy, open source mentality is more up their alley. They think all software should be free and easily examined and changed by anyone. Apple has lost it's way, while Linux is the true nerd's paradise -- what Apple used to be in the early 80's."

Except, of course, Linux has been around since the 90's. This seismic shift -- this need to escape from Apple -- didn't happen when Mac products really sucked in the 90's. Instead, it's happening now when the dam is about to break with people switching to Macs because the OS is incredible. If these folks really believed in the whole open source creedo, it would have happened a long time ago.

"Hold on, G-ster!" you're probably saying again. "Ubuntu is the first nice, human friendly version of Linux. All those other version in the 90's don't count. It's a totally different beast. It's the first Linux distro that you don't have to spend all day screwing and tinkering with just to be on the bleeding edge."

And to that, I say fine... but the whole conceit of the original quote is wrong then -- these switchers aren't "nerds" at all.