Advertising Pizza

Created by Saatchi & Saatchi, Peru, this piece of advertising is pretty smart. And its just won the gold at last weeks Cannes International Advertising Festival.

tags ( Advertising | Pizza )

Wake me up before you go off

I am the snooze champion. With my last alarm clock I snoozed for 2 hours once, the bulk of which I didn’t know I was doing. So much for getting up. Today I messed up too. Although I did watch three films last night which took me into the bad part of late o'clock. What I need is a Pattern Clock. This can’t be turned off until the sleeper can repeat back a randomly generated pattern of flashing lights. If you get it wrong it just keeps buzzing till you do. Someone please couple this with a tea maker.

tags ( Alarm clock | gadgets | sleeping )

Friday Stuff #2

What a week it has been. Having a quick scour over the best grooming site on the web, MySpace, has unturfed tham magical rhymes of MC Dicko who has named himself MC Dicko Lives on his Myspace page. Kinda like a fast food abortion-- McDick Olives please Mr drivethrough....

What a retard, guess he's young though so I should hold back. That said check his video, what a legendary piece of shit.... no must hold back, sorry dicko. Bizarrely not the most surreal music thing I've seen this week. That goes to the spinning leek video. Champion!

On the photo side I've liked Andrea Giacobbe's work, especially the fashion stuff - slightly surreal - top marks there. Also Alexander Bergstrom got another glance from me. He reminds me a little of Carl Bengtsson

The best video comes from a guy who has shortened 2001: Space Odyssey into 2001 seconds. In his words "2001: A Space Odyssey is one of the most amazing films ever made. It doesn’t half drag on a bit though. Thats why I tightened it up a bit, cut out the boring parts, made it a little snappier, and altered the sound track." Lovely... download it here.

Imagine finding out that your child wasn't yours? You know, like on Trisha and that. Paternity testing is a tricky business. Just look at this couple on the Maury Show. Ignore the reaction for a second. The baby of the white couple is clearly black. Why is the guy so shocked? Now I'm no expert but I've made this little abstract guide so you can tell if a child is yours - click the picture.

Been scanning the blogs again this week. The best was a blog of cats which look like Hitler. On a serious note the blog of a homeless guy was pretty interesting and has topped many of the links charts this week. Some guy photo-blogging about opening bottles didn't.

Thing about trawling blogs is that most are of dubious quality. Just look at my one. But a word of advice... if you're travelling the world, don't keep a diary. I've read loads of travel blogs and they're all as dull as dishwater. Remember, there was a reason you weren't a writer before you left. Just cause you've bought a plane ticket doesn't mean you have an exclusive licence to talk about the Angkor Wat. Oh? you "went to a Yoga class, which is sooo much cooler because its in a different country and you met this girl from Atlanta who was talking about her home and it reminded you that you'd not had a bagel for ages..." nothing more inspiring there than what I could hear in a laundrette. I don't know what makes travel bloggers such smug fucks. Its not like its difficult or original to go to these places. So a thumbs-up to Matt, whose take on the travelling diary is inspiring entertaining and to the point... see for yourselves.

Bored? then read the Friday stuff #1


tags ( MySpace | Photography | Leeks | Travelling | Paternity test )

Bask in the 80s wrongness

In 1985 I had a really shit haircut. I thought I’d be as cool as MJ Fox in Back to the Future breaking the speed limit in a DeLorean. Man he was so hot I bet he had a good go on the entire cast of The Breakfast Club, even that Emilio Estevez. You don’t tend to hear about MJF anymore, wonder if he’s stuck back in time again? I bought him an Etch-A-Sketch for Christmas last year but I didn’t get a thank you note. The ungrateful quiff that he is.

Look at all the music from back in the day…

Indeep – Last Night a DJ Saved My Life
This is art, because when they say the line “away goes trouble down the drain” you hear a toilet flushing. Awesome. When they sing “Called you on the phone” – you hear a ringing phone. Subtle. Like a car crash. You’d think it’d be enough to have a driving baseline, so typical of the early eighties, and two chicks singing along. But look at that bearded chap in the middle – what are you for?! I’m gonna put curse on him just for doing a rap which probably inspired John Barnes’ dismal effort. What an idiot. On your rug.



Alphaville - Forever Young
This would be the shittest song ever if it wasn’t for its appearance in Napoleon Dynamite. It teaches us a few things. Firstly, pop stars are not actors and look stupid trying to feign emotions; look at the singer’s stupid face at 2min 40s. Secondly if you aren’t English, don’t write in English. Music lyrics are bad enough with their underperforming metaphors and cliché’s, without having some pidgin version lambaste itself into puerile quasi-polemic nonsense. Actually it isn’t as bad as some of the Emo nonsense I’d been subject to recently – just wait till you all grow up, you’ll be so ashamed of yourselves.



Cutting Crew – I Just Died in Your Arms Tonight
During Christmas party at primary school, we each had to take along a record to have with our dry cake and sausage rolls. I took this little number in an attempt to woo Jackie Ley, who had spent the year flitting between me and Jamie; she was undecided as to who was the better boyfriend. When I finally got to kiss her I bit her lip. Accidentally…. I wasn’t trying to kill her in my arms. I’m not that stupid. I still bite now when I’ve had a bit to drink. On purpose though. Anyway, this song is fucking magic to the ladies. I should know I’ve kissed two.



Sisters of Mercy – This Corrosion
In the eighties the NME was still trendy cause of its excellent journalism and students had fucking no computers or TVs so they’d all crowd around a copy in a vague attempt to know what was happening in London. Everyone cool liked this song. I didn’t.



Flying Pickets – Only You
Black people weren’t allowed in the seventies, but by 1983 they even got onto Top of the Pops. Unfortunately it was with the stupid eye-boggling video of Don’t Worry Be Happy which is a shame cause McFerrin is a jazz beatbox crossover master. White people didn’t master beatboxing until much later on. Here’s an early attempt by the Flying Pickets. This song had so many alternative playground lyrics (“Looking from a window above, someone gave me a shove…”). But mainly it's video has some wicked sideburns.


Pretty boring that last song. Whilst I check the spelling of this nonsense have a dance…


And on a final note.....

.....eighties, we’ll always be together in electric dreams.

Someone else has collated over 1400 music videos on the interweb and made a lovely site here. Go find your own disasters by clicking on this really really long sentence which describes the link that contains the website I'm talking about.


tags ( Eighties Music | Cutting Crew | Back to the Future | Indeep | haircuts )

MacGyver is better than you.

God bless Angus MacGyver. Shit scared of guns, his action hero style involved everyday things and a bucket load of knowledge. Like a love child between Indiana Jones and a Womble.

If you got a problem, Yo I'll solve it...
...with a few bits of bric-a-brac I so happen to have concealed on my person. Oh yes - he is that good. When faced with a insurmountable wall, MacGyver converts an umbrella into a grappling hook! If it rained he'd probably build an umbrella factory out of a wall and bunch of Chinese students than just so happened to be lying around. What would Lee-Jon do? Moan and get as sodden as a tea bag in a bed-wetter's mattress going over Niagara Falls.

Not MacGyver... he's the fucking Swiss army knife of action heroes. Got a flat tyre and being trailed by goons in a sporty Ford Capri? - I'd be fucking ruined, limping around the road like a three-legged dog in clown shoes. But MacGyver, with his montage of science and technology, can fix everything and be home in time to see his chiselled face on the news. The slick bastard.

Want to be this good? Then learn some of his skills by clicking here.

tags ( MacGyver | Richard Dean Anderson )

ThePirateBay.org raided - a rant

ThePirageBay.org, a longtime fixture of the BitTorrent community, is currently under investigation.

Thepiratebay.org stole the crown as one of the largest bittorrent trackers after the demise of suprnova.org. They stayed steadfast in the face of bodies like the MPAA and RIAA. Yesterday Swedish police siezed their entire server farm to see if any criminal activity was taking place. This highly suspect reason probably comes from the fact that The Pirate Bay only hosted .torrent files and not actual copywrited material. This doesn't contravene copyright and trademark laws.

The question is, will it affect the huge BitTorrent community? Answer is probably no. Other sites have befallen the wrath of authorities (suprnova & elitetorrents were the most high profile) but others come along and supplant them very quickly. The internet has taught me on thing. Its a great democratic medium in which people vote with their feet as to what they want and are not easily dictated by the archaic commercial institutes just which attempt to control. When you buy, music you buy the packaging, as force fed by labels. You buy the directors new suits, you pay for advertising, you pay for the slogan makers and office space. Most of your hard earned money goes everywhere but the artist(s). When you download legally or otherwide you're after the music only. And its having a revolutionary effect. Although the its creaming 10% of an artist like Celine Dion's sales its supporting a huge number of small bands. We cannot be force fed hollywood and pop nonsence in the same way if the internet exists. It does. Accept it and work with us!

Am i saying taking something for free is justified. No - but that isn't the real argument as I see it. Let us look at what is really happening... Distribution over the internet can remove the middle men - the fusty industry. If done right it won't hurt directors, actors or musicians. In a matter of days I've seen video's appear on the internet, then the following few days, have most of my friends email me the video.

Put simply If the work is good enough it can go viral on the internet in days and hit more people that a good review or millions of dollars of marketing ever could. Add a little note on the website saying if you like it donate to us, or give it for free and offer a high-quality paid for DVD or HD-download and you're making money which, aside from server costs, is 100% yours. No RIAA no MPAA no middlemen, no marketing nonsense. No sweat!

Much like the idiotic Metallica suing their own fans, these high profile industry backed stunts only hurt the consumer in the long run. People who download aren't pirates but fans. It has been reported that those which download are the demographic most likely to buy music and importantly PROMOTE more new music. I bought the complete Broken Social Scene albums cause of a download, and recently bought the Primer DVD because I downloaded it and liked it so much that I wanted to donate - I wanted to say thank you. Wanna tel me off for downloading it first of all. Then give me my money back. To every CD i own. To every piece of vinyl. To every cinema ticket. Democratic culture. We've not had it for a century - I'm waiting to welcome it back!

tags ( bittorrent | The Pirate Bay | MPAA | RIAA | Downloading )
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