“Dream System”
My home-theater-in-a-box has a mic you can plug in and put where your head goes in the room, and it’ll throw itself into AUTOCALIBRATE mode by playing these tones and adjusting its speakers accordingly.
And it plays them LOUD, and my dog gets scared and leaves the room, but to me, they are pure bliss. I think this what a brain sounds like when it’s eating cereal.
“Woody says: Ice a bro!”
A Smirnoff Mule party? See, they’ve been pulling this shit since the sixties. From the copy, ca. 1966:
“When it comes to entertaining, this is the drink that is. For a cool, refreshing Mule, made with Smirnoff and 7-up, is a delicious treat you can start with and stay with. Only crystal clear Smirnoff, filtered through 14,000 lbs. of activated charcoal, blends so perfectly with the subtle flavor of 7-Up. So never forget the rule for the Mule. Make it with Smirnoff!”
UPDATE: My pal Scott Jackson tracked down some precious audio of Woody telling the story of his ethical uncertainty doing this ad.
Mad Men, Season 4 Episode 1: Joey’s Haircut
Okay, first off, fantastic episode. I shake my fist at the gods that I can’t watch the whole season tonight, and all the rest of the seasons tomorrow night.
That said, three things stood out to me as anachronistic for 1964:
- The new character Joey, Peggy’s copy boy (played by Matt Long who you may not remember as Jack on “Jack and Bobby”) dons a haircut I don’t believe you’d see in ‘64. All I know of 1964 is from stuff I’ve seen on movies about the sixties, but I never saw a haircut like that in ‘64 is all I’m saying. So I call bullshit.
- When Roger Sterling tells Don “You turned all the sizzle from Glo-Coat into a wet fart!” I just don’t believe that people farted in 1964, and certainly not in downtown ad agencies, and if they did, you’d better believe they were dry or they’d have Don Draper to answer to.
- As Peggy justifies/apologizes to Don for the Sugarberry hamfight debacle, she says this: “It was going great, until it wasn’t.” What a very 20xx way of putting it. Very self-conscious, very Internet. I’m not buying it, Olson. Get back to work.
But then again, I’m just a butthead who puts far too much trust in the show’s creators to transport him psychically into a world where nothing is out of place. So never mind me. God, what a fucking great show.
Mad Men, Season 11
Remember when consumer electronics used to look like this?
Yesterday I was walking the dog and this slitscan monstrosity of broken dreamscape was sitting on the curb. You’ve seen this before, you probably had one ten years ago. You’d turn it on and the thing would light up like it was controlling air traffic at JFK. And then you’d turn it off and it would start bumping out silent patterns of light and magic like a disco time machine in a color palette that could only be described as post-Soviet exuberant.
Thing is, I need a tape player. (It’s for a bit. Okay, I have a tape of my high school garage band I’m dying to listen to and self-flagellate over.)
But of course, it was a no-go. The tape servos cease to be. But the lightscapade keeps on going, as bright as it will long after our culture is dead and buried and future civilizations unearth it and make certain assumptions about the mechanics of our reproductive organs.
This guy, Dr. Marc Abrams, the Silver Lake Walker passed away today.
He’s been an institution in my neighborhood since the 80s, the fittest middle-aged dude I know. He lent a unique spirit to this corner of LA, and it’ll be way less cool here without him.
UPDATE: Please go and watch this exquisite multimedia tribute to the Walker, by Mel Melcon at the LA Times.
Permit me this one bit of self-congratulation. Being that Creativity is the trade mag for the ad industry, Pick of the Day is a nice bit of recognition.
Okay, I’m done. Jesus, man, get a grip.
UPDATE: #1 of Creativity Top 5 for the week of July 26, 2010. Neat.
Sho Kôsugi spars with Cathy, who has forgotten her pants: A love scene
Screw it. I linked to this clip from “Revenge of the Ninja” (1983) at the end of my previous long-ass post about Sam Firstenberg, but honestly, it needs the room to itself.
Cho: Cathy, you help me so much. I really think I should pay you.
Cathy: No, really! I love doing things for you, Cho. Besides, my karate training is more than enough. I just want you to teach me the way.
Cho: Well, if you want to work out, you forgot your pants!
Sam Firstenberg directs Shabba Doo and Lucinda Dickey on the set of Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo
You should know the name Sam Firstenberg because here are some highlights of his filmography, all properties of The Cannon Group:
- “Revenge of the Ninja” (1983)
- “Ninja III: The Domination” (1984)
- “Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo” (1984)
- “American Ninja” (1985)
This image comes from a Firstenberg fansite with some firsthand stories such as the one about how Sam, a 22-year-old from Poland, approached Menahem Golan, a titan of Israeli cinema who would go on to purchase The Cannon Group, about working as an unpaid PA, and soon would work his way up through the ranks to make his first feature, a Western-style action flick about ninjas, which he knew nothing about:
Golan got involved as a producer and director of the first of a new breed of action movies. It was “Enter the Ninja” the first martial arts movie to introduce the Ninja phenomena to western viewers. The idea to make a western style Ninja movie was presented to Golan by Mike Stone, a prominent American karate champion and formerly Elvis Presley’s personal trainer.
So here I was, ready to tackle the challenge of my first big action flick. I was handed the script and introduced to Sho Kosugi, the tallest Japanese person I had ever met. Sho was the spirit behind the project, an accomplished martial arts fighter and Ninjitsu expert who had come a few years earlier to Los Angeles with Hollywood on his mind.
He was the Ninjitsu advisor and in this capacity he made sure that every known Ninja weapon and every Ninja fighting trick, method, custom, ceremony, and accessories, would be included in the script. It was exciting and I understood it was important to the success of the movie, but my first decision right away was not to follow in the steps of the Hong Kong flicks, but rather to approach the movie as a straight Hollywood action movie with a martial arts slant, and the Ninjitsu mysticism the icing on the cake.
And my favorite part, on casting the role of Cathy:
The actress cast to play the lead was not able to come from Los Angeles to Utah and we were forced to cast the part locally. Unfortunately the pool of actresses in Utah is considerably smaller than the choices in Los Angeles, and our top choice was a local model, Ashley Ferrare. I called Golan to inform him of our decision and to let him know that her acting abilities left a lot to be desired. “Never mind her acting,” he replied, “how is her body?” As a model she was clearly well built, although, as I told him, “Her breasts are clearly inflated with foreign substances.” All he wanted to know was whether she would be considered sexy on the screen, and when I said that I thought she probably would, he replied “Then she is hired.”
Please, PLEASE watch this short clip as evidence of Ashley Ferrare’s performance. And I quote:
Cho: Cathy, you help me so much. I really think I should pay you.
Cathy: No, really! I love doing things for you, Cho. Besides, my karate training is more than enough. I just want you to teach me the way.
Cho: Well, if you want to work out, you forgot your pants!
This is my Flipboard.
That’s what I’m calling this little video I made to demonstrate the elegance and ingenuity of a new iPad app called Flipboard. I think you’ll agree, it looks nice. I also think you’ll find, once you download the app, that it feels amazing.
Here’s the effect it’s had on me in my couple of months using it in beta: I tend not to follow too many people on Twitter for the content they share, and in a typical Twitter client, I tend to gloss over links and images. Flipboard gives me such a nice way to read this stuff, I use it as an auxiliary client, just for the linked content. Turns out there’s some interesting stuff hidden behind all those ugly short URLs and yfrogs.
Big thanks to the talented and illustrious Peter Atencio for his work behind the lens, and to my handsome and kindhearted nephew Wes who knows how to swing.
