A Brief History of Communication (AD)

A breif History of communication from ljudbilden on Vimeo.

Client: Carphone Warehouse
Agency: Chi
Director: Kristofer Ström

I wish I lived in London...

just to visit this chocolate store: ...melt...

"We make all our delicious, fresh chocolates here in our Notting Hill kitchen. Watching chocolate being made is a fascinating and intoxicating experience. It is technical, skilled and smells divine. Our chocolates travel the shortest food distance from the kitchen to our chilled marble shelf."

www.meltchocolates.com

Newsworthy News

My Afternoon: A Bagel & Shmear and the New York Times

Brooke just informed me I sound like a 65 year old man. I found some interesting articles in the NYT today and thought I'd share the most fascinating with you all.

1. Finally, a Thin President
2. Craigslist Agrees to Curb Sex Ads
3. Money is Tight, and Junk Food Beckons
4. What I Will Miss About President Bush

2016 Olympic Logos

The Beijing Olympics have passed. Michael Phelps is still milking his fame. And the 2016 Olympic candidates have just released their logos. My vote is obviously for Brooke's home town, Chicago. One of my favorite cities in the world.

Some of the executions for Chicago are really quite stunning...

(courtesy of computer love)

A Brushfire Holiday

This Warm December: A Brushfire Holiday Vol. 1, the holiday album from Jack Johnson's Brushfire Records will be released 11/11. The album features holiday tracks from each member of the Brushfire roster and will include an original tune from Rogue Wave. To keep in the holiday spirit, 25% of the proceeds will be donated in support of children's music education.

(courtesy of Rolling Stones)

The Change We Need...

Actual text conversation between my little sister, Lindsey and I last night.....

Lindsey: Mom's baking us cookies. I think she's on drugs.

Me: Wow, really?

Lindsey: Either that or Obama's already changing the world.

Cheers.

Afternoon Music

R.I.P Michael Chrichton

"There's a line between our awe of science and technology, with all the possibilities they offer us, and our fear of same, that the sense of control they offer is a lethal illusion. Few authors made that line their own as skillfully -- and as profitably --as Michael Chrichton." - Gary Susman of Entertainment Weekly

Michael Crichton passed away yesterday at the age of 66 after a private battle with cancer. The former medical doctor is best known as the author of the best-selling Jurassic Park and the creator of the television series ER. Crichton wrote many other novels which include 1969's The Andromeda Strain. This particular book holds a special place in my heart. I read the novel back in junior high and it ignited within me a passion for the study of epidemiology, or infectious diseases. Much to my parent's delight, I didn't follow this career path for very long (8 months) but for awhile there this book was a source of pure fascination. The book follows the mutation of a deadly microorganism and the all-too-realistic threat of wiping out society. Although the book instilled a legitimate fear of/obsession with the reality of infectious strains (ex. MRSA Staph infections- go look it up if you're not aware of it), I have to respect Chrichton's ability to make biology and science extremely exciting, even to a 7th grader. To this day I have to credit him with not only my short lived career path but also the early formation of my love of sci-fi. Mr. Chrichton you will be missed.

A Flying Car?!

Finally: Scientists Working on a Flying Car

We're all aware of just how much real life has failed to live up to our grand, movie-heightened expectations for the future:

Taco Bell is not America's only restaurant; Prisoners are not cryogenically frozen until they can once again be of use to society; We have not replaced toilet paper with seashells. (Okay, those are all from Demolition Man, but that movie was seriously on cable a lot.) But it looks like we may be one step closer to the Hill Valley of 2015: American aircraft-design team Moller International says they are now two years away from a functional flying car. At last! Apparently, the car — dubbed the Autovolantor — will cost about a million dollars, be powered by eight fans, and could fly at altitudes of up to 5,000 feet at 150 miles per hour (we suppose this is reasonable for a first model). But what took so long? Flying cars are the most basic of all sci-fi clichés! We wouldn't be this antsy if science had given us crime-predicting precogs years ago, or if we could take a virtual-reality Mars vacation (two things we figured would've been easy). Also, what's the status on those self-tying sneakers?

New York Magazine

Go Blue!

Blue is a movement.

It is a platform for sustainability that goes beyond a limited focus on the environment to put people at the center.
It’s awakening to understand how your actions affect the environment, society, other cultures, and world economies.
Blue is less about what you can do to make a difference, and more about the fact that you can.

Blue is interconnectivity.
Blue is not reactive, it’s proactive.
Blue is a heightened sense of consciousness in daily life.
Blue is moving from limits to possibilities.
Blue is making sustainability personal.
Blue is taking small actions that make a big difference.
Blue is creating our own happiness.
Blue is not replacing green; it is embracing it while moving forward.
Blue is working together to create positive change.

Green. It’s become the latest buzzword. And it has launched retail and industry leaders toward the unfamiliar world of sustainability. Blue influences not just the environmental dynamics of our world but also the social, cultural, and economic aspects too. We understand that if a billion of us around the planet took small steps to change the way we live and the things we buy, amazing things could happen.

Blue Facts:

• Fair-trade coffee over a regular cup: Lift over 10 million families out of poverty
  

• 30 minutes of exercise over TV: We’d be happier and live longer
  

• One T-shirt of Organic cotton over traditional cotton: Keep 9 million pounds of toxins exposed to farmers and water.
  

• 5 CFLs over incandescent light bulbs: Shut down 300 coal power plants, save $150 billion on power bills, save equivalent of 70 bags of charcoal per person
  

• Reusable bag instead of paper or plastic: Save 200 billion bags from landfill. Millions of barrels of oil.
  

• One 4 pack of recycled toilet paper over virgin: 13 million trees saved, 40 million cubic feet of landfill space, 4 billion gallons of water.

• Coffee mug instead of paper cup: Over 1 million trees saved.
  

(saatchitrueblue.com)

Things You Never Knew Existed

Beer Bottle Holder Sweatshirt... when you really want to look Middle American

Afternoon Music

My little sister, Lindsey, submitted this recommendation....Cheers!

Historic...

I am so proud to be an American.

America is Back.

The following post was written by my friend Mike and can be found on his blog "This is Not Your Voice." Cheers.

"This morning we awake to a world dramatically different than the one we lived in yesterday. The United States, a country formed as a slave-holding nation, has elected a black man to the highest office in the land. This literally could not have happened in any other country in the world, and absolutely nothing like it has happened prior to this morning.

Millions of people are going to spend time trying to wax poetically about the history made last night. As for me, I really don’t like writing cookie-cutter words, but I think all Americans should take some time to pat ourselves on the back. We live in a country of amazing possibilities–possibilities only real because of what we’ve endured as a people. That’s pretty cool.

Did I ever doubt this day would come? Did I ever doubt that America would be the nation to break this barrier and usher in a new era in world history? Never. (It happened in “24″ for goddsakes!) But, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be extremely proud of where we come from and who we are. One sentence kept going through my mind last night: “America is back.” (This was also drunkenly mass-texted to everyone in my phone.) Well, I think we are back. It’s a great day to be an American, regardless of who got your vote last night. We are the beacon that shines on the rest of the world. We are the envy of all nations. All those weighty sentences we’ve learned since we were kids turned out to be true.

Thank God I’m an American.

(LOTS more on this later. I need to check out of the Holiday Inn.)"

Mike you couldn't have said it better.

Hanging With Wilco = Presidency

(courtesy of music snobbery)

Alela Diane

As gorillavsbear puts it, Alela Diane is one of the most absurdly overlooked and underappreciated folk singers of the last few years... check out this music video below

Heidi Klum + Guitar Hero

Client: Guitar Hero
Ad Agency: DDB

Bush's Bon Voyage

No matter what goes down in the election today, we can all take comfort in the fact that after January 20th, 2009, President Bush won't be pulling any more strings.

A new video from Indianapolis upstarts Margot and the Nuclear So and So's imagines Bush's last night as the leader of the free world. Instead of a quiet, reflective night at the White House, Bush hits the town, pounding Bud's, shopping for dildos, ripping bongs and scamming on strippers. It's pretty funny."

Check out Nuclear's vid below ...

As Tall As Cliffs



(Rolling Stone)

Dawson's Creek Syndrome

Not so long ago, America Ferrera and her scrappy, poncho-toting, brace-faced alter ego were the toast of broadcast TV. Ugly Betty blended soap and sass into a smart fashion-industry parody, and the refreshingly normal Ferrera gave the show surprising heart by seamlessly inhabiting the frumpy central role. But now, two seasons later, the antics of Betty Suarez feel both tired and tiring — and the lead actress herself is arguably the worst part of the show.

Granted, titular characters have it tough because the audience never gets a break from them. Call it Dawson's Creek Syndrome: Main character becomes overly omnipresent; writers have more fun creating quirkier secondary characters, giving them all the best lines; fans clamor for more of them and less of the insufferable lead actor with clawlike man-bangs and vast-prairie forehead; writers realize it's too late to rekindle viewer interest in the lead. It’s ironic to see DCS infecting Ugly Betty, considering James Van Der Beek's amusing guest-star turn last season, but maybe that’s how the disease spread. Because just as Pacey overshadowed Dawson and Jack and Karen ran roughshod over Will and Grace, so do the wickedly catty Marc, Amanda, and Wilhelmina outshine self-righteous Betty at every turn.

Indeed, after a promising, award-winning beginning, Betty seems to be losing her very Betty-ness — though never actually ugly, she's officially moved from Mildly Awkward Betty to Cute and Increasingly Svelte Betty Who Is No Longer Believably the Butt of Anyone's Office Jokes, Especially Since That Dress She’s Wearing Is DVF. This makes Ferrera’s recent shrieky, broad-strokes performances even more problematic. When you stop being able to relate to — or root for — Betty, she becomes kind of a shrill pain, and frankly, a raging buttinski. And when your lead actress has hinted to the press that she wants to lose the braces and has appeared in a series of increasingly flattering wigs despite the lack of a "Betty Discovers Frizz-Ease" B-plot, you start to wonder whether she's protecting Betty's essence anymore or just trying to escape from it.

Muddying the mix are frequent rumors that Ferrera is, to use our favorite Hollywood euphemism, difficult. Sources from the Traveling Pants sequel whispered that America resented being there because she (allegedly) felt Ugly Betty elevated her above it. During a Pants junket, she memorably delivered a snotty eye roll while co-star Blake Lively discussed Gossip Girl, followed by a Seventeen interview where Ferrera declared that Blake's show “conditions us to be mean,” despite the fact the she herself acts opposite popular comic-relief characters who are essentially Mean Girls themselves. (Plus, it’s at best hypocritical to go behind a friend’s back and accuse her of turning other women into unsupportive backstabbers.) And now rumors persist that guest star Lindsay Lohan's arc on Betty was truncated because Ferrera didn't like her; while those have been denied, we tend to suspect that where there's smoke, there's usually at least a tiny fire, especially when we’ve already seen Ferrera act publicly dismissive of a co-worker.

Obviously, we know TV isn’t real — except for A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila, of course — so God knows we don’t expect Ferrera to run into the Coffee Bean on weekends wearing a poncho, performing random acts of kindness. However, much like Tom Cruise’s crazy fits of passion over Katie Holmes ruined both Top Gun and Dawson’s Creek, it’s hard to lose yourself in a fictional world when the back of your mind is chock-full of unflattering real-life stories about the people inhabiting it. Perhaps if Ferrera’s performance were subtler or stronger — let’s start with 65 percent less whining — we’d be able to lose ourselves in it again. But we can't. And it’s starting to make Ugly Betty just plain ugly.

New York Magazine

Tuesday Music Picks

Some favorite songs from a few all time favorites...these are classics in my book......
off their new album