Canuckflack

This gem from the Boston Phoenix’s review of the catch phrases of the year:

“…a colleague on the West Coast reports seeing a pair of homeless men holding a handmade sign: “2 bums 1 cup.” In viral-marketing terms, that’s a bull’s-eye: once you reach the indigent layer, you’re made.”

Other phrases covered by James Parker include:

• Don’t tase me, bro
• It’s Britney, bitch!
• Why don’t you shut up?

[tags] 2girls1cup, viral marketing, word of mouth [/tags]

Melanie Villines was hired by Kraft to write an in-house history of innovation at the food giant. “The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Cheese” was the result – but it’s not available publicly.

The Chicago Reader, however, offers us a few details to snack on. Like this nugget:

“There were about 200 people who said they invented Miracle Whip.”

After all, victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan, especially in the world of food product differentiation.

Oooh. All that creamy edible oil goodness. Lathered on brown bread and topped with lettuce, tomato and a nice crisp piece of bacon.

Or, if you’re Belgian, squirted out on chips.

No, those aren’t jazz hands.

KQED and WNET are filming the San Francisco Ballet’s performance of the Nutcracker this week, and the SF Chronicle discusses how you translate a highly technical performance into language easily understood by a skilled television crew shooting the whole thing in hi definition.

““Snake arms,” Kraus said as the Arabian dancer in Act 2 began her sinuous ascent from a giant genie lamp. “Four,” called [director] Diamond, popping his thumb. Dozens of shots later, Kraus readied the crew for the Chinese dancer who “enters upright, cartwheels left,” then does “four jumps in place, kung fu leg up.“

… The challenge, said Kraus, who’s married to the director, “is to translate the movement into quick images that they can understand. The most important thing the camera people need to know is where the arms and legs are and where they’re moving, because we don’t like to cut off arms and feet.”

[tags] simple language, ballet, pro sports, television [/tags]

There will be pretty pictures. There will be enigmatic pictures. There will be badly composed pictures. But the idea is fantastic. Two minds quite capable of making the leap between diverse subjects, disciplines and concepts have cooked up a competition to identify the World’s Best Urban Places and Spaces.

In typical fashion, Russell Davies and Dan Hill have taken a largely critical idea (the World’s Worst Urban Places and Spaces) and shined it up.

I like the idea because it is so loosely defined. Sifting through my memories of my favourite places, I can sort memories and images according to the effect of space, weather, feelings elicited by crowds, an absence of others, or my reaction to a conscious attempt by some smarty-pants architect or artist to define the place.

Here’s Russell’s description of the project:

“We’ll leave you to interpret ‘best’ ‘urban’ ‘space’ and ‘place’ as you like. Could be anywhere or anything; bus shelters, buildings, bombsites or benches. Rather than wait until we’ve got enough for a book (which, of course, may never happen) we’re planning instead on doing a series of pamphlets. We’re going to try and persuade some top designers to do them for us. There’ll be a free one as a pdf online and lovely specially printed ones for everyone who contributes and/or who’d like to buy them.

Obviously we’ve not really worked out all the details on that yet, but will let you know when we have.

Does that sound interesting? I think it might be. Pile in, if you’d like to.”

You can find the Flickr pool they’ve set up, either to contribute or simply to gawk. Consider the submissions according to your own criteria, or to explode in Photoshop looking for naked ladies and other privacy violations.

[tags] World’s Best Urban Places, urbanism, place [/tags]

The new Ford “Built Ford Tough” videos manage to rip off two separate concepts, but do it well:

There aren’t any crackheads trying to evade arrest, and there are no Burt Reynolds hairpieces. But still, it’s funny.

The concept is that there are ten rules that Ford truck owners must follow – and these rules identify what could be best defined as “fancy” behaviour.

Here’s an incredibly personal and limited comment, which will likely only be understood by a group of friends I hung out with in the mid-80s.

Chuck Thompson, the author of Smile When You’re Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer, was asked what music he would choose for a road mix to accompany specific chapters in his book. This is his note for one chapter:

“… “Headstart for Happiness” — The Style Council (video)

With a certain age group of British men, it’s possible to start a fight simply by walking into a London pub and declaring that The Style Council was in fact a better band than The Jam. (True, by the way.) [Author Thompson's] life in Japan fired [his] suicidal imagination like no other place and there were dark weekends there when only [his] discovery of Paul Weller’s new and improved incarnation pulled me through.”

I think that our small group could still spend several hours debating the merits of post-punk Paul versus synth-pop Paul.

And part of that debate would centre around the proposition that Mick Talbot was Paul Weller’s Yoko Ono. Discuss.

h/t again to LHB

[tags] Style Council, Jam, Paul Weller, mod, Lisgar Collegiate Institute [/tags]

Now, I know that team-building exercises can take on all sorts of shapes and sizes. They can be amusing, challenging, thought-provoking, or stultifyingly boring.

And, at their worst, they can include the participation of clowns and mimes.

But I am really, really curious what Graeme Douglas at Planning for fun was doing milking cows

“…in the name of being a better planner…

[tags] advertising planner [/tags]

Broken Social Scene and Feist are local, quirky, imaginative and “independent.” Of course you remember independent music? Long tail before it got a cool name?

Perez Hilton is grasping, global, an aggregator but derivative and highly dependent on the craziness of others. (But still highly popular and influential)

Chart Attack has an interview with Feist, who, of course, broke through into the mainstream after her infectious song 1-2-3-4 was featured in an iPod commercial.

If I base my comments on a scant 100-odd words, it seems that Feist is well aware of the influence of celebrity bloggers – and their fickle nature.

Perez Hilton has certainly been kind to you this year.

Yeah! When will that dime turn? You know Dragonette? I was having drinks with them in London, which is where they live now. And Dan Kurtz actually produced my very first record in ’98. So we’re old, old friends. So I went out for a drink with him and Martina [Sorbara] and they had some friend there and we’re all just hanging out. And after about an hour I said to the friend, “Hey, what do you do?” And he said, “Oh, well, I have this blog, this gossip blog.” And he asks me what I do and I say, “I’m a singer, I’ve got some records out.”

I didn’t know who he was from a hole in the ground. I’d never heard his name before and he had never heard mine. But the next day, I heard from about 70,000 people going “Oh my God!” and all of a sudden I understood the context of who this guy with green hair was. And that was Perez Hilton, of course.

The next day, he did a blast saying “Check out this girl’s video,” and that was six months ago. I’m bemused and grateful that stuff is on some people’s radar. It’s certainly not on mine. But I can understand it means something to someone.

If I’m reading that last line accurately, that’s the “long tail” telling us that the “wider tail” doesn’t really play a large part in her daily life.

Independent is as independent does … and her decisions aren’t confined by the frames defined by a larger and more “popular” voice.
h/t to Large Hearted Boy

[tags] Feist, gossip blogs, long tail [/tags]

As we approach Christmas, we can harken back to when towns had local or regional department stores, each decorated in a particular style for the holidays. As the comments on a photo retrospective at Labelscar note, the retail landscape has now been Macyated.

As Canadians do more and more shopping at outlet malls in U.S. border cities, we’re increasingly leaving all but our underpants behind as we head home.

As we all debate climate change and the United States faces $4 a gallon gas, the Canadian Centre for Architecture presents 1973: Sorry out of gas. (Exhibition site, News Release)

Metropolis on the philosophy behind Rudy’s Barber Shop and Ace Hotels:

“…When I tell them it’s the handiwork of a Rudy’s stylist, neither one asks if I like the cut. Instead, they want to know if I enjoyed the experience, if I talked to other customers, if the vibe was good.

It’s obvious that what led Calderwood and Weigel into the business wasn’t an interest in hair. Rather, it was the idea of injecting new life into ritualized social interactions that intrigued them. “Wade used to fly back and forth from London and would see these barbers in Camden Market and Notting Hill where they’d just set up in the middle of the market and cut hair for the day,” Calderwood says. “And I used to live near Sig’s Barbershop downtown, this tiny old shop that’s never changed. I’d walk by it and think, ‘God, how cool would it be to buy that and get younger hairstylists to work there.’”

Need evidence that they’ve succeeded in creating an experience? Check out these Yelp comments about the original Rudy’s in Seattle.

James Surowiecki on how the web has affected how we shop:

“…the wealth of online product reviews and commentary has made the cues that stores use to shape shoppers’ perception of quality and value far less effective. This doesn’t mean that consumers are impervious to retailers’ tricks, and plenty of us shop the way Homer Simpson orders wine: buy the second-least-expensive thing on the list. …” (New Yorker)

[tags] mall, holiday decoration, Homer Simpson, Rudy’s Barber Shop, retail experience, outlet shopping [/tags]

We’ve all had jobs that presented a perfect chance to indulge our all-consuming passions and were thrilling — at the time. But, in retrospect, that job could be the source of light-hearted derision.

Like Peter Buck’s job at Wuxtry Records in Athens, Georgia.

I know, I know. Very High Fidelity, very original hipster, very alt-rock origins.

Unless you are featured in the local paper holding up edition #1 of Howard the Duck.

via WUXTRY Records MySpace and Cable and Tweed.

As I’ve mentioned, I spent four years of my childhood in Hong Kong.

A good part of my weekends was spent exploring the hillside behind our apartment building. There were a great number of spooky ruins in the forest, including Pinewood Battery.

I always knew it was a relic from the Second World War, one of the big gun emplacements meant to protect the colony of Hong Kong in the case of an attack from the sea.

While Pinewood Battery did not play a pivotal role in the defense of the island, these weekend jaunts were one of my few direct and personal contacts with a violent and relatively recent period in the history of the British Empire.

Today, we should pause to think of the Canadian troops who died protecting that Empire – and the freedom of countries and communities across Europe and Asia.

December 18, 1941 was the day Japanese troops, who had been working their way through the mainland portion of the colony, crossed the channel and attacked Allied troops on the island.

It was a violent and personal battle, with close fighting across the rocky and mountainous terrain of the Island. And it was all over by Christmas Day, 1941.

Canada had a substantial garrison of Winnipeg Grenadiers and Royal Rifles on the island: of the nearly 2000 Canadian soldiers in the garrison, over a thousand died or were injured during the battle or during their four-year detention as prisoners of war.

The CBC’s digital archive has a radio retrospective on the Battle of Hong Kong, with interviews with surviving members of the Canadian forces that fought in Hong Kong.

Histori.ca has a recreation of the events that led up to the death of Sergeant-Major John Osborne, and his posthumous awarding of the Victoria Cross.

A little late in the game, but here’s a guy who dressed up as a YouTube video for Halloween. And only rated himself 1.5 stars.

via this recording.

I’m lookin’ at you. Enjoy your clamshell packaging and seasonal wrapping, fella. ‘Cause Annie Leonard makes it clear that our consumer culture is heading us straight down the path to resource exhaustion and trash triumph.

The Story of Stuff is a 20 minute animation with on-screen narration by Leonard, explaining how weaknesses and manipulation at each step in the chain of production are producing toxic effects for the environment, workers, regions and customers.

Yeah, yeah. This sort of stuff is viewed with suspicion and animosity by most consumers in western economies. I certainly watched it with a jaundiced eye, what with all my economics training.

But my daughter was spellbound. Because her life does not depend upon an innate trust in the goals and motivations of a corporations. She does not feel the same sense of fear or unease at challenging the assumptions about corporate power and economic authority that underly popular understanding of our economic system.

So you should watch it as well. It has a good message, it’s a plain and clear piece of communication, it has a good beat and you can dance to it.

Oh – and try not to think of Steve Jobs, Apple and their six month product cycle when you watch the film.

[tags] Story of Stuff, sustainable, equitable, consumer culture, consumerism, planned obsolescence [/tags]

It struck me, listening to the abysmal music available on the radio today, that a lot of artists are affected by seasonal affective disorder. Not their music – their availability on radio channels. Take AOR stalwarts John Denver or Anne Murray: you rarely hear their songs at the height of summer.

Hall & Oates, on the other hand, are played all the time and no matter the weather.

I present for your enjoyment, an attempt to divide up the music spectrum according to seasons. In other words, in which temperature range will you likely hear specific genres or bands?

For example: Emo or Michael Buble are more likely to be heard (or received well) during the Fall. So is the soundtrack to When Harry Met Sally, but that dates me. A lot.

[tags] seasonal affective disorder, music genre, seasons, morrissey [/tags]