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[ Add A Comment ]Posted on August 28, 2010 by admin in Popular Media
Saturday, August 28th, 2010Our final collection of pointless infographics, lists of stupid lists, and the videos that eat up any time you have left over after Facebook.
 Completely irrelevant photo of Heather Locklear |
I’m always searching for ways to bring you interesting content without actually doing any work. For a long time, I achieved this with our Monday Demotivators, but with the incredible growth in the unemployment sector, no one’s at work on Monday these days to avoid it, so we dropped that weekly feature back in December 2009. More recently, I thought I’d sneak by with a weekly “linkdump” (like this one and this one), but quickly realized that this would be almost as much work as actually writing something, so I hope you enjoy this final collection of useless infographics, pointless lists, and YouTubidity. The infographics and videos are first, because the stupid list of 66 stupid lists would take you almost as long to peruse as the hours of suffering all the involved parties endured in the hope that someone would actually take the time to look it over. Oh. But before we move on, my pick for link of the week is the story of how Coach scrubbed their brand clean of all the filthy Snooki. Read the rest of this entry »
Is The Printed Book Dead?
[ 3 Comments ]Posted on August 27, 2010 by admin in Popular Media
Friday, August 27th, 2010The “is it dead” question gets pretty tedious, until it becomes a reality, as with newspapers. Is the death of the book imminent? If you answer that question with a resounding “no”, I’d bet a nickel you’re over forty.
  Not surprisingly, this title is only available for the Kindle |
Is it dead yet? Is the Internet dead? Is Facebook dead? If you spend enough time on the web, this kind of question becomes incredibly tedious. See The Tragic Death of Practically Everything if you don’t know what I mean; it’s a tidy roundup of press about the death of everything from iPods to e-mail, including the death of both print and eBooks. Now that would be a tragedy. If that happened, what would we read, especially now that the iPad is killing the magazine (and 18 other things) as well? As a result of all this kind of linkbait content flooding the web, I actually find it refreshing when one of these deaths is more or less confirmed. Especially when it impacts me directly. It wasn’t too long ago that you could debate whether newspapers are dead, but I think the eulogy is being delivered as you read this. And now, at last, I think the real death of the printed book is imminent. Although as recently as September 2009 I was pondering the pros and cons of eBooks vs their dead tree counterparts, a few pieces of information finally tipped the scales for me recently, which was a relief, because I’m nearly finished with a book myself, and was struggling a bit with how to market it. The fact that there’s an iPad vs Kindle debate going on at all is a powerful statement that those who understand books and making money are committed to the future of the eBook. But what is probably informing my decision even more is the wealth of information about how much money you DON’T make in traditional publishing. My first glimpse into this was this article from last year in which the author of a top 20 NYT bestseller shares that she netted about 27 grand for her troubles. And most recently, influencer and media guru Seth Godin
Skidoo The Movie: Like Jackie Gleason On Acid
[ Add A Comment ]Posted on August 24, 2010 by admin in Popular Media
Tuesday, August 24th, 2010Because, well, it IS Jackie Gleason on acid. If you like 60’s films like The Party, The President’s Analyst, Barbarella, or Head, you’ll love Skidoo. Good luck finding a copy though.
  Strangely, the poster is available on Amazon |
It had been a long time since I had thought of the game Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon. That is, until a friend recently turned me on to a production starring (among others; more on that further on) Burgess Meredith, Frank Gorshin, and Cesar Romero. Sounds like an episode of the Batman TV series, right? Well if you add Jackie Gleason, Carol Channing, Frankie Avalon, Mickey Rooney, Slim Pickens, and Groucho Marx in his final appearance in film, you have Skidoo, creating one of the weirder nexuses possible in the six degrees game. I have no idea how I managed to make it this far in life without having seen this star-studded masterpiece of late sixties psychadelic wackiness. It’s like Jackie Gleason on acid, because, well, it stars Jackie Gleason - on acid. Along with just about everyone else at one point in the film. The cast alone makes this flick worth watching, but you’ll especially enjoy it if you’re into other movies from 1967/68, a couple of years when it seems someone must have been pret-ty busy running around Hollywood spiking the punch and baking brownies. Movies like Head
Tell The Invisible Chimp I Can’t See Him Today
[ Add A Comment ]Posted on August 16, 2010 by admin in Popular Media
Monday, August 16th, 2010In the bizarre and bloody PR battle of carnivores vs vegetarians, things can take strange turns, like when this PETA campaign against Dodge backfires.
The carnivore vs vegetarian conflict is a bloody battleground. In a marketing war being waged with weapons like cologne that smells like meat (see the commercial here), things can often take an unexpected turn. A couple of PETA’s most reliable weapons of mass distraction are nudity or scantily clad celebrities, which was for instance effective when PETA was the winner and the American Hot Dog Association was the wiener last year when PETA dogged the AHDA by suggesting you stick something different between your buns on National Hot Dog Day. You can’t win ALL the battles though, and we think a US automaker Dodged the bullet pretty cleverly recently when PETA complained about the exploding chimp in this commercial (also below), and Dodge responded by digitally making the chimp invisible, but otherwise leaving the commercial intact. Not surprisingly, Dodge got exponentially more ad views with their strategy. We tried to contact the invisible chimp for comment, and although his agent insisted we couldn’t see him, he did say in a phone interview that he expected to be bigger than Trunk Monkey. We also had the still grieving Bubbles the Chimp on the line, who disagreed, saying “Invisible Chimp, I knew Trunk Monkey, Trunk Monkey was a friend of mine. And sir, you’re no Trunk Monkey”. Decide for yourself. Both versions of the ad below. With a bonus Trunk Monkey clip. Read the rest of this entry »
Short Horror Films By Independent Film Studio Fewdio
[ Add A Comment ]Posted on August 1, 2010 by admin in Featured, Popular Media
Sunday, August 1st, 2010Fewdio cashes in on the often overlooked fact that horror films are typically 90% setup to bring you studio-quality, witty horror film shorts. And they’re FREE.
The fact that so many films can be summarized in about 90 seconds is probably one of the reasons I enjoy short film so much. Why spend 120 minutes of your life doing something that can be accomplished in five? What is fairly easy to do, and is done a lot in this genre, is comedy. Which is why it was refreshing to run across Fewdio , an extremely talented and polished group of professionals who had been working in the studio system and decided they wanted to do something where they had complete control, and without a huge budget and production cycle. They cashed in on two facts that are largely overlooked regarding horror: first of all, that the best segments of horror films often stand up on their own and are strung together with setups, and secondly, that no-one was really doing quality horror shorts. As Fewdio’s Drew Daywalt points out in this Shock Till You Drop interview, it’s a very viable and largely unexplored format. As he puts it: “You end on a scare and bang, you’re out…it’s a good model to aspire to. Twilight Zone is formulated that way. Set up, continued set up, expected left turn, roll credits“. All of Fewdio’s films (and there are around 50) have fairly high production values, a clever concept, and exceptional attention to details that are often overlooked in independent productions, especially their attention to sound, probably one of the most powerful tools at a horror filmmaker’s disposal. You can watch most of their films on their YouTube channel, or buy the Nightmare House - Volume 1 DVD on their site. Watch a few below. Read the rest of this entry »