Here's an article in Maclean's magazine from this week's issue in which I am quoted. It's about an investment company targeting young people, called Thrasher Funds. Check out their website: the splash page is sort of funny, in that they seem to have covered all the youth stereotypes ("Hip-hop dude? Check. Hipster girl in skinny jeans? Check."). I'm not sure how viable this is in the long-term, and it's certainly not how I would market a product like this (the marketing is both generic and a bit transparent) but it is interesting to see someone trying to make a play in this space.
My friend Shane sent me this video of the first ad campaign for the Montreal Metro. If you love French jingles, porn mustaches, and random, synchronised dancing the way that I do - and who doesn't? - then you will believe this to be the greatest ad of all time.
As someone who works in the industry, I gotta say: if the advertising industry of the 60s was fueled by booze and cigarettes, and in the 80s it was dominated by cocaine, the 70s had to be all about LSD, ecstasy, peyote, and some sort of fish paralyzer mixed in equal amounts.
...is not something that I should admit to, but I will anyway. My friend Matthew would be aghast at this - not that I like Alicia Keys, although who knows, but at the fact that I wouldn't be comfortable admitting it. Matthew has a sort of relentlessly hip taste in music - he's the sort of person who might have a blog that dissects every single Bjork song ever (and by "might have" I mean "actually has"). But he made a good point a while ago when I mentioned that Kelly Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone" was a guilty pleasure: he said that there should be no such thing. And he's right (well, maybe heroin should be a guilty pleasure, but that's someone else's blog.) So I'll say it: "Since U Been Gone" is probably the second best pop song of the millennium, and I like the new Alicia Keys album.
There, I admit it. The first single, "No One," is the sort of radio-friendly singalong that no one should be ashamed to sing along to (much like, well, the aforementioned Kelly Clarkson track) and there are plenty of other eminently hummable tunes. I first caught win of the record almost by accident: Ms. Keys performed on "Fashion Rocks" this year and I was so taken by her live version of "The Thing About Love" that I assumed it was actually a cover.
So, there, I've admitted to it. There's more on the album, too: a great jam called "I Need You," and something called "Teenage Love Affair" that should be awful but isn't. I may be sacrificing whatever little hipster cred I have managed to hold on to until now by writing about this, but I don't worry, 'cause everything's gonna be all right.
Sure, why not? I think the idea behind the video goes something like this: get Geri to do a million crunches and three hundred thousand hours of Pilates; deprive Victoria of food for five years; but Mel B on a reality show where she actually has to run around for eight hours a day; take the just-delivered-a-kid Emma and emphasize the fact that her rack is really big; and hide Melanie C in Ann Wilson's old clothes.
Seriously, what is this, a Wilson Phillips video from fifteen years ago? Put the thin girls in the band in their underwear and throw the other one in in one of Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation era three-quarter length jackets?
Still, I like the fact that they haven't made any weird attempts to update their sound: no spare Timbaland beats, here. It's the same Stannard and Rowe (Standard and Rowe?) pop balladry that we got on "2 Become 1," or "Viva Forever," or "Goodbye." Hopefully, there's a more dance-friendly, uptempo new single one the Greatest Hits album. The DJ threw "Stop" on at a bar I was at last week, and we all sang along and did the cute little dance from the video. Hmm. That may have been the gayest sentence I've ever written.
This is fantastic: a perfect storm of comedy, marketing genius, and mash-up inanity. The Office? Great, as always. Andy, one of the characters thereon, being unable to remeber the end of the Kit Kat jingle after he calls it the best ad in the world, ever? Even better - especially since it touches on a real-world fear of marketers who are afraid of "good" commericals that don't create any link to the brand. And the fact that someone mashed up all of Andy's incorrect answers with actual Kit Kat commecial footage? Well that's just effing genius.
JossWhedon is back. The man who brought us Buffy the Vampire Slayer - the greatest television show in the history of the medium - is returning to TV with a new show called Dollhouse, scheduled for next year. Best of all, it will star Eliza Dushku, who played Faith, the rogue Slayer, on Buffy (although some of you might remember her as Missy, the rogue cheerleader in Bring It On; if you're a teenage boy you may know her from a three-minute period in your nighttime routine, right before you drift off to sleep).
I won't pitch the show to you in any great detail, as I find Whedon shows need to be experienced, rather than high-concepted (Buffy was about so much more than slaying the freak-of-the-week, and Firefly was hardly just a western). But for those of us who have been waiting for a couple of years now, it doesn't really matter what the show is about: JossWhedon is back doing television. Fire up your TiVos, folks.
