Half-Price, King of Books

I was Half-Price the other day perusing, where one real dollar means two dollars in Half-Price's world. For the value, why would I go anywhere else to browse and snoop? Sometimes there is a selection shortage (at smaller Half-Prices) but you're going to find something. That's the snare. I walked in not needing anything but I was there with my friend who needed a certain book. But walking around, I thought, why not? Once I picked up one book, I was on the buying train. So i picked up some things for creative inspiration, some sources of ideas and encouragements.

So I went and found this wonderful children's book by a guy named Colin Thompson. When I was young, I used to read this book by him about Atlantis, and I mean, I would check that book out weekly if my friends hadn't got to it first. I would pore over his illustrations and finds all these little detailed worlds he'd draw in the tiniest parts of his illustrations! (Like Michelangelo, you know?) They are so detailed and imaginative and even as a (young) adult I enjoyed looking at them and enjoying their detailed whimsy. Here's the book I bought (I haven't been able to find my Atlantis book yet). $5.58

I am also inspired by photography, particularly candid and environmental photography. So I found this wonderful book of still life photography by Charles Traub. It's filled with these snapshot moments of people in mid-conversation, mid-chewing, mid-sleeping, what have you. Walking, jumping, swimming, too. They're filled with so much candid action, such vitality and energy, and they are very fun to look at. You just have to wonder what was going on in these moments of life. It's a very nice part of my growing collection of the arts. $7.00

Finally, I bought one more thing that does in fact inspire me. I don't generally have time for games but when I'm at Half-Price and I find an amazingly priced interesting and mentally-challenging game, I'm usually a sucker. So I found this really intriguing strategy game and I bought it. It's called the Rise of Legends, and what most impressed me were the races and technologies available for play in the game. One aspect are these humans who live in armed city-states with names like Vinci, Petruzzo, etc-just like historical, feudal Italy! And the technologies of their worlds are these mechanical behemoths of gears and pipes and gadgets, all based on real sketches by Leo di Vinci! It's really quite fantastic and imaginative to see! There is merit in the creativity it took to create such a unique and original game, and it does in fact inspire me in its own way. $10.00

So get to Half-Price and find yourself some of your own inspiration. I found mine-and it was cheap.

Sweet Leaf Tea, Please!

Man this stuff is good. Reallll good.

So Sweet Leaf Tea is a tiny (not-so-tiny now) tea brewer from Austin, Texas. They started a while back, brewing tea in pillowcases, as their bottles will attest. Now they've moved onward and upward but still have kept the original flair for tea.

I love the Mint & Honey green tea flavor myself, but for several reasons do I really enjoy and respect the brand. First of all, in the world of teas, you have to understand the rest of the playing field. You've got tea everywhere else (especially the ever-trendy green tea brands) brewing cheap and filling their bottles with high fructose corn syrup and artificial flavors. Or, if it's an organic, natural tea, they've gone totally snob and upped the price for a fancy bottle and a rather tastless liquid inside it. Sweet Leaf will have none of it. Their ingredients are water, tea, sugar, and natural flavors (like spearmint) and the cost is very reasonable-and the taste, just get out of town, it's good tea. Very refreshing and very tasty. They have a really nice offering, too-there's a hibiscus-brewed tea with pomegranate, good old sweet tea, tea and lemonade, black tea and peach, black tea and raspberry, and more! This tea rocks and you need to go out now and get yourself a bottle.

Beauty is a fine-feathered thing

This is a picture I found on my news website, BBC news. Check out the caption:
"A rooster stands proud as it is judged in a birds' beauty contest in Saudi Arabia's eastern city of Qatif."

What this inspires in me is the global idea of beauty, I think. Not just all beauty as a whole, because I mean, we can't compare and woman or man who is beautiful with a chicken. (or can we?). But this chicken, to some people, is beautiful. Like pigs or chihuahuas, which some people think are just wonderful to look at. Everywhere else has their meanings of beauty instilled in that culture, in those people. The things I'll find beautiful in my life will be a certain way because of my socialization and I don't see this ever changing. I can't help what I find beautiful, I just do.

But as global humans, we should learn to appreciate the beauty others find in things, appreciate their sense of what is lovely, what is good, what is estimable. Our sense of these things is not the only sense of things. I guess I think about this because of the difficulty of conveying the same degree of beauty to everyone-you just can't! It's a challenge and responsibility of advertisers, then, to be careful when they portray something that is meant to be the paragon of beauty. It must be carefully carefully considered and maybe not conveyed as absolute. Just one more way to be socially responsible, I'd say.

Starbucks Being Risky

So this is old news to any truly trendy folk who get drinks at Starbucks, but recently they completely changed the staple of their business-the daily coffee. Instead of offering two or three of their custom blends from day to day they switched to a standard blend for every day, the Pike's Place roast, both regular and decaf. So if you go in to Starbucks for coffee (what a thought!), you have one choice-unless you come before noon when they brew one special blend. They also increased the sizes of coffee you can buy (two smaller sizes, actually) and they offer a caffe aulait option of their Pike's Place served with steamed milk (not a latte, mind you).

I'm not decrying the new coffee choice. It's not as strong and tasty as most of their other blends but I really can't complain. There's just no other coffee shops around that even compare, so I'm still a Starbucks man. What I think it interesting is the choice that Starbucks made to make this change! It seems risky to me to almost 180 their coffee offerings and really shake up the regulars' sense of continuity. What it says to me is that Starbucks is pretty confident in their place in the world of coffee. They have just a little fiscal security to make a risk like this and see if it's popular. And the great things is Starbuck's determination to keep all of their stores the same, so the Pike's Place wouldn't great in New York but really wonky in Alabama. They can make huge changes like this and because of their monopoly status they can just say tough cookies to anyone who doesn't like it. I like that, though. I like seeing some changes and risks happening. It shows creativity, growth, rethinking and money-saving for the company, ultimately.

And luckily, I like the coffee.

Lock-Ins are for teenagers

The other night the executive board of a Meadows recruitment organization I belong to got together for a lock-in! Yeah-one of those lock-ins kids have where they stay up all night eating Oreas and playing Jenga or something. But we stayed up (most of the night) brainstorming and learning about recruitment, being on a mock student panel, and honing our question-response skills for prospective students (and parents). We also threw in some food and gaming and a movie, but us all being old college people, we had to go to bed at 4. We got up at 6 and went to Ihop where we held our final work session and made some really good plans for our next year. And that was that.

I was impressed with the idea, I guess. It was a creative thing to bring us all to a lock-in sort of like a work-reward thing. The lock-in is fun but in the fun work is also required. But the work is rewarded by more of the lock-in. I guess the incentive value makes it work, because we generated some really good ideas. There was synergy just shooting all around and the structure of our evening was very conducive to creative thought and teamwork. The whole event was a creative rethink of the old model for 14-year-olds, I'd say.

Billboards? Hate'em

I hate billboards. I'm just going to be blunt and come right out and say it. Hate'em!

They're ugly to me, just stickin' up all over the road, marring the sky and any sort of landscaping along the road, or just being plain distracting. This feeling stems from idea that they're also quite useless. Maybe I'm just ill-informed, but I don't think they do a thing for a company. Maybe for food, only. I mean, honestly, who in the world is going to be cruising down the highway at 70 mph and then see a billboard for a lawyer or night classes and then be all about getting a pen and paper to write down the phonenumber, website, and name of the service? Or just the website? Or just grabbing the pen? I know, I know-what about gridlock traffic, you ask? Same story. Who cares? Maybe one person a day. But food-that's the only useful thing. If I'm driving (and I'm hungry...or I could be hungry) and I see a tasty looking billboard for some food I can get wantin' to eat that thing I saw on the billboard. Chik-fil-et, Taco Bueno, what have you. But still I don't appreciate billboards. I think they're ugly and just a bother. Imagine driving without them! How nice and undistracting they would be. I mean, they aren't everywhere on every freeway, but they're on enough of them to bug me. Let's tear em' down.

Bracelets, Anyone?

It's amazing how inspiring a small project can be for us-like a small craft project, I mean.

A while back I found this scrap of teal blue jacket fabric from someone's trenchcoat. I saw it and immediately thought of it as a bracelet! Over the next few days when I had free time I'd run to the costume shop for maybe 10 minutes and stitch what I could. I did some basic embroidery all up the fabric, made it functional with snaps. The embroidery starts at a deep orange and ends at white, sort of like a sunset, and the scale is flanked on both sides by a nice cobalt blue.

I really enjoyed making this project, actually. It was almost a special favor to myself or something, getting to do it. Of course I'm grateful to the costume shop, but for my own edifiaction, I suppose, I really enjoyed the project. It keeps me fresh and thinking to have a small creative challenge like that one.

Two-Steppin' Out Tonight

I'm a Texan and I always have been and always will be, and well, I'm rather proud of that fact. I really am. I won't go in to the reasons (there's just so many) I'm so proud of my state but let's all just concede that Texas is a great place. Okay? Done.

So I went to Billy Bob's Texas tonight-the first time I've ever been! For all you Texans out there reading and who've been to Billy Bob's, give me a break. For the rest of you, git yer boots on and git yer self to Billy Bob's. It's just a good old time way out in Fort Worth, right by the Stockyards. It's just a huge place! Just massive: not only are there several eating areas and bars and the great stage for the band and dance floor, but there's a large billiards area, a casino, two large gift stores, a rodeo, and a huge concert venue that stretched out into blackness from where I could see. Not to mention the scores of autographed hand/feet/face prints by all of country and folk music's finest covering almost every naked wall and the great and wonderful Texan regalia hanging around on ceilings and walls. This place is what it says it is to me: it's a mini-Texas!

It's a little microcosm of Texan culture, I think. There's a melding of young and old people, there's the Texan beer, the good old southern music, there's the casual cowboys mingling with Texas' finest and reknowned beautiful women, the flags and the open sense of belonging and welcome that (I think) pervades most of the state of Texas. I felt taken in, at least. I've never been two-stepping but had a blast learning. I'm not big on the whole boots thing but I do have a nice pair so I had to hit those up. I was just blown away. Everything was as I could expect it, it was quite a lot of ecgaging, reallly-and involving! I was taken in and everything I'd heard and seen and assumed about the place was positivily true! Word of mouth sells a place like that, I think, and it sesems to be working for Billy Bob's. Yee-haw.

Springtime, Please

Now that it's spring and cresting summer even, I thought I'd share some of my springtime photographs. I find a great deal of inspiration from them, to be perfectly honest, and there's also just something about tree branches set up against the sky that really gets me. Here's a few! Check out the rest on my reader.

There was amazing fog this one morning in March

I found this fungus growing on an ancient fossil rock face while hiking in central Texas

These are at least indicative of this spring for me. There's some more and not all are of those are from this spring but they are from a spring, at least. Take a look!

http://ryansshorereader.blogspot.com/2008/04/springtime-please.html

Austin Poem #1

Here's a little diddy I wrote while I was visiting Austin, Texas a while back. I was reading a bunch of early Jack Kerouac at the time, so I think the poem emulates his style a bit, especially in its informal, loosely conversational style. Check out this snippet:


Tonight: Feel the jive
Feel the pulse
Feel the human force!

The music there
was: sexy, vibrant, funky-
raucous, loud, full-


Read the rest at my reader!
http://ryansshorereader.blogspot.com/2008/04/austin-poem-1.html
Enjoy!

Just a Glance

Do you ever wish you had a camera with you that you could instantly use when the perfect thing happens right in front of you, sort of like a "print screen" button for your life? I mean, I do.

Tonight was a perfect example. It was all about composition, really. I was walking back home from a trip to the Meadows building and I had with me an empty cardboard cup of coffee. Nonchalantly, as is a habit of mine, I was flipping the cup into the air, giving it a really nice spin. It's an activity I do when I'm walking places. Well, at any rate, I was tossing the cup pretty high up and so I was required to look up to ensure that I could catch it. On one toss, I looked up and saw a lovely compositional photograph! I'll attempt to describe it:

So we've got a backdrop of dark indigo night sky accented by thin cloud cover and five or so dots of starlight. A light cyan glow creates the left side and a sharp angled line of brick colored a warm red dominates the right side. At the bottom left a fresh, green branch shoots up vertically, and at the middle left is the blurry form of my spinning cup. Finally, right above the cup a moth zips by, catching the light with his white wings and creating a delicate horizontal streak through the sky.

It sounds nice, right? I thought so. All of those elements just came together for a split second to create that image and I say it and immediately regretted that I couldn't capture it right then and there. It was pleasantly startling because of the moth, which I first took to be a shooting star. If anything, it just corroborated the desire I often have to carry my camera with me always. But even then, you've gotta drag the thing out and turn it on and get it ready, and then focus and take the picture. I mean, by then the unscripted, beautiful life moment has long since passed by (usually). I'll just have to remember those glimpses of beautiful composition in my mind only. Until a mind-controlled optical camera is invented, that is.

Self-Trust...?

I have many things to say about my creative process lately, it seems. I guess it's all those creative things I'm doing nowadays or something. So I was thinking about the decision making process I discussed at some length last time and I came to some sort of new conclusion about my sense of trust in my ideas.

We always learn now (we used to learn the opposite) that you shouldn't go with your gut instinct first idea but you should keep creating and trying new things, both good and bad , the shamefully poor and the brilliantly gleaming. But then what? So I've got this page or this head full of these good, bad, and ugly ideas staring at me/rolling around upstairs. Which one do I choose? Which one!?

Lately here's what I do: I pick the idea that makes me the most nervous. The one that kinda makes me squirm a bit inside, that makes me shift uneasily. It's a feeling that says, "I'm really unsure about this" followed by a faint voice that says excitedly "But this could be amazing!". And then another voice says, "Ryan, it's terrible. And it's too risky. And you need to stop talking to yourself." But it's the idea that I can't sit well with but that I know somewhere in my heart that it's a good thing. I don't know if it's the thing to solve the problem I'm trying to solve but I know it's a good thing and it could very well be a fantastic thing. It's that drop of glorious hope that pursuades me to choose the ocean of queasy, possibly wonderful risk over the puddle of safe, "this works", ease.

Just Frustrated: The Creative Decision

I've been doing several creative projects as of late, and in hindsight I got to thinking about my process. What I mean is, how do I arrive at my decisions for what to finally end up creating? What impacts that decision more: my time frame or my creative satiation? Am I impulsive or careful? (the questions stretch onward)

But looking back on it, I've generally gone with my first "good idea" on all of them. I sit and think about the project for a couple minutes and then have one good idea and think, yeah, that's a good one. But here I stop myself from just going with it: I tell myself to stop and explore other ideas in the name of true creativity (because we all know our first impulse is not actually our best idea). But secretly, I'm telling myself that I'm really just going to end up doing my first idea and that I'm only thinking of these other ones to satisfy some unseen creative taskmaster. I'll leave this alone now because I guess what I'm more interested in is that decision time when I've chosen the one idea I'll do from the infinite universe of ideas there are.

I wish I thought with more outright creativity, I think. Because I don't let the problem sit for too long in my head before choosing an idea (usually out of the necessity of just having to pick something), I wish the time I do spend ruminating over solutions was more rich. I don't know what I'm asking myself for, really. I just always wonder, "where did that come from?" when I think of a good idea, or "how did I think of that?". You know? What connections did my head put together, what pieces of knowledge and experience were fitted together into the tiny amalgam of mental substance that is an idea? I wish I could record it somehow...but that's rather impossible. It kind of makes you crazy a bit when you wonder about how people have ideas at all, how they know that their idea is the one that really solves the problem. Almost like when you look at a word too long and you take it apart and suddenly it looks alien to you. When you stop and "look" at how you think, it comes to make no sense at all!

So then I haven't answered any of my questions and you have become thoroughly confused because you probably just got done deconstructing some word from my last paragraph. So then that leaves me still wondering, I guess. But I still like my ideas most of the time. I can continue pondering my process in my spare time.

I'm in the Club!: Just Did It

(this is me jogging in Bali. I posed for corbis, too)

Wow! So tonight I went jogging (don't feel ashamed of yourself. I don't do this often). I'm going to be honest, it was about 1:50 am when I went. It's not a safe time and it's really late, etc etc. I know all that. But I had just got done with round one of homework and after several computer cowlicks and other rat's nests in the head of hair that is my homework, I was really uptight and really, not in a good mood. (I don't do this often either, by the way). So I had to go jogging. And my body needed it anyway.

I trudged to my shoes, pulled on my shorts, grabbed my keys, my ID, and my iPOd, and set out on my fitness excursion.



So it wasn't the best run. As soon as I took two steps, my iPod died, for one. I was just getting in to Boston's "More than a Feeling" (you should try jogging to it: you can't help but air guitar that raging chorus) when it shut off, leaving me to hear the silent whoosh of stuffy night air past my slowly bobbing ears. I fit my keys in between my fingers like a claw (in case I get mugged) and took a turn down a new street toward the nicer and hopefully safer houses. It was one of those jogs where when you start, your body feels like Archie's old jalopy and it's just not going to make it. Things are falling off and its chugging like mad just to make 2 mph-that was me, but I told myself to just keep on keeping on-it'd get better. I'd reach that "runners' high" part where you just glide along (I've been there once or twice...) soon enough, I thought. Needless to say, that never happened. It was just a rough time the whole way physically, but luckily the night air smelled wonderful and I was privelaged to see the icy course of a huge shooting star! So it was all in all a rough jog but a great night. But you know, I did it. I needed to, I just went, and I did it.



This is my point then: Later on I was changing clothes and I looked down at my shorts in the process. Now I bought this swimsuit a long time ago because it was grey, nondescript, and covered my knees (I was a teenager, you know?) and they became my everything-physical-plus-occasional-swimming-suit. I didn't and don't now really care about the brand of them. They work, they were cheap and there. But lo and behold, they're Nikes! So looking down, sweat dripping from my face, my muscles burning with gratified aches, I saw that swoosh and felt in the club, the runners' club. You know the Nike's running commercials where the devoted runner is out there jogging, be it the apocalypse or rain or what have you-that's the way I felt. I felt like I was a part of that world. I had done it! I just did it! And I don't even care about owning a brand name but still the power of that swoosh really got me. I smiled to myself and felt quite proud and accomplished: I am a runner now (for tonight, I mean).

First Hand: The Power of the Group

Tonight I was in a meeting with a group for a creative advertising project in which we're building a Rube-Goldbergesque contraption to symbolize the component parts of an advertising concept. To preface this meeting, you gotta understand that I've never understood synergy totally. I had a pretty good idea what I was about from simple deductive inference but you know, I wasn't textbook sure.

So we're working on our project and discussing the designs and thinking of names for parts and materials for this tube and that widget, etc; and it occured to me: our group had created synergy! We were liberally interacting with one another, playing off each other's ideas, asking one another for advice and their input, sharing the limelight throughout. We also had our personalities jiving in harmony. I'm usually the guy who talks wayyy too much and tries to do everything himself and I had to hold myself back-mostly because my group is great and far-passed competent. But my personality was jiving with the more analytical or whimsical or playful tenets of my group members' personalities and they were in harmony, not dischord. Also, we each had our own knowledge regarding the project or peripheral things associated with it. I might know a bunch about the design but this person over there knows all about creative organization while someone over here likens this aspect to Mouse Trap (the game) and creates a cool idea! I mean, there was synergy goin on in that apartment tonight. It was cool to see it working firsthand


Oh-and ironically enough, our project is about synergy, for the record. But that's not the reason it happened. Who knows why, really? It did!

The Power(lessness) of Words

I'm researching lately for a peformance assignment in my theatre history class, and some of my findings have been seriously challenging my notions in the power of language to really power expression. Before I continue, I've got to do a small history lesson first, however.

So there was a tortured and brilliant French artist named Antonin Artaud who explored words and irrevocably shaped the face of modern theatre today. Born in 1896, he then had a deadly disease at a young age, leaving his mind weakened and prone to depression and other neurological defects. This led to a rocky youth and rebellious adolesence which forced his parents to place him in a sanitorium at the age of 19. His doctors there gave him an opiate for treatment, effectively addicting him to the drugs for the rest of his short life.
To make a long story short, Artaud, a poet, playwright, visual artist, writer, was in a constant mental anguish because of the sheer pain of mental cognizance and his innability to accurately portray his thinking in his words. He wrote volumes and volumes of electric, painful, cyclical pieces of texts describing his mental condition, his prison of a mind. Words were painful to him because they really are a poor means of communication and he couldn't accept that. Throughout his life he explored every art form and paradigm of philosophy and myth and was never satisfied; however, theatre was the form in which he found the most answers, or at the very least, a vain satisfaction. I'll not go into is contribution to theatre, although know it is huge and quite a formidable chunk of research and reading. Just remember the name, Artaud (pronounced Are-toe). And if you're an Artaud scholar reading this, just shake your head and give me a break?

So think about this, then-words really are quite poor at conveying our thoughts. Try it if you don't believe me: try and describe, for instance, a flower-easy? But wait-try and do so with words that convey the same detail and understanding that our mind percieves when we look at flower. I mean, really describe that flower: you can't, can you? Or how about describing something non-concrete: happiness, grief-or something even harder, like the concept of liberty, lunacy, or pain. How do words even begin to make sense of these things in terms explicit and understandable? This is the basis of the conundrum that drove Artaud so crazy and if you really think about this, it doesn't feel to pleasant for your own mind, either.

And finally, I feel that this can be connected to advertising, especially to copywriting. Thinking about the power of words to convey not only what you see in your head when you think of those words but what does the mind of the millionth reader see when they read it too? What, if anything, is truly universal in the world of linguistics? Can any slogan or tagline really describe the thing discretely and powerfully? I'm not answering these questions, nor are their answers cut and dry. There's plenty of grey and smudges here associated with the power (or lack thereof) with words. Maybe I'm not so surprised we've moved to visual cues nowadays...

It's Hard To Say You're Proud..

Do you ever really realize how hard it can be to say a touching, heartfelt thing to someone, even if you mean it from the absolute bottom of your heart? You think of the words, conjure them to mind, prepare the thing to say, but then you stop as the words are bunched up right behind your lips. It's hard to let those out! Because they really mean something! They carry weight, emotion, vulnerability.

I was eating out with my parents this evening and my mom recently won a really cool award. After winning, she was put in a larger competition for the next tier of competitors, and I am really proud of her for winning! She's done a great thing and I'm so happy for her! But I had trouble saying so to her. Saying, "I'm really proud of you, mom." Think of saying this to your own mother. It's hard, right?

So then I think about all of the things I say that aren't hard on a given day-am I saying enough things that have merit/weight/meaning? I generally don't dig on small talk and useless conversation, but still I (we) tread on easy territory with things there are to say. And I'm not saying we don't have to be uncomfortable every time we say something or some crazy non-sense. What I'm saying is...

we ought to be more aware of what is coming out of our mouths-and let those vulnerable, good things come out if they need to. We all need to open up sometimes and we all need to encourage someone else!

And what's creative about that, you ask? Well, for one thing, think of how lazy conversation is nowadays. It takes mental focus and creativity to really think about something to say to someone that is truly honest and engaging. Another thing I think happens is the presense of vulnerability is that some boundries we always put up get taken down and some real mind melding can take place! Some sharing of mental properties and relations, out of whice creativity can arise! Like mutually tilled mind soil-the vulnerability is the tilling of the soil.

So think about that mind soil. There's a metaphor we could diverge on for a long time.

Kreative Kats

Yeah..I went the way of Kwik Kopy with the title of this post...but it fits what I'm talking about.

I'm sure many people have heard of this already-but I'm not new to it either. It's a current internet trend for all you people in the dark out there-you take pictures of cats and add (hopefully) hilarious captions spelled childishly wrong. It sounds simple but it really isn't quite so.

It all started way back with this picture below: This picture started a huge trend all over internet meme sites like "You're the Man Now Dog".com and the like as well as spawning two major archives of daily updated images inspired by the original:

Icanhascheezburger.com and lolcats.com

Go and check them out if you're not aquainted with this trend. Sometimes the dividends are hilarious! and sometimes they are simply lame. However, I have sympathy for the creativity of these pictures! I mean, it's not easy to look at a picture of a cat and come up with such a funny and effective caption that perfectly fits that picture. I tried myself and my results were poor. It reminded me of the job of the copywriter who must sit and type and try out words and phrases until he has just the write combination. It's not an easy task at all! Granted sometimes cats are embellished a bit with photoshop, which I think cheapens the effect. The talent is not in the photo-editing technique but in how perfectly the caption fits! Even if you don't find these pictures funny (you must have no sense of humor at all) you still have to see the clever factor of the best of these photos. And when one hits the nail on the head, the result is just plain funny. Here are some of my favorites:

enjoy them and find your own favorites! Or try and make your own! It's not as easy as it looks.

Pandora: The Best Thing for Music Since...

So if you haven't heard, there is a fantastic thing called Pandora-it's a free and extremely innovative internet radio. It is the child of the Music Genome Project which is an exhaustive listing of almost all the music ever (it's trying). It organizes music song by song according to a large selection of hundreds of musical characteristics (like DNA in the human genome project). SO basically, when you subscribe for free to Pandora you create radio stations based on an artist or a song. You type it in and the music genome databased assembles a radio station of music with similar characteristics! Then, as you listen, you let Pandora know what you like and what you don't like and it learns to really hone your stations to only what you really like. It's a fantastic thing and the staff is very personable and send personal emails.

I just started listening in the past month but it's been out since 2005. My fear is that it won't continue to be free (there is a paying subscription status that gets you some extra features)-like most good and cool public things, they soon cost money sadly. I only wish more people with money could see the merit in helping support good causes (Pandora is not that needy-don't get me wrong).

But this definately follows the trend of individualization in advertising, too! I mean there's some advertising in it for Puma and some other sponsors. but this thing is totally individualized and offers a primitive means of creating your own user page and being able to network with other fans of your music. it's a forward-thinking model for many more indivualized ad schemes to come. but if I have to pay for my Pandora, I might just do it. It's that cool. So I guess individualization worked on me.

Open the box. Get hooked. You will.

Pandora.com (easy!)

Banana Phone!

Wow. Today I had a fantastic experience that I will not soon forget.

A video was posted earlier about 200 people or so freezing in Grand Central Station-that was awesome! That was organized by a group of people called Improv Everywhere, if you didn't already know, and today-they were in Dallas. The Dallas "wing" of Improv... is called the Civil Confusion Agency and they have a website, by the way.



Anyway, they planned a Banana Phone mission. We met in front of the NorthPark AMC and were debriefed, armed with our banana phones concealed in purses, jacket pockets, and backpacks. Mine was an LG and had a headphone jack! I'm a tech-savvy guy when it comes to my bananas. There were about 80 or so of us and we dispersed into the food court with the intention of talking on our banana phones as soon as we saw the tip off by the "Pirate"-an Improv agent. He was wearing a bandana and when he answered his phone call, it was a chain effect. I bought a coke and settled down next to a family eating lunch-when all of a sudden my buddy was on his banana phone with no signal! So I pulled out my phone-I had a nice talk with my buddy John and got to put in the head set so I could hear him better. It was fantastic! As I walked around the food court, chatting and laughing with John people everywhere were on there phones at tables, walking, sitting, yelling, crying. All those without bananas were stunned. Some nervously ate their food, some looked perturbed by people having fun, some were laughing or utterly baffled. Two little girls came up to me clutching drinks and asked, gesturing with a thumb-pinky finger phone, "Why are you doing this? (she gestures to her hand phone). "Excuse me," I put my hand out for silence, "I'm talking to my friend John". The whole thing lasted 2 minutes. I saw my roommate eating his and promptly found a trashcan, peeled my phone, and walked off munching away as if nothing had happened.


The whole banana group found their way to a fountain elsewhere in the mall and we congratulated ourselves on a job well done and took some pictures. It was a good day.


And you know, the way these things spread is so viral! I was watching viral advertising at work! I mean, it's just a small internet thing that someone hears about from Improv Everywhere. They call some people, a Facebook event is made, word spreads one way or another, and the right people show up with concealed bananas at NorthPark mall! It's a viral thing and I got to live in it for a bit. No wonder agencies are tapping this potential! It's not a bad idea and its a terrible amount of fun.

Join up and let's shake people up!

http://improveverywhere.ning.com/group/dallastx

Creative Gaming

A friend of mine told me about a game I might like...it's called Crayon Physics and it's a delightful little thing that really is quite creative! The point is to get a ball to collect all of the stars in a level and to do so you must draw shapes a devise a way to get the ball where it needs to go. Everything you draw appears as a shape (in this version only rectangles but in the delux version-anything!) in the game and falls into the ball's environment. The whole game is designed on notebook and construction paper and everything is crayon-drawn. It's really a fun little whimsical thing-and it's free!

So I'm not a big gamer though I enjoy a good thinking game when I have time. But I was reading up on this game (and playing it) and also checking out the creator's blog, which lists several more games created by like-minded programmers and all of the sudden I realized I'd discovered a little world of creative games! They're all basically simple in design and function but what's creative is the concept and the artistry. The artwork is crafted specifically and with noticeable care, the game concepts are different and fun. For instance, "Cortex Command", featuring an extremely detailed 2-d world you are a disembodied brain that controls a host of robots and dummies to enact your military and economic goals. Working in the realm of basic 2-d simple line animation, an animator named Cactus and a clever DJ name John have designed an interesting repertiore of little games, including a basic ship-shooter named "Protoganda" designed to look like an old Russian propoganda film from the 40's, complete with cyrillic titles and english subtitles.

It's a cool little world to appreciate, even if you don't particularly care for gaming. You have to appreciate the thought and care that went into such programs-these people really care! Most are free, so it's not as if they get a lot for their work-they have the satisfaction of creative production in their field, and that's enough. Check em' out! Here's the website for "Crayon Physics". It's free anyway! Try it!

http://www.kloonigames.com/crayon/

Human Drama

 

Reading through TIME Magazine's website I came across this picture from Monday of a beaten Tibetan monk. Aside from the inherent deep sympathy and burning need for a more global perspective in our nation this picture inspired in me, I also had to wonder if this was the future of shock appeal in advertising. I tend to think it's a definite possibility.

Let's examine the idea. Sex appeal, while showing more and more of the human anatomy, is perhaps not deluding consumers as much as it used to. Aren't we learning that sex appeal is just that-an appeal? That it doesn't promise product quality or value? Sad to say, human pain and drama is a rather untapped source for such shock value that will most likely be leveraged in the near future. 

And it's sort of inevitable, though, I think. As our globe is shrinking daily thanks to the exponential growth of technology, the ordinary world citizen is becoming more and more aware of the world, of the lives of other humans, and of the suffering of those humans. This fact can produce two things: people care or they do not care. However, the presence of human drama is still shocking to anyone, whether they do anything about it or not:we're all human, after all. So we'll all look up and stare at the violence. Would using human violence to fuel ad-power illicit feelings that the company being advertised is a world-sympathizer and reputable or would such advertising disgust or frighten consumers? Or would consumers even doubt the validity of that company because they use human suffering to sell their product? Unless of course that company was the Red Cross and the product were volunteer hours to make a difference... 

We'll see about it soon enough I imagine. 

The Virtuoso In All Of Us?

I had the privelage of attending a cello recital recently of a friend of mine. To be honest, I was quite blown away! I was extremely impressed by his talent, but more than that, his passion moved me. It's one thing to be talented, but eventually, in my opinion, we all get over the fact that you hit the notes well or you never miss a beat or what have you-but passion is the key component for virtuosity. To be a virtuoso, not just in an instrument, you must have passion for what it is you're doing! If you don't have that fire behind it, it's just lacking and I think people can tell the difference.



But my friend has passion and talent. Though he is still a student, I consider a virtuoso of the cello. A virtuoso-in-training, I suppose. And that's inspiring! Seeing anyone doing that thing about which they have virtuosity is inspiring! Sitting in the audience, I was inspired! His passion and performance made me think about my own passions, it made me have a reignited fire to go and write poems, plays, to go create something. I love that about passionate inspiration-it is sort of this primal force that drives humans to create new things, even if the passion comes from a source not related to the reciever's own passions, as in my case (I'm not a cellist). And my desire for this creative passion is voracious-it's important to be fed with it. I need to consume sources of passion! We all need a little inspiration now and again.

SXSW

During my spring break, I had the delight of going south the Austin, Texas, site of (for those who don't know) among many other things, the South by Southwest Music Festival. Basically, 100s of bands come, some famous (Spoon, Van Morrison, Del the Funkee Homosapien) ,and some not-so-much (The Gayblades, Princess Ladyfriend, The Stiletto Formal): but they all come to play their music for thousands of fans who stream into the city from everywhere. I was a naive first-timer at SXSW and I suppose a naive night-life attendee period, but my favorite part about my trip to Austin, music aside, were the sheer amounts of people!



It's not like a town-country thing where I'm a countrified bumpkin who's never seen a bunch of people in a city before, but I mean, people were everywhere: on foot, on bike, on anything rollable/pushable/rideable, just going places, heading to concerts, grabbing a bite to eat, stopping to rest, some playing music in the streets. It was a rare time of a collective human experience where one could feel a universal pulse of life beating through everyone.



Everyone who was out was there for the music, Austinite or out-of-towner. Austin is the city of music anyway, right? But everyone was there together, going about their business with a jovial air of shared humanity. It felt to me like what it must have felt like in Greenwich Village way back in the 60s-just that friendly, human community of collective doing. You know? It was a beautiful thing.





p.s. went to the Elephant Room, a jazz club downtown. saw AMAZING concerts from Raya Yarbrough and Alice Russell. If you like jazz/funk/blues/fantastic music, check either of them out.

rayayarbrough.com

alicerussell.com

Snow: O the Humanity of it All!

What happens when tiny, freezing, white dainties fall from the sky? Everyone feels free license to squeal with delight and run in it like children, yelling and frolicking-they catch it in their wide open mouths, they smush it together into mounds and bean one another square in the face with it, they lay down and flap their arms and legs in it on the ground, and they meticulously roll it into great heaps and create tiny human-likenesses accented by sticks and other mushy debris.

And you know, those balls hurt! And your hands get red and needle-numb! And it gets in your clothes and rolls, icy and quick, down your pants and back! But it's snow, come on!





I love it. I love the snow! Not because I'm from a region of the country where real, bonefied snow is about as rare as a cyclone in the mediterranean, but because of its power. The power of snow that generates community among humans, no matter what. Sort of like death and taxes-SNOW: the great equalizer. Everyone has to bundle up, put on gloves, drive carefully or not at all. Everyone feels the irrestible urge to gaze intently at the stuff as if floats and flutters to the ground and then the luscious desire to snuggle into a warm place and simply be as the snow falls. Not that everyone gets to just be, but everyone would certainly like to. We all are human: we all get cold.





I mean, not many things have this power-at least not very many positive things. Things like famine of war or disasters certainly breed this sense of humanity among people-but what about good things that seed such commradery? Snow...free money?...I'm at a loss here for any more examples.





But think of the power of these things, these "universally" good things. They are wonderful things! I hesitate to mention their use in advertising, considering my hatred of the exploitation of good things which happens all the time. But still, snow-there's something great for humanity there, there really is.





And then, of course, it melts.

Creative Concerns

After studying about so many new ways of advertising, be it guerilla or "viral" or what have you, I feel left in a deep shadow of doubt and urgency. I've felt this way since I was a kid and I would drive by buildings I thought about designing in my head but that some other adult already went out and made. That feeling is that all of the ideas I want(ed) to create have already or are now being created! I want to be out there now creating! I've been waiting since I was 12, drooling over the modern lines of the Adam's Hats Building in downtown dallas, to be a professional creator.



As I've grown, this desire has moved beyond architecture and now encompasses a more nebulous and disheartening realm of many different and unknown things that I want to do, to make, to create. That's the ultimate drive: to be able to pour out all of the ideas roiling around inside my head. But the hardest part is that I feel like I keep forgetting the good ones!



So many times during the day, I'll be composing a little symphony in my head, only wishing I could write it down instead of going to rehearse for 4 hours, during which time I'll definately forget it! Or I'll be sitting in a lecture and think of a great thing to post on here but that's dried up like a puddle in the sun of my mental focus being directed at other things. If these ideas get lost in just one or two days, think of the ideas I've forgotten over the years! I dare not think of it.



But the mind is an amazing thing and can always create new things. So when I look at a poster or an ad, I think, "How did they even think of that?!" How do I even think of anything? It gets created and the limits of creation don't exist! I suppose that's where I have to take solace: in the knowledge that although I may have lost a handful of ideas (which may have largely been terrible, anyway), or other people's ideas are already being created all over the place, my mind has the wonderful ability to generate unlimited and (hopefully) great ideas eventually, once I figure out my job(s).

In the meantime, I guess I'll just keep a journal or something, write down those bad boys.

A Small Poem Collection

Some more of my poems. These aren't close time wise but they had a similar theme. I thought I'd share them. Here's snippets:

I want it to be more, more than it is!
More than a scent, more than a sense!
Experience! Joy! Power!



- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -



My words are held together:
with chewing gum and sticky tack,
band-aids, too.


Check out my reader for the whole poems:
http://ryansshorereader.blogspot.com/2008/02/some-poems-of-common-thread.html

Coke's Creative Side

For a brand that doesn't need any more advertising coverage, their website sure is swanky! Check out Coca-cola's creative webpage:



First of all you're welcomed by this groovy screen (no over-crowded product listing here!)

After choosing your region, you're taken to a regional menu, where simplicity and clarity reign:

What's first noticeable are links to sites about music, sports, and "the coke side of life". The music site for one is awesome! It is a whole community of international, independant artists offering thousands of free songs separated into many different channels or genres, much like iTunes is. I've actually put its mobile player on the bottom of my blog, so go down and listen to some tunes while you read. I've picked out a light piano tune I like on it right now.

Another great feature is in "the Coke side of life" site.There's a wonderful little program called the "Creator" where you can generate your personal Coca-cola artwork from a wide array of backgrounds, coke bottles, multilingual logos, and trendy clip art:

And when you're done creating, you're invited to email your creations to your friends! More coke! Here are some works I made on the Creator just for fun:

Long story short, the website is filled with Coke's new, simple, and wonderfully happy look! It just makes you happy to look around. Coke the product isn't mentioned explicitly but implied everywhere. Instead of advertising the product, the website advertises the lifestlye Coke supposedly creates, which is really effective! It's a creative way to surrepticiously convince you that you need a Coke.

No wonder Coke is internationally and unshakeably popular.

A Yawn is Contagious?

I beg to challenge the old dictum that a yawn is contagious, or at the very least, add to it. A laugh! A laugh is a contagious thing. "viral", you might say.

(Makes you smile, right? If not, you just don't have enough fun.)

I was sitting backstage again tonight, awaiting my turn to act. Rather blankly, I stared across the dark black backstage area, highlighted by the soft blue glows of the assistant stage managers' laptops and a faint warmth seeping in from onstage. One of the assistant stage managers was apparently watching something extremely hilarious. He was silently cackling in his chair, hunched over and heaving with muffled laughs. Wrenching up, he wore a wide, snickering grin across his face, and I must say his laugh was absolutely contagious. Just to see him naturally laughing so heartily at something left in me the desire to laugh, too! Not at him or at the thought of what thing he might be watching, but simply laughing for the sake of it! For the sake of working out my guts with a good (but silent) laugh.

And then I made the connection with this notion to the new trend in "viral" ads! They're supposed to infect their audiences, catching on like a virus and spreading their influence far and wide! Laughing is a viral element as well! Imagine: if a ranting teenager decrying the media's treatment of Britney Spears can entice literally millions of people to take notice, imagine that many people grouped together when one person just starts howling with laughter! It's gonna catch on. I'm not seeing that we should get a couple million people together to have a good laugh, although that sounds like a great thing to me; I'm just noticing how laughter could potentially be really contagious tactic for future viral ads.

Creative Power

I was awed yesterday by the sheer power of creative thought. Really great, creative ideas have a power about them! A force, an aura, an essence-they all convey the same sense: that this thing, this idea, is a great thing.

So here's what me think about this. I was sitting backstage doing some homework waiting for my entrance, just in a chair writing. Putting my pen down, I took a moment's pause and my wandered around my past and focused on an old poem I wrote last year. Mentally I read that old poem, and the power of those words (I'm not trying to shamelessly brag on my poetry either) just made me stop and my breath was cut short. Thinking about those words in that creative order just had power to me! I gasped and thought how profoundly those words struck my soul! I won't share this poem, however. It's a rather personal one. But do you know what I mean?

Sometimes if you see a really wonderfully creative thing, be it a
painting or poem or song or building or tree leaf, it just makes you STOP.

I mean, there's a power there! It's undeniable, even if you maybe don't even like that thing, you still are awed by the power of the creativity it took to make it. Like Guernica, by Picasso (I'll stick to the visual here:)

Or many others. I mean I could post and post but then you wouldn't be thinking of your own examples! But let's find those things that have that creative power!

Let's Get Gehry

Alright. Frank Gehry. For those of you who don't know who he is (you really ought to, though), he's a famous and often controversial architect, and his work inspires me personally!


Controversial, you ask? Let's peek at some of his projects!

First: The Dancing House in Prague, Czech Republic

Second: A hotel in Elciego, Spain

Third (his most famous work): The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain

So clearly his work is astounding, whether or not you like it. Gehry is the master of deconstructivism and is considered one of the greatest innovators in modern architecture, right up there with I.M. Pei and Frank Lloyd Wright in my book. In addition to architecture, Gehry has designed countless and priceless works of sculpture, jewelry, and furniture. All of it follows his organic, fluid design. Here's a sketch of an example of his preliminary plan, from which we builds a model and then builds the building! (It's not the simple, but things move from sketch to reality rather quickly):

Amazing! I'm always floored to see his sketches and then see how his buildings come from them! His designs, to me, are so graceful and hopeful. They seem to elevate humanity with their otherworldly lines and it inspires a sense of whimsy and surreal wonder to be a person inside such a beautiful thing. It's a dream of mine to visit one of his creations, preferrably the museum in Bilbao. To wander through it would be such a wonderful thing!


I'd post more pictures but I don't want to elongate this too much, but please check out more of Gehry's works! Or you can watch a great documentary on him that came out some years back:

Right on Target

Here's a jolly commercial for Target that I really enjoy. I was cruising through people's comments about it and I thought this was rather telling:

SugarQueen96 (4 months ago)
this is the best!!! it makes me so happy, im going to target!!!

Just the song sells the store! At least for this one person posting on YouTube...

But how about that intertextuality? Well...horizontally...the three "resolutions" people with the patches on their arms made me think of all the ads for Nicorette anti-smoking patches and other brands of the same product. Also, the plate of dancing food made me think of the ads, mostly on the sides of their vans, for GroceryWorks.com. I loved those ads! Sadly the company doesn't seem to be around anymore too much, at least here in North Texas. When I saw the woman walking that dog with a smile on his face, I thought about that one car spot some years ago. It was the one that likened each car to its type of owner and would show the front of a car and then show the face of a person that matched that car (another great spot, by the way).

Vertically...well, the woman with the biceps holding the baby's cradle made me think of the tv show, Desperate Housewives. I don't necessarily watch that show at all, but the woman looks like Eva Longoria and the shot behind the woman looks surreally beautiful, sort of like the world of the show. Also, I thought about the movie Amelie when I saw the "color-coded" shot because of the strong color-codes from that movie, predominately the use of green. Also, the older gentleman at the end of the commercial reminds me of Gene Autry, the singing cowboy! In addition to these, I thought of a smattering of memories from my own life and also bits and pieces from many different songs I like. But in total, I love this commercial! It's quite happy, don't you think?

GroupThink-the Positive One

Words are limited at expressing the absolute outpouring of energy and excitement that come from a completely packed house before a performance. It is a vibrant and living force that grows as the lights go down and then blooms in the performers as they feed from the people watching. The force is a fuel that moves like no other and it combusts into such a communal sense of joy. It's really an amazing thing-and it doesn't always happen, either.


Tonight was just such an occasion. It was our last performance of Urinetown, a wonderful student-directed musical I've been involved with for some time now. We've been having full houses all weekend and have had to turn people away because of lack of seats, but tonight we let everyone we could in the house. There were people everywhere! On the floor, in the corners, even up in the theatre's catwalks where we act several parts of the show. It was such an exciting house and that collective energy really grew. It is during those times that I have absolutely the most fun living sometimes that I have doing anything.


So this communal energy is like groupthink but in a good way! The whole group is sharing the same mentality, going in the same direction, and, to some degree, blinding their discomfort or perhaps other negative impulses with the idea that they're having a great time. World-reknowned playwright/actor/director/author Peter Brook refers to this phenomenon in his book The Empty Space. His reference is to the "Rough Theatre", which is created out of this communal energy but usually happens at a show that in reality is bad theatre but the group's excitement makes everyone in the group feel like they watched a great performance. This wasn't the case in Urinetown, however-certainly there were criticisms and small complaints, and even some dissatisified audience members, no doubt. However, the group mentality of tonight's performance left everyone with a sense of joy, excitement, and happiness-they had just had a good, fun time, and there's never anything wrong with that. It was a fantastic time and I regret that more people couldn't have fit into that theatre. The group was thinking positively tonight!

The Childish Things

I found this video delightful, for one thing. It really harkens back to an element of childhood whimsy we all feel but usually cover up with our older, "wiser" sensibilities. I realize this can be said of many things, but I found this little snippet very enjoyable.

That's what we need to do sometimes, especially in advertising: we need to go back into that part of our imagination that believes two pairs of scissors really can fall in love with eachother, you know? The part that delights in sliding down a stairway banister or jumping in a puddle. I always watch advertising geared toward children (an already delicate area since they are so impressionable) and wonder what types of people have the creativity to appeal to children, to think like them to some degree.

So that's what it takes then-to approach life with the heart of a child but with the mind of an adult? That might be one way. Certainly that opens us to up to the more creative impulses we have. If we allow ourselves to overflow with childish exuberance and imagination, then the best creative ideas have a chance to flow and our adult minds can narrow those ideas down! This video certainly helps me open up and just let those silly, whimsical things fall out of my head.

Transformation of Reification

Reification: the transformation of an experience otherwise intangible into something "consumable" that leads to both a revolutionary and reactionary response.

Think of the Rolling Stones, for an example. When they debuted way back when, they were the leaders of a movement of rebellion, of defying authority in a new sense. So as fans listened, they believed in the idea of the revolution of the Stones, but in reality, they were also stricken by a reactionary desire to not do anything about it. Vietnam era-some fans of this musical time period actually got up and went to the streets and college quads while everyone else agreed with the movement only in talk.

And how about today? The Stones are all over merchandise: pajamas at Target, playing the Superbowl, backpacks and keychains. For better or for worse, the institution they revolted against eventually accepted them and turned onto their side and, in a reactionary move, took the once-"revolutionary" music back to the traditional "status quo" of capital gain. The original art was reified into a diluted, marketable "thing", no longer a pulsing, intangible idea.

Alright then. So where does advertising play in? It seeks to be revolutionary and reactionary at the same time: to sell things in new ways but still sell things...right? It isn't just one thing-advertising reifies the creativity and work of those who create it for it to be "consumable".

But what if some advertising was only revolutionary?

What would that look like? the "truth" advertising campaign is a good place to start looking. But there's got to be more...more action, more chance for re-action, and less reification of powerful ideas. We'll have to wait to see what's to come! Or do it ourselves...

Custom Cups

So here's a fun idea which is really applicable to Starbucks (or any other mass-consumed brand of coffee served in post-consumer waste recycled cups with similarly processed sleeves). It's a sort of further step in the trend of individualization advertising seems to be taking nowadays.

I was drinking some coffee (Starbucks, I'll admit) the other day and got to looking at my sleeve. Now I know Starbucks usually decorates their sleeves, mine, being a generic school purchase, was decorated. So: I decorated that and another sleeve above.

I think this concept is really cool-individual sleeves! I think Starbucks drinkers could go online and draw their own sleeves of have materials at the store available to draw with stencils or something nearby. I realize this may seem a waste on something that just gets thrown away. HOWEVER-what if we made the sleeves out of a similarly recycled material that was reusable? Or if online, there was a sort of forum or contest for the best sleeve designs? Somehow the personalized sleeve, following in the footsteps of the personalized gift card, should be incorporated into the Starbucks (or coffee-to-go) experience.

Check out my sleeves I sketched in theatre history above!

Sunsets, Please

Lake Ray Roberts, December 2006

You know, sometimes sunset is my absolute favorite part of the day. Sunset and/or sunrise. Other than the fact that those always beautiful times in my opinion, what is it that marks those moments as special?

I suppose it's the fact that both sunset and sunrise are the transitions of the day into night and vice versa. One flows into next with a setting or arising of the very thing that gives each its identity, perpetually.

Sunset makes me stop and watch. Sometimes it startles me, takes my breath away, makes me think, makes me sigh, makes me cry, makes me jubilant, or makes me just plain happy. Perhaps because it's the promise of night and then the promise of the next day too? Or, more like, a sunset is a daily performance when everything gets to put on its best colors and show off: trees, clouds, people, everything! Whatever the sun is doing that day, the world gets to reflect it beautifully at sunset. That's pretty amazing!

So why do people rush off to dinner or to evening class or rehearsal without looking up and out of the window!? I mean, just glance at the sky! That's all it takes for the human in each of us to leap up and say, "That's a beautiful thing". I like that: The Human in All of Us. So stop and watch the sun set. If only 10 seconds, watch it! Appreciate it. Remember it later in the evening.

p.s. check out some of my favorite sunset pictures from my life at my Reader:
http://ryansshorereader.blogspot.com/2008/02/sunsets-please-my-favorites.html

Autopark

Man I'm just full of ideas lately! Just full of em.

So who hates people who double park? (Raise hands) How about people who park at a terrible angle the juts right out into the next space so they are double parking anyway? (More hands) So how about the worst offenders, people would park horizontally into 3 or so spaces? This happens, I promise (All hands should go up-except those jerks at the back who know they double park).

I was watching someone park their car out of my window the other day and I cringed because she zipped into her spot a very acute angle and was half-car in and half-car out. It was a really bad job, you know? So I got to thinking about cars being parked, and I know that some cars today can be put into 'park mode' where, thanks to computers and cameras, the car essentially parks itself.

However, citing the costs and the just plain non-universality of this amazing feature in just about all of today's cars, I propose a different and fool proof parking method: parking grooves. Think of those car wash things that grab your tires but operated instead by your car's tire turning the tire grips and cranking a chain that pulls the car forward! It's a two-way chain so you can reverse, too. It's pretty genius, so I've included completely copywrighted sketches of the product below:

If you can't tell, the width is wide enough to accomodate any conventional tire size and also the graded entrance ramp flares into a wide angle to allow cars to enter from all sorts of different angles! How great is that?

I know these are just one step ahead of the day, but you know, that's why they call me a forward thinker, a visionary, if you will. One day, we'll see these autoparkers (hopefully) everywhere, between every white or yellow line. No longer will double parking be an plague upon us honest drivers but all will park equally and equally greatly.

Phewture of Advertising?

Well, aside from my shameless attempt at a humorous title, I think it aptly describes an idea I had (though it may not be that surprising or original).

So:

First of all, it's important to know about me that I am very much smell-driven, if there is such a thing. Ever since I was a young lad I've always been interested in the way things smell! Be it potpourri or soap or just the air outside, I frequently would smell things so much all the time that my nose was constantly burning and I usually had headaches (soap is the worst with the burn! Don't try it-I think it's the glycerin that gets up in there). Naturally, I grew out of this painful habit but still it is the primal pleasure of good smells that makes me really excited, especially the smell of the air outside in just about any condition of weather or atmosphere. I can't desribe the elation or joy I feel in taking in a good whif of the air outside. It's an unspeakable wonder to me.

This being known, then, today when I was outside smelling the late afternoon warmth I thought about the power of smell because the smell I smelled today brought back a very strong wave of memory-think of it! Small particles of scent in the air flew into my nose and landed on a nerve pad and then sent the information to my brain in the form of a smell which then triggered a memory to play itself out vividly in my head! A memory that landed me into a rather emotional state of nostalgia. So think, then, of the power of scent in advertising!

I know it's being developed to be able to send smell through the TV somehow-think of how effective Burger King could be finally if somehow you could smell their chargrilled patties as you watched them on screen! This is a simple example using the basic (and not ineffective) psychology of hunger. But what about other smells to evoke a certain response to a more intangible product, like insurance or FedEx?

What kinds of smells trigger impulses in consumers to buy a thing because that smell tapped into some part of their brain and convinced them to make a purchase? And is it ethical to tap memories or aut onomic, psychological brain processes? I suppose we'll just wait for techonology to improve-and I for one am pretty excited about a multi-sensory television, which in my mind is just one step closer to that food-producing maching on the Jetsons. You know the one:

Commercial Idea #1

Driving the other day I looked up into the many glass office buildings I passed by and thought about, as I often do, the things going on in those buildings. I always do! I think about the meetings being held, the work being done, faxes being sent, phones being talked on, coffee being drank, elevators whirring up and down-all the busy life of an office full of people simply working together. And then I had this commercial idea based on some of these thoughts. Its application is still a mystery to me, however. It could be applicable to several business situations. Here's a basic retelling of the idea, I suppose:


So there's this office building long shot and the camera zooms into a window and several shots cruise by of the office teeming with business meetings. Except these aren't just regular business meetings, these are 'secret-club' meetings like kids might have when they're five or something. On the doors of the meetings a placard reads out the meeting titles, e.g. Girls are Gross Club, Super Best Friends Club, and the like. So you have these serious businessmen and women sitting in these conference rooms with graphs and figures all about these secret club matters, like a stockmarket-esque line graph going down showing a downturn in latest contact with cooties or a flip-chart with acronyms like "F.U.N." or something juvenile-looking.



So that's the basic idea I had which made me laugh! I think it could apply to a consulting firm or some business catering to other professionals or businesses in some way. Like I said, it's a flexible idea and a fun one, I think.

A Cold Weather Poem

Please read this poem of mine. I left a taste here:

Tonight my breath
Sings icy, silent rhapsodies
To the stars:

Visit my reader for the whole thing:
http://ryansshorereader.blogspot.com/2008/02/cold-weather-poem.html

Driving with Jon- Pt. 2

Mornings are a different time for Jon and I's commute to the theatre; usually they are a silent time.


With the air of nameless business drones heading out to their daily grind we climb up the highway, eyes gazing unflinchingly forward. Words don't seem necessary.


My favorite part of the drive, especially the morning, is a certain curve where 75 north exits onto a high bridge curving west onto 635. At the crest of the turn we are always greeted by the horizon laying stretched out before us with the sky's expanse of buildings, clouds, and sun.

The sight of it always puts me into perspective: My problems are no longer
insurmountable, my worries transient, my fears cowards. My God is bigger
than those things.

That's what I think every time we make that curve. And then we plunge back to the surface and the day is begun.

Rain-Feelings

Today there was an absolute downpour of rain!

First of all, I love rain and I realized as it coldly soaked through my shoes how much I rather missed the feeling of it! Do you ever do that? Realize that you haven't felt something so natural and simple in a long time?

Like grass: the other day I was walking to class and I realized that my feet hadn't felt grass in a long time! So long that I couldn't determine when I had last gone barefoot. As a hater of shoes anyway, I was taken aback and immediately removed my sandles. I stood in a cool swatch of grass and enjoyed the luxurious blades engulfing my feet with their dewy fingers. And then I went to class-I didn't want to be late.

So back to the rain with this grass story in mind. It was raining and I remembered a video I had watched about a British advertiser/father recalling when his son introduced him to the concept of opening your mouth and feeling the rain fall onto your tongue. Upon thinking of the video, I too felt like that father: I hadn't felt rain on my tongue in ages! So I opened my mouth wide toward the grey sky and several large drops splashed onto my tongue and tickled the roof of my mouth. It was wonderfully refreshing and I felt the glee of a child enamored with the wonder of life we so often forget in our scheduled, oppressive lives.

Don't forget the feel of grass on your feet! Or the squish of mud between your fingers! Touch it, feel it, experience the earth.

Life as a Drawing?

The other day in costume class we were discussing the importance of the skill of drawing. Naturally, in my mind I harkened back to Gregory's Creative License. I remembered the emphasis he placed on looking at the world through a new set of eyes, paying attention in a new way to our environments.

So I did it! I was in the mens' dressing room at the time and so I began to observe the room with a new eye of detail. Pieceing together the room together like a veritable quilt of drawings, I observed each angle, shadow, light saturation pattern. Each one, like a single plane in a cubist work by Picasso, was an individual perspective of the room. Every square inch, then, was its own perspective, its own drawing!

Suddenly my eyes were appreciating every intricate piece of my world as a vital part of my enviroment's collective art work.