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.