Follow Your Instinct

Just follow it. The ad is in your hands (don't forget to click in the Youtube video to direct the narrative - It's a new format)

Via Digicynic

Dengue Fever

I read about these guys a while back and loved the description of Pschedelic Khmer surf rock. Cambodia is quite special to me as most of my close Thai friends are Khmer in ethnic origin living close to the border and speak Khmer around me. It's also quite timely  after the border dispute over what is obviously a Khmer temple (the architecture speaks for itself) with Thailand bullying Cambodia and flexing its nationalistic muscles (when involving weaker neighbours) over the disputed territory.

Anyway I  was just awoken from a jet lag catch up sleep to the track 'Seeing Hands' and was catapulted back into some amazing nights in Phnom Penh and road trips to Angor Wat in Siem Reap. Khmer Culture is still such a mystery in many ways but here's a bit of recombinant music culture from Dengue Fever on Myspace that stretches from the surfing coast of Los Angeles to the Heart of Darkness. Click on the track called Singing Hands.

It's so good to hear that this music is also connecting in Cambodia with a generation that haven't heard this genre since the late sixites as both the music and the people  were all obliterated in the genocide and insanity of Pol Pot's ultra communist agrarian revolution with the Khmer Rouge. I feel I need to stop off in Phnom Penh sooner than I realised on long delayed trip I need to make to Vietnam. It's on the way I guess. Read about Dengue Fever over here if the music grabs you.

Tenuous link picture of me struggling with a surf board last week ;)

Dave Trott's Blog

Dave Trott was, is and always will be an advertising legend. His Blog is spilling  grade A advertising experience onto internet screens around the world for free and not only that, unlike when I was getting into the advertising business, you can engage in dialogue with him if your comments are in shape. 

If you're not sucking on his RSS feed yet, you should be. It's not too late either to go through the archives without sacrificing a whole weekend. It's worth it.

Everything You Need To Know About YouTube

Via Katie Chatfield

Widgets

I know some of my bloggy friends don't like widgets and it's possible that we all went a bit crazy on them this year diminishing their value a little, but I'm convinced of their utility and more importantly I like the conceptual blurring between either this space and that space (or your space and my place) when using them. Here's a great example of why Widgets are good.

The Quran

It was my planning mentor at HHCL who first turned me onto the Koran (as we spelled it then) and Islam, and watching the following video reminds me of a discussion I had in Starbucks the other day with a guy carrying Richard Dawkin's book The God Delusion. I asked him how he was finding it, and pointed out one flaw is the absence of separation between God and Religion (I dislike the latter).

In any case I put him onto my favourite rebuttal of the Dawkins book and he was very grateful for that link. I've just had a chance to watch this, and it's top quality content. I've no idea why YouTube viral clips get only 10 seconds to work with me and yet I'll lose an afternoon in this stuff. This came by way of Smashing Telly which has disrupted any number of lovely days I should have spent in the sun. Time to get down to the beach and squeeze a few hours out if possible.

Freestyle

I've pulled a calf muscle and forced to drop out of the Huntington Beach US Open World Surf Championships. It's a shame I know and I'm gutted not to be able to catch some waves this year but it has given me the opportunity to take a wander around the beach and see the event from the spectator side. The Xtreme Motorbike action (is that what it's called?) has blown me away. These kids are pushing it further than I thought imaginable.

This one is called the Lazy Boy

 

  

  

I'll put the rest up on my Flickr shortly. Expects lots of beach life and people shots!