Bits of this are great. It's also the second time today I've watched Neville Brody (I was catching up on Helvetica earlier) and it's the third or fourth time in the last few days that a name emerges more than once from completely separate and distinct internet travels.
I've talked about synchronicity-frequency related to increases in data consumption and it's almost worth a statistical probability paper if anyone other than me was interested in it, but more importantly this catch comes from Dhiren Shingadia who strikes a nice balance on his blog between taste, tasty and digital or all three at the same time if you wish ;)
My favourite meal of the day is breakfast. I started taking the definitive cooked breakfast a bit more seriously when I lived in Camden from 97-99 (around the time I worked at HHCL).
My girlfriend and I, at the time would go exploring Greasy Spoons and try out Hi-So Fry Ups at swish hotels and bourgeoisie cafes. I can still remember the first time the mushrooms arrived in a full cream sauce and I realised that an upper crust cooked breakfast wasn't such a bad thing or indeed a class transgression worthy of pejoratively labelling an injustice.
Last year I lived in Hong Kong twice on the Island of Lamma which is a lovely island only a half hour ferry ride away from Central where kids and dogs intermingle freely at all hours like they did in the old days when the car was less dominant and main stream media scaremongering was restricted to those bad old communists. Now it's a never ending stream of paedophiles served up with Roe vs Wade (poltical in-joke for observers of right wing psychology).
While living on Lamma I got into the habit of breakfast experimentation and discovered that straw mushrooms are an extraordinarily good replacement for meat in a cooked breakfast for both taste and texture dimensions, and so because it's been a couple of years now since I blogged my morning victuals, I thought I'd share some low res mobile snaps of my creations.
I love cooking (particularly for others) and for some reason or other I find breakfast a truly beautiful sight. It's a never ending quest nailing the perfect British Beauty though. If I'm lucky I'll be able to weave this post into another about cultural drift because I see what's happening here in Asia and it's very interesting some of the unifying aspects of global culture as good ideas catch on everywhere.
God I really lucked out on this sucker. Not sure where I heard about it but any biographical political film whose reach exceeds its grasp (up to an academy award nomination) had to be worth downloading (stealing) and my god it was fucking ace.
However long it lasted (it felt like an hour).... from the opening scene of a baby face George Stephanopoulos though to it's climactic end, I was back on my political junky fix of 2000-2005. It's remarkable even in this day and age of diminished privacy just how far Clinton was up for disrobing from behind-the-scenes come-back-kid (warts and all) as well as sharing with considerable political aplomb and generosity, the people who took him to victory in 1992.
I still maintain that those 8 years of Clinton were the best years of my life outside of living inside the Wirtschaftswunder of Germany in the 70's. I'm not saying Bill "Jim'll fixed it" for me. It's just that we all loved him, we forgave him the skirt semen - spunk if you will. Definitive spunky right?
Good thinks (things) happened around then. Or maybe I'm deluded and I was just young. It was rock and roll whatever you slice the Polish salami because the single most knockout blow watching this documentary was finally meeting James Carville. He's so impressive, he's even better than the person I've lasciviously read bundles about over quite a few books for half a decade or so, and wanted so badly to stare at.
I admit I think there was quote about him wearing a Nylon suit that made me sit-up reading some other hack journalist's interpretation of the Comeback Kid. I've always had a thing for the blindly indiscriminate & unfashionable Nylon suit for reasons it would be too indulgent to get into here, but in truth his clothes/style is worth deconstructing but only in that trainspotter way I'd get lost on with a person who rolls like Mr Carville. He'd look the bollocks in Commes de Garcons but lets just say because he's from Louisianna he also would know how how to drop it like its hot in Yohji Yamamoto even though a man his age cuts a sashaying swish draped in Kenzo. I'm slightly kidding of course on that last number, but it's true his clothes are unconventional for a policy wonk. The guy knows how to 'do' when a T Shirt works.
Just in case there's some cloud computin' dysphoria shit hanging over you. I fucking love this bro. He's a politico prophet, a one man focus group - part bleeding heart liberal...part sneering hammerhead shark snorting his way to the kill. I've never seen anything like this dude and I've read up on him. He exceeded my expectations.
But you know. If there's one bit I connect with the man it's when George (Hi My Name's Bill Clinton and I think this Greek kid is smart as fuck) Stephanopoulis takes a bow towards the end as victory was looking assured; and attempts to articulate how deeply rewarding it was to work with James Carville.
Apart from Mr Carville breaking into tears of redemptive reconciliation with his dreams of the past manifesting themselves in the future (as dreams do), there's just something utterly Liberal - pinko fascist communist if you lean towards those incoherent bastards who throw dirt better than they implement policy. There's something noble, something that reveals the dignity of the left when the Director of Communications (George) hands over to James, and is received with a mutual respect that reflects the honour of why all change starts at the bottom and fist fucks its way up.
Not Maserati down.
Watch the first clip (part one) if you want to understand why.
I've been talking about this for so long that the only thing that really interests me is why anybody in marketing and advertising who would want me do for some work with them, might not have googled my name and Unilever + Skin whitening. In any case it's still worth making a quick summary because money doesn't come first in my universe. Skin whitening creams in Asia are broadly speaking about hierarchy. The whiter the skin the less likely you are to be fresh from the rice paddies. The less likely you come from the rice paddy, the more likely you are to be hired, promoted, secure a Blu Ray DVD player, iTablet, BMW 3 series and/or shiny white teeth.
Though it strikes me that for someone who argues a woman is entitled to make her own decisions about abortion that the final decision on what colour one wishes to be is down to that person. So I'm not anti skin whitening.
They say that holding opposite and conflicting thoughts in our heads at the same time is a mark of evolution and so the only position I can take when thinking about this category is that it behooves the multinationals; that is the onus is upon them. That they bear the responsibility that there is a clear responsibility to fulfil and articulate, that melatonin expectation transactions should come with an unambiguous message that Unilever, P&G, Johnson & Johnson et al respect all people of all colours. The reverse isn't true for tanning lotions because that hierarchical imposition isn't present within that context. I maintain it's a great communication opportunity of the win win variety - if it's with sincerity.
Anyway, above are a series of ads by Ogilvy & Mather Hong Kong regional office. They look innocuous and in some markets they may well lean more towards the beauty end of the spectrum than concealment but as I've mentioned over here in the comments; the focus groups are revealing because with skilful moderation, the kind where dirty secrets surface...well they tell the story of skin whitening.
I think what's most interesting is how clearly the child is mimicking the father and seeking approval (enjoying it all nonetheless). Though the nose scrunching is uncanny.
Did we do anything wrong? Did we handle anything too harshly? Did we listen to only one side of the story? Did we perform our duties? Did we really think of people? Were we corrupt? Did we take too much? Did the media make people better informed? Did our society deteriorate? Did we love money more than the rightness? And did we only wait for help? If there was anyone to blame, it would be all of us. Apologise Thailand. And if there was anyone who can fix the problems, it would be all Thais. Keep the loss in mind and turn it into our force."
Sometimes we get a bit bogged down with which pipes the content is delivered on or what screen it's going to be viewed with. It's true that you can tell a lot from the contextual variables for enjoyment based on that but in principle the single largest differentiator in terms of value for video content is scheduled versus unscheduled. The reason for that was brought home again listening to you lot on Twitter talking about how rubbish the last episode of LOST was.
I should thank you for that. I don't watch many TV shows and even films are a struggle outside of a movie theatre but I make an effort to download something I keep hearing about so I can keep an eye on TV culture.
Even though LOST was obviously a bit contrived at points (how many fit babes can you fit on a beach?) I was into the second series and doubting if that was a wise investment of time but you nailed it for me by saving me having to endure all of the series only to be disappointed at the end.
Though it was interesting to make a note of you scheduled types because apart from it being more expensive to watch it's also a lot more sociable in that format. Which is what I mean by scheduled versus unscheduled. TV was often a lot more social than we gave it credit for. Do you remember the next day when Del Trotter famously leaned on a non existent bar in Only Fools and Horses? Everybody was miming it weren't they. It was so funny and so memorable.
The wire is different though YO! I love the characters and script writing in it (You feel me?).
So if you have any other must see tips I'd love to know what is culturally important and maybe why you think that too would be great.
I rarely blog about Steve Jobs and Apple. I think the obsession with Apple in the United States and Kingdom is symptomatic of an intellectual malaise that stretches from marketing to politics. Deconstructing the yearning for a killer app it's not hard to critique and conclude it as end-of-empire-futility. I mean, how can we belch on about authenticity in brands when as far as I know most advertising people couldn't care less about the supply chain details any further than a POS shelf wobbler because surely it hasn't passed you by that the newspapers harp on about productivity and the best selling apps are all games?
That doesn't mean I don't think Steve Jobs is anything less than the Henry Ford of our times. I dislike his editorial perspective which he's entitled to have and implement but the bottom line is I've loved buying and using his products. I see the MacBook Air as the Volkswagen Karmen of our age. It's so beautiful that I intend to buy a few so I can use one for as long as I'm able to.
That doesn't mean I think an app is going to save marketing. The malaise is too deep, the wilful blindness too pathological, and apart from all that I don't think we're in the business of the blockbuster any more. I think marketing doesn't get it, that more 'one to one', is de facto less 'one to many'. This is the why I fall asleep with gratuitous use of 'awesome' and 'cool' app tweets. I mean really. Shut up already.
Any hoo: Steve did an hour and a half interview which I felt should compensate for ever reading any more tweet links about him for a couple of years at least and I was right. It's a great chunk of what he's about along with some really great revelations about his business. The one I most liked is that app usage is overtaking search on his latest products. Which to me is obvious when a traditional keyboard is not available as per iPhone and iPad. Quicker to use a tool than finger dab the screen. This is interesting to me, but y'all gotta get with the program that the killer app is the operating system. The rest are tertiary ecosystem bricks, and one I talked about in my quick podcast over here.
I could mention that I didn't really know about his lisp before, that someone ought to tell Steve that the half mast jeans and 80's sneaker look is the least coolest thing he does.I'd be pushing for Boot Cut, Rock & Republic denim with some cowboy boots since keeping his weight up is not so easy now, but the polo neck and frameless Lennon glasses work well with that.
These are inconsequential matters. Even though I'm not a die hard fan boy gushing on the bulletin boards I feel I've paid him a better compliment here than I've read anywhere else and truth is you don't need to listen to me. Listen to him. I heard him reply 'we're having fun' when someone asked him about his business successes recently. Who else says that? Nobody right?
You can see that the most trivial agenda item (though not ignorable) is the quarterly report. It shows clearly, but in the final analysis of Apple, I need to remind you, it's not about the technology, it's about the human and rest assured advertising and marketing world: The malaise is inside us. There is no app for that, though watching Steve the human being below is a start.
Henry Ford of our times. I think Oscar Wilde said that first.
It's that time of the year where I need to revisit my Google insights topic on how the search term 2012 is trending. So far there's nothing to back up my still unarticulated hypothesis apart from a minor blip around the time of the Chile earthquake on February 28th, so there's nothing to say apart from perhaps introducing the 'Jakarta complex' (catchy name huh?). Or is it?
It's worth of course noting that Indonesia provides the most volume for the search term 2012 but it's a classical mistake for the quantitatively obsessed bloggers to attribute national scale when the latest data suggests it's Azerbaijan and Sri Lanka that are more interesting for analysis. The reason why 2012 is one of the few metrics I can use is that it uses numbers so it gets a truly deeper look at national trends than local languages. By that I mean "Revelation" probably has a different name in the Ukraine, though that is one search term I'd like to add for context and analysis. But 2012 it is so let's proceed with that and see what occurs. This might all end in tears since Misentropy pointed out to me the Baader Meinhoff complex but so far so good in my estimation. It's always a bit lonely out on the edge and ahead of the curve but it's been eventful thus far and that's what I'm banking on.
Some days my email inbox is one thick Smuckers chocolate fudge jar leaking pure intellectual indulgence of sweet but lucid and illuminating thinking. This morning's paragraph is from Thomas in the UK as we're having a discussion about music and Jaron Lanier (who I think we're in violent agreement on, is punching above his intellectual weight with his latest book).
As a perhaps superficial example, the 50's seem utterly distinct from the 60's which seem fairly distinct from the 70's. The 70's have a soundtrack that is distinct from the 80's. But 90's from Millenial? The sharpness of the contrast is becoming more and more attenuated. Perhaps this is because I didn't live through those periods but we've been to the Moon and now we've stopped bothering because it seems so pedestrian. The wide eyed wonder and mystery has become implicit and uninteresting, so full scale shifts in our cultural attitudes seem less likely, and thus there will no be soundtracks to accompany those shifts.
This is just as much for me as you which is why I'm embedding it some weeks after I first saw it. I am however slightly in love with all cognitive bias nomenclature if only because it's utterly humbling how little room there really is to be right. I could use a little humility more often. I even caught myself saying 'I don't know' to some French tourists requests for advice on some options the other night. I mean I think I knew what they were looking for but deep down I knew my ability to project what they were looking for was way more powerful than actually knowing. So I gave them both options.
Come to think of it I could have blown my cheeks and done the whole 'bof' thing too. Anyway cognitive biases; worth raising if it all gets a bit subjective as it often does in the worlds most subjective business. Yes I'm talking about advertising.
And while we're using Scribd just now. There's another document I wrote over a year ago, floating on the net that I neglected to proofread and edit myself. Some of you have written whole blog posts about it but I see that as asymmetric love for my writing as I don't read your work. I will however be editing it so you can see that the biggest howlers have nothing to do with paradoxical oxymorons but simple logic. If it was really important I'd have fixed it a long time ago but lesson learned. If you want a job doing properly it's best done etc.
A year or so back, Bangkok artist Jim Brewer explained to me a video installation concept he had and that I liked the idea of immediately. I'd touched on the subject myself back here though I had no idea when I wrote it how thematically integral it would be to maintaining the facade of cognitive integrity that is possibly holding together as well as holding back the entire Kingdom. (Sorry about that mouthful I'm spoon-feeding you but anything less elliptical is asking for trouble under censorship rules in Thailand).
A few moons ago, but not so many that it's a distant galaxy, I met Marcus Brown at The George on D'arblay Street in Soho London where he made a special trip to come and see us from his home in Munich, Germany. One of his comments that rang out then and applies even more so, to this day whether it's transmedia, digital or otherwise was 'it's all storytelling'.
I don't think anyone does it better than Marcus including his latest offering Jack The Twitter. In any case, he's gone and done a presentation of his portfolio in the last couple of years for us and I don't think there's a better example of character-development versatility on the internet. Take a look and see if you know someone in your marketing department who is looking for something fresh that stands out. He's the champ.
One of my probably duller-than-I-think, and self important (dinner party) pieces I'm prone to doing now and again (usually if there's a good red to hand) is how surreal it is to be a Gen X'er. Don't misunderstand me. I know Baby Boomers and older who have more life in them, than many Millennials and so on and so forth but allow me a Gen X tale. Below is the first taste of hologram technology I witnessed at the age of 8, living in West Germany watching Star Wars.
I don't remember the opening sequence being so special that I had to duck my head but that doesn't mean Star Wars didn't leave a massive impression on me; lots of things did at that age. However the Princess Leia hologram scene was unforgettable. The idea of not writing down a plea-for-help-message on a piece of paper (this was pre-internet) and instead using a plenipotentiary (of sorts) droid to project an hologram was sensational and yet plausible. The tonality projected through this medium imploring help, felt so much richer than any typewriter or pencil could achieve.
Here it is:
Yet Victor & Rolf's work in the Dutch Pavillion at the Shanghai Expo is just as, if not more seductive; and yet somehow while my experience of it is no more or less than any other person's enjoyment, there's just something delicious about the uniquely Gen X experience of overtaking the future. It happens a fair bit and I haven't even gone into the how amazing it is to juxtapose pre and post internet cultures alongside each other, though I will attempt to some day. Hopefully here.
It was of course the late (and truly great) Alexander McQueen who did it best with Kate Moss. It's a pity that so much incredible creativity in the fashion industry get's ignored, I guess because, by and large, the egos in fashion leave advertising standing in the dust.
That doesn't mean advertising doesn't plunder fashion's inexhaustible creativity time and again. Above is my favourite piece by Alexander McQueen in 1999. Anybody know which brand ripped this idea off? It might be creativity but it is also definitely art. Something our lot could learn something from.
You'd have to be brain dead not to pick up on how shallow, uninspiring and generally shit this presentation is between China Youthology and Ypulse. They're still obsessed with the word mashup when it's been embarrassingly unhip since the donkey mated with a horse creating the ass. You can have a quick flip through but the most stunning contradictions are the assertion that chinese youth (or is it just girls) are both materialistic and shallow (an aspirational life slide 7), feeling defeated and insecure (slide 10) as well as evolving from surface to substance (slide 34).
China is huge, this is a tier one or two city surface report that could be culled from the web and while I know what they are trying to say they need to drop the mashup "it's groovy" speakeasy vibe, the superficial analysis and get down to the hard work of explaining those contradictions. Instead they'll use this to sell in to the multinationals who are looking for safe but edgy but safe generic catalog communications. ChinaSMACK is where it's at if you want to see where the dynamite is.
My feedburner statistics are fluctuating wildly over the last week or so. For example today I seem to have about 400 less of you than normal. It seems to want to return to normal but then drops back down again. Anyone else noticed anything. The only thing I can think of is Java script is playing with the statistics but I've always had a bit of Java action going on in the templates and also post from time to time.
I was clicking around as usual on the net recently and noticed a new bar/restaurant/gallery in town called WTF (Wonderful Thai Friendship). No shit, but I felt an immediate sharp stab of cold creative jealousy that I hadn't realised what an insanely great name our internet acronym could be till someone else had snapped it up.
Anway WTF is the new hip hangout in town on Sukhumvit 51, Alley 7. I knew it was gathering steam when I was invited to join their Facebook group by P Tik who I interviewed earlier at WTF but ran over the 10 minutes that Youtube permits. I'll be splitting that later to post up here too.
As ever with these things, I also learned that I knew Som & Chris the owners of WTF and was really delighted to find that the art was good and provocative so I took advantage of the opportunity to interview Som about their new anti-establishment with a video installation in the background that was made by Jim Brewer on the topic of Yellow in Thailand. I was aware of his idea because I know Jim and he shared it with me some time back as out of nowhere (sort of), the wearing of yellow in support of his Majesty became ubiquitous every Monday. I explained it all back here in 2007 with what seems like a slightly prescient post though it isn't rocket science if you think about it.
Anyway this gusto for the colour diminished somewhat as over time the colour polarization of politics in Thailand became very sensitive with the now widely understood association of Red for the rural impoverished classes.
The recording is a crap unfortunately because first I'm rubbish at thinking about sound, and as it's an art gallery on the 2nd and 3rd floor, it echoes too much to hear my questions so turn down the base and play with the treble if you can. I hope though that you can pickup Som sharing her new tapas, bar and art gallery concept and also talking a little bit about art in Bangkok and specifically Jim's work which is going on the background. Most interesting was the revelation that Yellow trainers were banned in Thailand as the feet are considered the most lowly part of the body to associate with anything let alone anything Royal.
She also talks about the stiff reaction that many of her Thai gallery visitors had about the video installation and their demands to know which farang (Westerner) artist was responsible for it. Anyway WTF is the kind of place that supports art as stimulus to discussion and is to be applauded loudly and embraced heartily for that alone, though the owners, clientÃĻle I met, (Hi Andrew that was mad, call you soon) bar and tapas menu are enough reason to go and check them out.
Unless you wish to avoid me in which case that's all very understandable.
Many of my readers in Thailand need to use a VPN to get around this image, you may also want to subscribe over here for the period while my blogging is censored as I'm piping my feeds to lots of unexpected places using a lot of digital backflips one of which I've filmed for you guys on the 10th floor of Communications Authority Tower, on 72 Charoenkrung Road, Bangrak. It was taken in the Andaman sea where we did the usual things like throw a ton of money into the Thai economy hiring a Yacht and then sailing around for a few days,
This is my first podcast so it's not only very very short, I'm not confident that I'm going to get the iTunes RSS feed up and running first time. In principle most of the spade work is done by Blogger but either it will embed, be downloadable or something. Let's see what happens below.
I went for a walk around the park this morning and had a thought. Just one thought mind you, and realised I had that James Bond Mobile on me so I used the voice recorder on it to capture my thought. Later on I realised a blip in my head took a minute or so to explain and if there's anything that is both my advantage and my disadvantage it's this stream of thoughts that are constantly squeezing through what I assume is a very narrow pipe with some caching between immediate processing and pending processing.
You've all given me a fabulous laugh as 64% of you voted Young lady B from Hong Kong as being a fella. Well done gang. And for dessert I should add that the young post operative transsexual Lovely Lady B, picked me up, and despite years of living here I had no idea. To add insult to injury I remember as it became clear that she like me a lot that, uncharacteristically for me in public, I was quite tactile in the swish bars I took her to and I distinctly remember explaining to her that she was extraordinarily 'sporty'. As in fit as a fiddle. You have to laugh don't you?
Incidentally though if I were to be asked who was more feminine. As in graceful, elegant, well mannered and just all round pleasant to be with it was the lady born as a boy. There's another two posts I want to do about this subject as I learned so much about gender identity from this country that it gives me an a lot of additional dimensions to think about when I listen to Women talking about make-up or Guys and football in groups and depth interviews. It's all good though (You can put the missus' shampoo brand down now lads)
Congratulations to Khun Apichat Weerasethakul for winning the Palme d'Or at Cannes with his movie set in Isaan, the impoverished province of the red protesters gunned down by an army under orders.
The definition of a coincidence is you weren't paying attention the first time round.
Here he is below taking his prize from Tim Burton. Photo Courtesy of the New York Times. The same paper interrupted while interviewing Seh Daeng as a sniper blew out his brains in front of the Dusit Thani luxury hotel.
Check out his other movie "Tropical Malady" if the Joycian style is tough for you. Otherwise just feel it. Thinking is superfluous.
Strangely enough the weather was almost unbearably hot in the lead up to May 19th crackdown and then suddenly we had two of the biggest tropical storms straight after. I caught this little tyke chilling out in the 7-Eleven chiller fridge and I saw the seeds of a lovely print ad in it.
Right. It's all been so depressing lately observing/listening to the political echo chamber on Facebook whining on about property instead of lost lives, that I think I need a change of topic. So can you do me a favour please and vote using your utmost skill and judgement.
Which one is the ladyboy? (If enough of you vote I'll share an amusing story about what actually happened)
Thaksin Shinawatra photographed in Louis Vuitton Champs Elysee, Paris on May 15 2010. Four days before the death toll of red protesters went over 80, not including 6 soldiers.
