Here’s an interesting way to market SUVs: a commercial for Subaru’s Forester that depicts a happy couple quietly driving off-road through the forest to look at beautiful deer at a burbling brook (”they’re beatiful…” she whispers) until a fat slob in a huge full-size SUV comes tramping along driving very noisily and fast and scares away the poor deer. He rolls down his window and says in his duh-duh voice “what are you looking at?”

So, that’s the spin - this is the SUV for people that aren’t the butt-headed assholes we see every day driving SUVs - you can buy one without becoming one of those people.

Horrific word of the day: “archi-tainment”

If I ever become some sort of Erma Bombeck-like writer, I’m planning on titling my first book “If my body is a temple, then I’m passing the collection plate.” — unless anyone thinks that may work as a business book title - because that’s where the dough is!

When I was at the Warhol exhibit at the MoCA in LA recently, I saw a few kids looking at one of the Rorshach series and one exclaimed to the others “This one here is the coolest one of all because it’s got three faces in it!”

Morph a clown here. And you can hit “new clown” to get a different clown to torment, emmm, morph.

Doesn’t the interface designer in all of us love the fact that we’ve got a “new clown” button out there in web land?

And now the archives are gone again.
Sheesh.

SNUBA.

This is the most disgusting food I’ve ever seen: Ore-Ida Funky Fries come in flavors such as cinnamon and chocolate. And I’m almost certain the bag suggests you go to funkyfries.com, but that site is devoted to Jewish cooking, which I am sure does not allow for blue or chocolate taters.

And the archives are back - thanks to some wonderful assistance!

Maui is wonderful. I’ll post some stories when I return.

I think the comments are working. Go ahead and go through all the posts and add your own thoughts!

Archives - I hope I can fix that sometime after my vacation - and I have no idea what happened to the background.

Comments coming soon - they may or may not be working now. And the archives are missing, but they’ll come back. Sorry.

I was passing over the Grapevine a few days ago and I saw a real live grass fire - always freaky to see that. Some guy in a semi had pulled over and was using his cab extinguisher to put it out, or at least try. At 65 mph, it’s amazing he could see it and stop in time, let alone cross the freeway to get to it. A few miles later I saw the fire danger status sign: Extreme.

Sticker on the back of a cool looking car: Xtreme for Jesus

The other day I drove through Gilroy and the smell of garlic in my convertible (top-down, of course) was incredible - I don’t think I’d ever noticed it quite that intensely. I’m going back the other way tomorrow, so I’ll have to see if it’s anything like that again.

My celebrity sighting - I saw Dave Foley of the Kids in the Hall as I came out of the Hip House of Blues show last night. We were nose-to-nose almost as we made our way out. I looked at him and smiled, and he looked at me with some sort of benevolent confusion. I said nothing, since nothing short of “would you be my friend?” would have mattered much…

From a non-ironic review of a B.B. King concert “Then came “The Thrill Is Gone”, and, to be honest, I was disappointed in the way they did it.”

I was just in the Giant Robot store in LA, and a woman comes in with flyers for Emm Gryner appearing in town (not sure why she was in that store, there was some connection with the magazine) and suddenly it turns out that half the customers in the store are from Toronto. And talk turned to the upcoming Hip shows - one woman in the store did the graphic design for Gord’s book/CD, and is friends with the band’s manager. Small Canadian world.

The MoCA in LA is showing a Warhol retrospective that runs until the 18th. It’s pretty cool - the sudden shift from commercial art to fine art, with the content remaining almost the same. Get the Dennis Hopper narration - he’s very low-key, I kept expecting to hear “now this fucKIN painting, man, this FUCKIN’ painting, when the shit come down, when the shit comes down….”

Today I was walking through Pershing Park in downtown LA, during a noontime concert. Some very LA-looking bunch of guys were playing some funky-metal stuff. The lead singer stopped singing, pointed at me and yelled “Hey, it’s Ozzy!” - what could I do - I threw him the goats. I kept going, people pointed at me and nodded “hah, yeah…heh-heh” and then he shouted as I was exiting the park “Hey — I love your show!!”

“As they say in the Midwest, ‘If you’re looking for an emperor, get Willie.’ ”

I have no idea what that means, but it was a line of dialogue that featured prominently in a dream that I had last night.

And my IDSA notes get blogged and commented on here.

A bit nicer version of my IDSA review is here

Raod trip! I’m on my way to see the Tragically Hip in San Diego, Anaheim, and Los Angeles, before heading back for the show(s) here at the Fillmore!

Dream, or nightmare? You decide.

Last weekend I attended an office party - someone else’s office, so I didn’t know anyone. It was a themed party - dress like you did in high school. I discarded accuracy, but did show up in jeans, a stretched out Neil Young t-shirt hanging out, high tops, a baseball cap, and my hair kind of down, and well, out.

Two people asked me if it was a wig. And were skeptical when I said that it wasn’t.

========================================================
FreshMeat #15 from Steve Portigal

               (__)
               (oo) Fresh
                \/  Meat

Reach out and touch some FreshMeat!
=========================================================
Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose
=========================================================
From the Internet boom came several new iterations of the structure, symbols, and meaning of work. Casual Fridays evolved into casual day every day, and that became you’re-lucky-I’m-even-wearing-pants day. Dogs in the office and unisex bathrooms became common reference points (although relatively uncommon experiences for most workers).

Perhaps one of the most over-hyped notions was the dawning of the Free Agent era - the independent professional of the future, someone who worked with others only as needed,
rapidly shifting organizational "structure" in a dynamic and tantalizingly post-modern setting. Daniel Pink and Fast Company launched the movement in 1997 and the Free Agent Nation became one of those concepts (just like the paperless office and smart appliances) that we all like to imagine even though we don’t really believe they will happen.

And then the boom faded, burst, crashed, and recessed. Suddenly, large numbers of workers were figuring out what was next - many of them from the Internet industry, where the classic norms of work had been most dramatically tested. And the Free Agent path held some promise for them.

(Full disclosure - as of this writing, I’m nearing the end of my first year of self-employment, although I don’t describe myself as a Free Agent necessarily).

And so, bold experiments were launched - alliances, strategic partnerships (without being business partners), quid pro quo deals, visions for unbranded groupings, branded groupings, everything imaginable, and then some. Although if you look closer, you’ll see a bunch of folks with home offices, DSL connections, and cell phones, imagining that there’s some middle ground between this and life in cubicle-land.

Although it is tempting to identify with the romantic notion that the Free Agent movement puts forward, I really just see myself as someone who works at home, making good use out of technologies like DSL and the mobile phone. It’s been interesting to see how people react to me as a professional, since I present without many familiar corporate trappings. And it’s been a learning experience for me to realize how and when to move a little closer to that "corporate" image. For example, an answering machine is a home technology, but voice mail (which answers calls when I am on the phone) is a work technology. Eventually I realized this was essential, and switched to voice mail (although, the fact that my answering machine broke down may have had some amount of influence over this shift).

Or, consider the role of the web site. I believe my web site articulates my background and offering well (although if you disagree, please tell me!) but I also know that the level of visual refinement was somewhat less than corporate standards. Not something mission-critical, but a part of my business identity that I could obviously improve on. And so, several months ago, I set out to do just that - find someone to help evolve my web site.

Here in Silicon Valley, there are obviously fewer Internet professionals than before, but there are definitely plenty of unemployed and underemployed designers, coders, HTML jockeys, FEDs, and what-have-you. And many of these folks were now working on their own. I sought to capitalize on this, and reached out to my network for referrals. I got a wonderful list of names - people that were highly respected by those whose opinion I held in great esteem.

I sent out messages to these folks, describing myself, my business, and the scope of the work as I saw it. Surprisingly, the response was incredibly lackluster - many never responded, others took weeks to respond, others promised to follow-up with me later but never did. One person gave me an assignment of sorts to complete before I was to initiate my next contact.

It really seemed that they didn’t want my business. Of course, the job was small. But that seems awfully short-sighted. I am a free agent (note lack of capital letters) - I provide services to my customers by partnering with others who possess skills that I don’t. From my way of looking at it, it would be worth getting on my list of partners.

Now, maybe this experience was specific to the particular type of service I was looking for (I have had much better experiences in finding vendors in other categories, although the budgets were more significant than lil’ ole me). But really, who (especially in this market) can afford to turn up their nose at possible work, and who can afford to be so short-sighted?

My learning is this: there is a big difference between offering a service and being "in business." The people I dealt with probably have great design and implementation abilities, but they clearly lack the business skills required to build a relationship and close a sale. Someone might be the best translator, web designer, or pet walker, but they will need more to be a free agent - they must be able to listen well, ask questions, make commitments and follow through on them, articulate, negotiate, deliver, and a million more essential competencies.

I imagine many of the people I approached had worked very successful experiences on project teams in larger organizations, with project managers, sales staff, admin support, billing, and so on. I just don’t believe that everyone can make the shift to doing that all themselves. And that’s fine, I think our economy needs free agents, and it needs people inside corporations. But clearly, the notion of us all becoming free agents is just silly - just because you have what it takes to create breathtakingly usable and beautiful web pages doesn’t mean you can operate a business that delivers those services (and let’s not forget that many people have the business skills but would rather spend their time doing other things)

I see the next shakeout being in the Free Agent Nation - as more jobs in companies become available, those of us who aren’t cut out to be CEO, president, janitor, accountant, etc. head back to the traditional work environments. Those who remain independent will be the ones with the staying power, the interest, and the broader skills. And that will benefit everyone.

–

Epilogue: The person I found was someone whom I was already working with; since we already knew each other he had a leg-up in understanding what kind of face I wanted to put out there. We’ve had a creative partnership, and the new-and-improved web site is up. Check it out - http://www.portigal.com.

–

Check out Free Agent Nation at http://www.freeagentnation.com, Harriet Rubin’s book on soloing is here and Daniel Pink’s Free Agent book is here.

Is it just me, or is Rashomon one of the most overrated films that has come out in the past 50 years or so? Derivative of various episodes of “All in the Family” and “The Odd Couple” or what?

It was pretty interesting to see the Criterion version of Rashomon (on DVD) - last time I saw it was in film class back in my undergrad days, and the print is much cleaner, the subtitles crisp and easy to read, and so on. The cinematography was pretty damn incredible.

I got a lot of pleasure out of seeing Rashomon on the Independent Film Channel last Friday - I didn’t remember a lot of it, such as the whole framing sequence in the rain - which I guess tells you something about the film. I had a similar thing when I saw Memento the second time, and was amused by that.

Saturday night the Sundance Channel showed Rashomon. I hadn’t seen the film for probably 15 years or so, and it was quite the story.

I’ll be submitting design-related items to the blog being hosted at http://www.core77.com

One of the TV ads with Fred Flintsone pitching cigarettes is here. I’m still searching for the one I saw the adbusters folks show at IDSA that had him singing while he flicked his lighter.

My lengthy notes on the IDSA conference are here.