This is the creepy theme of the new Best Buy ads. In order to show the diversity of musical tastes that their customers have, they have the names of genres written all over their faces. Yikes. It’s a little hard to see at this size, but believe me, it’s not very appealing, just kinda uncomfortable.

This is the character for Fukigen (a look of displeasure, perhaps?), a Japanese beverage from Asahi. Not created by the other artist, but definitely evocative. We just referred to it for the longest time as "Angry Boy" because we couldn't read what it said on the bottle!

The artist is Nara Yoshimoto.

========================================================
FreshMeat #22 from Steve Portigal
=========================================================

               (__)
               (oo) Fresh
                \/  Meat

Can’t have any pudding if you don’t read FreshMeat!
=========================================================
We make no mention of the huge bottle of Yoo-hoo beverage
=========================================================
Last month I flew to New York to attend the Licensing
International tradeshow. If SpongeBob is going to end up
on a box of cereal in the next two years, this is where
that deal is likely to go down.

I had been interested in attending this tradeshow simply
because I saw it on a morning news program (Today, Good
Morning America, etc.) a few years back. I don’t think I
even caught the name of the show, I just remember being
awestruck by the visual impact of the show itself. It was
a colorful chaotic jungle of familiar brands promoting
themselves, with guys in KISS costumes and Strawberry
Shortcake outfits wandering around. I decided to someday
attend this magical event. Eventually I figured out what
the show (and the business itself) was called - licensing!
Expecting a new and fascinating facet of culture, product
development, business, and marketing, I arranged to attend
as a speaker, organizing and moderating a panel on
consumer trends.

With a bit of ethnographic curiosity, I set out to learn
more of what this community/practice/business is all
about. Typically, my work starts with products, with the
cultural aspects moving to encompass issues of brand. I
was prepared for a shift in focus, with this show starting
with the brand, but I was surprised to discover that in
licensing one doesn’t even deal with “brands,” but rather
“properties.” I’m sure some brand theorist could explain
the difference and we’d be enlightened, but let’s just
marvel for a moment at the lingo. I think culturally we’ve
internalized the distance between the marketing word
“brand” and the cowboy word “brand” because it is a bit of
an uncomfortable connection. But now the entities in
question are actual things that can be exchanged (or
licensed) rather than simply labels that are burned into
flesh to signify ownership. Fair enough.

The tradeshow was interesting, to put it mildly.
Immediately you see that everything imaginable is
available for licensing. I thought I was prepared for
this, I mean if one more person tells me that Martha
Stewart and Ralph Lauren are brands, I’m going to shriek.
Okay, got it. But the licensing business takes it further.
Did you know that John Wayne and Andrew Weil (the bearded
purveyor of wellness) are both brands, er, properties? I’m
not talking about a conceptual sense of property-ness, I
mean they are owned, managed, marketed and ready for
licensing. Other brands/people/products that are also
properties include: Andy Warhol, Antiques Roadshow, Buzz
Aldrin, Chicken Soup for the Soul, CSI: Miami, Dairy
Queen, National Enquirer, NYPD, Siegfried and Roy, Bozo
the Clown, Village People, Terminator 2, Rocky, and
Shrek 3 (yeah, 3).

And so the tradeshow is overflowing with displays that
showcase known and unknown properties. In some cases the
company themselves will be in attendance (i.e., Nickelodeon
with SpongeBob) and in other cases there are holding
companies and agents with boring neutral names (i.e.,
Equity Management Inc. or IMC Licensing) some of whom have
an amusing combination of properties making up their palette
(Zippo, Mr. Clean, Crayola, Andrew Weil, and Pennzoil in
one case; Midway Games, Terminator 2, Village People,
Musicland Band and U.S. Secret Service in another) and
others with quite obvious specialties (IMC had a booth
touting Jello-O, Kool-Aid, Planters, Oscar Mayer, Kraft,
Tabasco, Manischewitz and others - although it appears
they also manage other licenses, such as the science-
fiction show “Red Dwarf”). And in other cases there are
up-and-coming (hopefully) properties that most of us
haven’t heard of.

It gets more complicated. For example, American Greetings
(the card company) hired the consumer products division of
Nickelodeon (the TV channel) to handle Holly Hobbie for
them. Nick is part of Viacom, a huge conglomerate, and
they have enough horsepower that they can take on business
handling other properties for other groups. It seems like
there was business going in every direction. Property
owners looking to sign up a licensor, agents repping their
portfolios, licensees with products looking for
distributors, and every possible permutation.

But it’s hard to see the dealflow - mostly you just see
people in suits and costumes, and a countless number of
booths. Check out my photos from the show (including scans
of some of the artifacts I picked up) at LINK TO COME.
I spent several hours walking the floors with my
colleagues, looking at as much as we could, until we
reached total property burnout. Although this was an
industry show, the tactic was to seduce us as consumers. I
posed for pictures with SpongeBob and Patrick, and Mr.
Peanut, and the Care Bears, and more. I sampled the Krispy
Kremes covered in candy fish-shaped sprinkles (for some
to-be-released film). I grabbed free manga, stickers,
postcards, and peered at the current Lassie. After all
that, here are some of my observations.

It seems that many previously dormant properties are back!
Or at least, that’s a common phrase. Holly Hobbie is back!
Trollz are back! Although, in fact, Trollz are an update
of Troll dolls (small toys with long stiff brightly
colored hair), so strictly speaking they may not really be
back. Fido Dido (mostly known for 7-Up ads in the 90s)
appears to be back, and so are Davey and Goliath, those
earnest clay purveyors of biblical insight.

One surprising pattern was a variety of properties or
artifacts that showed a large number of different
feelings, moods, or attitudes. Sesame Street had a single-
sheet magnet featuring 12 different Muppets with
associated moods - Oscar as “crabby”, Elmo as “ticklish”,
Cookie Monster as “hungry”, Guy Smiley as “smiley”, etc.
and a separate magnet, reading “I’m feeling” that can be
used as a frame to be placed on top of the characters to
display your mood to the world. This was very similar to
the “feelings poster” sometimes used in therapy.

Anther example was Mood Frog who appears without labels,
but has a range of facial expressions suggesting anger,
boredom, nausea, confusion, etc. The Fear’s are, as you
might imagine, afraid of very specific things: dirt,
germs, cooking, flat hair, and veggies. Another line of
products featured a grid of baby faces with a variety of
moods: cranky, quiet, sleepy, happy, poopy, and so on. One
property featured cartoon girls with different attitudes
(I don’t have the specifics, but something like “The Shy
Thinker” “The Clever Go-getter” etc.) that presumably
tapped into something that the target audience could
identify with. I guess “The Breakfast Club” (a film that
segmented high school kinds into tidy parcels like The
Jock, The Nerd, The Criminal, The Princess, and The
Basketcase) lives on in one form or another.

Choosing a mood is already a mode in current products and
features, especially online. For example, Moods on
LiveJournal.com (a blogging site popular with the younger
crowd) offers the following default set of choices
(inviting you to add more as needed): accomplished,
aggravated, amused, angry, annoyed, anxious, apathetic,
artistic, awake, bitchy, blah, blank, bored, bouncy, busy,
calm, cheerful, chipper, cold, complacent, confused,
contemplative, content, cranky, crappy, crazy, creative,
crushed, curious, cynical, depressed, determined, devious,
dirty, disappointed, discontent, distressed, ditzy, dorky,
drained, drunk, ecstatic, embarrassed, energetic, enraged,
enthralled, envious, excited, exhausted,
flirty, frustrated, full, geeky, giddy, giggly, gloomy,
good, grateful, groggy, grumpy, guilty, happy, high,
hopeful, horny, hot, hungry, hyper, impressed,
indescribable, indifferent, infuriated, intimidated,
irate, irritated, jealous, jubilant, lazy, lethargic,
listless, lonely, loved, melancholy, mellow, mischievous,
moody, morose, naughty, nauseated, nerdy, nervous,
nostalgic, numb, okay, optimistic, peaceful, pensive,
pessimistic, pissed off, pleased, predatory, productive,
quixotic, recumbent, refreshed, rejected, rejuvenated,
relaxed, relieved, restless, rushed, sad, satisfied,
scared, shocked, sick, silly, sleepy, sore, stressed,
surprised, sympathetic, thankful, thirsty, thoughtful,
tired, touched, uncomfortable, weird, working, and
worried.

Similarly, IM (instant messenger) and web forums both
offer a huge set of smileys (or emoticons) as this
screenshot from the IM program Trillian suggests:

The thrust of this multiple-mood approach seems to be two-
fold: first, just like a line of toothpaste with multiple
flavors and features, we can find the one that suits us
best, and second, the display of so many different
feelings at once appeals to a certain vain sense of our
own emotional complexity.

Elsewhere at the show, girls with attitude were prominent.
This movement got a lot of press earlier this year when
David & Goliath (not the churchgoing boy and dog, but a
clothing company) caused controversy with a clothing
displaying slogans such as “Boys are Stupid - Throw
Rocks At Them” (read more here)

We saw attitude (the very cute Dog of Glee encouraging
you to “have a nice day buttface”) and mean girls galore.
“Angry Little Asian Girl” and “Emily the Strange” were two of
my favorites (probably because I had the opportunity to talk with the
artists and creators of the property, get a sense of who
they were and what their characters were about for them).

A lot of characters involved cats. Some were swanky
princess type cats, skinny, with a Parisian posture,
perhaps with a tiara. Some were emotional (”Sad Kitty
speaks for everyone who has ever experienced heartbreak,
disappointment, and the general hardships of life. Sad
Kitty cries the tears of all mankind!”) while some
companies offered a huge range of cat properties to suit a
variety of moods and attitudes (The Grinning Cat, Blue
Mood Cats, Tribal Cat, Three Hip Kittens, Flower Cat, Rain
Poodle, Art Cat, The Guitar Cat, Tropical Kitty, Dead
Kitty, and Lucky Cat all come from a San Francisco company
called Tokyo Bay).

The aesthetic of Japanese anime is a powerful influence,
with many different animated characters that typically
have flared legs, short bodies, big heads, big eyes, and
sometimes rather adult physical development. Homies and
Mijos come from da ‘hood. Previously infantile Troll dolls
are now sexed-up Trollz. Petz includes Catz and Dogz. And
there’s something called “Rock Hard Fairies” which claims
that “Fairies Just Got Cool!!”

Another tactic was to anthropomorphize whatever hadn’t
previously been given the breath of life (or big cartoony
eyes). We saw an elevator car and Doggy Poo, to name but
two.

And finally, some properties were cool and funny simply
because they were foreign and literally didn’t quite
translate. A whole segment of the floor was operated by
the Korean Culture and Content Agency featuring Big Ear
Rabbit (”The Fundamental Concepts is the adventurous
travel by the boys with complex in their individual
surrounding with Big Ear Rabbit, Roy who is centered with
them and the boys are finding out their good point rather
than their own demerit. This is the story telling method
to be estimated by the boys themselves in the process of
hearing the story clearly, but is different from the
direct story telling method that the esteemed fathers told
their children the instructions.”), Ayap (”Dews in the
cave gathered into the magic bead for a thousand years,
and he was born there…He is good and pure. When he drinks
dews collected in the magic bead, his power rises a lot so
that he can help other people who are at a crisis. He
likes diverse kinds of sports. His is a sport-mania.”) and
JaJa (”She is the girl who always goes on a diet. We’re
trying to develop ‘A diet characters’ mainly for the ages
between 17 to 30, young females who strongly want to be
healthy and beauty. Providing a pleasant infotainment
contents throughout funny diet stories.”).

It’s not clear what lessons there are to be learned here -
no matter how many interesting, creative, and resonant
properties I encountered, I left the tradeshow muttering
about “too much crap.” It was overwhelming. Perhaps the
lessons could be found by looking at patterns over time:
what properties survive, what clever licensing deals get
struck (will there be John Wayne pet food? Or Homies
tampons?), and how do the established brands like Sesame
Street and SpongeBob evolve over time to stay current. In
order to assess those types of things, I may have to go
back next year!

–

My photos (including scans of handouts) from the Licensing
show are at [LINK TO COME]

I wonder where this started, or what other examples there are - it’s the oft-used film/TV cliche based on an understated need for more of something to address the current situation the characters face.

Jaws - “You’re going to need a bigger boat.” (to get that big-ass shark - probably the originator of this line?)
Ally McBeal - “I might need a touch more clay” (to appropriate sculpt the large penis of the artist’s model)
Calendar Girls - “Lawrence, we’re going to need considerably bigger buns” (I think this was to conceal the breasts of a woman posing for a fund-raising calendar)
Split Second - “We’re going to need bigger guns”
Godzilla 98 - “We’re going to need bigger guns” (these last two from this discussion here
Batman film with Clooney - Alfred: “We’re going to need a bigger cave…”
Dinosaurs (that weird animated ABC TV show) - “We’re gonna need another Timmy!”

In an earlier post I described our experience seeing the film “Festival Express.” Today the Globe and Mail has a profile of Ken Walker, the person who put the who concert experience together back in 1970, and who has had a troubled but very interesting life.

These experiences include, in no particular order, jail time in the United States for allegedly facilitating gun smuggling into South America; a personal lecture from Jerry Garcia (Jerry Garcia!) on the dangers of drugs; speculation in pork bellies, sulphur, gold and wheat; buying up singer Nana Mouskouri’s North American contract; a bust for illegal possession of narcotics in 1971; and organizing one of the most glorious failures in the history of rock ‘n’ roll, 1970’s trans-Canada Festival Express.

Somewhere in there — in the fall of 1998, to be precise — Walker tried to kill himself by jamming a Second World War-vintage .38-calibre pistol owned by his jeweller father into his mouth, and pulling the trigger as two astonished police constables watched. The bullet blew through the top of his skull and into the ceiling of the basement family room of what was then his Richmond Hill, Ont., home.

Amazingly, it didn’t kill him. It put him in a coma for a month, removed a chunk from the right side of his brain, and left a still-noticeable dent in the skin of his skull. But it didn’t kill him. And that is why, when his seizures are in abeyance, and the 17 pills he takes every 24 hours are working just fine, Walker is able to spend some of his days reminiscing about his pivotal role in Festival Express, the memories fuelled by seemingly bottomless cups of coffee and one Player’s Light after another held between stubby, nicotine-stained fingers.

It’s a role that is going to get renewed scrutiny with the release of the much-delayed documentary chronicling the legendary high times, also called Festival Express. “I fooled them all,” says Walker with a mordant chuckle as he settles into a booth in the dark smoking room of a restaurant, near his cramped north Toronto apartment, that he visits several times a week.

Nice post (spotted on WebWord about how to make sure products launched in Japan (originating elsewhere) will succeed. Gratifying to see the similarities between what I’ve told my clients in previous projects.

Attention to detail. Do not ever launch a product in Japan if you think you have even a 1% chance of product problems.
Functionality is important, but not without aesthetics. Presentation is everything. Even a $4 bowl of noodles is served in great style at a roadside noodle shop in the middle of nowhere in Japan.
Customer is KING. And I mean it. Being in Japan even for a week will spoil you. No matter how small the business is, the service is impeccable at all times.
Never say NO to the customer. Even when it is impossible, the Japanese believe in trying one more time when a customer says so. By the way, that is also how innovation happens. I was surprised myself how many times we came up with solutions when challenged by our customers (while the technical folks back home continued to complain that it couldn’t be done).
Do your homework. If you think that you can simply sell what you have on the shelves in Japan too, forget it. You will need to understand the unique characteristics of the Japanese market vis-a-vis your products, test your products, customize/localize it, and demonstrate that you are committed to Japan by translating all documents into Japanese, providing customer support in Japanese, and having a full-fledged office in Japan or a Japanese partner.

This is genius. Spelling out naughty words using the letters from corporate logos.

Hmm. You can buy a tape or MP3 of the Licensing show panel on trends that I moderated last month.

full story
Joan and Melissa Rivers’ move from E! Entertainment Television to TV Guide Channel may keep them off the red carpet at September’s Emmy Awards…The Rivers reportedly received a hefty three-year contract, worth up to $8 million, to join the TV Guide Channel.

TV Guide Channel? $8 Million or not, what’s the next bus stop on their tragic ride to complete and utter irrelevance? The SpectraVision channel? It’s like that episode of Family Guy where Joan Rivers is standing on the red carpet making comments about passerby, when someone points out that her microphone isn’t even plugged in, that she’s just standing around doing the commentary with no camera (and no contract) and she wails “But I have noplace to go!”

full story

Jim Cara thought the ‘NOTAG’ plate he got for his Suzuki motorcycle would give people a laugh. Instead, he found that the laugh - along with more than 200 parking violations - was on him. The new tag arrived in the mail Saturday, along with an avalanche of Wilmington parking violations. ‘All the traffic tickets say, ‘Notice of violation. License number: no tag,'’ Cara explained. Officials said city computers linked to state Division of Motor Vehicles computers finally found an address for ticketed vehicles that lacked license tags: Cara’s home in Elsmere.

John Rago, spokesman for Wilmington Mayor James Baker, said an incorrect computer code used by the contractor that processes the city’s parking violations helped land the tickets in Cara’s mail. City officials plan to have it corrected, he said.

The New York Times claws away at Catwoman
The character of Catwoman, definitively embodied by Eartha Kitt in the old ‘Batman’ television series and dutifully updated by Michelle Pfeiffer in Tim Burton’s ‘Batman Returns,’ has always been a camp dominatrix, a persona not entirely suited to Ms. Berry’s soft, eager demeanor. She overacts Patience’s flaky timidity and then, to compensate, overdoes catwoman’s suave self-confidence, swinging her hips and pushing out her lips as if she were trying to attract the amorous attentions of Pepe le Pew.

A record 34,427 people committed suicide in Japan last year, up 7.1 percent from the previous year.

(testing “Hello” software that seems like it’ll handle easily blogging photos - it’s several steps, but it’s presumably easier than any other way of doing it)

In an earlier post, I pointed out how you could “buy diahrrea online” at drugstore.com. I submitted that link to Doh, The Humanity which is a pretty funny site.

See who people named Kerry gave their political contributions to versus people named Bush.

Recently I purchased a Black and Decker Hedgehog 24″ Dual Action Trimmer. When I got it home, I saw that the trimmer was in the box, fully assembled, etc.
There was nothing else in the box - no manual, warranty card, or other documentation. The outside of the box promised a free extension cord would be included, and that was not in the box either.

It worked wonderfully.

On the Monday, I called Black and Decker to sort this out. I worked through the phone maze, and then was told that they were too busy, call back later, and they hung up on me.

I went online, did all the crap required to send in a customer service request.

As far as the documentation goes, they won’t send me anything, but they want me to go to another website and go through a registration process so I can download the information. No warranty card, obviously, would be available that way.

Turns out the free extension cord is a mail-in offer. But the box has a sticker that says “Free Extension Cord Included” - doesn’t included mean it’s IN THE BOX? There was no information about sending away to get it. That’s just crap, IMHO. Anyway, their email response suggested I use the attached form to send in for the cord. But they attached no form.

Finally, the email response gave me a “click here” link if the response was satisfactory, otherwise asked me to click the button below to send a followup. There was no button below.

Simple problem that they won’t make right. Deceptive and misleading packaging. Sloppy customer support.

Bah!

Yo, Robot is the title of “I, Robot” in Spain.

Don’t know if anyone from Montara sees this blog, but I’m having a problem with SBC voice mail (”The Message Center”) and I was curious if others in the area have the same problem, since it’s possibly a capacity issue.

Frequently, but intermittently
- my phone rings many times and the voice mail never picks up
- calling the local number they have for us (728-3704) gives a busy signal (often these two things are related)
- occasional voice messages where I never heard the phone ring in the first place

I had The Message Center before moving to Montara, and it works slightly different here - here you call that number and need to press * to get to the login interface - until recently it was a non-standard greeting before you pressed * - this makes me think that we’re on some old equipment here that can’t handle the capacity - too many calls come in and it just stops picking them up.

I’m specifically interested in hearing from other folks who have experienced something similar in the local area, and if there have been any attempts to work with SBC for a resolution, etc. etc. I’d like to coordinate any steps I take with others if possible.

There’s a ridiculous cross-promotion running in Loews theaters right now. They try hard to encourage good behavior with those “trailers” than run. Don’t talk on your cellphone, don’t pirate movies, and of course, clean up after yourself.

This particular spot shows a moviegoer leaving a mess behind, claiming it’s not his, but then the hosts of Forensic Files (a show on Court TV) appear and pick up all the crap he’s left behind and test it to prove that it’s his. Or something like that. Very over the top and silly.

What’s wrong is that the rude patron is really really fat (and unkmept) and has eaten an enormous amount of food - much of which is scattered on him and the area around him. So, you go to the movies and sit through all these ads and persuasion to eat! drink! buy! and then you see an ad where the person who enthusiastically did so is presented as a failure, because they ate a lot and are fat and physically unappealing and violate social norms by being messy.

Why isn’t the messy person a thin attractive moderate consumer? Because that doesn’t bring enough moral bluster to their sanctioning. The hypocrisy is disgusting - at one point the forensic scientists pull some tell-tale trash from the ground and prominently display it to the camera - it’s a bag from M&Ms. So even within this ad we have product placement encouraging us to buy and consume candy, all the while making us feel repulsion for the fat slob who indugles his physical desires and as a consequence behaves unacceptably.

In our theater this ad was shown shortly after a hyperkinetic employee wheeled a concession cart in and prevented any pre-film conversation among friends by shouting an aggressive corny sales pitch that made me cringe (but left other patrons applauding). In my physical-limitation-equals-personality-flaw bigotry I’ll point out that he had a very very slight speech impediment that rendered his over-the-top blustering somewhat twisted.

For some reason HBO sent me a survey link by email yesterday, as a followup to Sunday’s debut of Entourage (which I watched, and enjoyed). I took the survey (hey, a chance to win $10.00 from Amazon - why the hell not) and did not enjoy it. All the usual stuff about whether you watched it, how did you hear about it, do you get HBO, and then the part where they clearly want to get some REAL INSIGHT as to the appeal of the show. Yeccghhhh.

Using a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 means Poor and 5 means Excellent, how would you rate the following aspects of ENTOURAGE?
The humor
The drama
The characters
The idea for the series
The dialogue
The music in the show
The locations
The relationships between the characters
The story
The action
The uniqueness
The pace
The ending
The beginning
The title, ENTOURAGE
The look of the show
The realism
The inside look at a Hollywood lifestyle

I think after about 6 aspects, it starts getting ridiculous. As if you can slice your reaction to the show that precisely? The title? Who gives a crap what the title is? Obviously, they do, but then, how is that information useful? Are they going to relaunch under a new title?

Now we’d like you to rate the characters on ENTOURAGE. For each character, tell us how much he/she adds or detracts from your enjoyment of the show.

This was also five choices:

Adds a lot Adds a little Detracts a little Detracts a lot Not sure
VINCE, who slips easily into stardom
ERIC, who is learning the rules of Hollywood as he tries to help Vince make the right choices
DRAMA, Vince’s half-brother whose own acting aspirations have been eclipsed by Vince’s success
TURTLE, the least experienced of the group who’s always up for a good time
ARI, Vince’s high-powered agent who clashes with Eric over his client’s decisions

To be helpful, they included headshots of the characters with this breezy description. It seems like they’ve taken pitch-meeting copy and tossed that into the survey, where it rings incredibly inappropriate. Again, we’re asked to provide input at a very silly level - the show worked as a whole - there are characters you like and don’t like, doesn’t drama come from conflict? Oh, I wish there was less of the people we don’t like? I personally couldn’t pick my feeling about the show apart enough to assess individual characters, and further, I don’t want to, and beyond that, I don’t want them to listen to us, the viewers, about what characters they feature.

I’m sure this type of thing is nothing new, and that ER and Will and Grace and every other damn thing (more Seven of Nine, puhleeze!) gets this treatment…

the box doodle project is fun cardboard-box art

Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools mentions freecycle, specifically his local group, run by yours truly. Ahhh, cosmic collisions!

Slasher is an amazing film

What follows is a 90-minute documentary on a single start-to-finish weekend in the Slasher’s life. The California native is shown grabbing two bottles of beer (for breakfast), kissing his wife and two little girls good-bye, and traveling to the airport in a limo for an early flight east. He’s headed for Memphis, the blues and Elvis capitol of the world. Oh, yeah, Memphis, we’re told, is also the bankruptcy capitol of the world, and a Toyota dealership there has flown in the Slasher and his crew for a three-day desperation sale. There’s no money in the area, but hopes are high anyway, because the Slasher is legendary. The tuxedo-wearing man once sold 200 cars in three days.

My cool-hunting moment. Kids in front of the Metreon in SF wearing backpacks made from cereal boxes. Anyone seen this before? What’s the story?
full size pic

Another hilarious Amazon.com: Customer Reviews driveby.

Pacific Gas & Electric said on Friday that it had lost track of three pieces of spent nuclear fuel it last used in the late 1960s, although the utility said there was no threat to public safety.

I couldn’t find the “best” picture - the opening credits bit where the fuel rod flies out of Homer’s car into the sewer grating.

From a small business mailing list I’m on, a funny (because it’s not me) story of terrible phone solicitation:

Well today, I have to warn you about the lousy service I got from AOL
Yellowpages. This morning I got a customer service call
in which the seller was trying to get me to purchase advertising for
AOL Yellowpages.

1.
He went on an on about how much he knew about my business then
proceeded to ask me who I was, and what I do.

2.
When I asked him about the success rate to ensure that I was not
spending more than what I was receiving in sales- he said he could
not give out financial information - nor did he even know his
client’s success rate in percentages! Furthermore, he was appalled
that I should even ask him at all, and said “You know, sometimes you
just lose money” What kind of answer is that?!

3.
When pricing information about my area - I told him that I was in San
Francisco. He proceeded to give me pricing for Fremont and said he
didn’t know how to give me pricing for SF, because his computer
information said I was in Fremont.

4.
I politely told him “i need some time to think about this, please
call back next quarter”. He then said “No go - can’t do that”

5.
Finally, when I said “well, thank you for your time then.”
He hung up on me.

Last night we saw the “world premiere” of Festival Express. It was a whole fancy premiere event with a lot of media around, a red carpet on the sidewalk, security, guest lists, reserved seating sections, and a fashionably late start. I described the film briefly in another posting.

Here was our second time in a week to be in a room with famous rock star types: a bunch of folks from the Dead (Bob Weir, Bill K, Micky Hart, Phil Lesh) and Eddie Kramer, famous produce/engineer. And a serious aging hippie contingent, making the coastside people look like, well, coastsiders, not hippies. Patchouli, hoo yeah.

The film was a rather poorly-thought-out documentary. It basically followed the musicians on the train trip, with playing concerts along the way. Recent interviews with some of those in attendance were used to provide some reflection and some context.

But the interviews were terrible: only the event’s producer had any personality and told any good stories (and he was awesome - comb-over, bad posture, a Eugene Levy character from the old SCTV). Everyone else said “It was a special wonderful time” and other bullshit soundbites. There were scant moments of actual personality in these people who were there at the time, and being a professional interviewer, I’ll blame their interviewers, not the stars/journalists themselves.

As a doc, they didn’t do a lot of interesting stuff in how they put it together, everything was rather belabored and obvious - shots of kids fighting with cops while rock music plays on - yeah, we’ve seen that before - can you show it to us in a new way?

The most compelling stuff, as the stories implied, was what happened on the train - so why didn’t we see it? There’s bits and pieces of jamming, and one great drunken session with Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Janis, and ? Rick Danko ? but I wanted much more. I wanted to get a sense of what it was like on the train, and they talked about it, but didn’t show it.

Now, the fact that the film got made at all was a miracle, so maybe footage existed at one point that they could have used to do this, or maybe they just didn’t know how to film a “backstage” event like it was front-stage. I wanted Don’t Look Back type of moments that really shed some light on these people and this event.

Most of the film were musical performances from the concerts in Toronto, Winnipeg, and Calgary. And some of them were amazing - the only really bad part was the strange vibrato Sylvia Tyson was using to sing CC Rider - I was in agony for it to end, not sure what was up with that.

If you watch musical peformances on TV/video, you know that they can’t have a static shot anymore, it’s all rapid cutting that takes you out of the experience, so it was amazing to see Janis Joplin go nuts on a big screen in unflinching closeup on her bad skinned visage. You got a lot of time to be with the performers and watch them do their thing.

Even some of the Dead stuff was pretty groovy and it’s not really my thing.

I have more bad to say than good, I guess, because the film could have been incredible with a bit more vision…I was disappointed but I absolutely enjoyed it. The musical performances that touched me (and they absolutely did, very strongly) were worth it.

Last week we went to see Greendale in Half Moon Bay at the Coastside Film Society. This is Neil Young’s film of his most recent album.

I’m a long-time big-time Neil Young fan, but I’ve drifted away in the past few years. I haven’t liked the music, I have found some of his last couple of albums a bit forced and not that enjoyable. I can’t stand CSNY, so I’ve avoided the stuff he’s done with them lately as well. I haven’t seen a concert, I’ve not attended the Bridge Benefit (I went many many years in a row). Before the Greendale album came out, he did a tour in Europe where he performed the music acoustically. I downloaded some of it, and didn’t really get into it, and so I had never heard of any of it.

I’ve seen other Neil Young film efforts such as Muddy Track (though never had the chance to see Human Highway or Journey Through the Past, but understand they are silly and self-indulgent and just…bad…) and I had pretty low expectations of the whole thing.

Okay, bad stuff outa the way.

I absolutely loved it. The music was excellent - it was pretty grooving Crazy Horse stuff, of course lots of familiar tones and riffs from the stuff he’s been doing for many years, but great songs, great lyrics, very enjoyable head-bobbing stuff, on first listen.

The movie itself was pretty interesting. Greendale was filmed in and around HMB, so attending a screening locally was neat. The first shot in the film was of the sky. The second shot was an exterior of a church - the very building we were sitting in to watch the film. That was pretty cool. And it’s a story, there’s events that happen and some evolution and progress of a narrative. It’s enough to follow along and enjoy and feel some sense of closure by the end.

The “thing” is that there is no dialogue, it’s all just the Neil songs. The actors lip-sync, but not as if they are singing, more as if they are talking, which makes for an interesting visual effect since of course Neil is singing on the soundtrack. And really, what this produces is one of the most post-modern things I’ve ever experienced (can there be varying degrees of post-modernity or is that a contradiction in terms?)…Neil’s narrative voice in the songs tells the stories, but when the lyrics include “And Grandpa said:” then the words are lip-synced - or spoken if you will - by Grandpa. And then sometimes the characters speak other parts of the song. And sometimes the characters play musical instruments for the solo - as if they can actually hear the music that we hear - which supposedly is in the soundtrack. And then at one point the film transitions to a rehearsal for a Neil Young Greendale concert where the story of the film and album was staged. Recursion, or something.

Lotta funny deliberate frame-breaking moments, for example, the regular use of newspaper headlines, that were printed on white paper and taped onto an actual newspaper. White paper - gray newsprint. One was even peeling off.

In one shot a bug lands on the camera lens. Another shot is badly trimmed so we see the half second of non-motion before “Action” was called.

But I think it’s a bit disingenuous to believe Neil’s “one take and that’s it” approach too much - there’s a lot of planning here, there’s a lot that was really well thought out (and well considered in the editing) in order to create such amazing synergy between the characters and the music and the story.

Our screening was attended by various people responsible for the film, including Neil himself, looking very local and just-off-the-ranch. He took questions after, stood onstage with LA Johnson (sp?) and various other members of the cast - most of whom said nothing, except for one guy who played the eccentric painter who appeared to be just that - a local eccentric dude, who is in fact the painter of all the artwork his character painted. Anyway, Neil was very gracious, even when people asked cringe-worthy questions. I guess the aging hippie contingent in town is more comfortable than I with “Neil you have painted gorgeous melodies all your life and we want to thank you.”

The political and environmental message of the movie is obviously very important to Neil; he spoke to the crowd about “getting the word out.” It was the first time I’d seen him speak in a non-musical-performance setting.

All in all, a very cool and satisfying only-on-the-coast event!

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Office Depot is partnering with Hewlett-Packard to offer recycling of one electronic product a day for free all through the summer. The program will run from July 18 through Sept. 6.

MuchMusic did a Festival Express-like thing way back when, as this article recalls

True, there was a live event telecast from Halifax, Nova Scotia, June 25 (1990). But this only climaxed a three-week, cross-country train tour beginning in Vancouver, British Columbia, during which a box-car-turned-studio became the site for awards presentations at 13 stops along the way. Concerts and jams by artists such as initial guests Jeff Healey, Crash Vegas, and members of Blue Rodeo also staged for showing on the service.

The New York Times is now doing home delivery to the Coastside! Thank goodness, it’s been tough trying to read it online for the past 7 months.

I do my banking at Wells Fargo. I use their online account tool to get in and check balances and so on. http://online.wellsfargo.com

We have a mortgage with Wells Fargo. We’ve been paying by mail and I was getting tired of it - it’d be nice to do it automatically, etc. so I checked out the link they point me to on their paper bills. http://www.wellsfargo.com/mortgage.
Under “Your Account” are choices to “Manage Your Account Online” and
“Pay Your Mortgage Bills Online.” I went to the first link, and set up an account. The fact that I have a Wells Fargo account I’m going to pay from offers no advantage. So be it. Interestingly, once you create an account you have to wait a few days for the account to be validated (notified by email) and then after that a couple of days to have your bill tied to your account (notified by email).

Here’s one of those emails:

Dear Steve Portigal,

Welcome! Your online account is now active on Wells Fargo Home Mortgage Online Bills. You will receive an email when your bill becomes available online.

You can visit http://www.ebpp.wellsfargo.com/mortgagepay/ to update your personal information, add payment methods, or make other changes to your account.

For questions about Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, please email us at online.customerservice@mortgage.wellsfargo.com and we will respond promptly. Serving you is very important to us, and we appreciate your business.

Sincerely,

Home Mortgage Online Bills
Online Service Center

Did you know you can also have instant access to detailed loan information with YourMortgage Online? Please visit www.yourwellsfargomortgage.com and click on ‘First Visit’ to enroll and learn more about this service.

–
Anyway, I needed to back in and check something, so I tried http://www.yourwellsfargomortgage.com. It seemed different. I couldn’t log in with the userid and password I had remembered, I tried all my backups, etc. Then I did the forgot password/userid thing and came up blank. Finally I sent in a request for help and got back a reminder etc. today. What that gave me was the link to the site I should have been using - turns out that even though I created an online account to pay the mortgage, I didn’t actually have a “YourMortgage” account - that is something different.

How many freakin’ ways are there to log in to their site? One for the banking info, another for paying the mortgage, and another for managing the mortgage? The last two are within one line of each other in the main menu and represent different accounts? And if you try to login from the main menu of the mortgage page, where will that take you?

I honestly expected better. I’ve been trained, as a customer, so I won’t be causing them any more service requests, but jeez, annoyance and unecessary effort all over the place here!

Eight Worst New Car Features

We’re seeing the “world premiere” of this film tonight

Gavin Poolman remembers using the film cans containing the only existing work prints of “Festival Express” for hockey goals. His parents were divorced, and his father, who was the original producer of the film, moved often. Young Poolman never could understand why his father insisted on lugging around this stupid collection of heavy film canisters. At one point, he dragged the cans out of the garage and stacked them in the street to serve as goalposts.

“Festival Express,” which will have its world premiere tonight at the UA Galaxy (followed by a party at the Great American Music Hall), is rock’s great lost concert film. The movie, which opens its theatrical run July 23 at the Bridge, features a cast of 135 drunken and deranged rock musicians — including Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, the Band, Delaney & Bonnie, Buddy Guy, Sha Na Na and others — rolling across Canada on a train in 1970, partying nonstop in between mini-Woodstock performances at outposts along the way.

Tidbit bured in a story about Lea Fastow: “She’ll spend the vast majority of her time indoors under fluorescent lights,” said David Novak, a former Microsoft consultant who served a year in prison for mail fraud. Now he’s a Utah consultant, helping other federal prisoners prepare for life inside.

Geez - what color is YOUR parachute?

An Israeli singer famed for his falsetto won a court case against the Hebrew version of ‘Shrek 2′ on Monday for implying he had been castrated. In its original Israeli dub, the hit animated comedy had one character threaten to emasculate another by saying ‘Let’s do a David Daor on him’ — referring to the leading contralto who represented the Jewish state at the Eurovision song contest.
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