EUTube -- the YouTube channel of the European Union -- is seeding a video called "Electrical Derby," whose job is to educate viewers about electricity, while propagating the Eurotrash pop culture aesthetic that gives spoofs like this a perpetually appreciative audience.
After a few watches we're fairly confident we'll be experts in how batteries work; but every time we start the video up again, we get caught up in fantasizing how RAD it would be to spend a few hours at a neon roller derby.
We like the idea, but imagine trying to explain supermagnets at a rave. (Actually, it's possible we've done that -- and it all went horribly wrong.) In any event, "Electrical Derby" is a follow up to "Chemical Party," last year's attempt to teach chemistry with synthesized music and mating rituals.
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AdFreak takes vocal issue with this spot for Oven Pride, which got the clear in the UK after riotous accusations that it was sexist.* (Okay, maybe "riotous" is overstating.)
The ad's not sexist, our buddy blog says; it's just idiotic. And yeah, we're inclined to agree. Even taking into account that British humour is different from the American variety, everything from the man's chimpanzee behaviour to the narrator's forced "mm-hm-hm!" at the end gives us the ad-willies.
It's just a low-budget piece, screenwritten, no doubt, by housewives that produce skits for the local Pentecost. Speaking of housewives, know what yours needs? A shiny new set of Madison Avenue cookware.
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- Why you should buy the shirt at left. (No, it's not a Greenpeace thing.)
- Tetris' 25th.
- Keg party on Twitter. May be a mite warm, though.
- What tacky-ass Kiss needs to do is show women trying to type with those acrylic French manis. Not so sexy when your E's and I's keep turning into 8's and 3's, are they?
- 10 examples of how crowdsourcing is (possibly) changing the world.
- Tinseltown jailbait.
- Very Funny Ads is a glowing testament to the following truth: it's not that people don't like ads, it's that they don't like shitty ads. Embrace it.
- This is kinda saucy: YouTube XL makes your favourite amateur vids deliciously watchable over big TV screens. (V-v-via.)
This cool minimalist skateboard design, with "Hello" printed on it in nine or ten languages (if you're counting "Hallo"), is the fruit of a collabo between California skate label Buddy Carr and New York-based typography designer Antonio Carusone.
Top of board is black with "Hello" in white; wheels are printed too. More photos at Fubiz.
There are currently only 100 boards for sale at the not-bad rate of $160 apiece, so we strongly suggest dropping that cash like its hot. Hat-tip to @pakkoidea.
Sally Ride, Jim Lovell and Buzz Aldrin bring stargazer's wonder to this piece by Louis Vuitton. Shot by Annie Leibovitz, the astronauts will grace July issues just in time to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon.
Antoine Arnaut, head of communications at LV in France, says each spacewalker donated a "significant" portion of their modeling fees to Al Gore's Climate Project. As for the bag at left, it's the Vuitton Icare -- an elbow ornament named after Icarus, an icon of Greek myth who dies after flying too close to the sun, losing his wings and plummeting back to earth.
Not the bag I'd've chosen to feature with survivors of a successful sky-bound mission, but hey, I suppose it's nice that Icarus, Aldrin, Lovel and Ride all have something in common: a lust for that final frontier.
Oh, yeah. You may have noticed Neil Armstrong is missing. This wasn't an oversight on LV's part; after an entreaty or two, "he thought it probably wasn't the right thing to do," Arnault admits.
Agency websites: the ultimate canvases.
We were pretty impressed by Modernista's attempt to embrace the stripped-down future of client relations, but BooneOakley's new website made us grin wryly and raise a glass.
Yeah, that's a YouTube video. The buttons in the video are clickable, and a timeline across the X axis lets you leap to whatever section you want to see first: "Featured work," "About Us" and "Billy" -- the story of a mild-mannered marketing director, who dies.
The work is joyful, the animation crappy and the humour shameless. We were like, here's an agency that's not concerned abut being the future; it's the present, and it's not afraid of embracing all its possibilities.
It's also not afraid to put a bullet in somebody's head shortly after he's been axed.
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Ben Muller sent us word of I Got an Envelope, a social art project where people leave empty self-addressed envelopes in random places. The hope is that some (ideally not malevolent) person will come across the envelope, fill it with magical things, and send it back to the owner.
Charming. Or not:
One guy just walked by our desk, peered down at what we were covering, smirked and said "I'd sprinkle coal on a note with the words, 'YOU DON'T BELONG.' Written in lipstick."
Seems disturbingly like he thought that through beforehand.
Gerber shocks parents into submission: In "Really?" parents on the street discover that the "vegetable" consumed most by the average rosy-faced US toddler is ... wait for it ...
French fries!
After this revelation, each Designated Caregiver looked appropriately shocked and appalled. Yeah, didn't see that coming. It's not like we have a nationwide obesity problem or anything.
Visit StartHealthyStayHealthy.com for more "Heart-warming. Thought-provoking. Hilarious!" reality checks.
So the whole Susan Boyle Britain's Got Talent thing has been peripheral to us and for good reason. We already have American Idol fever right? And besides, the whole thing was yet another indication all we care about is what people look like and not what's inside them or what sort of talent they may have.
This frumpy looking woman walks on stage and she's instantly judged some sort of loser because she's not beautiful and young and perfect. But as soon as she opened her mouth, everyone had to eat their cynicism and come to the realization we place way too much importance on exterior appearances.
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You knew it would come to this, right? Those ever more prominent bugs and screen crawls that assault you during your favorite programming are now on their way to becoming full blown, in-program commercials tied to the action and content you are viewing. Or at least that's what Optalgin painkillers hopes.
During a live broadcast of the championship League Final in Tel Aviv, every time there was an injured player, the ad, created by Shalmor Avnon Amichay/Y&R Interactive, would appear.
Check it out here.
Has your head exploded yet? But wait. This might not be so bad. If programming never broke and these ads appeared once in a while, how bad would that be? Thoughts?
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