One of the most remarkable things about Iron Man was the closing credits. The sequence by Danny Yount of Prologue is nothing short of brilliant. Do yourself a favor and watch it, then head to the theater if you haven’t seen it already.
DAD: When I teach her to ride a bike, I will tell her that my hand is on the seat, but then I will take it away just as she is getting the hang of it.
MOM: That will not turn out well.
DAD: No.
DAD: I will demonstrate a total lack of understanding of the proper grammatical way to use quotation marks, and sign every birthday card with “Love.”
MOM: That will keep her on her toes.
Like The Onion, McSweeney’s consistently brings the funny. Sharp wit, tight writing and impeccable timing fuel the McSweeney’s team in all their myriad of ventures (Wholphin, Believer, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern).
Simply brilliant. Mix Guy Ritchie (Mr. Madonna and noted film director) with the world’s greatest sport and you get one of the finest long-form ads to air in some time.
There’s a much high res of the advert at Nike’s football page. Do yourself a favor and watch that version.
Writing the Bible has given me a newfound appreciation for handwriting. What a fantastic project to undertake with a child.
I’ve often wondered why more actors don’t extend their talents to global problems. High marks to Jennifer Connelly and director Terry George for putting together charity:water to produce this PSA about the cost of worldwide water shortage. I realize most people will scoff at the idea of New York running out of water, but on NPR Friday I heard a discussion about the amount of water available to central florida. Of course, for many cities water shortage is already a reality, but for now most people see this as a problem unique to the developing world.
24-hour news is a generally terrible thing. Because there is just not enough mass-appeal news happening 24 hours a day, channels harp upon the minutiae of the few stories that are nearly universal. The constant babble of the various pundits actually reduces the value of the news to an ever-dwindling amount.
However, 24-hour sports news is a different manner. Most games are created equal, so every there’s new news, and even from hour to hour there are updated highlights to show. While constant regular news coverage reduces the quality of overall coverage, rolling sports reporting actually encourages better coverage. In practice the rolling broadcast offers a wider range of highlights and a broader spectrum of featured sports. Of course they are usually trying to fit their coverage into a 30-minute cycling show, where Sportscenter spends an hour on the most of the same materials. But despite that constriction, the fact remains that in a world where more is usually less at Espnews more may just be more.
They have inconsiderately locked the commercial they did which is amazing on their site, so I can only link to it. But do yourself a favor and check out the motion work Trollback has done for Espnews here.
ESPNEWS just moved into high definition broadcast, and Trollback+Company helped them mark the occasion with some beautiful brand adjustment. Their motion pieces are a beautiful composite of (what I’d guess is) processing, video and motion work.
The idea of making health care portable isn’t really what makes this video awesome, though the video is pretty funny. Rather this video’s part in the growing swell of reasonable alternatives to a purely market-based health care system, which has by all accounts been proven a failure, is what is truly awesome.
For a confluence of reasons that individually would not be damning, we now have a health care system that provides at best adequate care to people with insurance (which comes at a higher price than citizens of most other developed nations pay) and no systemic care to people without insurance. The steep basic costs of simple care are a contributing factor in Americans’ increasingly unhealthy lifestyles, which in turns fuels a greater demand for health care that more and more people cannot afford. We are in a bad place, charting a course for a worse place, and the influx of (often radically) different health care systems is welcome.
I’m not sure what the answer is, but I’m reasonable sure this system is it’s death knells and I’d prefer we didn’t all die with it.
Bruce Springsteen endorses Barack Obama just before the Pennsylvania primaries:
He has the depth, the reflectiveness, and the resilience to be our next President. He speaks to the America I’ve envisioned in my music for the past 35 years, a generous nation with a citizenry willing to tackle nuanced and complex problems, a country that’s interested in its collective destiny and in the potential of its gathered spirit. A place where “…nobody crowds you, and nobody goes it alone.”
The endorsement of superstars shouldn’t really matter than much. They are, after all, just talented artists at best and marketing vehicles at worse (you wouldn’t care who the Jolly Green Giant endorsed would you?). But Springsteen may be slightly different, because millions have identified with his songs in a profound and personal way beyond what a normal musician achieves. Mariah Carey will likely never have someone claim Hero defined their life. But it’s possible someone might keep a copy of The River for just that reason.
For confirmation of Bruce’s cool (though not precisely his relevance), check out this video of him performing Dancing in the Dark with a street musician in Copenhagen.
It’s been well documented that the American public is suffering Iraq fatigue. We’re tired of the war, tired of the death, tired of the cost and becoming therefore less and less interested in news about the war. During the Vietnam War a similar fatigue balanced against the steep and visible cost of drafted young men triggered a wave of resentment in America that helped bring about change. But but we are engaged in a distant war fought by volunteers and seem more willing to let the war in Iraq go on.
Realizing the fatigue must be battled to keep the American public engaged in the political discourse, anti-war advocates are turning to new methods to drive home salient points. Cue The $3 Trillion Shopping Spree, a fun site that lets you shop with $3t for goods like groceries for a year, sending someone to college, or ending our dependence of foreign oil.
It’s tongue-in-cheek to be sure, but as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu put it:
Satire should, like a polished razor keen,
Wound with a touch that’s scarcely felt or seen.
Vietnam needed the open wound of the drafted dead to raise the public to demand withdrawal. Perhaps satire will wound us enough to act.
If you’d asked me yesterday to describe a setting where a video was the song, I would’ve fumbled for a good description. I would have tried Fantasia, or perhaps live videos. But Moonlight in Glory may be the best answer I’ve found before. Visual audio, at it’s finest. Of course, it doesn’t hurt when the songwriters are David Byrne and Brian Eno, and the visual artist is Trollbäck + Company. If you want to really experience it you should check out a higher res-version—be sure to click on ‘cinematic view’.
Note: I was primed to appreciate this since it mentions Noah—I’m on Genesis 9, which deals Noah in the aftermath of the flood as I transcribe the Bible by hand as a part of the Handwritten Word project.