"We decided that to know and be known was a good thing"

PSFK:

And these [online] communities blossomed, starting with close friends and family then expanding to include co-workers and long lost childhood chums, finally welcoming obscure acquaintances and total strangers with whom we’ve never had a face to face conversation. We decided that to know and be known was a good thing, but never really thought it through.

This is good stuff. It's infused with melancholy and understanding. It gets to the heart of the human condition, to the war that rises from the conflict between the need to be loved and the desire to be left alone. And it is a subject that resonates with anyone who has ever experienced something too heavy for Twitter. Social media encourages infinite how-you-doings, but is totally unprepared for any answer other than, "Fine."

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon

Want to see a slasher movie at the metroplex? Good luck. The only ones that make it there are misguided, boring films that hate themselves and their audience. (Or remake after remake after remake after... yawn.) Instead, go rent Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, a funny, wonderful high-concept film. Imagine that Jason, Michael and the like are not supernatural bogeymen, but just extremely ambitious serial killers. How would they go about finding a perfect set of victims? Choosing a survivor girl? Adopting a local legend? Selecting gear? Working out? And rigging a murder house? Behind the Mask is at once a slasher movie and an education in modern mythology that tries to do for killers what Watchmen did for heroes.

What does it take to be the Michael Jordan of?

When people talk about someone being the Michael Jordan of something, they're usually referencing a standard of greatness. But what makes a Michael Jordan? Or a Tiger Woods, a Peyton Manning, or a Michael Phelps? Or, for that matter, an Alex Bogusky, a Dan Wieden, or a David Droga? I've narrowed it down to four characteristics. Genetics (also known as talent). Willpower. Competitiveness. And luck.

A billboard

I only have one line in the new outdoor campaign for Regis. And here it is.

Is experience a good thing?

The Egotist is running a series of posts from jobseekers. In one, a designer named Kammerer included his 21 years of experience without citing any brands he'd worked on or awards he'd won. I posted a comment that read, in part:

Is citing how many years of experience you have really a plus? At a certain point, people look at your resume and say, “If you have that many years of experience, you should have won a certain number of awards, made creative director, worked at some great shops, and so on.” Your experience starts to work against you.

For instance, Anomaly ECD and 2007 Denver 50 judge Mike Byrne starts his bio this way:

Mike Byrne is a former Creative Director at Wieden+Kennedy Portland, where he served as the co-creative chief for the agency's cornerstone Nike account from 2000 - 2006. During his tenure, W+K Portland amassed more awards than any other agency in the United States including two 'Agency of the Year' honors.

I'm not trying to call anyone out, especially not the designer in question. I'm just wondering how many years of experience you can have before people start to raise their eyebrows and wonder why you haven't been promoted.

Recall not always the best measure of advertising effectiveness

Consider the "he went to Jared" campaign. Holy crap do I hate these advertisements. They tell us we’re scum if we don’t spend our hard-earned dough in that chain. And they work to reinforce every sexist patriarchial stereotype. They're the most annoying, poorly conceived commercials I’ve seen. Obviously they are trying to create one of those campaigns where, by pretending something and repeating it often enough, it eventually becomes true. Each ad is an egregiously terrible, stinking mess of advertising bullshit. Bullshit that someone actually wrote, storyboarded, directed, shot, edited, and most horrifically - approved. If I come face to face with the person who created that ad campaign, it won't be pretty. And if I find out you're the guy who actually went to Jared, I'm straight up punching you in the neck. For the love of all that's holy in the universe, come up with another ad campaign for your fucking store.

The importance of supporting characters

When you think of Miami Vice, you think of Crockett and Tubbs. Fast cars. Guns. Phil Collins. And maybe the show that launched the career of my favorite film director. But what you should really remember is Edward James Olmos. The first few episodes of the series were silly, with too many scenes of Don Johnson standing resolutely as the cigar chomping Lieutenant Rodriguez screamed cliches like, "You're over the line, Crockett!" The show verged on parody. In the fourth episode, Rodriguez gets shot and shortly thereafter he's replaced by the quiet shadow of Lieutenant Castillo. Olmos changed the texture of Miami Vice. The series became darker. More stylized. More mysterious. It set the tone for a decade and captured the imagination of boys across America, who dreamed of following in the footsteps of the show's cynical, stylish heroes. To this day, episodes like "Smugglers Blues" and "Evan" are burned into my memory. Only now do I realize just how big a role a supporting character can play.

If you're going to steal, steal from the awesome

The New York Times isn't wrong, exactly. Wanted borrows a lot of its style and substance from Fight Club and The Matrix. It also owes a debt to a lesser-known Christian Bale film named Equilibrium. And there are the riffs lifted from Terminator 2, Frailty, The Empire Strikes Back and American Psycho. But the thing is, those are all awesome movies. And Wanted is also an awesome movie. Blood-curdling, pulse-pounding, jaw-dropping awesome. It looks awesome. It sounds awesome. The guns are awesome. The characters curve the flight of their bullets, and you can't tell me that's not just freaking awesome. Fight Club, The Matrix and Terminator 2 are action classics and cultural touchstones. Wanted settles on being the former. And that's awesome.

Marketing that which does not need to be marketed

I have always wanted to do one of those dense, integrated campaigns that seduces consumers with mystery. I tried once, but the effort was just a stopgap measure performed on my own time and creatively it was a huge flop. The marketing supporting the film of Watchmen is just the sort of thing I wish I could have pulled off. Microsites, games, coffee and much more. But I wonder why one needs to do viral marketing for this film at all. The director of 300 helms the film version of the greatest graphic novel of all time? That's going to get attention from every theater, website, movie critic and entertainment show in the world. And my guess is that the sort of people who use their iPhones to play online multiplayer games are already going to see this film anyway. Maybe they should have spent their budget on TV?

Swimming is exactly like life

When you get in the pool, you sink. So you start beating your arms and legs around like crazy, inching forward and trying like hell not to drown.

The guy in the next lane is going much faster than you, so you assume that he's just a lot better at beating his arms and legs around than you are. But one day, you realize that he's not beating his arms and legs around at all. He's found a different way to play the game. A way to work with an element that should by all rights kill him. A way to stay balanced and graceful after fatigue and panic set in. A way to enter an alien environment and instantly become a native.

The day you realize these things may be the most important day of your life.

Deep breath

Given what has happened to my family, blogging feels kind of rude. But I'm not hitting the delete button just yet. So here goes. You can expect a post at 9:00 am for the next several days. Things are going to be kind of random. I hope you read something you can use.