Shexshy Shteve: bitchshlayer

Hellooooo, ladiesh...
Sexshy Shteve ish in the houshe. I'm here to drop some knowledge about the finesht NFL team the world hash ever known: the Detroit Lionsh. Jon Kitna is a touchdown ashashin and I am kryptonite to the bitchesh. I mean it.

Sho I made a video, in EXSHTREME closhe-up, of me being f*cking aweshome, showing you how it'sh done, because I'm f*cking EXSHTREME.

If any ladiesh out there need a man, a REAL MAN, a shexsh cannon, you can find me on the shtreetsh, shlaying shluts. Becaushe thatsh how a playa rollsh.

more video (don't get used to it)

new video of my recent favorite whipping boy David Beckham, clowning around with Reggie Bush for an Adidas commercial. It's kind of lame, since all you learn is that Beckham sucks at American football, and Reggie Bush sucks at soccer. There are some interesting parts, like when they have Reggie Bush try to kick a ball around a wall. Beckham tries it and makes it look laughably easy, but that's stupid because it's really hard. They also have Reggie defend some PKs, which historically is not Beckham's forte.

My favorite part is where Reggie runs a pattern and Beckham hits him on the numbers with a kicked ball. That's not easy, either.

It would have been more fun to see them play a sport at which neither one is world class. Swimming, ping pong, cricket, rugby (running and kicking elements there), etc.

5 seconds of magic

our first video here at GJAW. Stealing from another blog:
"this video is only 5 seconds long. I dare you not to watch it 40 times."

i-don't-care-any-more-phone

If you haven't heard, Apple is launching a new phone. Probably you have heard, because the media blitz and subsequent fawning from the press is out ouf control.

Apple is awesome at marketing. They have entire stores filled with product lines that no price-motivated computer user will buy. They have funny commercials. They cultivate an image that is both trendy and counter-culture, which is funny because Apple is at least as ruthless in their business as Dell or Gateway. They have to be, because their products cost more without doing more. That's where the marketing genius comes in. The ipod is neat, but the sound quality is mediocre and the gimmicky "accessories" all have one thing in common: they are expensive without being better.

If new features make you all hot and bothered, you can get a helio phone for a lot less money that does more. The iphone is nothing special. It's shiny and expensive and Cingular (sorry, AT&T) sucks so your service will be shite.* Cellphone features are evolving so rapidly that it won't be long before this minor innovation is out-done by some new device. Verizon passed on the iphone when Apple offered them a deal, so it's a safe bet they've got a supplier that's working on something even shinier and more costly.

For a more on this ridiculous gadget and the press coverage, see Slate.com.

*Before they rolled into ATT, Cingular had more customer complaints nationwide than all the other carriers combined. niiiiiiiice.

first day of summer (it's all downhill from here)

today is one of my favorite days on the calendar. It's the longest day of the year if you live in the northern hemisphere.

Photo is courtesy NASA. thanks, NASA.

Hooray, summer!

That is all. funny is back tomorrow.

Hyderabad? no way, it's HyderaGOOD!

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Not sure what this is. Two million views on youtube, so I'm a little late to the game. Is this what the tech support people in Bangalore are watching on their lunch breaks?

alexei lalas hits crack pipe, talks to guardian

that irrepressible idiot Alexei Lalas is at it again, talking out of his ass to major media outlets. I analyzed his unique genius once before, so we're not covering new territory here. but I appreciate it when he says stuff that is deliberately inflammatory and stupid and we can unpack it a little bit.

Lalas and his group did a nice job bringing D. Beckham to the soccer backwater that is the LA Galaxy, but the truth is that a) Beckham is an aging, faded star that was fired from his own national team until very recently, and b) he is moving here for "branding" opportunities, not because he always wanted to play in LA and the other famous soccer cities (salt lake, houston, etc.). but that's not how Lalas sees it. He thinks that MLS is great. They pay him, so he should. I have a television and also a computer that talks to other computers through a cable in the wall, so I know better. so do you. in any case, take it away, Lexi!

We know when we're being patronised and I get so irritated when I hear the experts in England talk about David Beckham as if he's going into semi-retirement by leaving Real Madrid for Los Angeles.

I am an American, in your home market. Allow me to patronize you: Beckham is coming to semi-retirement so his wife can be in movies and tom cruise can try to convert them to scientology. She's skinny w/ obnoxious fake boobs. She was always meant for LA.

PS. Your team sucks and your product is crap.

That's ignorance of the first degree because almost every one of those critics has not even seen a single MLS [Major League Soccer] game. It's insulting to us and to our sport to say Beckham is on his way to Hollywood when he's coming to play in one of the most competitive leagues in the world.

I have watched about 5 minutes of one game and it sucked. I won't watch it again. Let me reiterate: I am in the LA Galaxy home market, and I refuse to watch it because it's shite. I do have the fox soccer channel, so I watch Premier League games. A lot.

There are a lot of stars in European football who would struggle over here. But Beckham has done his homework on this league, and his team-mates, and he recognises the merit of American soccer.

This is reductive and stupid. who cares how many 'stars' would struggle here? How many Americans are having any success in european football? (Aside from the goalies.) Three? Four? At middling or small clubs? And that's the best we can do. That's what I call merit. Man, we rule. America, f*ck yeah.

You know there's no accounting for bad taste. The fact that a segment of the world worships an inferior product in the Premiership is their business. In England our league is considered second-class but I honestly believe if you took a helicopter and grabbed a bunch of MLS players and took them to the perceived best league in the world they wouldn't miss a beat and the fans wouldn't notice any drop in quality.

You are an idiot. Anyone who has watched a soccer game in the states and compared it with the lowliest Watford v. Wigan game on the telly knows you are an idiot. Take your MLS team over there. You will get pummeled.

Lalas was really good at marketing himself. He had fun hair and a goatee and he was pretty good back in the day. Which is funny, because it's exactly what they will be saying about David Beckham when he gets here.

I'm not crying, I'm cutting onions, making lasagna for one

new series on HBO called Flight of the Conchordes. [thanks HBO for the photo] The guys are from New Zealand, in a band, trying to "make it" in New York. If you like Extras or The Office, I recommend it. The title of this post is a lyric from one of their ballads about crying. The show features the odd musical number, an agent that works out of the NZ consulate, and a rabid fan base of one. I think it's funnier than Curb Your Enthusiasm. Not a good example; I think paint drying is funnier than Curb Your Enthusiasm. Sundays @ 1030 PM. good times.

Another thing that doesn't suck: the new fantastic 4 movie. Really, it wasn't bad. It wasn't great, but for a summer pulp movie it was pretty good. maybe because the first one was atrocious, or because the other summer blockbusters are execrably bad (Pirates 3, Spider Man 3, Shrek3). The product tie-ins were really cheesy and forced, but whatever. It could have been worse.

speaking of tie-ins, I got to watch a commercial for Transformers and Chevy that included the line "Play the autobot game at chevy.com and help Chevy save the world!" typical understatement.

fookin 'ell

ahh, the Nurburgering. or is it Nurburgring? whatever. it's one of the world's most famous racetracks. they don't have formula 1 races there any more because it's too unsafe. it's also famous because you can drive on it in any car if you pay a fee. people ride around it in tour buses at the same time as ze germans are whipping around the track in their porsches. and then there's these guys. you have to watch it w/ the sound turned on to get the full effect. enjoy.

Just a city boy, born and raised in south Detroit...

The last episode of the Sopranos aired tonight. The series had lost much of it's intensity, especially in the beginning of this last half-season, when HBO decided to extend it by six episodes and didn't have enough plot to stretch. The show finished with a bang, though, and the last episode was one of those shows they'll be reviewing in film classes for years to come. Brilliant, compelling television.

I was especially fond of the music used to close the series: Tony listening to Don't Stop Believing by Journey. (Full disclosure: that makes the third time in three nights I heard the song, since they played it in the bars when I was out on Friday and Saturday, which says a lot about my taste in bars, but there you go).

I'm proud to say that I have a copy of the power-ballad classic on CD, and I defy you to resist it's awesome strenf. The song was Track 1 on a mix-tape a friend made me a couple years ago, before she moved back home. To north jersey. A funny coincidence. Nothing says north Jersey like a power-ballad, I guess.

thanks for reading.

ps. when are skin-tight jeans up to your armpits going to come back? that look is hot! you don't believe me, watch the video in the Journey link above. or go here.

so that's what $800,000 buys you

turns out that the London 2012 olympic logo cost $800,000 to "develop".
really.

have you seen it? yikes. they're going to use the same basic shape and change the color at random, or according to some pattern only they know. sort of like MTV in the early days. told you the 80's were coming back.

the head of the firm isn't talking, so we can't get any feedback on his vision. is it weird if a PR firm doesn't talk to the media? guess not.

Logo looks great, let's go back to working on new Coke

The new logo for the London olympic games has debuted. It's terrible. I guess it doesn't much matter, except that they spent a ton of money on it and it's their big shining example to the world and they came up with something that sucked. Great that you can "create your own" on their web page. Good luck with that.

I'd have loved to be in the room when they were doing the mock-ups. Here's example dialog of the conference room where all the comm and marketing majors got together to make some magic:

Comm major #1: We need a new logo for our london 2012 campaign, for the summer olympics. For starters, the candidate logo we made actually looks pretty good.

Overpaid Marketing Guy #3: F*ck that sh*t! Let's go the other direction. [Aggressively stubs out marlboro red cigarette into ashtray, because he's edgy and into marketing and edgy.]

Leggy Marketing Girl #7: huh?

Creative Guy [dressed in black pants, black turtleneck, IM Pei glasses]: Legible, colorful design will be so passe by the time 2012 rolls around. Let's do something edgy and cool for 1983, so that it'll be cool again by 2012.

Comm Major: yeah, that's awesome.

Legal guy [knows nothing about marketing or communications]: umm, but it might not work, because, ahh, if it's too edgy, it will look unprofessional and tasteless and inelegant and... ahhh... ugly?

Overpaid Marketing Guy #3: F*ck that sh*t! it's gonna' be awesome! [lights another cig]

All: Yeah!

[exeunt]