TheSpunker - by Ben Popken. Published by Gattaca, Inc.

Edelman Hires Popken, not just Steve Rubel

Dan Edelman, PR giant, hired Steve Rubel, blog maven. Dan Edelman hired me today, too.

In a deal announced a few minutes ago, Dan J. Edelman hired Ben Popken, some say advertising's number one ad blogger with a sexual euphemism in his blog name, to write a single post about him.

The very post you are reading now.

The deal marks a big move for Dan Edelman because this is his first blog post. "I'm ecstatic," said Edelman, "I think blogs are cool and I'd like to see my name in one. This synergy of money and banality is the perfect way to achieve my dream."

The deal is rumored to be worth at least $1 but neither party responded to our fawning efforts to weasle out more info. They also did not explain what a blog is or how many you need to make a good pig-roasting fire.

Corporate-ladder-climber, paradigm pusher and burrito-eating giant, Daniel Edelman (pictured) is #2 Art Director, #7 staff member and #1 with a bullet at Reflex Group. Technorati lists the man-about-town as "no posts contain" any references to him.

"Now there's one," mused Ben Popken from atop his aerie perch he's constructed atop his Brooklyn apartment. Inside the crow's nest he's better able to absorb and parse the morphing blogoshphere. "The journey of thousand trackbacks begins with a single post," he said with a shimmering green light shooting forth from his eyes.

Ben Popken takes over Consumerist

Gawker Media hired me to take over The Consumerist. We blog about consumer issues and take companies to task and such. Come over and check it out.

I'll be interested in ads, though from a more critical perspective. I may post here and there on The Spunker but Consumerist is going to take up most of my time.

Mad love to Manuel Galarza and Gattaca, Inc. for letting me get good enough at blogging that Gawker hired me away.  Special thanks to Joel Johnson's mom. If she hadn't found my post mocking her son I probably wouldn't have the new job. Shoutouts to everbody on the blogroll, you guys rock. Word up to Bucky Turco. Knowing a publisher was engaged by the blog added some extra pressure and incentive to make it better these past few weeks.

Thanks everybody, it's been lots of fun. We can still be friends, I swear.

Hit me up at ben [the darn at sign] consumerist.com with your consumer kvetching, hot ads and dishy industry dirt.

NY Mag Pens Blog To Riches Article, Annoys the Crap out of Us

This is what Jessica Coen, an A-list blogger, looks like. Get a sex change or a dye job but this is the necessary look to emulate for blog success.

There's a relatively gay article about how a few precious bloggers went from blog rags to riches in the recent issue of New York Mag. We're going to live-blog our bile as we read it. Since we're in the admittedly enviable position of getting paid to blog already, we think the sour-grapes odor that would normally stink up such an endeavor will be absent. We suggest you look at the article here in a new window and resize your windows so you can see the offending article and our commentary side-by-side.

9:30 am - Come across link via populicio.us. Note grating sensation sawing across spine. Save for later ranting on del.icio.us.
8:46 pm - Decide to do what we're doing.
8:46 pm - Who cares about Jossip?
8:47 - "Was steaming along nicely," certainly the use of passive voice is unnecessary.
8:48 - Talk of audience share and comparison to Gawker. "He was earning a comfortable 5 figure salary but not millions, what the darn, this is a glass ceiling." No it's not, shutup you tard. You mean he didn't have a multi-blog network to trade traffic back and forth from, he didn't have an eccentric rich backer, and he was inspired by Gawker's tone and style and he emulated it, a blog that was the vanguard for its niche and scope, and he hasn't surpassed its success? Damn, life is so unfair. There must be something wrong with the so called magic of this so called blogging so-called thing. Will NY Mag tell us? We must read on.
8:51 - Glancing over above comments we realize we still hate magazines. What is it about glossy paper that engenders this tabloid mentality, this gushing way of presenting secret information they've dug up, this way of making you feel bad about your pitiful life? We hate magazines.
8:54 - "But if you talk to many of today’s bloggers, they’ll complain that the game seems fixed. They’ve targeted one of the more lucrative niches—gossip or politics or gadgets (or sex, of course)—yet they cannot reach anywhere close to the size of the existing big blogs. It’s as if there were an A-list of a few extremely lucky, well-trafficked blogs—then hordes of people stuck on the B-list or C-list, also-rans who can’t figure out why their audiences stay so comparatively puny no matter how hard they work. “It just seems like it’s a big in-party,” one blogger complained to me." Who are these blog losers? Maybe they should learn to write better or learn how to find stories better and faster than other blogs and then share the information with higher profile blogs in their niche. Yes, it's a big in-party of people who are obsessed at being good at what they do. If you want in, get obsessed. The Spunker was started by an outsider newbie and rose to a position of some renown within 5 months. We certainly didn't do it by bitching about not getting enough trackbacks.
8:58 - We don't think dramatic lighting suits Jesse Oxfeld. However, Jessica Coen looks quite wanton. Why must mainstream media continually objectify her? Is it a desperate attempt to sexify a medium suffering from a severe glamour and glitz nadir? Or are they telling us their readers are shallow and superficial? Or does everyone just jones for Jess?
8:59 - "Then he counted an interesting metric: the number of links that pointed toward each site (“inbound” links, as they’re called)." Gee, that sounds like a fun metric. I wonder how he thought of using it. Technorati, what?
9:00 - We note the article title again, "Blogs to Riches: The Haves and Have-Nots of the Blogging Boom" and are further convinced it is a stupid title.
9:01 - "The A-list is teensy, the B-list is bigger, and the C-list is simply massive. In the blogosphere, the biggest audiences—and the advertising revenue they bring—go to a small, elite few. Most bloggers toil in total obscurity." You could apply this evaluation to fucking anything. Every category has its elite. Yes, the cost of entry to blogging is near zero. Yes, it is democratic. Yes there is elitism, an elitism that is based on a meritocracy.
9:03 - Has this guy ever read the Tipping Point or he just discovering this shit on his own, like that guy who invented calculus in a hut in India?
9:05 - Why is there a pic of Joshua Michael Mitchell next to a paragraph lead about Peter Rojas?
9:08 - Can we please shutup about Calacanis? Weblogs Inc sucks! No one actually reads that drivel, he's just managed to inject a misperception of his "network's" "value" into mainstream journalists clouded noggins.
9:13 - No bile for the past five minutes. The 40 of Balantine is settling in much like the NY mag article's author is into some not as annoying notions about how blogging actually works.
9:17 - Elizabeth Spiers, blah blah blah yay blogging. Done. The Spunker recipe for blog success: Mock people and things more well known than you. Post it. Tell the people you mocked about it. Post their responses. Post your response. Etc. We can't believe we just spent 31 minutes on this crap and will spend another 5-10 editing. Thank you NY Mag, you are the queen of pad.
9:36 - After doing some editing it occurs to us that it is furthermore gay that the author, Clive Thompson, should pretend to be shocked and appalled and concerned and confused by blogs, only to reveal himself to be a sometimes BoingBoinged and Gawker blogger whom Nick Denton allegedly calls to toss his salad "pick his brain." That doesn't seem very honest transparent and bloggerly. [edit: 7:39 am]

Schweppes Bottles Overtake European Fountains

A new ambient campaign for Schweppes fizzes all over Europe this summer. The Duval Guillaume Antwerp agency plans to fit fountains with the trademark tonic's bottle, "thus illustrating in real life the sparklingness of a Schweppes" (Sparklingness also means effervescence). We wonder whether, likewise, quinine will flow from the spigot?

Battle of the Ad Blogs: We're #4

The Spunker placed 4th out of 7 contenders for Battle of the Ad Blogs 2006 for best commercial ad blog category.  Thanks for your votes. Had we pushed a little more, we could've gotten 3rd, as that went to Fast Company, who only beat us by 33 votes. There was rampant ballot stuffing, especially by the agency blogs. Adrants, who won our category, also had about 80 votes discounted because either people submitted multiple votes from the same ip or used ip anonymizer programs while voting. We'd chalk that up more to overzealous fans as Adrants has more important things to do, like find pictures of women in various stages of undress that peripherally relate to advertising.

Though we’re glad the silly thing is over, it was a cool way to bring the community together and trade some traffic back and forth in a more free-wheeling atmosphere than the usual client-patron hierarchical system of story sourcing. Now we can get back to what really matters, posting ad porn.

Full Results [Ad-Rag]

David Hasselhoff trades in Knight for Pepsi Cap, Rides

How do you like your Pepsi-Cola? How about David Hassel-humped? This asexually lascivious image leered at Flickr user Downunder Dan from atop an Australian billboard and he was compelled to share it with us. Thanks, Dan! Now we can gouge our eyes out in peace and replace them with K.I.T.T's array of futuristic crime sensors. via.

ConEd and GHI Blindly Bully Blogger

ConEd and GHI insurance bully customers into paying on time, threatening cancellation, even if they pay they bills punctually, rants PR and blogging maven B.L. Ochman.

"I pay my bills on time. Yet last night, my Con Ed bill included a dire notice that my electricity was about to be disconnected. For the past four months, my health insurance bill has included a notice to cancel IF I don't pay on time...I called Con Ed and was told that it was a mistake and to disregard it. I asked the rep how to prevent this "mistake" from happening again and she said "people make mistakes, there really is no way to prevent it from happening again." <snip> I wrote a letter to the president of the [health insurance company]. He told me the threatening notices are sent to all customers at the request of GHI and that "good customers like you who pay on time can simply disregard the notice." NO! Wrong!"

Rather than “mistakes” B.L. supposes this is actually a new trend in customer intimidation. While it’s certainly bad policy, this bullish position is more bluster than bust. The cost for a company to acquire a new customer is far greater than squeezing extra dollars out of existing ones or the “indignation” of providing service to unpunctual payers.

How treating one’s customers with universal contempt pays off is beyond us. The secrets are probably divulged in one of those senior year MBA courses at Stanford Graduate Business School.

Once we were in a spot of debt with American Express. We received a call from an outsourced Indian debt collector sounding like they were accusing us of ebaying the vital organs of their eldest man-child. After resolving the issue some time later can you guess where we’ll never seek credit again?

Simply put, companies, can you please be nicer? We want to give you good money for good products but not if you’re going to be a jerk!

Scammed Ford Buyer Torches Dealership, Kills Self

Don’t screw your customers over: they may blow you up.

On February 4, George Georgettis, an apparently mild-mannered performance arts theater manager, purchased a new SUV from a Miami Ford dealership. When he arrived home and checked the paperwork, he discovered the price was vastly higher than he agreed to on the lot. Feeling scammed, he took action. But rather than quietly seethe, blog about it or even complain to the Better Business Bureau, he crashed his new Ford Escape through the dealership's window, doused the SUV in gasoline and lit a match.

Witness "Denise Cruz was in line at the body shop, and was standing near Georgettis when he lit the match. “And the next thing you heard was BOOM, and you saw flames all over the place,” reported CBS-4.

Eleven cars were destroyed in the conflagration, including an extra-special 'limited-edition' Ford GT worth $150,000.

This otherwise darkly comic tale of vigilante consumer activism turned tragic last night when the suspect allegedly committed suicide, hanging himself in the restroom of a flight from Washington to LA.

Note to Ford: live consumers make for better return customers.

Customer Torches Dealership [ CBS-4 ]

CareerBuilder's new Microsite is Bananas

Leveraging its monkey equity, CareerBuilder.com launched a new microsite where you can build your own primate co-worker, boss or receptionist and make 'em say funny stuff. There's pre-recorded lines and text-to-speech, but you can also call-in or use your computer's microphone to lay down your monkey business. Here's one The Spunker made. Now you make one and post it in the comments. Microsites and virals usually bore us but this one is top potassium stick. Cramer-Krasselt created the fine work. via.

New Shots Spot Wows with Toronto Mystique

Shot on the tippy top of the King Edward hotel in a ballroom left untouched for 30 years, director Graydon Sheppard scrabbles our brains with his new spot for Shots Magazine London UK. Graydon is a new director at Runt, the youth division of UNTITLED Toronto. Fresh, funny, disturbing and highly stylized. Just how we like it. For a neat trick, crank the volume. When played in The Spunker's office, our boss ran out to see if someone threw themselves off the smoker's landing in the stairwell.

UPDATE: If you're as enchanted by the locale as we, don't miss this photo gallery of the ballroom.

Blush Lingerie Outdoor Campaign Teases

Blush, a German lingerie store, has this fantastic outdoor teaser campaign leading up to its store. Click thumbs to expand. Agency: BBDO, Berlin. via.

Agent Provacateur Lingerie Releases New Viral

Agent Provacateur has finally let the last straps loose on their soft-core porn branded entertainment vehicle, "Tied up At the Office." With bondage, spanking and lots of frilly little black numbers, the eight-minute film is chock-full of product demos. The film's release obviously coincides with valentine's day and is design to "call up your wildest fantasies." So should your fantasies involve digital black and white videography, moans articulated by rising LED lights, claustrophobic closeups and mopettes licking each other dirty, Mike Figgis' short is sure to please.

Orange Paper Packages Tied up with Tape, this is One of my Favorite Things

200 seconds of stop-motion tape grows all over the wall in this fantastic orange commercial. After the jump, wait for the load and click the play button. The vid is for a UK mobile phone company but in the end you 1) don't know 2) don't care, it's just tasty to look at and you feel like calling anyway because the ad makes you feel good. via.

True Evite Crimes, Cont.

Mr. Curtis Coltrane, MTV Fashion VJ, throws a weekly hiphop party at his own expense and sends out silly evites. We already drew and quartered week three's, which provoked a retort from Curtis and, seeing as no good deed goes unpunished, also got us on his guest list. Hot on the well-designed heels comes this week's invite, which, besides apparently learning nothing from the our consultative advice, gave TheSpunker one of these "shoutouts" - a behavior in this so-called "hip-hop" subculture whereby one individual makes vocal recognition of another individual in a public forum. To wit, "This is it, the Caddy V-16, Purple Label Sweats, the Jordan 30's, the Alexander Nash Suit............ What do we all have in common? The fliest shit on the planet. GET FRESH FRIDAYS...! You know you shit is poppin when BLOG's start talking about you. All press is good press, unless you are Paris. Nahmeans?? check it out THESPUNKER.com." Hello to " Sneaker "Caviar" Steve, Sky-crombie-MTV, Rockwilder..., Beny "The New Body" (Fuck Buffy) and Michelle "PR" Huff " who may be two-stepping their way here today. Awesome. Do my Chucks and dirty jeans count as fly kicks and threads?

Dance Chicken Dance

Spotted our dancing chicken suit flyer friend again and scored an interview. Watch here as quicktime and here as .mp4. It's spicy and mad crazy like H5N1 bird flu. Previously: Chicken Suit Schadenfreude.

Let's Bitch Together

SHARPEN the RAPIERS. I'm doing a trial run over at Gawker Media's Consumerist starting tomorrow. I need your help. Send me your bitching, rants and diatribes about products and companies that suck. Pens keep exploding, mussing your pocket protector? Verizon never installs that damn land line? Stuck in Dell Hell? Tastes insipid, more flatulence? I want, no, need to know. I'll post 'em and if the complaint is worthy, bring the offending parties to task. Unleash the angst on popsumer@gmail.com. It's a rollicking experiment in consumer advocacy, active journalism and social media and you're invited. Sidebar: This development is further proof that the best way to get a job at Gawker Media is to mock it. UPDATE: Just FYI, I haven't put any Consumerist posts up yet. Later tonight (Wed) I will. There's actually two guys, Joel and John who are writing it now but there's no way to distinguish authorship...which is weird but we can take that up later, say in a week's time or so. For now, watch out for the ones with pictures and Spunker zest...maybe I'll make the first letters of every line a secret code anagram that only you, loyal reader, will understand.

Paint it Pink

Pink is the new pink, as L.A.'s new Paul Smith store beautifully illustrates. via.

Why are Canadian's Hands so Dirty?

Nice new work for Hockey Canada from Reginald Pike & Director Mark Gilbert. Why do all these Canadian men have one dirty hand? The answer may surprise your heart. Perhaps it's the ineffable guilt over giving the wrong present to their baby boys? Agency: DDB Canada

USA's Alchemical Secret: Turning Fat into Bullets

Radical. Search  over 7,000 US and Canadian print ads from 1911-1955 in Ad*Access's online database. The compendium combines the resources of JWT's and Duke University's collections. Keyword search across a variety of criteria including headline, company and target audience. A useful historical advertisement reference tool for discovering whether single girls can wear tampons, how wasting paper can get you shot, and how Love is wonderful we agree... but "there is nothing finer than a Stromberg-Carlson" in TV 1953. via.

Little Clydesdale that Could

I didn't understand the Budweiser "Little Clydesdale that Could" SuperBowl ad but luckily Hanasiana's got the inside scoop. It's a political allegory. "George W. Bush, represented by a young Clydesdale, slips into a harness and tries to pull the Budweiser beer wagon—which represents both the United States and the free-wheeling lifestyle he has only recently left behind..." Read more.

From Russia with Softcore #2

A while back we reported on the Russian cellphone company that forced its highest female managers to pose nude for a calendar distributed to its VIP clients and partners. Now Euroset's calendar is here. Forget bedroom, these are boardroom eyes.

Motion Graphics Attack LA Cityscape

Motion Graphics can make life beautiful. Check out this awesome vid by Three Legged Legs. A sight more fun than Eminem jumping around like a monkey who lost his bannana, no? via.

BMW Suffers "Google Death Penalty"

Adverblog: "In Germany, BMW has been trying to artificially boost the popularity ranking of its site. The mighty Google found out the automaker was cheating and apparently kicked it out of its index. As reported on [other blogs, notably outer court] BMW has been caught employing doorway pages to attract search engines spiders. While BMW almost immediately removed the pages after the news broke (after having them live for almost 2 years), apparently it was too late. German BMW are now suffering what is known as the “Google death penalty”: a ban from almost any imaginable top search result, and a degrading of the PageRank to the lowest possible value."

Don't you people get it? It's not 1999 anymore. All you have to do is have lots of great, relevant content and you'll get search engine hits. Want a better ranking? Make a better site.

Super Bowl Roundup

'Dern Superbowl ads rounded up. Black underlines lead to videos. All videos here at Google video.
Godaddy: Edited together at the last moment. After all the hype--whatever. The *uncensored* version is still tame.
Burger King: Scrumptious but didn't completely satisfy. Just like fast food. Have the commercial your way at the whopperette's site. They'll be releasing the "more mayo" version on February 8th and the "extra cheese" on Feb 14th.
CareerBuilder: One of the best spots. Spot on. Introduction of jackasses was a good twist.
Budweiser: Mostly boring except for the streaker spot. I didn't understand the one where the horse decides to pull the beer truck on its own. The fan one where everyone turns their cards to make a Bud and a glass and then pours it in the glass and everyone goes ah - a yawner. We know this is all done in CGI so there's no magic and you're left thinking, who are these ninnies with their hyper-coordinated placards?
Cadillac: Super sweet production values. However, it all got ruined because they put up the disclaimer "2007 model shown" before it actually got shown. It's supposed to be a tease, fellas, couldn't you have waited a few nano-seconds?
Fabio: Fabio hair gel or something. Gayitudinous Maximus. The Third.
Degree: We've already seen Stunt City a whole bunch but it's stays strong, long after initial application.
Ameriquest: The airplane awkwardness. Funny setup and punchline but it didn't connect to the brand for me. Sidebar: Does Ameriquest offer insurance if you fall off the Mile High Club?
Emerald Nuts: Dumb. No one cares about your nutty anagrams anymore.
Hummer: City stomping robots and monsters falling in love and birthing an H3. Decent showing, okay, you placed. Here's the two's love web site.
Motorala: New small cell phone shoots in from outer space as an asteroid. Millions years later man invents cell phone towers & you can actually use it.
Miller: Touch football isn't hardcore. Unless the stunt models are drunk. Blahh.
Mastercard: We love Macgyver. Macgyver has to buy lots of little things from the convenience store to make his bomb. Funny, self-aware of both brands and dare I say, priceless?
I'm not going to comment on the tv and movie trailers because really, who gives a crap. There's some spots missing but I started the game late and then fell asleep in the third quarter. Sorry, guess I wasn't sufficiently entertained! Go Steelers! Adfreak was good and live-blogged the whole thing. Go VNU! So did Adrants. Go indie blogger barons! So did Adjab. Go crappy AOL blog network! American Copywriter will have a podcast of them watching the whole thing up later today. Go sheep!

VOTE NOW FOR GODDAMN CUPCAKES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’m a contender!

This advertising blog got nominated for best commercial ad blog. It’s based on votes so please go to http://ad-rag.com/battleoftheadblogs/#5
Click The Spunker and click vote.

Don’t fret. You don’t have to be in advertising or know much about blogs. You can look around here and say hey this looks pretty good and Ben Popken seems like a nice guy. You don’t have to know I started the blog from scratch six months ago, that I’m currently ranked 6 out of 7 or that I’m competing against incumbent heavily corporate backed blogs. That the writing is incisive and witty, that the stories are often exclusive and fast-breaking scoops, that The Spunker brims with great-looking pictures—none of these facts need be of concern. You only need know that if we win - - - I’ll totally throw a huge party with free cupcakes for everyone.

It’s a very simple four step process.

1) Click http://ad-rag.com/battleoftheadblogs/#5 
2) Click The Spunker
3) Click Vote
4) Eat a cupcake

Yours Truly,

Ben Popken

p.s. voting ends February 10th.

Gaaagle

Go to http://gaaagle.com. It's a Google parody blog satirizing the Google China fiasco. It's set up like Google but provides a editorialized search results. Clicking on images delivers Google image results for "Chinese Freedom." Clicking Business Solutions gives you Google results for the "Greed." The real gems are the hilarious videos in their main blog section. They encourage you to submit your free speach related content in, which could end up looking very interesting if this gets traction. There's even concern that they themselves have been "Gaaagled":  We f[o]nd our home page listed when we search “gaaagle.com” and “gaaagle” in Google. Then,  the link disappears when we search again later. The search results for “gaaagle” and “gaaagle.com” dispaly a link to the Gaaagle.com home page and then, an hour later, the link is gone.  Try it yourself. Is this normal?  Has  Google Gaaagled Gaaagle?" Here's archived versions of the videos, Searching for Freebird and The Adventures of Confuscius in case they get further Gaaagled.

Stuff and Me

Wait! Stop the presses! A Million-dollar-homepage type site that doesn't suck! Bear with me here. Stuffandme.com. The way it works is you buy an ad on the front page, comedian Aric McKeown takes a funny picture of himself interacting with your product and then he puts it up into rotation. An ad for Running with Scissors Magazine shows him falling down stairs with scissors. One for the band Starlight Mints has Aric bleeding from the head on a dance floor. The ad pictured at left is for his improv comedy troupe. What's neat is he's providing editorial and unique content instead of just throwing up some lame bot. Mr. McKeown told The Spunker, "About 4 weeks ago I read an article about the million dollar homepage and thought, damn, that was a smart idea. I figured there must be another unique advertising idea out there. I came up with Stuff & Me about four hours of reading the article and racking my brain." Another plus?  "It's blatant narcissism, which makes me laugh."

If Sylvia Plath were a Media Buyer...

Contextual advertising fugdgeups happen in paper media too. German newspaper Landeszeitung Luneburg ran an article on the 61st anniversary of the Red Army’s liberation of the concentration camp at Auschwitz. Right next to it was an ad for a German energy company with the headline,  “E.ON provides today for the gas of tomorrow.” [Apt via Consumerist via Backspace via Ishbadiddle via Stay Free!]

Go Rocketboom Ads!

Oh my god, Rocketboom! The insanely popular and high integrity vlog has been ebaying their first ad space on ebay. Bids are up to $15,000. Currently, "Dave" and "Fivepercentcard.com" are the highest bidders. Fivepercent is, as you can probably tell, a crappy sign up for a credit card site. However, the inimitable Blogads network (which we're a part of) also placed bids up to 12,000. There's still 6+ days left so we'll see how this shakes out but Blogads is the one that deserves to win so far. I just hope they can pony up all the cash to compete with a 5% initial APR.

Insert Pithy Title Re: Advertising Vaudeville Here

Mikal Riech does improv. He's the CD for Mad Injection, a "hot dose of creative injection" spinoff of Mad Dogs & Englishmen. Every Wednesday at 10pm he performs in the "Harsh" improv troupe. Past and present students from portfolio shop Adhouse ("New York's smallest and arguably hippest ad school," says Advertising Age) where he teaches are invited to attend and mingle as well. Is it any good? The Spunker will have to attend and tell you what to think. (Thanks to Bill).

True Evite Crimes

So Bucky Turco, the Man behind Animal magazine,  and I were chitchatting back and forth and he wanted to know what I would think if I received the evite below from Coltrane Curtis, who is, as I later learn , the MTV Fashion VJ (bitchy critque follows the primary source doc). UPDATE: The evite's writer retorts in the comments. Word up.

-----
NEW YORK IS NO LONGER WACK ON THE WEEKENDS.... This is for all who will be in NY this weekend, and not dodging du-rags, chicken heads and bullets in Detroit.

Voltron is forming... With 2 weeks under our belt, this GET FRESH FRIDAY is really a good look. Pretty faces, industry heavy-hitters, eclectically sexy professional women, good looking well-dressed eligible men (pause) and great sounds (Soul)...!

The shit that I really love, is that folks were dressed, looking good. LOOKING DAMN GOOD....! Sneakers, frames, heels, good denim, handbags, watches, were all in the building. We got started a lil late, like 11:30, but we rocked till my NewEra and Scott Langton shit got sweated thru (Shameless plug....!)

 Off top, big shouts and mad love to, BOMBAY SAPPHIRE (Little big guy and Senor curly, thank you for your support), Pole Dancers, Young Hollywood, Twin Hype Lisa and Alex (lol), Drea @ Akademiks, Fifi, Coffey, Dao-Yi, Max-imum Miami, Natalie, Aixa & crew, Jessica and Jessica's Amazing Birthday Soiree.---snip---

This week, Bombay Sapphire in the spot, FOR LADIES ONLY... fellas, don't even fix your lips to ask for a drink ticket. REAL TALK....! ---snip---

 GET FRESH FRIDAY'S
@ PINK
199 Bowery
11pm- Until
DJ SOUL
__
COLTRANE CURTIS
MANAGING PARTNER / CREATIVE DIRECTOR
EPIPHANY / MARGEOTES,FERTITTA AND POWELL
411 Lafayette   Street
6th Floor
New York, NY
10003
Tel 212.460.0522
Cel 917.714.5101
Fax 212.475.3932
coltrane@epiphanymediallc.com
coltrane_curtis@mfpnewyork.com
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTE: This e-mail message, including any attachment(s), contains information that may be confidential, protected by the attorney-client or other legal privileges... ---snip---
- - - - - -

SPUNKER: Hmm, I would think... Pretty design on the flyer but who the fuck is this funny fat kid? Most importantly, what kind of music is playing? It takes me a while to figure out its Soul. That should be pretty high up there not all this other hootenanny and oh by the way we’re playing Soul. I would think why does this dude spend so much time talking about how good looking the party is? When I party, I want the music to be good, the drinks to be cheap and the people cool, not some fashionista “heavy hitter” scene. And then I would check out his email addresses realize this is MTV’s Fashion VJ and so that’s his whole thing and I would be like, oh ok this is kind of funny then. But his websites are shallow so he gets points off. And I would think it’s silly to use “W3” as your shorthand for world wide web. The title of your attachment is another branding opportunity, don’t waste it. And spending half your evite on shoutouts is lame. As is having a confidentiality notice. And I don’t give a whoop that you were sponsored by Bombay Sapphire, don’t put them in caps. So overall, unless I knew the people throwing it or otherwise had a really good reason, I wouldn’t attend.

ANIMAL: You're good. I was kind of feeling the same way. This mentioning of the clothes etc is what bothered me the most. And of course, it being way too fucking long. I kept thinking, can't this kid cut this banter down to 2 sentences?

SPUNKER:Yeah it’s like “First we looked good. Then lightened up after having enough sponsored drinks. Then we had some fun and got stinky in our good looking clothing. But first and foremost, we were good looking.” The *list* of accessories is pretty classic. Shit man, look at all these words you made me write. I should niptuck this whole thing into a blog entry.

ANIMAL:Yes you should, laf. (that may have been the point, I don't know myself, but sometimes I can be sneaky like that).

SPUNKER:Yeah aren’t you involved in the promo juice behind this? I thought I remembered coming across something like before.

ANIMAL: Fuck no. Please. Ugg. I should burn your email for even suggesting.

SPUNKER: Good. I’ll take my lighter away from the little framed certificate on the wall that says “respect for Bucky” as well then.

ANIMAL: No way. Ok. If you keep up the certificate I will forget your insinuation of me being behind such a terrible event, laf.

SPUNKER: The certificate stays!

Chicken Suit Schadenfreude

Having slung many a flyer in my day, my heart goes out to this poor soul forced to dance in a giant plastic chicken suit. Watch the movie I made of his pain this morning. One time I had to stand in the concession area of the Denver Bronco's stadium and belt out "Bronco bag! Get your free bronco bag!" to entice people to fill out home insurance leads. It was awesome.

BK Super Bowl Ad Leak

Here's a first glimpse at what CP&B's dancing whopertte ad will feature. I think that's a crowned Brook Burke in the background, confirming my suspicion that all those paparazzi pics are going to dovetail in a giant Burger King/Brooke Burke Super Bowl extravaganza. As you can see, there's a hamburger bun  and a princess/queen, possibly in mid-dance move. You heard it here first, there's going to be dancing whoperettes in the dancing whopperette ad. Pic from today's AdCritic email.

Cool Squiggly Stuff Animation

James Paterson makes tight animation and his flash is sick! Check it out here. It reminds me of my friend Stieg Retlin's cool work. We just hired on a new web designer, Stephen Mahadeo here at Gattaca (The Spunker's publisher) and he turned me onto Mr. Paterson's stuff when we were brainstorming about redesigning The Spunker. I'm thinking it's gonna be like Extreme Makeover/The Swan meets A List Apart meets Robotripping Swiss future-retarded-awesomeness.

Spike Jonze talks to animals for Beer Money

Hilarious work by Spike Jonze for Young & Rubicam Chicago for Miller Lite. Adhunt pointed us to these six animals talking off-camera about acting in beer commercials. Check it out here.