Yeah. Thanks, Dad.
It’s official. No matter how pedestrian they are, I love book store ads created by national agencies. It’s a vice, I guess.
This campaign by Saatchi & Saatchi in New Delhi, India. I’m not sure if that’s where the bookstore is located, though. You can see the rest of them here and here.
(Via Ads of the World.)
Oh. So that’s not how you do it?
Bill Green at Make the Logo Bigger reminded me of my favorite “how to raise babies” book – Safe Baby Handling Tips by Kelly and David Sopp.
(Check out the pictures here at one those “blogs” that are nothing more than a vessel for Internet advertising. Very funny.)
Across the vast landscape of the blogosphere, thousands of blogs sprout up each day – millions each month. Everyone wants a shot at instant publication and the even more instant gratification that is promised therein.
Chances are, just as many are abandoned; “We’re Open” sign cocked at a slight angle, florescent lights flickering, radios tuned to the static of a long since canceled format.
Blogs rarely die. They nearly always fade away, forgotten, given up for better pursuits, leaving a fossil record of past thoughts for future web archeologists to StumbleUpon.
For me, the example is Fresh Glue, a marketing/advertising blog from right here in Sioux Falls. A great site with some great insight. A blog I was always insanely jealous of, both for the attention it got and the quality of its posts.
Now, with Fresh Glue’s strongest personalities – P.R. specialist Nathan Schock and copywriter Greg Veerman – long gone, the blog has become seemingly abandoned. There hasn’t been a new post since October, and before that the content was sloping downward, uninspired. Some of the more recent contributors were well intentioned, but the passion just wasn’t there.
As Schock and Veerman went, so did the site. Fresh Glue helped fuel my love for clever marketing, introduced the company blog as a viable project and led me to meeting two of the area’s best marketing writers. It orchestrated the first (and, so far, only) Sioux Falls blogger meet-up.
Though this sounds like a eulogy, it’s not meant to be. Fresh Glue is still technically active. Meanwhile, Greg Veerman is still blogging about green marketing at It Grows on Trees and Nathan Schock is doing likewise at Greenway Communique, both continuing the tradition of passionate thought about a passionate subject.
And though this sounds reverential, it’s not. It’s just that their passion was so contagious. You couldn’t help but enjoy their insight. The old stuff is still up, if you’re willing to search for it; bones of a former successful venture, carbon-dated to a time when everything seemed to be coming up Fresh Glue.
We assume that the blogs – and the papers and the magazines and the television programs – that we enjoy are going to be around forever. They’re not. The odds are stacked against them. Media is fragile, touchy, easily out of favor and quickly forgotten. If anything, it helps us understand the value in appreciating what we have when it’s still around.
Sure, the posts still exist. But it’s the passion that keeps them alive.
Hold on for a few seconds. I’m going to get curmudgeony.
You don’t write a blog. You don’t post a blog. You don’t tell people about the blog you just wrote, about how you’ll talk about it on a forthcoming blog.
Blog is short for weblog, the entire entity that contains your writing. The Web site itself. The series of writings arranged in a descending chronological order. That’s a blog. Not the individual piece.
You write posts. Or articles. Or synopses. Stories. Reviews. But not blogs.
You write ON a blog. You write FOR a blog. But you don’t write a blog. That is, unless you’re talking in the technical sense; writing the code that will form a blog could be considered “writing a blog.” It’s like writing an article for a publication and saying “I just wrote a magazine,” or “You can read about in my latest magazine.”
That’s all. Semantics, I know. But it’s just something I’m tired of reading.
Issues Considered: Annoyances, Blogging, Words
I feel really bad saying this, but I read a Michael Chabon book last month and I’m quite disappointed.
The Little Blue Book of Advertising – Jeff Woll and Steve Lance
The Areas of My Expertise – John Hodgman
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union – Michael Chabon
Special Topics in Calamity Physics – Marisha Pessl (still reading)
Maybe it was because I read the book so quickly, hoping to get two books in this month. Maybe it was because I was actually more excited to start reading Special Topics in Calamity Physics. Maybe it was because I was worried about working extra, or because other things were on my mind. Who knows. Something about The Yiddish Policemen’s Union left a bad taste in my mouth.
I feel unfulfilled. I feel like I missed something important.
Let’s get this out of the way. Michael Chabon is one of my favorite living authors, and I was seriously looking forward to this book. Even if it was another Jewish detective novel. Even if I was afraid he was driving himself into a rut.
Recently, you can count on one of three things in a Michael Chabon book – detectives, comics or Jewish culture. It started with The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (comics and Jewish culture), continued with a short story in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #13 (comics), The Final Solution (detectives and Jewish culture), The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (detectives and Jewish culture) and is still going strong in his newest book, Gentlemen of the Road, which reportedly was originally titled Jews With Swords.
I’m not saying it’s horrible – or even that uncommon. Hell, I dare you to show me a John Steinbeck book that goes Salina-less or a Dave Eggers novel without a handful of supposedly clever pop culture references. But the guy that won a Pulitzer – a Pulitzer! – for writing The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, you’d think, would branch out a little. You know, see what else is out there.
I’ll stop. I promised myself I wouldn’t go on a negative tangent. The truth is I really liked The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. It’s a great plot; an alternate history similar to Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America, except this time instead of paranoid persecution, the Jewish community was simply given their own state: Alaska. Well, for a while, anyway – the state is scheduled to be reverted back to the United States, putting millions of Jews back into the country – and back into the bad graces of a nation that’s barely stood their existence in the first place.
The novel subtly deals with anti-Semitism and nationalism, and rewrites some famous events to help support the idea of a Jewish Free State – World War II continues past 1946, Berlin is nuked, Cuba attacks the U.S. in the 60s and various other hidden gems of revisionist history. But moreover, it deals with a lonely man with little place in life dealing with the possibility that he’ll be without place in a larger sense of the word in just a few months.
At its core, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union is a detective novel, a detective novel that just so happens to deal with the death of the man who might have been Messiah. Other than that, it’s pretty straight forward – aside from the Yiddish, the Jewish traditions that went over my head and the chess references.
So I’ll admit. It was good. I found myself enthralled by the story, caught up in the twists and convinced that it would end well.
It didn’t. At least for me, it didn’t.
The book was critically acclaimed. It’s on the short list for two major book awards. Everyone seemed to love it. But to me, there was something a little wrong about the ending, like Chabon was close to deadline and didn’t finish his thought before my copy of the book was published. Something was missing. The ending was about as unfulfilling as a side order of Chinese food, lacking substance and leaving me hungry just minutes after finishing it.
I felt cheated. Not mad, just confused and cheated.
I wondered if I had skimmed some important part of the book, if there was some small two sentence revelation that I had glossed over in a time of Yiddish repulsion. Maybe there really was weight in the ending of the book, some incredible twist that I had missed, dropping the ball completely and ruining the novel.
The thing is, I hadn’t. The ending makes sense. In fact, in looking over it again, it’s probably one of the only ways the story could end logically.
The problem was that I had no emotional tie to the characters. They always seemed unreal, disjointed, like the words I read were obviously written, instead of the words coming out of the character’s mouth. Something wasn’t believable from the beginning – the way they talked, the coincidences, whatever; it just didn’t feel real to me.
I didn’t care about the characters like I have in books past, like I cared about Joe Kavalier and Sammy Clay, like I cared about the silent German boy from The Final Solution, like I cared about Art Bechstein from The Mysteries of Pittsburgh.
And that’s why I’m disappointed. I love Michael Chabon’s writing. I know this won’t deter me from reading more of his work. But to know that I completely missed the boat – that despite all of the great reviews, I was unable to be drawn in – leaves me disappointed. Both in myself and in the book.
It’s a lot of pressure, I know. But I’m sure Chabon will be able to make it through.
Issues Considered: Books, Literature, What I've Been Reading, Writers
A love affair usually starts with some harmless flirting. A bold move. Three shades of justification and an unhappiness at home.
For me, it started with an album.
I wasn’t always a word guy. I read a lot, but I didn’t feel any real emotional connection with words, never considered actually stringing anything together, creating, emoting. Words were great, but they weren’t inspiring.
And then, just like that, I was inspired. A love affair blossomed. The album was Jawbreaker’s Dear You. The affair was with Blake Schwarzenbach’s lyrics.
After listening to Dear You all the way through for the first time, I started to keep a list of great song lyrics. This was in high school. Without surprise, I discovered that 80% of the lyrics I had written down were from that Jawbreaker album. Nearly everything else paled in comparison. The list was abandoned for lack of competition.
I’m surprised how often I forget about this. I’m lured down new avenues by new bands, treated to a great hook, surprised by a brilliant lyric. I’m bombarded by songs I should like, and often I convince myself that I actually do, that they match up to the stuff I’ve always enjoyed.
And then, just like that, life snaps back into focus and I come back to that Jawbreaker album. To Jets to Brazil. To Blake Schwarzenbach. To a writer that I consider one of the best ever – my favorite lyricist at least, and an underrated talent in creating heartbreaking and tragic turns of phrase.
When it comes down to it, Blake’s lyrics were instrumental in my becoming a writer. Sure, I was driven to write by more than a simple punk lyricist – but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t inspired by his wordplay. It shapes a good chunk of what I write today. Not to cheapen his writing, but everything was constructed to be memorable, to be clever in a way that all copywriting aspires to – each lyric was a headline, each song a brochure, each album a sales piece for his life, the longing, tragedy and happiness. Moods were swayed. Lives changed. People smiled, knowing a master of the craft had just convinced them that, yes, life sucked but, yes, there was hope.
Once every few months, I find myself writing love letters in my head to Blake’s lyrics. They’re overwrought with sappy idol worship and jealousy and disconnected from reality. At these times, I turn up the music and just sing along, knowing that my lot isn’t to recreate that which can’t be recreated. My lot is to take the inspiration and run with it.
I can’t convince you to take up a Jets to Brazil album and instantly fall in love. It’s difficult to explain why a person’s words can be so exciting and brilliant without simply experiencing them yourself. And I’m not so naïve to assume everyone’s tastes are like mine. But find a few songs from Jawbreaker’s Dear You, or Jets to Brazil’s Orange Rhyming Dictionary. Download “The Frequency,” an epic Jets to Brazil song. See if you can locate what it is that I find so electric. Let me know what you think.
Because it’s Blake Schwarzenbach Day at BMOWP. And this love affair doesn’t seem to be winding down any time soon.
“They’re playing love songs on your radio tonight/I don’t get those songs on mine.” – “I Typed for Miles,” Jets to Brazil
I’ve always loved this image.
From the comments below the picture:
The image is a panoramic view of the world from the new space station….It is a night photo with the lights clearly indicating the populated areas. You can scroll East-West and North-South.
Note that Canada’s population is almost exclusively along the U.S. border.
Moving east to Europe, there is a high population concentration along the Mediterranean Coast. It’s easy to spot London, Paris, Stockholm and Vienna.
Note the Nile River and the rest of Africa. After the Nile, the lights don’t come on again until Johannesburg. Look at the Australian Outback and the Trans-Siberian Rail Route. Moving east, the most striking observation is the difference between North and South Korea. Note the density of Japan.
As humans, we’re in danger of scrambling far past the point of comfortable living, piling ourselves higher and higher in areas of the world that aren’t designed to be habitable by our species. We build out of bounds when we’re free to do so. When we can’t build out, we build up . We push everything out of our way in a new form of Manifest Destiny, slaughtering open space and murdering the untouched nature of the great outdoors.
But when you look at a picture like this, you realize how much of our world is uninhabited. Not because we haven’t made it there yet, but because Mother Earth has devised ways of keeping us out.
I could study this map all day. It shows the difference between populated and uninhabited, industrialized and third world, crowded and spacious.It tells so much about the world – about our patterns, about our needs and about our migration routes.
All without uttering a word. All illuminated by the gentle hum of electricity.