Across the Universe

I saw "Across the Universe" last night - the movie about the Beatles, the sixties, the Vietnam war, the Iraq war, and, well, love. It was wonderfully directed, with many of the songs ending up looking better than 99% of music videos these days. But... somehow... it was only OK. Some of the songs ended up feeling like set pieces, unconnected with any plot that was going on. The plot was much like early Beatles songs, boy meets girl, they fall in love, break apart, come back together. The main problem I had was that the movie was too infected with the ghosts of the 60's (Janis and Jimi were there, along with John, Paul, George and Ringo) to ever really come off as a new piece of work or a new statement about that time. While beautiful (and some of the songs really were covered amazingly - Joe Cocker doing"Come Together" was awesome, and the rendition of "I wanna hold your hand" was great), it was all somewhat of a rehash of everything we've ever seen about the sixties.

But it really was beautiful.

My favorite brands - Burger King

He creeps out my mom, but I love him. Burger King returned to the "Have it your way" slogan, introduced "The King", who is undenibly strange, and started producing some of the most innovative commercials and advertising schemes around. "Subservient Chicken" was a web phenomenon, using flash and some very clever word logic to make users feel in control of a dude in a chicken suit. The character went on to star along with the King and Brooke Burke in the Burger King themed games that came out for the XBox last christmas (and yes, we played them. A lot. And apparently so did lots of others - it drove their profits up 40%!) One of their newest commercials shows a regular chicken practicing kung-fu (with that one old Asian dude who ALWAYS plays the "Old Asian Man") Its totally brilliant. And best of all, the whole new marketing campaign has pulled Burger King back from the edge of disaster Who says marketing doesn't make a difference?

Kentucky Fried Chicken

Its hardly new news, but I wanted to comment of KFC's decision to return to being Kentucky Fried Chicken. This ends two trends I'm more than glad to see the back of: Acronyms for EVERYTHING, and the use of very boring san-serif (and occationaly semi-serif) fonts for EVERYTHING. This returns them to their original font from 1952 ... and a welcome return it is. Now they just have to go back to an original theme song on their commercials, since Sweet Home Alabama is not only over used already, but has nothing to do with Kentucky. Remember "We do chicken right" guys?

Do you know where your makeup comes from?

A tidbit from my pink book: Your makeup is full of dead bug blood (as are your lollipops and your pink beverage). No, seriously. There's a little bug called the Cochineal, which lives as a parasite on cactus. They are raised, killed, ground up, purified, and are one of the most popular food and makeup colorings around. In the US, look for "Natural Coloring" and "Natural Red 4" - in the EU its known as additive "E 120". Mmm, bug juice.... (not that this will stop me from wearing lipstick or eating pink popsicles)

The book

OK, here's what I'm working on now: a book all about the color pink. So if you want to help me out by giving me photos of things that are pink... especially things you don't normally think of or expect to be pink. And if you have any ideas of things I can write about, then awesome! I've got 40 pages of reference material and over 200 photos so far, but I'm really just getting started.

ClinicaHealth becomes Inspire!

One of the companies I'm currently working with, ClinicaHealth, has become Inspire, complete with a shiny new logo courtesy of yours truly. It links in the old ClinicaHealth happy dude with the Inspire name - and gives him a little more pizazz in the process.

Inspire is a place where you can join or create support groups around health issues. There are more changes that'll be rolling out soon, so keep your eyes open!