Really? This is the spot?

How does an advertising agency convince a room full of executives in the financial services industry that this is the perfect ad?

Featuring music by Joanna Newsom, this thing careens from violent confrontation to love story in the span of 60 seconds.



Really? So you'll take care of my money then?

So apparently there’s an election coming up?

I have avoided commenting on the campaign because while I participate in participatory democracy, I’m not crazy about politics.

If political debate really created a marketplace for ideas and creative solutions for some of the challenges we face, then perhaps I might join in.

But like any kind of marketing, there’s no time for nuance or deeper understanding so the conversation inevitably turns into a shouting match. And if you listen to the people doing the shouting it becomes clear that they’re not nearly as informed as they think they are.

Further, my experience suggests that the certainty of someone’s argument is usually inversely related to the accuracy of that argument. And if that’s a maxim that you think you might believe in, then the shouters are the last people that we should be listening to.

But I accept that you can’t run a campaign and win without shouting. That’s probably just a function of the scale of an election in a country this big. But the challenges we face are so complex…I just hope that whoever wins surrounds himself with smart, smart people.

Maybe when all of the shouting is done they can sit down in a quiet room and figure out just what the eff we’re going to do with this mess.

All I know is that I’m not smart enough to do it. And neither is Sarah Palin.

(Oh c’mon…that was pretty mild. And I would feel like total milquetoast if I didn’t at least allude to who I’m voting for. Besides, she’s been using an anti-intellectual appeal in her speeches and I think that we need more intellectualism, not less.)

A pumpkin on the porch and maybe a skeleton in the window....what else do I need?

What you need is Hallowindow. Mark Gervais created a great DVD that will keep the tricksters away!



He pins a sheet over the windows inside the house and aims a projector at the sheet. The text is reversed out on the DVD so that the copy can be read from the street.

He's been doing this for two years and has sold out his supply for this year. He promises more by the beginning of November so you can get an early start unnerving the kiddies in the neighborhood!

Your mother should know…

Among the readers of this blog, you will find an attorney, an artist, an economist, a surfer, a teacher, a karate instructor and an engineer.

You will also find my mother.

And mom has a history of adding value when she comes around. For example, in 1990 I started a radio program in Memphis. The station played old-school country music during the daytime hours and then I came on at dinner time and started spinning Dinosaur Jr, The Cure, Jane’s Addiction and the like.

I worked from 6pm to 3am seven nights per week.

The country people hated me. I occasionally received threats over the phone although they were all just blustery intimidation. Still, try walking out to a dark parking lot at 3:15am all alone after taking a call from a guy who was reading the studio address from a phone book. That happened at least a half-dozen times. I took to parking my car flush against the back door of the studio just to facilitate a quick getaway.

But it wasn’t all paranoia and black coffee. I actually developed a small but loyal following – especially among the alienated high-school types. Most calls I took were enthusiastic and I even got fan mail. I introduced and emceed a few rock shows in town and got to hang out with luminaries like the guys from Reverend Horton Heat’s band and School of Fish . The Hoodoo Gurus actually kicked me out of their dressing room!

So there were lots of upsides.

The most popular thing I ever did was interview my mother on the air after she had breakfast with Eric Avery, the bass player from Jane’s Addiction. It’s true. Let me set the stage…

Picture a classic New England town – wait, I’ll get even more specific. Picture the town from the movie The Witches of Eastwick. That movie was filmed in my home town. A pristine, coastal New England village with a white church on the town common. We lived across the street from that church in a house built in 1750.


This is the actual place I'm trying to describe. Is it any wonder that the producers of The Witches of Eastwick found this to be the "perfect, typical, charming New England town"?

My parent’s neighbors had a daughter who worked on the Lollapalooza tour in some capacity and when the tour was in town, she took Avery to her parent’s house for a home cooked meal and, as it turns out, breakfast at my parent’s house.

So there’s my mom, sitting by herself having a quiet breakfast on the back patio – probably some juice, toast, maybe some cantaloupe – with the dogwood tree in full bloom when this guy peaks over the white picket fence:



My mom’s interview about that breakfast was the most talked-about thing that I ever did on the radio.

So you can see, having my mom around has its benefits.

And that’s why I panicked when she told me that she listened to the first 5 or 10 minutes of Dan Carlin’s Punic Nightmares podcast (from my October 16 post) and that she couldn’t stand it.

“He sounded like the worst history professor I ever had. Boring and slow and dull.”

Yikes.

Slow and dull? That was the opposite of my impression. And I was so…forceful about that recommendation. What have I done to my readers?

What have I done to my cred?? !!

But upon further review, I’m going to stick with the recommendation.

The thing is, mom doesn’t have an iPod (mental note – iPod for birthday present) and she was sitting at her desk, listening and, well, just sitting.

Also, I could see her point for the first ten or fifteen minutes. It does start slowly. The host, Dan Carlin, is speaking in a kind of deliberate way at the beginning. But I think that’s intentional, his way of building suspense and working up to a crescendo.

If I can get mom to listen while she walks the dog or drives somewhere, I think she’ll get caught up in the story. If I can get her to give it 15 or 20 minutes in the right environment I still think it will pay off for her.

I also spoke to Bob, my history-major friend and drummer and while he hasn’t yet listened to the particular episodes I recommended, he is familiar with the Hardcore History podcast and he’s a big fan.

So while mom’s opinion matters, I’m going to stand firm on the recommendation. Get out there and give a shot. I would love to read your comments when you do.

Here's the short story on New England weather:

Summer is great.

Autumn is beautiful.

Winter is great if you have a warm sweater and the right attitude.

Spring is awful. Muddy, rainy, misty, bone-chilling, buggy rotten.

Plan your visits accordingly.

Fall in New England is all harvest festivals and hayrides and cider and clear blue skies. It smells earthy and crisp and good.

And also there are the leaves. And the thousands upon thousands of people who come to see them. Imagine fleets of Oldsmobile’s parked at knick-knack choked bed & breakfasts across New Hampshire and Vermont. They come in busses and RV’s just to look at leaves.

The weather reports in October track the band of “peak foliage” as it moves from Nova Scotia and Maine down through the White Mountains and across western Massachusetts into Rhode Island.

It’s never been my particular passion but this year a wet summer and September’s warm days and cold nights have made for unusually bright colors.

These two pictures were taken within five minutes of our house and it just reminds me how much I love where we live.

Warning: Podcast Recommendation

Somewhere in my travels I came across a podcast called “Hardcore History” by a guy named Dan Carlin.

Carlin actually does two podcasts; the second one is called “Common Sense with Dan Carlin” and, apparently, is more political in nature. Fact is, I’ve never listened to “Common Sense” and only just discovered it this morning while I was researching “Hardcore History” so I can’t give it the official TMUOTF imprimatur yet.

“Hardcore History” however, gets the TMUOTF gold star and his two most recent podcasts are mind-blowing, unbelievable stories.

But before I get into the juicy details, let me make some observations about podcasts. First, I love ‘em. My music consumption has been cut in half because of them. In fact, this post started as a eulogy for the music consumer I used to be but that seemed a little melodramatic and not entirely accurate either. More on that in a future post.

Podcasts, like blogs, fall all over the map because of their DIY nature. You can listen to some as background noise while you work and others require your attention and focus.

“Hardcore History” is in the latter category. It usually runs an hour or longer and works well for car rides and commutes. Carlin describes himself as an amateur historian. This love of history combined with his background in broadcasting plus a flair for story telling makes these podcasts great history classes even if you never liked history classes.

So if you do decide to follow these links, give them a fair chance. I think you’ll be rewarded.

Start with his current three-part series on The Punic Wars which took place between Carthage and Rome between 264 and 146 BC.

WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! Really, it’s so much more exciting and fascinating than you’re thinking right now. You’ve got to hear these. Please. Give me your confidence and trust on this.

Part I and Part II have been posted. (Scroll down on that link to get to both parts and make sure you listen to them in the right order! They are also available on iTunes .) It might be a month or longer before we get Part III but I’ll bet that you’ll be waiting like me to hear the conclusion.

(And Bob, I hope you’ll give a listen and offer some feedback from the perspective of a history major…)

Maybe I was a bit hard on Ringo...

I love me some comments from readers! The always reliable Arkay posted a great follow up to the Ringo Starr video below. I may have been a bit too hard on old Ringo judging by this video...