Whose Faulty Vision

Clash of the Titans

If Jack Bauer and John McClane got into a fight, who’d win? I bet the fight would go on for hours, and they’d both have little scabs on their faces, and there would be lots of explosions.

Trapped by Chocolate

Doesn’t your heart just bleed for this guy?

Pitches Right and Left

I have rather an embarrassment of pitches at work at the moment. I’m already working on one big pitch, and I just got asked to help out on another one. Obviously I can’t name companies or give details–I don’t like to identify companies I work with in this blog to start with, and pitches are particularly confidential–but these are both big, exciting brands. As part of the second one, I may have to fly out to Los Angeles on Thursday night–kinda last-minute, huh?

Fringe is Over

The Fringe Festival is, sadly, over. My final tallies:

• # of shifts I’ve volunteered: 14
• # of shows I’ve seen: 15
• # of those that were one-performer shows: 5
• # of those that were autobiographical: 3 or 4 (depending how you count them)
• # of those that were self-indulgent enough that I was tempted to walk out: 2
• # of shows involving characters who were associated with theater (actors, directors, writers, etc): 5
• # of those that had a character who was writing a play about a character who was writing a book about a character who was writing a book, and after that I got a bit lost: 1
• # of more years I want to be involved with the Fringe: As many as I can

Childhood issues

Message to the actress/writer of the Fringe show “Elanore alla Barre”: It’s good that you’re working through some issues from your childhood, it really is. But could you do it with your therapist, instead of making 50 people watch you act like a 3-year old for an hour? Thanks.

Seriously, that show was an hour of this woman acting like a 3-year old, playing with her toys and making messes and so on. An Italian 3-year old, at that, so I couldn’t even understand what she was saying, except for the bits that were similar enough to French for me to make out.

Sights of Connecticut: Henry Kissinger and a Tractor Marriage

I never blogged about my trip to Connecticut last weekend. It was a really nice, relaxing trip to a beautiful town. Two anecdotes:

Christmas and I and my relatives were at a restaurant on Saturday night. We were waiting to be seated, when a tall woman comes through, brushing past Christmas. A shortish guy and another couple come in, and all four are quickly seated, while we continued to wait. I thought the guy looked kinda like Henry Kissinger–turned out it actually was Kissinger, and the tall woman was his wife. So I’ve been within a couple of feet of Henry Kissinger, and Christmas has been treated rudely by his wife.

Earlier in the day on Saturday, we all went to a little county fair. Among the highlights were a 4-H dog agility test, a bunch of cute animals (I’ll post pictures eventually), a motorcycle jump show…oh, and a couple got married in the tractor pull arena, and then celebrated by competing in the tractor pull. Seriously. Isn’t that…um…romantic?

Future of Entertainment

As I watch through these focus groups, one of the questions is about the future of entertainment technology. These are people who are a little more plugged-in than average, but still pretty mainstream. Their answers are things like, “You’ll be able to use your cell phone to record something on your DVR.” “You’ll be able to see people face to face when you talk to them.” “You’ll be able to watch TV on your computer.”

You know what? You can do all of those things already. And I don’t mean, you can do them if you’re a major geek: this is all buy it off the shelf today, plug and play stuff. Things are changing so fast people aren’t aware of everything they can do already.