If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

I was just reading this interesting article on male vs female stand up comedians.

It suggests that women aren’t as good at standing up and making people laugh because they don’t grow up in the competitive environment that men do. Apparently, those of us without fallopian tubes live a life of one-upmanship all day, every day from the moment we are born. This hones our verbal gladiatorial skillz and turns the funnier of us into sharper comedians.

Is that the case? My first instinct is to dismiss it as sexist bullshit, but then I think a little more and perhaps see something in it. In addition, I wonder if it’s sexist after all.

I have two kids, a boy and a girl, and my seven-year-old son is roughly 1,000,000,000,000 times more competitive than my three-year-old daughter. She is strong-willed, smart and always stands her ground, but unlike my son, she doesn’t seek to create a contest out of every single thing from Subway Surfers and Thumb War to getting dressed and brushing teeth. I know it’s merely anecdotal, but I can see where the guy who wrote the article is coming from. My son and his friends are painfully, constantly, ridiculously competitive, while my daughter can’t see why all that guff is so important.

Which brings me to the sexism point. There’s nothing to say that being competitive is a good thing. It can certainly lead you to strive to greater efforts and achieve more than you would otherwise, but it also turns life into a somewhat pointless series of meaningless contests. Even if you compete in some of the more lucrative areas, such as sport, you’ll only compete against other men, who have the same competitive advantage as you. And has this competitive edge helped men in other areas? Women currently dominate the music charts and have no trouble winning Booker prizes (both massive competitions), while comediennes such as Tina Fey and Miranda (yes, I know she’s shit, but she’s very successful) also manage to dominate their field. So perhaps their lack of overall competitiveness allows them to concentrate on making their work good for its own sake, creating higher quality stuff that wins in the end.

So men might be more competitive, but it might not matter.

As this is pure conjecture rather than science, what are your unfounded opinions on the matter?

Violin Nuthin’ But A G Thang (thanks, A):

The future (and past) of gaming:

Michael Bay’s profit per explosion (thanks, G).

Classic albums as novels (thanks, A).

Lionel Messi vs a Japanese robot.

Amazing pictures from below (thanks, S).

Pick your drug, choose your soundtrack (thanks, G).

Rear Window timelapse (thanks, K):

The incredible beauty of Earth from the International Space Station (thanks, A):

A wonderful new book we can all enjoy (thanks, J).

When celebrities were young (thanks, A).

Wu Tang vs The Beatles (thanks, G) and Wu Tang vs Hendrix (thanks, O).

Alec Baldwin interviews Thom Yorke (thanks, T).

When I was at AMV a few big Guinness ads were made.

I know there’s a lot of love for Swimblack, and one of my old art directors loves Dreamclub, but the two biggest are surely Surfer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zff9hVH3ptY

And Noitulove:

But which would you rather have made?

In the red corner, weighing in at about two million pounds, we have Surfer, winner of two – count ’em – two D&AD Black Pencils. I think it also won Channel 4’s contemporaneous poll to find the greatest ad of all time, the Creative Circle Platinum award and best ad at the BTAAs. However, it didn’t win the Cannes Grand Prix, nor Best Of Show at The One Show (it lost out to Independent Litany and We Know What Men Are Thinking respectively).

While in the blue corner we have Noitulove, winner (apparently by a landslide over Sony Balls) of the Cannes Grand Prix for film and Best Of Show at The One Show. It was, however, beaten to best ad at the BTAAs by Impossible Dream and won a single craft Silver Pencil for Special Effects at D&AD, so more popular abroad than at home. Overall, it won ‘more awards’ than Surfer, but that might be because it was entered in award schemes that Surfer was not.

So they seem quite even in award terms, but which would you rather have made?

For what it’s worth, I’d rather have made Surfer, but then I’d rather have made Surfer than any other ad in history.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=XS1dM6kmCx4

Three cheers for postmodernism.

And funny songs.

UPDATE: and another one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfiiWGWhB9g&hd=1

‘It’s a really weird commercial for soap’ must be one of the best lines of the year.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mx_GzNlQOxI

There are a few reasons why this isn’t my cup of Lapsang Souchong, but here’s the biggest:

The conceit of having the thing that’s on your mobile phone actually with you is sooooooooooooooooooo fucking old.

Here’s how old: I made an ad with that idea in 2000, and when I was making it we heard that a team from DDB was making a similar ad for a different mobile company.

That was thirteen years ago.

Thirteen.

Thir-fucking-teen.

It was played out before 9/11, before Lord of the Rings, before Jedward.

In all fairness, it has been done brilliantly since:

But it’s also been done really badly, as recently as last week:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcLmZMwPoCg

So as far as I’m concerned, it’s time to put this thing to bed.

Or flush it down the toilet.

Or stab it through the heart with a spike made of frozen excrement.

I was speaking to a copywriter recently and he explained that he had a nickname for the regular demands for a Grrr/Cog/Balls/Gorilla.

He called it Grrrballs.

When I were a lad and all round here were fields it was Tangounexpected (doesn’t roll off the tongue quite so well, but whatevs). Every client wanted a Tango or a Dunlop Unexpected (more a Tango to be fair. It was much more famous than Unexpected) and whether you were being briefed on Sugar Puffs or Pirelli the planners and client wanted to let you know how high they were setting the bar.

Almost always that’s not what they wanted. Most of them just wanted to look as if they were after a big, famous ad, so they pointed to the most topical one. But in those instances it was like the owner of Doncaster Rovers pointing to a great Arsenal game and asking for that kind of performance. None of the necessary factors were in place, so it was never going to happen.

But should we condemn the client who wants an ad way out of his league? I suppose it’s better than the client who goes straight for the crap, and in shooting for the moon you might hit the stars they really want. Then again, creatives are never keen on bashing their heads against a brick wall, and false hope can be pretty tedious.

Then there are the ones who actually mean it. They really do want a Grrrballs.

Few and far between, but most welcome.

Clutch them to your trembling bosom and never let them go.

Orson Welles explains how to gamble (thanks, T).

I don’t know what to say about Winny Puhh (thanks, J):

Why The Walking Dead and Toy Story are basically the same (thanks, G).

Celebrities photoshopped to look like ordinary people (thanks, P).

Beautiful movie moment portraits (thanks, T).

Best burglar of all time (thanks, J):

The greatest films of all time and their 1-star IMDB reviews (thanks, J).

Thug Kitchen (thanks, J).

Great design + great TV = … (thanks, M).

Most ironic things ever (thanks, J).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=o4vPyGY0SSc

The basic visuals are the same every time (really good looking food during the cooking process), but each is beautifully different.

Great campaign.

On Twitter today a CD friend of mine said that ‘still in the mix’ actually means ‘no one is taking that idea seriously anymore’.

Nice.

Others:

It is what it is = It is shit

The director’s working on a movie = He’s watching Jeremy Kyle but he doesn’t like your script

Can we see how it works in digital? = We’d like it to die

We haven’t heard back yet = Dead

Interesting (1) = Pretty good

Interesting (2) = shit

Keep going = I hate what you’ve done so far

Can we get more time on this? = Your work smells of poo

Any others?

I think people fear reinvention. We prefer the devil we know even if parts of that preference mean we might be less happy or less able to realise our most prized ambitions. Reinvention requires work, insecurity, all the uncomfortable sensations and thoughts you experience when you have to start all over again.

And yet it’s one of the greatest keys to success. Look at the careers of obvious serial reinventors, such as Bowie, Jagger or Madonna. But then look at the people who were seen in one pigeonhole and then broke out of it to become even more brilliant in another one.

There’s Peter Jackson, whose early films looked like this:

Or The Evil Dead’s Sam Raimi, who went on to direct slightly more mainstream fare such as this:

What about Steve Jobs? From tech whiz to movie mogul. Alan Sugar? Businessman to football chairman to TV star. Justin Timberlake? Boyband twat to credible musician and actor. Robin Williams? Mork to Oscar-winner etc.

It’s entirely understandable that making the decision to reinvent puts the willies up some people, but when you consider how well it can work out and how exciting it can be, the upsides can often outweigh the downs. High-flying women who want to be mums, then businesswomen etc; creatives who go into management; people who leave the rat race to sell organic cheese… You don’t have to put on a conical bra and have sex with Vanilla Ice. You can just go off in a different direction and see if you like it.

A while ago I did a career course with an ex-CD called Patrick Collister. He showed us a graph that explained how the most successful people actually leave their jobs when they are at their peak then go on to find another. I suppose that’s because it puts you in the strongest position for a move (as opposed to waiting till you’ve spent a few years on the down slope), but I think it’s also because you feel in control of your life. If you wait until you’ve failed then you’ll feel as if circumstances have forced you into being someone you don’t want to be. If you make the decision then you empower yourself.

So whatever you’re doing now, there are many other options, including every other way of spending your time in the universe (not including certain athletic pursuits that may have been rendered impossibly by your age or the way you have hitherto treated your body).