If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

I’ve been helping out my friend Alfred at Anomaly with his brilliant project, 1000 Cranes For Japan.

It takes the Japanese tradition of folding origami cranes to be granted a wish, and turns it into a way of showing support and understanding for those poor buggers who have been well fucked up by the tsunami/earthquake.

So in exchange for a donation, you can download one of the patterns done by top illustrators, such as:

Zeitguised

Jeff Metal

And Stuart Patience

Fold ’em up and off you go (I chose the first one).

The campaign has had loads of coverage, including Creativity Online’s pick of the day.

So, brilliant stuff from everyone involved (Unit 9 did the site).

UPDATE: you can consider every donation one in the eye for the planet’s biggest cunt.

I was reading Dave Trott’s blog today.

It’s an excellent post on one of the ways in which awards have become devalued, making them more about congratulation than stimulation.

I’ve lamented the current awards scene here, here, here, here, here, here, here etc.

And it seems obvious to me that the whole shooting match is fucked.

They don’t help creatives, they’ve done nothing to improve the recent standard of the work and they have a fraction of the respect they used to have.

But they keep going, high on the oxygen of cash and pointless circle-jerkification that means nothing and adds nothing to the industry as a whole.

So I think we need to take action.

This blog is intended to test the general opinion of what a boycott might achieve, and indeed what you would like it to achieve.

Please leave your thoughts in the comments section and we’ll work out what to do from there.

Thanks in advance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9vu3dUMQ1s

(Thanks, A.)

I think this is a great idea.

It’s annoying when people have great ideas and those people aren’t you or people from whom you could directly benefit, such as members of your family.

Brilliant Amazon Mr. Man reviews (thanks, D/M).

If you enjoyed the honey badger, check out the vampire bat (thanks, C):

Brian Cox: wonders of the stoner system:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhDF6_Fyv0o

A brief history of the title sequence (thanks, S):

Paris shot beautifully with a stills camera (thanks, N):

One for all you Chelsea fans (or haytaz. Thanks, J).

Interesting ad for the film Limitless:

The Yoga Farmer:

Super Mario in real life (thanks, G).

Please submit some agency cards so that they have a few that didn’t come from Iris.

And for anyone looking for something intelligent on which to waste their time, normally you’d be in exactly the wrong place, but today you can check out this excellent blog post from Roger Ebert on listening to music.

It’s a USB stick with all the work on it.

Makes a nice change, and you can view the TV.

Quite creative, innit?

D&AD, the gauntlet has been thrown down.

You can do so here.

It takes a couple of minutes.

Or you can keep the money for yourself for, y’know, those couple of pints you need.

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

Apparently this was based on The Trip. I can see the resemblance. They both involve two people speaking in a restaurant:

And there the resemblance ends. Otherwise, they are as similar as chocolate mousse and shit, or waking up in bed next to the person you love and waking up in a Turkish prison next to a sweaty rapist called Mehmet.

But back to the new Bernard Matthews campaign.

Other excruciating aspects of it include the fact that Martin Spandau is only the first of a campaign that involves (…wait for it…) Nell McAndrew! Yes! Nell Fucking McAndrew (foreign readers, she is as famous in your country as she is in ours). What do I know about Nell McAndrew? Well, she was one of those women paid to go around pretending to be Lara Croft until someone fitter came along the following year. Hang on, she’s only on fucking Wikipedia! That tells me she married a man called Paul Hardcastle (not that one) and was Rear of the Year and Yorkshirewoman of the year. But why would she be chatting to Marco Pierre White about turkey? Fuck knows. Why is Martin Kemp taking to Marco about turkey? Fuck knows. But I’m guessing these two (there’s a third, but I can’t remember who it is. Bobby Ball? Marti Caine? Eddie The Eagle Edwards?) were all Bernard Matthews (the company, not the man. The man is dead. Cremated at gas mark 7 for three and a half hours) could afford. What was the budget? 55p? Shall we have a whip round so they can afford three more famous people? How about the lead singer of Cotton Eye Joe, or the girl who said Ro-land in Grange Hill? And the fucking conversation! Don’t get me started on the fucking conversation: ‘Turkey? Is it Christmas’ ‘Turkey is one of those meats you can eat every day of the year.’ OK THEN, NAME ME A MEAT YOU CAN’T EAT EVERY DAY OF THE YEAR. GO ON, YOU ARSEHOLES. ‘That is absolutely delicious.’ I’LL BET IT FUCKING IS. IF I PAY YOU TO SAY YOU PISS IN A BOWLER HAT WILL YOU DO IT MARTIN? WILL YOU? WILL YOU?!!!! OF COURSE YOU WILL. IF YOU WERE WILLING TO DO THIS FOR MONEY THEN YOU’D SHAG A GOAT FOR A FIVER, WOULDN’T YOU? SHAG IT, KILL IT, EAT IT, SAY YOU COULD EAT IT EVERY DAY OF THE YEAR THEN TELL ME HOW MMMMMMMM FUCKING DELICIOUS IT IS, YOU LYING WANKER. ‘I think Turkey is, without doubt, the king of birds.’ WELL WHY HAVEN’T I SEEN IT ON ANY MENU OF ANY MARCO PIERRE WHITE FUCKING RESTAURANT OUTSIDE OF THE RUN-UP TO CHRISTMAS? OR ANY GOOD RESTAURANT FOR THAT MATTER? DON’T GET ME WRONG, I LIKE TURKEY. I LIKE IT A LOT. YUM, YUM TURKEY, BUT THEY DON’T COOK IT IN GOOD RESTAURANTS AND MARCO CERTAINLY DOESN’T COOK IT, THE LYING CACKWIPE.

And look, even the outtakes are shit:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBppze3vX_0

*Lyrics competition. Where is that line from?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0A0jVkFs3C4

(Thanks, K.)

I also think Adidas have done a very good job of melding their sport’n’entertainment vibe without making either side look shit.

And the kidz will love it.

Have you seen David Eggers’ TED talk?

It’s absolutely inspirational.

So much so, that when I saw it last year I was keen to get involved with opening one of these shop/schools myself.

Unfortunately, the website said they couldn’t cope with the enquiries and were not able to think about opening a new one anytime soon.

Fortunately, they were already bringing this one to life:

The website for The Ministry of Stories is here.

Why not volunteer/donate/pop along?

(Thanks to Pete for pointing this out.)

The good people of This Is Real Art (Paul, Nat, Andy, Megan and others) have come up trumps again.

Not content with creating my website, which I fucking love, they also very kindly took on the brief to do my online portfolio (Ideally, I’d have liked to have had it all on one site, but my website is a bit odd so I needed something simpler for any prospective employers).

It’s simple because I asked for it to be that way (all the ker-azy stuff is on my website) and it’s beautifully designed because TIRA don’t know how to do anything else.

Check out their website. If they do the kind of thing you’re after then I couldn’t recommend a nicer bunch. They also work with several excellent charities (including my favourite, Reprieve), so that proves they’re thoroughly good eggs.