“Be Berlin” billboard around the corner from our agency.

Sad and funny at the same time. But mostly sad.

Faris Yakob talks about, well, a lot of stuff, from T. S. Elliot and William S. Burroughs, cut-up technique in literature and, of course, sampling-music like Jungle, to John Locke, Luke Skywalker, unicorns, more Jungle music, The Art of Remixing, its cultural approach of “inviting participation”, video editing, augmented reality and basically every other example on the planet to explain “A History of Recombinant Culture”, which is, why I am not going to. Just watch the lecture from Interesting NY.
And by talking about it here I’m pretty much proving his point.
I’m taking something from somebody else, placing the content in a new environment, adding something new to it, creating a different frame for it, and change, by doing so, its meaning. Which is, by itself, nothing new, but that’s why the lecture is called “A History…”, from then till now, and that’s where that comes from.
In a way our “Remixing Society” was inevitable because there is a certain need to rearrange inside of us. Like Yakob says: It takes something to make something else. And by creating something we always create a bit of ourselfs along with it.
And as he quotes William Gibbson: The remix is the very nature of the digital, remixing is the very nature of human beings as well. Because that’s what our brain does the whole time, remixing and recombining reality. If only to understand the plot our surrounding is telling us.
While it might have found it’s first expressions in art, like Yakob says, it now has spread and is used by the masses - and became a culture.
The question “What’s next?” is just one of the issues I hopefully will debate tonight at the Odessa Bar in Berlin at Beersphere, an event “where people who are interested in this sort of thing hang out and meet nice people and drink heavily [optional].”, as Faris Yakob puts it himself. “It grew out of our love of coffee mornings and likeminds and beer. We did it a few times in London and NYC and it was grand.” Around here it’s hosted by David - who turns out to have a really interesting blog, if only he was blogging - and looks like the kind of event I always wanted to do with Beersandideas in the real world, so I’m curious how it’s going to turn out. Probably brilliant.
Unfortunately the only person I could have invited who is interested in that kind of thing - and lives in Berlin - is spending the evening at the Roisin Murphy concert.
So if you as well are attending the Roisin Murphy concert and you see a beautiful little planner jumping around to her favorite music, invite her for a beer. It’s on me.

Faris Yakob at Interesting New York from David Nottoli on Vimeo.

“Gum Election is a guerilla art project which started in New York City in October 2008. It should encourage people to vote on November 04th and also not to spit out their chewing gums carelessly on New York Cities already dirty streets.”

Take a look at the blog HERE. 

I think it’s great. And “Due to the heavy support of German bloggers three more posters showed up in Germany. This time in Berlin.”

But Düsseldorf is also in the mix. Who would have thought. Jake?

Again ONLY IN AMERICA: Sarah Palin as possible next Vice-President. Someone made an effort and simply cut together some of her worst moments. One of my eyes laughed and the other cried like a baby bathed in onions. Watch for yourself!

Another item from our series ONLY IN AMERICA! I’m a little astounded by the warning close to the end “keep out of reach of children”. I would have expected a miniature version for our beloved kids. How else should they survive such harsh times, without their back-up rack?

Bit swamped and tired so I haven’t been posting a lot lately but here’s a few ads I like for a reason.

They’re not new or anything, I just found them in my beers-folder, and I recognized something.

If you have a solid strapline, use it. There is nothing to be ashamed of if it’s a good line and improves the ad. And if you are a copywriter and your AD tells you the line people will need to actually understand the ad needs to be so tiny that nobody without a magnifying glass can read it, you should be allowed to bitch-slap him in the face.

It’s nothing but odd to think your ad becomes more award-appealing or - God forbid - arty if you can’t decipher what the hell it’s trying to sell. If anything it only makes it look like spam. Don’t get me wrong, I really, really like the campaign for Armstrong, and I like the art direction as well, it’s just that it took me ages to find out what’s going on there.

And then look at the Canadian Club ads. One word: ballsy.

It’s not a bad thing to try to talk to other people if you got something to say.

And the line “Damn right your Dad drank it” cracks me up every time.

Okay, it’s a pretty difficult thing to post a note about singer/songwriter William Fitzsimmons here on beersandideas, mostly because people wouldn’t recognize me as the badass that I am anymore and rather ask me for tips about interior design next time they see me, but what the hell. I mean, Chuck Norris had a beard, right? The great Evan Tanner had one.
Anyway, the guy is a genius. Buy his records, honestly. The music gets especially exciting when his songwriting skills are combined with some light clicks-’n-beats in the studio-versions (there’s better songs than this but this is the only one I’ve found on Youtube).
And yes, you will want to grab the dude at his shoulders sometimes and yell at him: Hey, Beardface, get rid off the glasses and stop hanging around with homeless guys, life is not that bad, really. But I guess, sometimes it is, and there you go.
The other thing is, that I really like this kind of live-concept: there is no audience really, but it is streamed live via internet. And to prove that to the artist he gets bombed with short messages from all kinds of monitors in front of him which should absolutely not distract him from his own lyrics what so ever. Brilliant move, production company. Why not have a bunch of strippers pole-dancing in the studio? For better concentration, I mean.
The stage design is also sweet by the way. With all the glowing balloons in different colors, so cosy and whatnot. I mean, like I care about interior design. Pfff. Let’s go push a box of kittens downstairs for funsies than wrestle with sharks.

HERE is the link to the article.

I know this film is over a year old, but if you haven’t seen it then defo check it out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0jkv2bRFgQ

and the lead kids’ (Thomas Turgoose) new film ‘Somers town’ looks great, although i haven’t seen it yet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCYkp97Nd7w

We all know the situation.

We watch a horror movie about a bunch of people being atacked by zombies, werewolves, zombies, killers, psychopaths, zombies, mostly zombies, and these nutjobs continuosly are doing the exact wrong things to survive. Everytime we are yelling, no, please, do not be a total idiot and open that door, do not help that guy, he is already infected and will eat you later on and no, do not shoot him in the leg, that is pointless, what is so hard about shooting him in the head. Well, now you can make those decisions and proof that you are not an idiot. The Outbreak is a short film where you can make choices whether the main character lives or gets eaten alive by freaking zombies. It is as completely awesome as it sounds and you can check it out HERE. 

And, err, by the way, I got killed a total 7 times before I survived. Zombies are tricky.

Seems like I should be watching more horror films these days.