Favorite Spots

It's Clio season, which means that the advertising community is giving out awards for the best spots from the previous year. Clios are given world-wide, so a lot of the best spots aren't things you can see on TV. Here's a selection of things that I thought were fantastic.

Of the Clio winners, this one is probably my favorite. It's a spot for Carsburgh Draft beer that's a great parody of all the overblown movie trailers you've ever seen. It really made me laugh when they draw out the word "bloody". Supposedly the advertising professionals just loved this one as well, but mostly because it celebrated everything they like. Great concept, exotic location and very, very expensive.

This ad for Sony BRAVIA tvs just blew me away. They took a quarter of a million superballs to the streets of San Francisco and just let 'er rip. This is just the kind of thing that appeals to me, the visuals are just stunning and I've got enough 10-year-old boy in me to love the sheer beauty of potential energy in action. I'm not saying it makes me desperate to get a new TV or anything, but I think that the best advertising doesn't go out of its way to force a brand on you. The ad barely mentions the brand. Advertising is omnipresent enough these days without being beated over the head by ads. Unless it's done ironically.

This American Express Ad is probably one of my favorite things on TV right now. It's part of their series of short films by famous directors about thier lives and passions. It's got all the hallmarks of a film by Wes Anderson; fantastic art direction, self-referential parody, sly humor and Jason Schwartzman. It's a great ad for American Express, though it really isn't until the end that you're really aware that the product being advertised. Someone wrote that this is the best Wes Anderson film they've ever seen, mostly because he didn't have enough time to indulge his faults like clunky characters and too-clever setups. I don't know, I quite like Wes Anderson films. Give me "Rushmore" anyday!

If you've got a favorite ad, I'd like to know about it. Post me a comment!

Show Update

It's Mother's Day. I was able to call my mom despite having a matinee of "Fools" at 2 PM. The call to be at the theatre was 12:30 PM, so that led to a quite truncated morning. The wife and I were able to get the grocery shopping done, thankfully since the forthcoming week also promises to be a hectic one. But more on that later.

I haven't posted since we opened our show in Olathe. The opening night was great, we had a whole crowd of theatre people who were a great audience. After two weeks of running the show without any kind of response to the jokes and such we were putting out into the dark theatre it was a real relief to have a roomful of people. The show really went well that night too. Though I hate to brag, it was a small triumph. Of course, the Saturday show was quite a letdown. The crowd was smaller and much less responsive. It's extremely difficult to do comedy without an audience that laughs. It was almost payback for having such a good opening night. I said to Tricia then that my worry was that we'd had our best audience too soon.

The next week was action-packed, though the show was dark. Tricia's car broke down (distributor) and she decided that she'd like to have a new car. It would have cost about 25% of the car's total value to fix it. She drives a 1997 Civic, so it's most likely time to get her a new car. It's frustrating because I have to wonder how that will affect our ability to buy a house this year, but she does need a car. We've been shopping as we can, given the schedule that's going on. She's decided on a Corolla, so that'll be one more Toyota Corolla among the people I know. It seems like all the people I went to college with around here have Corollas in their lives. Hopefully we'll get a different color than "Ubiquitous Blue". I hope we can get a good deal. If you have any pieces of advice on bargaining with the dealers, please post a comment! I'll post the details of what happens here, since it's likely to be a great story, win or lose.

This weekend we had the show again, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It was a very tough run and I'm very tired tonight. The Friday house was good, responsive at least. I think part of that was that the cast was glad to be back together. We worked well together and made the show great. I was pretty happy with it. Then the Saturday house was great, as was the show. It was one of those nights where the audience and the performers are feeding off each other. The director hugged me that night and told me that I had been "on fire". High praise and I hope I warranted it. Today's matinee was tough to get to, but we made it happen, despite being at the most 75%. I think today was a occasion of the audience feeding us. There were several people who really, really enjoyed the show. That made us (well, me certainly) want to give them more. I think it was a good show, with a party afterwards at the director's house.

The house, unfortunatley, is in Spring Hill, KS. You may not know where that is, so here's a map from the Plaza to help illustrate the point. Quite a long way away. I wasn't even aware that KC had a 210th Street! The party was good, Tricia got to see the director's family's horses, which made her pretty happy. I'm glad we went, but I'm more glad to be home now. It's time to relax for tonight and get ready for the week. I hope it's an easier one. To all you mothers out there, Happy Mother's Day and I'll post again soon.

Little Dollop of Heaven

Today, at work, I got a present, a small box, but what it contained was just enough to make a rainy, gloomy day beautiful. It was a box of 12 small jars that contained the best mustard that was ever created. It's Boetje's Dutch Style Mustard! It's without a doubt my favorite condiment in the whole wide world.

Boetje's is a mustard, stone-ground with only five ingredients: water, vinegar, mustard seed, sugar and salt. I tend to think that they forgot one: angel dust, because there's something in this mustard that makes it taste so heavenly. This mustard goes great with any kind of sandwich, and since I eat a sandwich every day at lunch, this is serious business for me.

I ran out of this mustard just this week, but the good people at Boetje Foods in Rock Island, IL came through for me like nobody's business. Ordered through their website (http://www.boetjefoods.com) on Monday, and here it is Wednesday and I've got the goods. You can say that there's better brands of mustards, but you'd be wrong! I've tried to find a similiar mustard in the grocery stores here in Kansas City, but I've only found pale imitations. Even the Hickory Farms people have nothing that's even a shade as tasty as this mustard. If you like the taste of mustard with real flavor behind it, I can't recommend this enough.

Hell Week

It's called that because it's the week that includes tech week and dress rehearsals and they're all in the week right before the opening of the show. So it's quite a few days without a break in the action.

"Fools" opens at OCTA on Friday and the cast is all very excited about it. It's Tech Week though, so that means that it's very busy. Tonight we're doing pictures for the show, so we all have to be there early, 6:30 PM. When it takes 30 minutes to get to the theatre and you get off work at 5 PM and you have to cook dinner in that time, it doesn't leave a lot of time for introspection, or you know, bathroom breaks. It's a hectic week, but you hope that it all pays off at opening night when you put up the best show you can. I'm playing the heavy, the villian. It's a role I don't get to play very much, so I'm pretty happy about it. I think the show is funny and I hope our audiences agree. The theatre out there is supported by the community fairly well, so I imagine we'll have some large houses. Of course, when I was in "Glengarry Glen Ross" out there we had only moderate houses. I think that audiences look on dramas as "vegetable theatre", where they only go out of a sense of obligation. It sure seems that a company can put a crappy musical up and it'll have huge houses, but when you put up a very good play you're rewarded with small, but appreciative houses.

My sister-in-law is in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" out in the Washington, DC area. I'm envious of her because while I'm in a Neil Simon comedy, she's out there doing Albee! I'd love to have that kind of opportunity. Doing Mamet was great, and it's something that won't come around again, so I treasure the experience, but I want more! More dramas, more characters that you can sink your teeth into, more anguish and despair and vindictiveness and mendacity! I'm looking to be in a show like that.

So, if you've got a theatre and you need someone to portay the myraid panes of the human spirit, let me know. Oh, I'll do commercial work as well. *wink*