The Tastemakers Society

I’m sure you’ve all heard about and or seen the “Be Kanye tablets” ads and viral video. I’ve even seen the ads in person on the Q train in NY, and over heard a conversation between a boyfriend and girlfriend on wether not the ad was real or a joke (I guess not as obvious a joke as I thought). But this campaign between Kanye and Absolut is great and marketing at its best. They’ve got people talking and now with this new commercial they’ve just stepped there way up onto my list of favorite ads ever. It’s a simple concept to shoot, take tablets be Kanye, but they put it together flawlessly making a great commercial. So I’m tipping my hat to Kanye and Absolut because every move they’ve made on this campaign has been a brilliant one. Hate him or love him you have to give Kanye his do, he’s creative and knows how to get your attention. And don’t fret all you Flavor of love fans I heard they have the “Be Flave” tablets in the works now.   

Remember those “this is your brain on drugs” commercials with the egg frying. As a youngster I thought that was a pretty effective message the commercial stayed with me forever. Even though it turns out it had no actual resulting effect on me using or not using drugs at all, it was just a very impactful and at the time shocking to the point type of commercial. Now just because the ad didn’t neccesarily have any power over me doesn’t mean it didn’t have it over someone else, with that being said I think we should bring those types of head on at your face commercials back to TV and to jump start things. I’ve created my own little ad for the “Drug~Free America” people, check it out …….

Looks like throwback thursday is becoming a weekly thing, so now for your memories pleasure I present you with Zack, Kelly, Jessie, Slater, Lisa, Screech and we can’t forget about Mr. Belding, Zaaaaaccchhhh!!! Classic I tell you, classic. Saved by the bell was a ’show’ I mean you followed it/them all the way until they got out of college and that was what high school shows used to be like you know pre school shootings. But now we’ve got shit like the O.C. and One Tree Hill and you wonder why in the fuck teenagers are so off the hook these days, hmm let’s think for a second maybe. Well, I’m not one to blame everything on T.V. so I wont but it would be nice to see some less dramatic teen programming at one point, oh well, we always have re-runs. And Screech makes me feel like he could have been related to Kramer, yea that Kramer the ”nigger” lover, ha.  

Marty McFly is my other name/alias so to speak, you can call me McFly for short. Once again with this throwback thursday stuff and this time I bring you Back to the Future which we all know put Michael J. Fox on the map and began a revolution in which many of us all wish some of the back to the future props could come to real life. Case in point the Nike’s Mcfly wore in the future along with the skateboard he was riding, and the whip, oh the whip! the back to the future car is a must.

Michael Jackson is the greatest of all time hence the G.O.A.T title, I’ve been listening to MJ non-stop for a week since I bought his 25th anniversary Thriller album and his number one hits album. MJ is instant dance music no matter where you’re at what you’re doing or who you are if you here an MJ song you’re gonna start grooving, its something that can’t even be helped. The moment you here MJ you automatically start thinking about doing some MJ-ish dance move, roll hip then a high kick and it’s official MJ has just taken you over.

It’s something about old people singing in harmony I find really rejoiceful. Young @ Heart is a movie documenting the efforts of a senior citizen group who travels around performing old hits in various places. In the trailer they show them performing in a prison yard with inmates around how perfect of an image is that and I think one of the inmates even cried when they were done. This is the type of movie that’ll give you that ear to ear smile for no reason at all.

I Read this article from the New York Times about OCD. It’s an interesting read on OCD and how restaurants can cause it to trigger in those who have it. I just can’t ever seem to make decisions at restaurants, I don’t have OCD per say but I for sure have OCD like habits that’s why this article was so interesting to me. I mean having to walk through the restaurant door 3 times, chew 3 times and drink 3 times, or checking your waiter/waitress’ hands before they serve you, and burning forks over flames to disinfect, that’s making an event out of dining out.  

Everyone on the planet will be writing the Superbowl and the Superbowl ads today so I’m going to keep this short. First off I knew the Patriots were going to loose they were do for a lose. And I had been rooting for Eli Manning since the playoffs began (no I’m not a giants fan), I just really wanted for the first time in history for 2 brothers to win back to back superbowls. I also think they both got back to back superbowl MVP’s as well. Now onto the superbowl ads, this had to be the worse year ever for ads. I’ve never seen so many terrible, uncreative, boring ads during the superbowl in my entire life. Some commercials had potential, really good ideas executed badly. Take the E trade baby commercial, great concept, the ending with the baby throwing up, bad follow through on concept. You need more than just a good idea, you need to execute that idea to its fullest. The commercial would have been much better if at the end the instead of throwing up, the baby had to get up for something, like get back into bed because his parents were coming. That would have made for a much better commercial. So overall bowl recap, the ads suck the game was pretty boring but the last 10 minutes of the 4th quarter were legendary.

One of my favorite movies from the 90’s, The Mummy, is coming out with its third installment but without its main/big/lead star. Yea, yea they’re bringing back Brandon Fraser and the brother but they can’t carry the weight nor fill in for what Rachel Weisz brought to the table. I mean could you make Harry Potter without Daniel Radcliff, Lord of the rings without Eilijah Wood, Spider Man without Tobey Maguire, NO! So why even try, right? Well apparently the heads over at Universal Pictures and Alphaville Films don’t think like I do. Weisz was a key element in the two previous Mummy movies so why would you think replacing her would suffice as an ok thing to do. I think this is a bad move but we’ll just have to wait and see how the movie plays out, but in my opinion its just NOT WEISZ to do a movie without your lead.

This saturday I went to an indoor gun range with Scott his brother Justin and his brother’s roommate BG. Now let’s get something clear off break I can’t legally own a gun so the two guns we used for the gun range were Justin’s and BG’s. Justin owns a glock 45 and BG has a 40 cal Smith and Wesson but the actual guns aren’t what important, the gun range experience was. I’ve shot a gun before but a gun range is a very different type of atmosphere, to be surrounded by people shooting multiple guns is a very crazed feeling at first. The first few minutes I was nervous I just kept replying a scene in my head were one of the other guys in the other booths shooting just came out and shot all of us while we were shooting at our targets. But after a few minutes you get used to the constant gun shots and shells flying and you just focus in on your own shooting. But still thinking back the whole idea of a bunch of strangers in a room shooting guns seems like a very odd situation, but none the less it was fun. And get this the owner of the indoor gun range was more concerned with us keeping our cell phones in the car than anything else, he never asked to see a gun license or a ownership of the guns we were using. And the above pic is the acutal target I was shooting at. So if you ever want to know what we do here in Maryland, we shoot guns and eat chicken.  

Living with your sister has its certain attributes, you know having not to cook a lot on my own. Getting the occasional decent piece of female advice but you also get things like America’s Next Top Model, Dancing with the stars and One Tree Hill also comes with that package. Which brings plus and minus to having her around but the best things of all, is her Victoria Secret catalogs. Now I’ve been looking through VS catalogs for years and been watching their yearly televised fashion show but it just hit me the other day, that VS probably reaches more males than any men’s mag. Except maybe Playboy. Ok, ok, granted its for women and is only just a catalog but everyone knows that men look through those catalogs just as much as women do. And VS models are by far more largely known than any model from a men’s magazine. Let’s not forget how they have a frequent circulation which is always a plus. So again with the title, I’ve come to this realization which is the best men’s magazine is actually a catalog.

Last night I was thinking about all the old cartoons I used to watch as a youngster, back when I’d wake up at the crack of dawn on saturday to watch hours upon hours of cartoons. Ahh, the good old days. And one of those shows I was reminiscing about was the rescue rangers, remember them, the official title of the show was, Chip-N-Dale Rescue Rangers. You had to love that silly dale, super serious ass chip, zipper the do everything fly, monterey jack who would go bonkers over the smell of cheese and of course gadget the cute genius of the group she was the macgyver of the rodent world. I love that show, I loved all the cartoons I grew up on in the late 80’s and 90’s. I prefer the cartoons of my heyday then those of today, too much digital work. I like that good old fashion hand drawn cartoon. Tom & Jerry are ageless.