Breaking News: Simpsons' Writers Turn To Internet For Ideas

I watched a new Simpsons episode last night for the first time in a long time. The episode was Eternal Moonshine of the Simpson Mind and towards the end Homer experiences a near-death experience that triggers the old life-flashing-before-your-eyes bit. The sequence was pretty well done and the music soft and tragic. All in all, very entertaining.

They even did a fake YouTube "share/watch again" ending (although it should be "replay").


Immediately after seeing that sequence I went online to see if I could find the clip but to no avail. I also couldn't help shake the feeling that the sequence was vaguely familiar. Leave it to the bloggers to figure it out. The sequence was a parody of photographer Noah Kalina's Everyday video that has gained a certain notoriety online:

I wonder what you're supposed to do with rest of your life once you've been parodied by the Simpsons. Awesome.

Note 1: See Noah's note on the Simpsons parody here. Apparently they used the music without permission.

Update: Looks like the part about using the music without permission was an oversight. The Simpsons people are trying to make it right.

Note 2: According to the YouTube spoof at the end of the parody, Homer is 39 years old. Who's gonna update Wikipedia?

You Will Never Be This Good At Games

Coming to you all the way from Too-Much-Time-On-Hands Land (actually Japan, where else?), comes the most skillful Tetris player you have, and likely will ever see. The deftness and agility of mind that this player possesses is absolutely mind-boggling. My eyes alone don't even work as quickly as the combination of his eyes, mind and fingers.

Amazing. Complete flabbergastification.

Thanks Roy!

Paint By Light

I saw an amazingly magical commercial on television a few months ago and was absolutely smitten by it. The animation was unlike anything I'd seen before, slightly imperfect like a flip book but also refreshing in its simplicity. Unfortunately when I finally sat down to blog about it I couldn't for the life of me remember the name of the company! I searched everywhere but couldn't find it. So needless to say I was super happy to come across it again recently. The ad was for Sprint as part of their Sprint Ahead campaign. Have a look here:

According to Jamie Kivisto, one of the artists that worked on the project, "all the animation was done with flashlights...there's about 100 frames for every two seconds of footage." The commercial also features the song "Souvenirs" by Architecture In Helsinki (one of my favorite bands).

The stop-motion animation flashlight technique was also used in a couple of other commercials in the Spring Ahead campaign as well as the Sprint Ahead flash website. And if you're super interested in these commercials like I am, have a look at the behind the scenes video as well.

Addendum: Have a look at this Japanese site for more of the same. Via Taylor McKnight.

This is New York City

NYC & Company, New York City's official marketing and tourism agency (not to be confused with the New York State Tourism Department of "I [heart] NY" fame, dontcha know) has recently launched a new full scale advertising campaign in a effort to renew interest in the city I didn't really think interest was ever down) both domestically and internationally (the ads will run in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy and Spain as well as Boston, Philadelphia, Miami and San Antonio). Their goal is to "attract 50 million visitors annually by 2015."




The "This is New York City™"campaign designed by UK ad agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty (Best. Name. Ever. I mean, that just screams Harry Potter.), includes print, outdoor, online and television ads. The ads are highly stylized and the TV spots mix live action and animation (reminiscent of the Yellow Submarine style in my opinion) and have a very enjoyable whimsical feel to them (reinforced by the Ella Fitzgerald soundtrack the the muppet cameo).

Here's the New York Times article covering the campaign. Also I've noticed that I've used far too many parentheses in this post (seven including this one, in fact).

Think Different

I stumbled across the the Wikipedia entry for Apple's late 90s Think Different ad campaign today and I thought I'd share it with you. The campaign was commissioned by Steve Jobs after his return to Apple in 1997 and was created by the ad agency TBWA\Chiat\Day.


The ads, print and television, never actually showed any Apple product but instead featured black and white images and footage of the following historically significant people:

• Albert Einstein
• Bob Dylan
• Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Richard Branson
• John Lennon
• R. Buckminster Fuller
• Thomas Edison
• Muhammad Ali
• Ted Turner
• Maria Callas
• Mahatma Gandhi
• Amelia Earhart
• Alfred Hitchcock
• Martha Graham
• Jim Henson (with Kermit the Frog)
• Frank Lloyd Wright
• Pablo Picasso

The television spots also featured the following text written by a TBWA\Chiat\Day copy writer:

Here’s to the crazy ones.
The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.
They’re not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They push the human race forward.
And while some see them as the crazy ones,
We see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think
they can change the world,
Are the ones who do.

I feel like this commercial is a perfect example of how well advertising can reach a consumer. The black and white images, the quiet, evocative music, the footage of significant individuals and the simple and poignant voice-over (narrated by Richard Dreyfus) all work in tandem to move the viewer. Well, it worked for me at least. Gave me goosebumps.

YouTube Revived The Video Star

Sometimes I forget how fantastic music videos can be but more and more I'm finding that they are the perfect little nugget of entertainment for my YouTube-sized attention span. I've also noticed that artists (or the directors) are exhibiting far more creativity in the medium than before. I'm definitely seeing a lot less of the standard band set up playing for the camera and a lot more storytelling and visual effects. Now that I think about it however, creative music videos probably aren't a new development but more a function of the wider availability of a broader selection of videos. Now that YouTube has effectively rendered MTV even more obsolete than it already was, nearly everything you can imagine is available on-demand. Then again, the neat-o factor that I'm trying to describe could also just be a characteristic specific to certain genres of music. I'm sure the Nickelbacks of the world still have the dullest videos you could imagine.

Anyway, all this blah blah blah is just because I happened to spend the last 45 minutes watching music video and I found some pretty neat ones that I wanted to post. I suppose I could have done just that without all the preamble but I'm not about to go back and delete it all now!

D.A.N.C.E. by Justice

Daft Punk Is Playing At My House by LCD Soundsystem

Boy From School by Hot Chip (you have to watch this one all the way through to the end for the full effect)

Montreal -40°C by Malajube.

Thoughts? Anything else I should be watching? Please share!

Têtes à Claques

If you know me then chances are I've already blabbed to you about the Quebecois short video site Têtes à Claques (and probably more than once too cause I'm totally one of those people who never remembers to whom she's told what). And if not then I'm telling you now. The videos feature footage of real mouths and eyes super-imposed over clay dolls to create really creepy looking characters. The creator Michel Beaudet originally intended to make stop-motion animation shorts until he got lazy and realized that all the work was in the eyes and mouth. So instead of moving them frame by frame, he just filmed real ones.




This is some really funny stuff, my friends. Even if you don't speak French. But funnier if you do. And even funnier if you're from Quebec. And funnier still if you went to a French high school with lots of Quebecois teachers.

Thanks Sasha!

Hell Ya!

Check out this folk cover of OutKast's Hey Ya by Mat Webble from the Scottsdale, Arizona band Obadiah Parker. I still can't believe how good it sounds.


Via Fosfor.

Soda Geyser

OK I think pretty much everyone knew about this except for me but I want to share with you just in case there's some other poor soul out there who is just as unaware as me. Apparently if you mix Mentos candy and any kind of soda you get a soda geyser of sorts. Many poor fools have taken it upon themselves to a) try the experiment b) record the entire thing and c) post it on YouTube for the collective benefit of the citizens of the internet. There are quite a few of these videos out there . A YouTube search for coke + mentos or pepsi + mentos should pull up most of them. As for what causes the reaction, you can find a pretty decent explanation on Steve Spangler Science. And in case you're too lazy to read the whole thing, here's the gist of it:

As soon as the Mentos hit the soda, bubbles form all over the surface of the candy...When all this gas is released, it literally pushes all of the liquid up and out of the bottle in an incredible soda blast.

See, I do all the work for you.

Thanks Joy!