on the shore of the ultimate sea

It’s been an interesting, albeit slow, few August weeks round these parts, so here’s a bit of a Creativity-related fill-in.

One of our favorite publishers, PowerHouse books, sent by a catalog for its new season, which, strangely, included a huge, front-and-center push for a book on small-plates portion control written by none other than Alex Bogusky. If you failed Know Your Advertising Creatives 101 (and no shame in that–certainly other coursework has greater world relevance) Mr. Bogusky is the Chief Creative Officer of Crispin, Porter + Bogusky, the Miami-based ad agency whose clients include Burger King and Domino’s. The evangelical pizza business is new, but CP+B’s relationship with Burger King is going on a decade, in which time they’ve revitalized the marketing, with a rock-n-jock approach hitting hard in the agency’s breadbasket, the young adult male. Read more on Bogusky's diet book

Move D Looks Up, originally uploaded by nparish.

Here’s Move D, from his appearance earlier in the summer at Brooklyn’s best techno party on the Gowanus at The Yard. Read more about it in my Earplug review. But don’t take my word for it’s dopeness–listen to the set at the Sunday Best downloads page.

There’s only one place I’d rather be in a few hours, and that’s good old Köln for the Total 9 party. The compilation itself comes out next week, and buying it is the smart thing to do. It’s very, very good.

My good pal Jimmy told me a fun Total story from a few years ago, when his friend ran up to Wolfgang Voigt, maybe a bit intoxicated, and surely in awe of the whole affair, and told him “Wolfgang, you’re my hero.”

Wolfgang gave him a smile and calmly said “When we make a party, we are all heroes.”

Ain’t that the truth.

Partizan Lab’s Erik Lerner has directed this cute little animated video for one of my favorite artists, Rex the Dog. The song is “I Can See You, You Can See Me.” Rex’s debut album, which may be called “I Can See You, You Can See Me” (at least that’s the title on the drawing of a CD on his MySpace page) The Rex the Dog Show, is out soon.

Of course you remember Rex from his big big song “We Live In Daddy’s Car” from a few years ago, as well as his aural affinity for the KORG 700S synthesizer.

Follow along at his site. There’s even a nice little preview mix and stickers, too, for the faithful. Just sign up for Rexy’s fan club.

Oh, you know, just another day at the office writing about Radiohead, lasers, and the folks that love them. Last week I talked with James Frost, the director of Radiohead’s new “House of Cards” video. I’m seeing the group play for the first time at All Points West next month; I’ll report back if the stuff from the video is used at all in the live show. It’d be a bit of a shame if it wasn’t; this look is too closely connected to this song to be utilized in a fresh way anywhere else. So Radiohead might as well keep trotting it out with “House of Cards” when they play it live. Come to think of it, as amazing as applying this technology to film the crowd and band during a live performance would be, it’d probably be impossible to render the data in time to produce anything but the crudest preview. But I’m sure you stopped at the link to read Frost say that in our talk and have already ruled out that possibility.

Good thing, too, as who knows whether that LIDAR stuff might cause some impromptu LASIK for audience members, like these dodgy Russian rave lasers.

True providence (well, an invite from a production company) got me into a preview of Pineapple Express Thursday night at BAM, complete with a Q&A afterwards from David Gordon Green. It was a funny film; it felt like the Rogen-Apatow-McBride-DGG bloc is evolving a tiny amount past previous milestones from each of them, pushing screwball, farce improv comedy a little further out onto the gangplank. Things in PE get pretty absurd, but it’s OK when they do. As the wheels come off, you’re reminded its a chummy bunch of funny guys who have tens of millions of dollars to make something that’ll hold ground at the box office for a few weeks and have a shedload of extra stuff on the DVD. Or, as Green explained the wild climax, “it only works because everything is building to such absurdity.”

Not to give the impression it isn’t a funny movie; its hilarious. I don’t bust out laughing that easily at the novies but by the end even small weird utterances and movements from characters had me giggling.

Spoiler alert: they smoke a ton of weed in the movie. Green revealed afterward it was some herb used as a substitute, and despite it tasting terrible “it was addictive.” They actually had a Technical Consultant who was a pot grower licensed by the state of California. He appeared, along with the postproduction supervisor, as a guy buying dope off Franco. The grower is the one with the rat tail.

Another interesting revelation was how much improv was used. At the end, there’s a Boy what an adventure!-type diner scene, which Green said was all improvised. He wound up cutting five different versions, testing them all in different L.A. neighborhoods and adding stuff that did unexpectedly well into a final cut.

A few more bullet-pointy notes:

DGG is working on remaking Suspiria, the Dario Argento classic, with Christof Gebert, the sound mixer he frequently works with.

Originally Seth Rogan and James Franco had opposite roles.

James Franco gashed his head badly during one slapstick scene and needed stitches in his forehead; they had to shoot him with a headband or from behind for the next week or so.

Huey Lewis wasn’t the first choice for the Pineapple Express theme song; the guys wanted Ray Parker, Jr. But there was prior litigation between Parker, Jr. and studio Columbia that killed the idea.

Danny McBride’s shitty clothes and weird wardrobe is payback for Green agreeing to do a nude scene when the two were in film school together.

A few months ago I began a flirtation with ffffound after receiving an invite from designer Keita Kitamura. It’s a neat little image bookmarking service created by Keita and Yosuke Abe in Yugo Nakamura’s Tha ltd web design shop. Check out a bit on Yugo I did as part of the Creativity 50 to learn more about them. It’s gotten a great group of beta testers who’ve bookmarked some zany stuff out there. (Though the beta has grown rapidly and now includes lots of random photos of tits off Flickr.)

After playing around with it for a while I figured it’d be excellent if we could get the images to go on Facebook, to spice things up a bit here beyond hatching eggs and super wall videos. So I drew out a little plan of what a simple Facebook ffffound app would do.

Problem is, I’m just coping with English; communicating with Facebook’s guts is a ways away for me. Luckily super Aussie Arnold Almeida found me after a desperate post on a ffffound appreciation group here and whipped up a spiffy little app according to my basic specs. And he’s been awesome enough to maintain it through several ffffound code changes since.

If you’re on ffffound already, now’s your chance to show off all the freaky nonsense you pick up on the web to your facebook buddies. If not, the app will still work! You can put in any user, like ‘yugo’, who’s always got interesting new stuff, which will then show on your page. (Or me, ‘paryshnikov,’ but no guarantee my bookmarks are interesting or new.) Cruise around, have fun, and look at interesting images.

Oh Wighnomys.

My favorite technarchists from Jena are back with a great mix.

But Metawuffmischfelge? What does that mean? Well, it doesn’t hurt to ask (along with a technical Q):

from Wighnomy Brothers
reply-to Wighnomy Brothers
to nick
date Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 1:59 AM
subject AW: a quick question for Gabor…

good morning nick …

i recorded the vinyls but i mixed the hole stuff in the computer!
metawuffmischfelge? it´s a fantasy word!

greetings!
robag

…in other news…a cool change at earplug; DJ charts now include bits about the records written by the DJs charting them. And no one knows why dance records work better than those playing them to make people dance. The linked installment is from Justin Simon aka Invisible Conga People (on Italians Do It Better). Don’t confuse him with Mike Simonetti, IDIB’s founder (and I’d say one of the people instrumental in getting those punk kids dancing when he was doing Troubleman). One of my favorite reads, Cosmic Disco, did an interview with Mike and is hosting a guest mix I’ve been enjoying. Check ‘er out.

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Here’s a piece from the June issue of Creativity I feel came out quite well. Pulling in young talent is a constant source of gnashing whether you’re blogging or running a basketball franchise–but as far as digital marketing goes, it’s time to take the next step from hiring designers and coders who can make things look cool to hiring developers who can form concepts and bring together a team with knowhow to execute higher level things. Software tools. (Like, imagine if Chase built Mint.) There aren’t any great case studies yet as to how these things will look but smart agencies are already thinking beyond microshites to applications.

Here’s the full thing; poke around on the site for more goodies–we were all really proud of the June issue (let me know if you’d like me to send one). I’ve also pasted it below for convenience (erm, and search engines).

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At Soul Skate, originally uploaded by nparish.

I can easily award my ‘favorite weekend’ crown to Memorial Day; since the inception of Detroit’s electronic music festival, whatever you might call it (DEMF, Movement, Fuse-In) I’ve been in town catching up with lovely friends and family, hearing amazing artists and stomping around one of the world’s most intriguing cities. I take a little pride in only missing one festival, in 2001, and have seen it go through all sorts of changes. Compared to previous years, 2008 was professional in concept and execution, with Paxahau, the party promotion company which took reins over last year, honing an already strong element of expertise to managing the three-day event. Each year is a little different, but this was on balance one of the best yet, with a huge array of options.

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