New Google App

Apparently lets people use a surface computing technology to Perez Hilton my, and my colleauge Sarah's faces. Thanks to Miguel Caballero, as well as Google Creative Sandbox 2008. We were able to snap photos and then email directly to an interactive board that let users play with photos, video and other content on a wall using an infra-red technology. Pretty wild; very Minority Report.

There's no recession at Google

Just gourmet food on a giant rotating pedestal. There was Slanted Door Vietnamese style beef with watermelon, a foodie breakfast with quail eggs, and an Indian plate with a spicy kabob. And desserts. And an open bar.

Snags at Beer O'Clock

We celebrated the final presentation of our big business pitch with a barbecue on my boss's office patio this afternoon. After a few Bud Lights and a couple of hot dogs ("snags" as my Aussie boss might say), I finally found myself winding down from weeks, actually months, of stress, excitement, argument, doubt, elation, late nights, coffee and office catering. The best times in advertising really are when you work on a team, competing against other agencies and even with people inside your agency, seeing what great creatives can come up with, and then that final blast of adrenaline you feel in the car pulling into the (hopefully) new client's parking lot.

Ron Jeremy at the Beldings.

Beldings Award winners get some loving from [aging] porn star Ron Jeremy. He hung around (hung, get it?) for the after-party that Yahoo! sponsored (which one of the partners of David & Goliath referred to as "Yoo-hoo"). He's as foul looking as the last time I saw him in the flesh (in the flesh, get it?) at the Houston's at Century City.

We Won the First Belding of the Night!

Wow and we deserved it! The first Belding award went to the Activision team (Marcus & Miguel pictured here) for the videos for World Leader Reviews. The Belding theme this year was to award not only the silver bowl, but also to provide "bonus" awards. In this case, Marcus and Miguel are serenaded by YouTube star Tay Zonday who sings "Chocolate Rain" (of "I move away from the mic to breathe in" fame). The next winner received a foot long hot dog from a cougar, and so on and so on. At the end of the night, World Leaders for the Activision game Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare won the Belding Sweepstakes prize for DDB Los Angeles.

Metro Bus Chronicles #2

Just finished a book, Then We Came To The End, and am starting another, X Saves the World. What commitment to future-gas and carbon karma is this, this riding the bus exercise? Damned if I know - I don't think it is saving me any money, I don't think I'm using up $2.50 worth of gas driving 14 miles round trip to Venice in my VW Jetta. The guy next to me smells like weed and the lady in front like Arial laundry soap, which reminds me of Paris, not Tijuana. There are those of us with iPods and those without, I notice. I can't help telling people at work that I've taken a bus. Its like leaking a dirty secret. There's just more to see at street level. The sun in the window feels good.

Sweet Goodbye

It's always tough leaving home in the morning when working crazy hours. I've been working on a new business pitch that has sent me into the office early and home late, so when I saw Henry looking sad-eyed at me from the window, I had to snap this from the front porch.

Yeah, he's chewing on the paint and kind of looks like a refugee. Or a lead poisoning case.

Then We Came to the End.

If you are reading Joshua Ferris's book, you'll get why this pencil sharpener label is funny. People in ad agencies are possessive about electric pencil sharpeners and other mechanical tools of the trade. For my part, I hide a heavy duty stapler in my office; it can stapler over sixty pages. It rules.

Bartles & Jaymes

It's just great advertising. This old cardboard standee is shoved in the stairwell down to the toilet of a Chicago pub. I have no idea where in Chicago I was when I snapped this.

Cubs in a Pub.

Roaming through Chicago looking for fun, and some DDB colleagues (not the ones from Chicago) found ourselves in a pub during a Cubs game.

"Freakin' awesome!" someone says in Midwest accent.

Have no effing idea where in the city I am right now. I need [another] beer.

Chicago! Yeah, Lake View.

I'm at a work training session in Chicago and the office got me a sick rate at the Four Seasons. I don't know what kind of corporate hoo-haw is going on here, but I can tell you that I'm paying less per night to stay in the Four Seasons than I was to stay a night at the Comfort Inn in New Bern, North Carolina. Go figure.

Tonight we had dinner at Gibson's, where I narrowly avoided going into diabetic shock after eating a pound of blue cheese dressing (on a salad), followed by a twice-baked franken-potato and a side of grilled cow. Then we had a gallon of ice cream. for dessert. On the walk home my heart was racing in an attempt to both burn off some of the 5,000 calories I must have consumed whilst pumping the cholesterol laden blood through my choked arteries. The temperature had fallen into the low 40s, but I couldn't tell since my body had become a heat-laden engine in its attempt to shed the caloric intake. Don't get me wrong; I loved every second of it. Croaking from a heart attack in front of my corporate colleagues would be a pathetic way to go, and I'm guessing it wouldn't even make a sidebar in AdWeek.

That's the John Hancock Center taking up the view in the right side of the window. Not sure what that building directly across the street is.

Clippers Game at Staples

Our Activision client was cool and kind enough to hook us up with tickets to a box at the Staples Center to catch a game between the Clippers and the Golden State Warriors. The Warriors kicked the Clippers' asses (no surprise there); I think the look on Lindsay's face probably has more to do with whatever disturbing tale Paul is weaving just behind her.

I ate three Staples Center hot dogs (they were free in the luxury box), which is the whole motivation for me going to anything NBA. Note how many people are paying zero attention to the game.

Y2K, Me and The American Dialect Society

The Y2K

This came up in a recent Google Alerts I have set to see when something with my name is published (okay, I know it sounds vain, but it's really so I can figure out where people might be back-linking or posting about my blog). A recent Alert included this post about the name of a drink in the cocktail calendar I published at the end of the last millenium (sounds impressive, huh?). The American Dialect Society, as part of their ongoing work, is perhaps looking to seek out how terms like "Y2K" entered the American vernacular.

Coincidentally - given the years I spent doing my small part to help undermine the American economy by advertising subprime mortgages - the word subprime is the Society's 2007 word of the year.

World AIDS Day

Today is World AIDS Day. This is a video project I just completed for PRODUCT (RED). Thanks to everyone at (RED) and the Global Fund, all of whom work so hard and so diligently to work towards the eradication of HIV/AIDS. Find out more at JOINRED.COM.



Thanks to Karen, Rich, Carole, Damion, and everyone at (RED), Tribal DDB, DDB, Spotwelders, Machine Head, Lime Studios, but special thanks to Colette and Bich Ngoc who had the vision to make this project happen.

Back on the Blog

So, what's my excuse? I didn't have a camera-phone until yesterday, when I upgraded my four year old Blackberry with a new Blackberry Curve. I had gotten rid of my mobile phone with camera a while ago, in favor of my work Blackberry with phone and email. I didn't realize how dependent I'd become on mobile photo blogging to create posts. I guess it was just easier to write captions, or capture funny moments, than it was to just write a few paragraphs. That must be the ad agency life seeping into my my blogging. Need a visual. Need some copy.

During my "sabbatical" from this blog, I did move offices to a spot with a giant picture window looking out over Main Street in Venice. I work in the Frank Gehry "Binocular" building, in the wing that is meant to look like the bow of a ship (the white framed cutouts in this picture - you can see how it curves off to a point to the right of my office. It's a great space to work in, and I appreciate the company giving me the office.

More good times to come. Caro and I are going to a black-tie event for City of Hope this week as a guest of Gibson guitars. Should be some good blogger photo snapshots.

We have been Wii-ing.

This is the first post I've typed out soley on the Wii. Which is part of the reason I've been pretty lax about posting to Left on Red. The Wii addiction has been sucking up some free time. At least I have a job in interactive marketing so that it qualifies as work. Sounds like something an alcoholic would say about working as a bartender.

The baby gets a littler bigger and more toddlery. The flowers in the front yard are blossoming and the warm California sun is shining. Work is going great; there should be some good news there soon, I hope.

More to come shortly on some sad notes and some funny ones.

That's life, though: a little bad with the good and in the end it all balances out.

Lost Under Dallas

My colleague, Jonathan Deiss, lost in a weird rabbit warren of yellow-tiled tunnels underneath downtown Dallas. It smelled like ammonia; Jonathan suggested we were under a nerve gas attack.

Kim Chee is the New Thing in 2007.

Write that down.

Puno joined our creative team recently. Among other things, she is Korean and has promised to take us out for fried chicken and beer in Koreatown. If, as she says, kim chee is the new thing, then I fully expect a culinary trip that will make me a convert.

Visit Puno's beautiful site. She is also a big Yelp user, along with Mr. Hermanns.