He captured our hearts this past winter with his first breakthrough ad that had him going from shower to ship to white steed all in one take. At the end of June, he was back with another ingeniously absurd one-shot commercial, an awesome upping of the stakes of the first (log rolling? check! jacuzzi busting? check! flying? check!). And just last week, Old Spice Guy launched 183 — yes, 183! — individual video responses (all available on YouTube) to various Tweets he’d received from both big names and no names alike (e.g. Ellen DeGeneres, Starbucks, Alyssa Milano, Huffington Post, George Stephanopoulos, Demi Moore, Gillette, the list goes on and on and on). It’s hard to get worked up over being manipulated into giving away free advertising for a major corporation when it’s so damn entertaining!
How did we manage to miss this totally awesome quote from Ryan Gosling? In an interview with New York magazine about his upcoming movie BLUE VALENTINE (opening later this year, it’s a portrait of a marriage, co-starring Michelle Williams), he’s asked about his character’s tattoo of Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree on his arm, and replies: “That book is so fucked up; that story’s the worst. I mean, at the end the tree is a stump and the old guy just sitting on him — he’s just used him to death, and you’re supposed to want to be the tree? Fuck you. You be the tree. I don’t want to be the tree.” Now we can’t decide which we love more — Silverstein’s book or Gosling’s quote about it.
Warning: only hardcore nerds — or those with a soft spot for hardcore nerds — will find this YouTube footage (below) touching. Game designer Anders Howard, with the help of his friends, designed a video game to propose to his girlfriend Steffany; he got friends and family together for a launch event of the game and had her test drive it in front of everyone; in it, a Steffany-look-alike has to walk around a cartoon city collecting food (she writes a foodie blog called Dinner Love) and along the way gets help from an Anders-look-alike, as well as flowers, love letters and ultimately a ring. Super geeks can even play the game for themselves here.
SEDUCE ME, a new five-part original series directed, written by and starring Isabella Rossellini, recently launched over on SUNfiltered. Her original kooky web series GREEN PORNO examined how animals mate; this time she’s exploring how animals seduce each other. The series trailer is above; each of the new episodes is linked to below:
Bedbug – Bed bugs reproduce in mass numbers. This episode explores the violent nature in which the blood-sucking baby bugs are conceived.
Cuttlefish – Male cuttle fish play the field and often “sneak” into harems posing as females. Once infiltration is complete, the male liberally sows his seed leaving several members of the harem pregnant.
Duck – The female duck has a complex body. While males show dominance by forcefully mating with her, she chooses which male will father her ducklings by rejecting and redirecting the seed that doesn’t suit her.
Salmon – Life and death surround the reproductive activities of salmon. Babies are born into the decay of their dead parents’ bodies but manage to avenge their deaths by eating the parasites that attacked them.
Snake – Monogamy is the goal of the male garter snake – he’s got to be the only one. Once he’s mated with his female lover, his hopes are high that no other males come along to ‘un-seal’ the deal.
Okay, we know this will be twice in one week that we’re going rogue and abandoning the whole love and sex thing, but this is worth it! OK Go is an indie band that has mastered viral marketing with clever, innovative one-shot vids for their songs. First there was “A Million Ways,” in which they did an awesome little dance routine in someone’s backyard. Then they upped the ante with a choreographed number on a set of treadmills for “Here I Go Again.” Then came “WTF?” — its psychedonkulous colors and patterns made you go WTF when you watched it (here’s how they did that one). Now, for the song “This Too Shall Pass” from their new album “Of the Blue Colour of the Sky,” they’ve done it again — even better! It’s a giant Rube Goldberg machine in a two-story warehouse that moves along in perfect freakin’ synch with the song, all captured in one glorious take (after more than 60s tries over two days). You can read all about how they did it in this Wired article.
To kick off your Superbowl weekend, check out these 3 bits that you won’t (but should!) see during the game this Sunday — all are in response to the anti-choice, anti-equality, anti-gay Christian group Focus on the Family’s 2.5-million-dollar spot (that we mentioned the other day) featuring football star Tim Tebow and his mom talking about how she refused to have an abortion after doctors advised her to. Hey, good for Mrs. Tebow, who had the right to make her own decisions about her reproductive health! Guess we can now hold our breath until CBS runs an equally “appropriate” ad about preserving that right to choose:
Infomercial parodies are a fine art that only a few have mastered. But we think YourTango has just joined the ranks of elite spoofers with their “SpatSolver.” We guarantee you’ll be wishing this thing was real in seconds! Yeah, the commercial goes on a little too long, and the free “Apologizer” is pretty unfunny, but the site itself is impressively authentic looking and the bit about wearing the SpatSolver as a fashion accessory is Bumpits genius.
This week, the Sundance Channel launched its third season of “Green Porno,” Isabella Rossellini’s wacky exploration of all the weird ways animals do it (this time around, there are more overt environmental messages throughout). To honor the show, we’re holding another contest where one lucky EMandLO.com reader will win an eco-friendly prize pack. It includes Ella Vickers bags made out of recycled sails, “1 Bag at a Time” farmers market bags, a Boku journal made from recycled paper, a Sundance Channel T-shirt made from organic cotten, a Sundance Channel pen (eh), and a copy of the new Green Porno book! All you have to do is watch this short episode, this one, this one and this one (4 in all, not the teaser linked to above) to answer the following five contest questions, then send your correct (duh) answers to us via this form, including a way for us to reach you in case you win. (All questions apply only to creatures featured in season three of Green Porno.) We’ll choose one winner at random from those who answered correctly (sorry, only those with addresses in the United States will be considered due to shipping limitations). Good luck!
In which species does the male have a “harem” of females from which to choose a mate?
Which animal mates in “orgies” (aka, spawning)?
Which species changes gender as a part of its maturation process?
For every one of these caught, 10 other lives (called bicatch) are lost…?
Which species can communicate by luminescent effect or shape-change and show love with a “20 arm embrace”?
July 20, 2010
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