Ask-Steve.com

Ralph Stanley's radio ad supporting Obama in West Virginia

I'd like to say a very heartfelt thank you to Dave Allen for his post over at Pampelmoose. It may be the single most heartening thing I've read in a week at least.

Ralph Stanley is the last remaining survivor of the Stanley Brothers, and as such is one of the few remaining figures of the first generation of bluegrass musicians. He’s from the part of the mountains the Carter Family came from, and has had a recent career revival for his part in the Oh Brother Where Art Thou movie.

Listening to Ralph Stanley's iconic voice speaking in support of Barack Obama gives me tremendous encouragement and hope. I hope it does the same for you.

Ralph Stanley, a Radio Ad Supporting Obama in West Virginia - pampelmoose

Video: Worth a watch

Find lyrics, a larger size version of the video and more at Dipdive.com

I don't want to encourage public bathroom mischief, but...

This one is just too funny to pass up. How could Rubbermaid have not seen this coming?

Or maybe it's one of those situations where the designer did see it coming.

Maybe the name was coined by a bored marketing person who knew it would make it safely through the internal hoops at Rubbermaid—and then give people some great laughs when clever bathroom visitors inevitably discovered the hidden gem and took artistic license with it.

Or perhaps it was devised this way from the start. Think online viral marketing carried to the most mundane level: a diaper changing table in a public restroom. It's certainly not something I thought I'd ever be blogging about, and yet here I am giving Rubbermaid some publicity and product promotion on Ask-Steve.com.

I do have to say that I wouldn't have written about this, though, if there weren't a very direct political tie in. That being the fact that the revised name of the Sturdy Station applies just as accurately to the current White House as it does to the diaper changing station.

[This photo was taken at the McMenamin's Bagdad Pub restroom on SE 37th & Hawthorne in Portland, Oregon]

Technorati Tags: advertising, Bush, graffiti, neoconservatism, Oregon, politics, Portland, public art

One more reason Google rules

Google's logo today (celebrating the birthday of Edvard Munch) is an excellent example of why the company continues to dominate all rivals. And why, barring any major blunders, it will continue to do so. While most companies half Google's size are worrying about 'brand integrity' and fretting over the hue of each pixel in their logo, Google is finding all kinds of creative ways to have fun with theirs. It's no doubt a blast for their staff and makes visiting the site a lot more interesting, too. Of course, having what is arguably the best technology behind the funky logo helps, too...

Too Much Coffee Man Opera Animation

It's hilarious.

[Psssst! Be sure to read the 'Italian' subtitles.]

View it here:
Too Much Coffee Man Opera Animation

If that link doesn't work, try this one:
http://www.tmcm.com/opera/animation/

News on 9/11: Cartoon boobies on the Starbucks logo

So where are we five years after 9/11? Freaking out over tiny cartoon boobies in the original Starbucks Coffee logo, apparently. And no, I'm not joking. I thought the Janet Jackson fiasco was embarrassing enough, but there are people in our very own Pacific Northwest that are bent on making Americans look even more stupid, prudish and small minded than that did. Although this is on a much smaller scale and therefore hopefully won't be noticed by the rest of the world.

From a clip in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer entitled, "Principal roasts Starbucks over steamy retro logo":

Starbucks' trip down memory lane to bring back its original mermaid logo on its cups has brewed up some controversy.

A Kent elementary school principal, according to a local TV station, asked teachers last week that if they were bringing their daily joe to school that they make sure they get a sleeve to cover the image of a topless mermaid on Starbucks cups.

I guess we are talking about a country where people get so worked up and turned on by mothers nursing their babies that it becomes national news—all while the Bush regime is waging illegal wars, ensnaring our youth in a back door draft, and trying to find still more countries to attack and occupy.

Wake up, people, and smell the coffee!

The Insider: Principal roasts Starbucks over steamy retro logo

Technorati Tags: coffee

I'm Listening To: Protest Songs

These songs are salve for my soul, grieving for the actions of my government, saddened by the gullibility and stupidity of so many of my fellow Americans, and weary from ongoing Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung.

American Idiot, Green Day
Deja Vu (All Over Again), John Fogerty
Savages, Paul Weller
To Kill The Child, Roger Waters
It's A Hit, Rilo Kiley
Living With War, Neil Young
The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song, The Flaming Lips
The World's Gone Mad, Handsome Boy Modeling School
We're All In This Together, Ben Lee
Army Reserve, Pearl Jam
Jet Pilot, Son Volt
America Is Not The World, Morrissey
Winter in the Hamptons, Josh Rouse
Both Sides Of The Gun, Ben Harper
World Inside The World, Rhett Miller
16 Military Wives, The Decemberists
Endless War, Son Volt
So What The Fuss, Stevie Wonder
Not In Our Name, Charlie Haden
Parachutes, Pearl Jam

If you subscribe to Rhapsody, listen to this playlist now.

I saw Jack Hirschman read at City Lights Books in San Francisco

It looks like 70 is the new 60. I went with a friend to see Jack Hirschman read from his latest tome, The Arcanes, at City Lights Books in San Francisco. Jack Hirschman is 73 years old, but is as spry, energetic and clear-spoken as I imagine he must have been a decade or two ago. The newly appointed Poet Laureate of San Francisco spoke of his recent trip to Venezuela and his participation in an event featuring poets from all over the world. His enthusiasm and passion were riveting. The only bummer came when I went to buy a signed copy of the book: They were asking $64 for it! As much as I wanted a copy, I just couldn't justify spending $64 on it.

From the City Lights website:

The Arcanes represent, in Jack Hirschman’s vast poetic production, a fundamental and extraordinary element, the most advanced point of his questing. It comprises 126 long and orchestrated compositions, collected from more than thirty years of a particular poetic inquiry, which ground the political engagement and social themes, ever present in his poetry, with stormy leaps of mind, heart and soul, and personal events and references...

The Arcanes look at the life and at history, at the happenings and changes in the contemporary world, at the decline and agony in western civilization, at the role of new systems of communication, at the struggles of the new movements, at the horrors of wars that are never just. But Hirschman always succeeds in giving a sign of hope, confident as he is in human beings and above all in poetry.

Before going to the reading, we had a pint of Stella at Vesuvio. The thing that caught my eye the first time I walked past on a previous trip down was the lettering that runs along the front of the building: "itching to get away from... Portland, Oregon." I still don't know what that means or why it's there.

Beat Generation dwindles, but Hirschman remains - SFGate.com

Words of hope and inspiration from across the aisle

A friend of mine forwarded the text of this speech delivered recently by former National Endowment for the Arts Chair John Frohnmayer. I can't find the transcript of the speech anywhere online and that's a shame, so I'm posting it here.

=====================

CANARIES IN THE COAL MINE: ART, FREEDOM and COMMUNITY

John Frohnmayer

Eugene City Club, Eugene, Oregon
June 2, 2006

Martin Luther King, Jr. said: "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."

By that standard we all should be dead..

DIY geyser -- with Mentos and Diet Coke

The Wall Street Journal ran a story yesterday about the difference in how Mentos and Coca-Cola Co. are responding to the publicity they're getting because of an unintended -- and apparently very entertaining -- use of their products.

The article, entitled "Mixing Diet Coke and Mentos Makes a Gusher of Publicity," calls the recent buzz of the explosive combination "a marketing coup."

Hundreds of amateur videos have flooded the Internet in recent months showing an oddball experiment: people dropping the quarter-size Mentos candies into bottles of Diet Coke. The combination results in a geyser of soda that shoots as high as 20 feet into the air.

Mentos is embracing the publicity wholeheartedly, and is even talking about striking a marketing deal with the two men who created a "dancing fountain" using 101 two-liter bottles of Diet COke and 523 Mentos.

It's no wonder Coca-Cola isn't enjoying the popular buzz of yesteryear. Their reaction:

"It's an entertaining phenomenon," said Coke spokeswoman Susan McDermott. "We would hope people want to drink [Diet Coke] more than try experiments with it." She said the "craziness with Mentos ... doesn't fit with the brand personality" of Diet Coke. What brand personality is that? Boring? Stodgy?

Mentos' Mr. Healy points out that Coke-Mentos experiments have been around for years, but they have been given a new jolt by the newfound fascination among young people to create video content and share it online.

What's the chemistry behind the geyser? San Diego chemist Neal Langerman suggests the answer lies in the higher level of carbon dioxide in diet sodas than other sodas and the porous surface area of a Mentos. Mr. Langerman, the past chairman of the division of chemical health and safety at the American Chemical Society, said similar results wouldn't be achieved with an M&M, for instance, "which is really solid." Diet Coke has more carbon dioxide than Diet Pepsi, he says. Coke wouldn't comment on the comparison.

Diet Coke & Mentos video

Mixing Diet Coke and Mentos Makes a Gusher of Publicity - WSJ