September 2008

Seinfeld off Microsoft and Onto Short Bus

September 28, 2008

So, Microsoft flushed its co-branding initiative with Jerry Seinfeld like Duchamp’s Dadaist toilet (which is a polite way of describing what many critics have regarded as absurdist excrement – see Maria Russo’s astute analysis at her Los Angeles Times blog). It’s unclear who Microsoft’s ad agency, Crispin Porter & Bogusky, was targeting with the waning [...]

Click to continue →

The Family Liar

September 25, 2008

As one might expect, I hail from a family of storytellers (read: entertaining fibbers). Both sides of my lineage (the Greco and Anglo, in this case) each make a claim to some order of narrative provenance (the Greek side claims to have invented the form, though I’m sure a few early homo sapiens huddled around [...]

Click to continue →

Advice from AMC’s Executive Suite

September 24, 2008

On the wing-tipped heels of AMC’s recent Emmy-grab with its retro-ad game series Mad Men, Charlie Collier, executive vice president and general manager of AMC, shares some professional insights with Diane Clehane at MediaBistro. The interview reminded me of a gag Jerry Rapp and I once penned for a TV-biz script in which a creative [...]

Click to continue →

5 Reasons to Applaud Damien Hirst

September 22, 2008

English artist Damien Hirst has weathered controversy, critics and the unenviable task of fitting the corpse of a 14-foot tiger shark into a vat of formaldehyde. And still, there are five additional reasons to applaud him. 1. A two-day auction at Sotheby’s auction house dubbed “Beautiful Inside My Head Forever” cut out the middleman – [...]

Click to continue →

← Previous Entries