*AmongMany

Well, it is exactly what it sounds like. All said, however, it’s a pretty interesting project being conducted by photographer Jacob Pritchard. Pritchard helps his subjects get all set for portraits in in their own bed, then lets them have at it with the remote for a few takes to see what comes out of it. And the results are pretty compelling.

For the moment, it seems, Pictures in Bed lives on its own Tumblr account. I’d presume it was left off his portfolio site for ease of updating. Regardless, there’s something intriguing about delving into people homes/lives to see how they sleep/hang out in bed. It has a voyeuristic quality that’s paid off safely. And apparently the participants are having fun too:

I felt like a cross between a professional model, a porn star, and an artist—it was titillating. -Kelly

For me, my bed is a magical place I dream about when I’m drunk, exhausted and somewhere far, far away—like the East Village. -Tanveer

If you want to participate, you can drop Jacob a line. His info is here. Have fun, and let me know if your shot turns up there!

Having just come back from my (first) trip to the UK, this passport folio immediately caught my eye. After all, when you’re traveling, figuring out where to put your passport that it’ll be safe and you’ll still keep track of it is a pain. And, perhaps if I did more international travel, I’d have already gotten myself a passport wallet. But I digress.

Gus leather goods caught my eye immediately with their smart, no-nonsense designs. But the thing that sealed the deal for me with the passport holder was the SIM card slots. What a statement that attention to detail makes about the role that digital is playing in our lives these days! And, of course, the shift toward an “all plastic” lifestyle is also well-reflected in Gus’ goods.

While I’m not certain that my travel proclivities make the passport carrier a necessity for me, I’ll certainly be keeping their wallets in mind next time around.

Back in August 2005 I received a rather cryptic email that was just intriguing enough to get me to respond. After a couple of cloak & dagger style exchanges, it turned out the person on the other end was from a little recruiting shop in Atlanta called TalentZoo, which also happened to run a successful site for advertising people. They wanted to start a new blog and were interested in having me join up for the cause. Being a young, ambitious ad guy, I readily did so (for free). Not long after, Beyond Madison Avenue was born.

It started off with just a few people, of which Mack Collier quickly emerged as the impromptu leader. Over the course of the next year, we gained a few new faces - Paul McEnany, Jayne Karalow, and  Sean Howard to name a few - and lost a few of the old ones. Eventually, Mack slipped away to focus on The Viral Garden - an effort for which he’s become quite well known. I was asked to fill his shoes in an editorial position. Over the course of the following year (our second), we gained a significant number of readers. We settled solidly into the top 70 of AdAge’s Power 150 listing (which by then was more than 400 blogs long). We beat out Wired, Seth Godin, and Logic + Emotion in Jaffe’s Most Valuable Blog competition. Not a bad year all in all.

From the beginning, TalentZoo’s involvement was limited to hosting and some banner space; we were otherwise left to our own devices. Unfortunately, our growing success was met with new rules and less control, both of which ultimately served to drive the core team of writers on to other ventures. Despite having left things a little rough - there was some disagreement around the logic behind our decisions to move on - I appreciated the experience and relationships that I was taking away from my time with BMA. Until recently…

On one of my recent return trips - I do reference my previous posts occasionally - I noticed that the author’s name had been changed on one of my posts. Curious, I looked up another. Same thing. It quickly became evident that the terms of my departure were worse than I had realized.

More than two years of my postings have now been attributed to other authors…

Primarily someone writing as “IsabellaSingerLo”. As far as I can tell, my name was simply changed in the database since I don’t see any posts by this author that I didn’t write. I had originally intended to list out the links in this post, but there’s just too many. Instead, you can find most of the altered posts archived here.

The situation begs an interestings question: I wrote those posts specifically for BMA, but I wrote them. Can it be considered plagarism? How much of that content is mine (or at least partly mine)? This is, of course, disappointing to say the least. Something just rubs me the wrong way about losing attribution for all of the thoughts and discussions that made up my education in blogging.

Burger King and the folks at Crispin Porter Bogusky allegedly severed 233,906 Facebook friendships.

That’s right, 233,906 people were defriended in return for a single free Burger King whopper.  That was the idea behind the Burger King Facebook application: The Whopper Sacrifice.

The rules are simple

1. Add the application
2. Delete 10 of your friends
3. Get a coupon for a free Burger King Whopper

But there is a catch.  Those ten friends are sent a message that you traded their friendship for a delicious Whopper.

I hope it was worth it.  And this is truly a brilliant way to use Facebook to advertise.

I sat down a few weeks ago to watch TV, always gravitating towards some mindless reality show when I really wanna veg, and decided to see what HBO had to offer. There was this show called Summer Height High. With a quick skimming of the program synopsis, “A reality crew follows the lives of the students and staff at a typical Australian public highschool for one term”, I knew I was gonna love it.

And did I love it — but the joke was on me. I thought I was going to be watching a real documentary. Well it didn’t take long for me to figure it out, Summer Heights High is a Mokumentary (think The Office meets Best In Show). And it captures the hilarity/absurdity/stupidity/awesomness of reality tv drama in the smartest of ways.

Just like the synopsis promised it follows the lives of three students/staff at a public highschool.
There are the three subjects:

• 1. Jonah Takalua: a year 8, 13 year old boy with severe ADD and an attitude problem.
• 2. Mr. G: A 36 year old overly enthusiastic drama teacher, with an affinity for his chihuahua and himself.
• 3. Ja’Mie: An exchange student from a prestigious all-girls private school.

Here are clips from each of the characters if you still need some convincing: Mr G, Jonah, Ja’Mie.

The plane that landed in the Hudson river landed a minutes ago and already pictures are loaded up on Flickr.

I think it’s pretty amazing that those side-door-slide-floaty things actually work. Whenever they’re going through the emergency safety instructions at the start of a flight my mind always tries to picture a scenario where everyone would line up and go down the slide in an organized fashion… and well, here one is. Kinda.

This morning The New York Times featured a great article about the Presidential Inauguration that is right around the corner and corporations jumping at the opportunity to stamp their brands on it.  I don’t know if it was because I spent the majority of my day yesterday in Ikea, but this definitely caught my interest:

That’s right. Ikea has recreated the Oval Office in Union Station (check out more pictures here).

Other brands taking advantage of the Inaugurations’ captive audience are Quaker Oats (by holding Quaker Oat parties featuring mom’s that blog), Hennessy with limited edition bottles and Pepsi-Co.  It’s a new wave of political consumerism.

And I think it’s pretty amazing how many brands are excited to align themselves with the new presidency. While it’s not surprising (what company would want to miss a captive audience) it is a sign of ‘change’ — I don’t remember many Ikea recreations of Guantanamo.

Growing up I remember looking forward to the HUGE Toys ‘R Us circular that would come in the morning paper after Thanksgiving.  I would go through it marking anything and everything I wanted. Unfortunately I also had to face the reality that my parents would not get me EVERYTHING, so I would guide them through my holiday wish list with a key.  It had these categories:
1. Want 2. Need 3. Want but don’t Need.   4. Need but can live with out.   5.  Need and cannot live without. 6. Absolutely have to have and cannot live without.

This season I don’t need these Paige Cuff Frye Boots, but I want them badly.

You can deposit money into my paypal account if you’d like to make a contribution (e-mail me and I can set that up for you). Or you can go here.. and check out my Urban Outfitters holiday wishlist.

Feel free to add your wishlist in the comments section. Who knows, maybe Santa reads this blog.

I’m a vampire fan. As my friend Will pointed out the other day, as well as my hairdresser Lisa, ‘not everyone is a vampire fan. Some people prefer Zombies.’

And while I’m always down for a good Zombie flick (28 Days Later was not zombies by the way — it was humans infected with a mutated strain of the RAGE virus.. or something.. and it was a damn good movie), I will have to say that I love vampire movies. I love vampire TV shows even more.

When Buffy and Angel finally consummated their relationship in the TV show Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and Angel experienced his moment of pure happiness, thus breaking the curse plummeting him into the vortex of Hell, i cried.  I cried hard. Embarrassingly hard.

When they split the show Buffy The Vampire Slayer into one hour of Buffy followed by an hour of Angel, I reveled in the now 2 hours I could waste melting into prime-time WB programming.  When the network featured crossover events, I would isolate myself in front of the glowing television set in pure uninterrupted bliss.

Then the writers changed. The show started to suck and the WB became the CW.

And now many years later Twilight emerged. I picked up the book many times between 2006 and 2008. I look at the cover, read the dust jacket, put it down.

Then a few weeks ago at a Dinner Party a bunch of my female friends were discussing their love for the book. How “hot” it was. How they would stay up late reading it. I dismissed their comments (one of the girls at the party also said how she doesn’t read  book that doesn’t have a pink cover). Seriously.

And then my curiosity got the best of me. Late at night, unable to sleep I went on my favorite pirated movie website, and there it was. Twilight the newly released movie. Filmed with a handheld camera, it all its glory.

Being even more untrue to my “read the book, then watch the movie” policy, i clicked play.

I figured this crap movie would put me to sleep in seconds.

And I stayed away for the entire 90ish minutes.

The next day I found myself in a trance at Barnes and Nobles buying not only the first book but second book “New Moon”, and devouring both of them in days.

However for all its grasp on me Twilight it is NOT Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Nor is it Harry Potter — I don’t even want to humor the comparison.

Here to me, is how the books succeeds and fails:

First, let me start off by saying. Yes. I liked Twilight. I thoroughly enjoyed Twilight. I enjoyed it like I enjoy reading US Weekly in the bathroom (sorry for the graphic detail). Quick, entertaining, done.

Secondly, for people who claim this is a revolutionary new look at vampires (the whole being able to walk in the day light and not prey on people) just look at Anne Rice’s Interview With A Vampire — didn’t Brad Pitt only eat animals?  And Blade, he walked around in sunlight. Regardless, its a nice twist — the diamond glittery skin. The lack of fangs. And the inclusion of their greatest enemy, Werewolves. Nice.

Third, as for the INTENSE love story. Ehh. It’s intense because the author, Stephanie Meyer is constantly reminding us. In reality Bella walked through the school parking lot, saw a hot boy that everyone else thought was hot too. The boy, Edward couldn’t read her mind (like he could with everyone else) so he couldn’t hear her mentally drooling over him. Then they make eyes a few more times. And BAM - WHAT DO YOU KNOW, they are assigned to be lab partners and fall in love. Not complex. I mean yeah, her blood, so sweet, so hard to resist. But please. Its not love. Its pure infatuation. They never have fun. They never giggle together. He stares at her while she sleeps, always worried she is going to break. Honestly, Bella seems really boring. She wallows in her misery. I bet she shops at Hot Topic, if they have one in Forks, WA.

Some parents seem to think the book preaches abstinence. Really? This is hilarious since Edward is also saying to her, he will only end Bella’s human life if she marries him.  Shouldn’t it worry the same people who like the abstinence subtext that the book is fusing marriage with death?

Oddly enough even Angel and Buffy had an abstinence subtext.  They couldn’t have sex because if they did Angel would go to the vortex of hell. HELL people. Never to return and live a life of suffering and torture. That’s some mighty stuff.

But for everything I say that’s negative I keep coming back to the fact, that even now, as I’m almost finishing book three, I know I will go and get book four. Why? Its a good story. Its not a work of art. But its a damn good story.

And while I say give me Buffy & Angel’s romance any day over Bella & Edward’s, unfortunately for now, Buffy doesn’t have a movie out, nor a book, or a tv show.  So for those out there that despise Twilight maybe something good will come of this Twilight series after all.  Buffy movie?

(E-mail Josh Whedon and let him know you want it.)

A few weeks ago Danny wrote about Wall Blank, the get cheap art and fill your walls. And this made me remember another site. Jen Bekman’s 20×200.

The idea is simple:

(limited editions × low prices) + the internet = art for everyone

Each week the site posts two new pieces, a photograph and a work on paper:

Each image is available in three sizes.

* A small size – an edition of 200 for $20. * A medium - sized edition of 20 for $200. * A large - sized edition of 2 generally for $2000

Every piece of art is delivered with certificate of authenticity and numbered by the artist.   There is even the opportunity to purchase the original from the artist. So how did this all get started? Jen Bekman opened an apparently tiny gallery 5 years ago on the Lower East Side. Her mission was to support emerging artists and collectors.  20×200 takes her mission further and redefines what it means to be an art collector.  And of course, like any good art lover, all profits are donated — in this case to the Public Design Center. What I like most about this site is the art. Its’ gorgeous — thought was obviously put in selecting the pieces. I will admit I get super frustrated when I see something I need-want-and-can’t-live-without and then click to find out the only print left is at the $2000 level — but hey, all the reason to visit 20×200 more often.