Yes I am taking a break from blogging.

Perfect hipster business valentine story:

The story of the Uglydolls, as David Horvath tells it, goes like this. A couple of years ago, he was living in Los Angeles, and his girlfriend, Sun-Min Kim, had moved back to Korea to be with her family. Horvath, an illustrator, wrote her long, pining letters, and at the end he would draw one of a number of cartoon characters he had made up – a blocky, orange guy named Wage, with startled round eyes and an apron. At Christmas, Kim surprised him by sending back a plush-toy version of Wage, about a foot high, that she had sewn herself. Horvath was so excited that he showed it off to Eric Nakamura, the owner of a store in Los Angeles called Giant Robot, which sold art books and magazines as well as toys and T-shirts made by artists. ”He thought I was pitching him a product,” Horvath recalls. ”He said, ‘Yeah, man, that’s great, I’ll take 20.”

The Dolls then got more and more successful, mostly among urban people in their 20s and 30s. It even appeared in the Whitney Museum.

They are now trying to sell them to actual children:

It’s clear that he and Kim see their invention connecting with children. Each character comes with a tag explaining the character’s back story and how they all ”know” one another and what each one is like. … To Tracy Edwards, the Barneys vice president who oversees the chain’s home and kids businesses, the Uglydoll characterizations are important: ”The stories, in the end, sell the dolls.”

But there is a story that might sell them to adults, like this writer:

Meanwhile, the Uglydolls have given Kim and Horvath more reasons to visit each other, and now they plan to marry. This in itself is the kind of ending you’d expect from a children’s story – of the sort that grown-ups can’t resist.

I am such a sucker.

Jefferson Market on sixth ave. has great cheese guy. No big deal but it put me in a good mood tonight.

Take a look at this guy’s site. Cinematography and photography in free fall from an airplane. He has done many notable commercials and movies including the first Charlie’s Angels and the Pepsi Super Bowl commercial with the goose. I thought they mostly used CG, but according to this, they actually shot quite a bit of footage in the air.

If you see nothing else, take a look at his reel.

Apparently:

Movie credits, which used to last an average of three to four minutes, have joined the list of other things in Hollywood — like egos and salaries — suffering from inflation. Once, moviemakers considered anything longer than seven minutes — the credits for “Titanic” and “Waterworld” were in that range — to be pushing the bounds of propriety and audience patience.

So what? It’s not like you have to stay and watch, unless it’s a Jackie Chan flick. Besides there are often plenty of legitimate reasons for crediting all sorts of people:

In independent film shorts, for example, where many people work without being paid and a screen credit is their only form of compensation, credits can sometimes last a fourth as long as the short itself. In some movies with limited budgets, travel agencies and other companies are sometimes given credit — in essence free advertising in a prestigious format — if they agree to work for less.

Besides movie credits are useless these days anyway.

Reading about the 5 paragraph essay earlier today and thinking about my just completed ad class got me thinking about writing.

When you write an essay you usually follow the standard thesis, supporting points, conclusion format. You assume that your reader will read the whole thing.

In an ad you not only assume that your reader won’t read your copy, but you assume that he will be actively hostile toward it and will go out of his way to avoid it. You have to grab his attention with an interesting headline, visual or combination of the two, draw him into your text and make sure he comes out with a positive impression of your product.

However, they are both attempts to persuade the reader. To get your point across.

This is just the type of writing Calpundit mentions as fitting the 5 paragraph (or really 5 section) essay.

The whole format is geared toward making a persuasive case, and how often does that come up in real life?

He says while ironically making a persuasive case as he does several times a day, very well, on his blog.

In some sense all writing is persuasive; even an instruction manual is trying to persuade you to operate your new machine correctly.

He also gives this advice:

…ignore anyone who tells you to write like you talk. This is possibly the worst writing advice ever to gain wide popularity. Honest.

This is indeed the first piece of advice I have seen about writing advertising copy and it isn’t wrong. It doesn’t mean to literally write the words as you would speak them. If you actually listen of a recording of a real conversation you would probably be amazed just how incoherent it sounds. But you have to listen to a recording or read a transcript for it to look confusing. When you are having a conversation it sounds natural and makes sense.

Writing like you talk means that your reader should feel as though she is listening to a conversation. It means you should avoid sounding stilted or confusing. Your writing should flow. It should be easy to understand and get your point across clearly. It should not sound like the typical academic paper or corporate memo.

Calpundit does this well. When I read him, I feel like I am listening to a persuasive argument, not wading my way through a policy statement.

The best advice I have heard on this comes from the copywriter Luke Sullivan:

Write like you talk.
Write with a smooth, easy rhythm that sounds natural. Obey the rules of grammar and go easy on the adjectives. Short sentences are best. One-word sentences? Fine. End with a preposition if you want to. And if it feels right, begin a sentence with “and.” Just be clear.

This is from Sullivan’s excellent book on creating advertising.

I am trying to be an Art Director, not a Copywriter, but I feel it is very important to understand writing ads if I plan on going into advertising.

I am getting into this Friendster thing a little late, I know, but I find it incredibly fascinating. I signed up about a month ago when I got an invitation from Hebron, but have just really gotten into it. I only have 6 friends, but they are diverse enough that I already have more than 100,000 people in my personal network. I do have to admit that Amy seems to be responsible for half of that.

I know Friendster is officially over, but it seems to be like one of those trends that don’t seem to know when to stop. Like Electroclash, Williamsburg, The Atkins Diet, and, well, blogging, everyone knows its finished but people are still doing it because no one has come up with a suitable replacement.

I haven’t contacted anyone on the site except my actual friends, but I find it fascinating fining all these people who are somehow related to people I actually know. I especially like it when someone is connected to two or more of my friends who don’t know each other and aren’t related.

Unfortunately the servers are often very slow. I realize its a free site and that servers cost money, and I think things will speed up once they start charging, but they people will quit in droves and a lot of the fun will be lost.

They could also use better searching. Right now you can narrow the search results by distance from you, gender, who people are looking for and a few other criteria. Although this doesn’t really work. I often look for single women looking for men, but it often brings up women in relationships or otherwise not looking. But I want even more detailed searches. I want to look for people related to at least two of my friends or no more than 3 steps away from me, or only through people with less than 200 friends. Databases can create all sorts of powerful relationships and search criteria, they should allow us to use it to its maximum potential.

This is my entry by the way, which you can’t read unless you are one of the 103,523 people liked to me.

Weight: 161 lbs
Holding steady.

I haven’t fallen off the wagon; I am still on Atkins. But little has changed. My weight has remained the same for about 2 months. I am clearly in a plateau. But I don’t mind, really. I am nowhere near my goal of ~145 lbs but my pants are 32” and loose. I am still technically overweight by BMI measurement but not by much. I look and feel good. I will probably try to loose more weight this winter to show it off come spring and summer, but I’m in no hurry.

It never gets old seeing someone I haven’t seen since before the diet and getting compliments. It really has been a dramatic change and it makes me thrilled.

In diet news, I found this interesting article via Atrios of all people saying, among other things, that people on low carb diets may be able to eat more calories then those on regular or low fat diets and still loose weight. It is a direct challenge to the principal that “a calorie is a calorie” that many nutritionists hold. That makes sense. I seem to be eating more on Atkins: I am getting a 1/2 pound per meal of meat or fish and a good size helping of veggies. Of course I have no starch and I am working out, but I still feel as though I am eating more.