Must Buy: Harold and Kumar 2!

If you hear Wilson Phillip's Hold On or get a glimpse of Neil Patrick Harris and you start cracking up... then you are a Harold and Kumar Fan. Well you lucky dude or dudette, you are in luck. This month H&K Escape from Guantanamo Bay comes out on DVD... and trust me when I tell you, it's going to rock.

First of all, when you left Harold and Kumar they were going to Amsterdam, right? We all know that they got sidetracked and they end up somewhere else. Well... what you didn't know is that they shot a shitload of footage that it's only found in the dvd, so you just click away and watched what could have happened if Kumar... oh well, I don't want to spoil it. Let's just say what would have happened if they actually made it to Amsterdam. They also have different shots so you can actually choose what happens next. Talk about interactive dvd!!!

In a world of oh so serious movies, I am going as fast as I can to my nearest Borders to buy myself a copy. Why? I like to laugh at stupid stuff as well. Besides, H&K 2 has, somewhere deep inside the film, a interesting "exploration" on racism. And I mean absolute, ignorant, blatant racism. And coming from a person who lived a true amazingly racist moment a couple of weeks ago while I was traveling with the guys... I now enjoy watching the flick even more.

Ok, so I'll tell you the thing that happened, just so that we all laugh.

Travis and I are camping out somewhere late at night. In fact, we were sitting on the floor waiting in line. Huddled up and extremely cold, we decided to chit chat a bit. Yes, we talk in Spanish. (Gasp! Where the fuck do these people live??? Not telling.) So after a while, a couple of guys right next to us tells the group that he was going to take a Mexican Bath.

According to the Urban Dictionary (sorry for my ignorance, I truly didn't know this term), the mexican bath is: Leaning over the sink and splashing water on your face and armpits. Hm. Where I come from we call that a Cat's Bath... Anyway, the guy suddenly opens his eyes and said: um, hey sorry, I meant that as a joke. We smile, honestly not giving a fuck. The guy in front of us said: oh don't worry, they don't speak mexican.

Yeah. Digest that one. In the meantime, go buy yourself that DVD.

Que vivan los idiotas!!!

Fortune Cookie 500 #'s 176-180

On experience

There is no better mentor than a mistake.


On long nights

You will stay for however long you are willing to.


On harassing

Sometimes people forget that other people have families too.


On shitty days

Never confuse a stupid day with a bad day.


On resting

There is no more vile enemy to rest than a deadline.

Get In. Get Out. Remember Forever

Taking advantage of the current restaurant review trend here at WAS, I am taking the liberty of scaling things down a bit and sharing my In-N-Out Burger experience with you all.

In-N-Out Burger is that southwestern burger treat comparable to the fine burger experience had at your local White Castle. It was recently made famous by a trashy (and most likely junked out) Britney Spears, who went to get her grub on at an LA location, wearing little more than a dirty wifebeater and short-shorts… and barefoot. Plus, the place has been featured in countless movies that highlight redneck chic, so it has an aura all its own.

So, it was imperative that during a recent trip with Me and TravisFucker, we go to one and try it for ourselves. First thing: this is the kind of place that can only be enjoyed after midnight, to get the full effect. At that hour the place has a fairly sizeable number of people hanging out, eating their way out of a hangover, a sleepless night… whatever.

The place is just made for clueless wackos: the menu has just five items – hamburger, cheeseburger, double-double, fries, shakes and Coke. That’s it, no fancy combos, no complicated French words, and no foreign ingredients (unless you consider red onions foreign, which they don’t have anyway). Even the art direction of the menu is kept at a minimum – black and red lettering over white – no food styling shots.

You wait in line, you order, you eat, you leave, just like the brand name promises: In-N-Out. The décor is also barebones: white floors, white walls, white ceilings, red tables.

As for the burgers, well, what do you expect for under $5.00? I assure you this is not Grade-A prime beef, but at 2:00 a.m., a burger is burger, and it gets the job done. Like White Castle, it’s not about the burger, it’s about the experience. And at In-N-Out, it’s all about sitting with like-minded people who have no shame in wearing dirty clothes, flip-flops, sporting serious bed head, etc., sharing a solid meal. Isn’t that what eating is all about?

Seven Deadly Ad Client Sin #3

Speed is definitely a client’s drug of choice. True there are various second place finishers but when it comes to speed, well nothing make a client happier than getting things they need done in two weeks handed in a week in advance for no particular reason except to decorate their desk. If you’ve ever wondered why that is or what it’s called, well it’s the 3rd of seven deadly ad client sins and it’s called…

Velocita

When a client constantly needs everything done rush, they should mean it. But they don’t. They just want things done fast so they feel in control. It is dumb ego at its worst often costing various points on the quality meter, but hey, it doesn’t matter because I can later do as many revisions I want (but that’s another sin).

If you’ve ever worked in any advertising department, you’ve had to do things three times as fast with less than half a logical reason to do so. That’s Velocita. The illogical insistence that everything be done as expeditiously as inhumanly possible. Screw anyone’s family or health, this better get done fast or else there’ll be consequences.

The whip cracks, the steeds gallop and the sausage factory is at an all time high because the client said they needed something done double rush because single rush is normal, double rush is urgent, and triple rush means you can land in the black list if you don’t hand that in before the day is up.

Velocita ALWAYS works against the quality of work. Some people shall insist that they work better under pressure and that’s all fine and dandy in their gung-ho mentality feeling like the shit for having done something double-time and triple-quick but what they don’t know is that it’s all for naught. You will work in vain, get elevated blood pressure and limited hours of sleep for nothing.

That’s the thing about Velocita, it’s illogical yet constantly justified by the client with things that make 0 sense on any playing field. But it has to get done because that’s how things are. Oh and also take note that you’re super rushed work shall be sent to be viewed via Blackberry with revisions coming in constantly because if it wasn’t clear enough above, YOU DON’T MATTER.

Clients committing this atrocious sin must bathe in hot oil and impale themselves atop the nearest fire hydrant if you want to save your souls… although being a shitty client begs the question, do you even have a soul?

Selling a dildo is fun

Anti blush pills. Do they work?

Do I smell a hint of shame?

I have been working on a billboard, and by working I mean getting revision after revision, for a full week. I have done almost 15 alternatives of the same shit. Every time I send something hoping for it to get approved, it comes back with another revision. And it isn't a "move this to the right" change. It's do the thing again. Since I honestly give a fuck because I get paid anyways, I decided to play along and see how many crappy revisions I can get on a simple fucking job.

Cut to this morning. I wake up late. I am suffering from the greatest ailment of them all: hangover. I had a romantic dinner at home and well, one thing led to another... let me rephrase that. One bottle of wine led to another, which led to Black Label on the rocks... Let's just say, I'm not in the mood of stupid revisions at 9:30 in the fucking morning.

Anyways, the point of the story is this: I thought yesterday night, when I sent in the last revision, that the piece would be approved. It couldn't be changed, since I had done everything they wanted. I get the call from the client. Oh, FYI, the client actually asked me to put the logo and the name of the product smaller. Hm. Interesting. I thought that billboards should have stuff nice and big so that when people drive by almost 70 miles per hour while texting, they at least see one damn thing of the billboard. Oh well.

Where was I? Oh, the call. So the chick calls me again, first thing in the morning. Riing. Riiiiiiiiiing...

"Yada, yada, yada... um... can you... change this and that?" Hm. What is this that I am hearing??? Oh... I can slightly hear it... oh yes, I can hear it now, perfectly. She was ashamed. She was so ashamed of her boss giving me revision after revision, I could hear it in her voice. This was truly amazing to me. At last, one client knew, deep in their heart, that they were wasting both my time and theirs and they actually felt bad about it. The thing is, the poor chick who has to call me is doing it because she has no option, she has to follow instructions and make 10 more changes today.

I actually felt bad for her. I said, don't worry, that's what we're here for. I took the changes, decided to do them hours later just for the kick of not doing something asap and sent the damn thing again. You know what? After 5 days, the damn thing is approved. I almost fainted. It is over.

Are clients aware of how stupid they look when they cannot figure out simple changes and have to change their minds every damn second? After a few years I have learned that 80% don't give a shit if I think that they are dumb like hell. In fact, they treasure their ability to revise the shit out of an ad. But today I saw someone that was truly mortified of another person's true ignorance.

That made me truly happy.

I wanna get pregnant...

'cause I want my kid to do this...

This is made out of Junk Mail.

Read 10 ways how people destroy YOUR junk mail designs. Yeah. You know you have either written or designed at least one of those crappy mailers...

Click at the name of the post.

Seven Deadly Ad Client Sins #2

Have you ever heard the expression “The customer is always right?” Well clients swear that the same applies to them. They are incapable of making a mistake, they know more about everything than you and don’t even think about suggesting something that might help their brand. They know their brand because they ARE their brand. This is what we call:

Arogantia Correcta

The second of Seven Deadly Ad Client Sins. This sin is characterized by the lack of logic in discussions or conversations and a total disregard for the possibility of being wrong about anything. If need be ludicrous examples and Ross Perot like analogies shall be utilized more than anything to shut you up into submission so you follow their orders rather than make the best ad possible.

Characteristic of this sin is the escalating of voice volume, the constant interruptions and the insisting that we listen to them because they know what they’re talking about versus us ad peons that don’t know how to make a good ad and would pretty much guarantee their brand’s failure by doing something so blasphemous as thinking of the best way to communicate to a target. These people eat targets for breakfast and shit sales for lunch, or so they say, and who am I to not believe that they shit on their sales?

Ad Wisdom of the week

"People who absolutely love working advertising usually do so because they still get paid for mediocre work"

Seven Deadly Ad Client Sins:

For those of us lucky enough to work in advertising, we’ve seen a variety of things that not only make you scratch your head, but that push you to the brink of desperation because something that you swear could have work, ended up being a tepid excuse for a steaming pile of shit. Often times people who don’t know how advertising is run blame the creative or the agency but those of us who have seen our idea babies raped and conditioned to suck know that the fault lies somewhere else.

Though there are thousands of things that piss me off about a client, there are seven that resonate throughout the advertising world. So without further ado, I present the first of Seven Deadly Ad Client Sins.

Stuffage

An ad when finished by a creative team should have balance, the right amount of aesthetic glam and a coherent message. Clients don’t understand any of these and instead insist they know better than you about communicating effectively even if their status reports are more than enough proof to show that they’re full of manure.

There is only so much information an ad can hold before becoming ineffective. This is not a judgment call, it’s just pure sense. True there were days where you could include 8 paragraphs of copy and that was all fine and dandy but in a world as cluttered as ours, everyone’s competing for the reader’s attention when in reality the consumer doesn’t want to see your ad.

As if that weren’t a big enough hump to hurdle over, the client insists that you add more and more and more information. You see your original layout and you see how it swells with inane information that only serves to satisfy the client who demands that content be added because it’s MUST SEE information about the brand or a product.

This isn’t limited to print either. Thanks to the beauty of audio compression and VO talent with Micro Machine Speed Speech, more information gets fed into a poor ad to suffocate the primary message into submission.

Retail ads do wonders stuffing unnecessary information into an ad and trust me, if you think the ad is loaded, the client sees three spots where you can put bullet points, a sub-sub-sub-sub headline or a burst.

If you’re a client who has stumbled upon this page and you’ve committed this sin, you must say three Hail Me’s, Two Our Holy Jokers and lash yourself for two hours. Forgiveness shall not be offered for this, but it’ll sure as hell make us feel better.

Joker’s 20 on 20

There are literally thousands of blogs you can choose to read from. Design blogs, ad blogs, food blogs, doctor blogs, and pretty much any type of blog you can think of since these don’t depend on funds to continue living like a magazine. It’s an intriguing trend because to a small degree, we form part of that microcosm of the blogosphere and I enjoy being part of this collective that at times produces brilliant posts and I hope I offer some type of input for the greater good be it through something relatively well thought out or just a series of dick jokes that make people chuckle.

So here’s what happens, I got to thinking about the blogs I enjoy reading a lot and said, what would a Q & A spot with these wonderful characters be like? Instead of continuing my ponderings I said what the hell and began to think of bloggers I really enjoy and what would I ask them. So I chose the blogs, have gotten in contact with one of my favorite bloggers and have 20 questions, 20 answers and some comments from me.

Will I get to 20? That's not that great of a question but I hope mine are.

Will post soon

Cheers

Joker

Nice to meet you!!!

Picture this. You are given a time travel machine. You have ten trips. Not one more, not one less. You get to go whenever you want in all history to meet certain people. You get to ask them just one question, then you have to go to another time zone. Whom do you choose? What are the questions you ask?

Here are mine in no particular order:

1) God.
Q: Who killed John F. Kennedy and do you have it on DVD?

2) Ghandi.
Q: Wanna watch Fight Club with me?

3) Kevin Smith.
Q: Can I stay at your place for a month so I can learn how you write so damn perfectly?

4) George Clooney.
Q: Can you have meaningless sex with me and let me tape it?

5) Picasso.
Q: Can I copy your artwork as you did others and sell it for a gazillion dollars on Ebay?

6) Bruce Lee.
Q: Can you teach me how to hit the shit out of people without letting them put a hand on me?

7) The chick I met in High School who said that advertising was the way to go.
Q: Wanna know how does it feel when someone guts you while you are still alive???

8) Marilyn Monroe.
Q: Was Frank Sinatra a good lay?

9) Charles Manson.
Q: Who does your hair?

10) Steve Wozniak.
Q: Can you make me an official Tester for all your new Apple products for as long as I live?

Jesus is junk mail

He's not magic, he's not glory, he's junk mail. That's the level to which people have demoted the dearly beloved savior of two religions. you don't believe me? Check your email people. It's that simple. Along with the sinfully delicious emails detailing the possibilities of your grown manhood, enhanced breast, prolonged erections, options for catholic, jewish, or christian sex partners and debt consolidation, there's little ol' Jesus lurking in the shadows of your junk mail.

Be it in a blatant request to sign up for the Catholicathon where you can give your tithe and be forgiven that one time you butt fucked your 12 year old cousin by telling them you wanted to hide your wand in their magic box or the time you pasted peanut butter on your nether regions so scraps could make a happy, or the oh so popular Beloved in Christ we love you intros to oh so many Ugandan money transfers we're all missing out on, Christ is everywhere in your junk mail.

Seriously, if you think getting Rick Rolled is annoying try posting a pinup of Jesus on an email and putting in the subject hilarious nut shot. I've had that done to me and it was almost funny, except that Jesus was in all his bloody martyred glory and I was mentally prepared to see someone get a sweet field goal kick in the jimmy so I felt guilty for maybe a second... maybe.

Then I got to thinking of all the times I've received Jesus power point presentations, pictures, forwards, chain mails and donation requests, not forgetting my sweet friends from Lebanon who also believe in Christ and that through his medium, I'll hand over my social security number along with my entire savings fund... you know, savings for the savior. Makes sense right?

But honestly, it's not like I think there are many Buddha, Allah, Vishnu, Zoroastrian or any other type of spam mail and I wonder seriously, when did the propaganda: "Spam for Jesus" come into effect. There's this eternal email and online love for Jesus but people every day seem less and less Jesus like to me. Oh sure, they pray a good prayer, but being a good natured whole hearted Christian or Catholic? not really, not even in Christmas time because all you need to see is traffic and Santa Claus cluttering every possible window and advert in existence at nauseum just to sell more coke, or berries, or snacks, or tv's or whatnot.

People don't say please or thank you, they don't give you the right of way because they can cut before you right away. They don't say good morning, good afternoon or good evening because it's cliché or oldschool. They don't hold the door for someone because they're afraid they might get sued for wrongful entrance ajarism in the third degree. They don't go to church and when they do, they don't really mean it. And that's a judgment call. Don't believe me? Go to a church, look around and see the people who are praying the loudest. notice that for the most part they're also the hardest to deal with, the nastiest and rudest of the pack? But they sure can pray and they know the psalms by heart. That's because that's how they convince themselves they're not as shitty as they really are.

Screw nice gestures, I give my money to the church and don't miss one of those enthralling services where I'm asked to listen and repeat but never to analyze. People rarely analyze what they say, read, receive or send and they think they're doing me a favor for sending me a Jesus forward. You're not, you're just giving me one more reason to not read what you have to send and push you further away from me and last I checked, that's not what all this do onto others as you would do onto you thing is all about, is it?

Got meat??? Les Halles NYC Review

Did I tell you what happened for my birthday last June??? Well, my sweetie surprised me with a wonderful gift: a spur of the moment trip to NYC. Whooooooohooooooo!!! I pack my bags and head for a long weekend there, so happy because I got to chill out at the best place ever. But it wasn't the only surprise: he took me to Les Halles at Park Avenue... And boy do I have a great review about that place. Let's begin, shall we?

In the words of John Lennon, all you need is Meat. Les Halles is a brasserie. You eat meat. Period. It became famous via my ultimate chef hero, Tony Bourdain, but I've learned that after he left to explore the world, the place still gets loads of visitors. And there is a reason. They cook pretty damn good. So... would I recommend it to you guys? In a second.

For starters... don't expect to hear music and people mumbling. It is a loud place, full of people and energy. They have decided to make space for more people than ever, so don't get too surprised if you seat almost right next to another group merely by inches.

Oh, very important, make your reservations. Although they like walk-ins, you might need to seal the deal before you go. After 8:30 the place is packed as hell. So keep that in mind.

The service is ok. Not wonderful and amazing, but hey, when you see the amount of people that are there sitting next to you asking for food, you kind of get that the waiters will bullshit you a bit and then move on to the hungriest and nearest client. I found it cool because I hate when waiters ask you minute by minute how are things going... so this worked for me. Maybe for you as well...

Expect to pay at least 150 bucks for a couple, drinking 4 glasses of wine, no appetizers, two entrees and dessert - it was my bday, dammit!!! Yes. 150 american dollars. No, mein friends. Not expensive. Memorable. Granted, Bourdain is not cooking there anymore, but who gives a shit... This is not fucking Olive Garden, dammit. The food is actually good, so pay up. I've seen people pay more at Friday's for a frozen chicken and three margaritas.

Well, now you now, the next time you hit Manhattan you gotta ask the guys down at Les Halles for some medium rare goodness.

Haiku Poo-poo #10

Like a geyser

Vomit rises

When you are near

Can I have a small cup of disappointment???

Here's the deal. RestrictionsApply and myself were talking and walking a few days ago and I spotted a Pinkberry. I told him: look, the yogurt store!!! I have not been able to go, read that it's the place to munch down on something nice without the calories!!! Since it opened a few years ago ('05), at least I found it difficult to go. Since Restrictions and I share a "I have to try that" adventure streak, we decided to hit the line.

First of all, let me set the tone. Über asshole music playing all around the store. Fancy "thingies" for sale, mainly to consume frozen yogurt. Loads of emo kids (did you know that they eat babies?) hanging around, mix that with would be Paris Hilton whores also eating away. Hm. We think... this Pinkberry shit has some serious hype. Damn, it must be sooooo good...

Cut to Restrictions and I, Pinkberry in hand. First spoonful. Um. Huh? Second try. THIS TASTES LIKE SHIT!!!!!!!!!! We start walking to our destination. One dude stops us - while we are trying to either eat the crappy thing or puke it - to ask us where the Pinkberry store was. We smiled and said... oooh that way. Enjoy!!!

I could not walk 20 steps more with that crappy yogurt in hand. Restrictions tried to fight it a little bit more but ended up throwing it away. An extremely expensive yogurt which tasted like hell, and which I would not have even tasted if it wasn't for all the shitty hyped crap I read about them.

In that moment, we knew. We've been had. Advertising people fell into the greatest trap, ever. Sell shit in a good way and people will come.

Restrictions, I owe you a nice Baskin Robbins...

Funny What-If Biography Covers.

Here's one of the covers... Go to the name of the post for more...

I'd like to solve this one: IDIOT!

Dumbest Guy Ever on Wheel of Fortune - Watch more free videos