Lurv cats ... of death

So I got a new phone a few months ago. It's awesome by the way. One of the features on the phone allows you to edit photos by cropping, changing from color to black and white, and drawing over a picture. I've had a lot of fun with the drawing feature. Natalie sent me a picture of Yetti with her favorite toy rat (we call him Raton) sitting at her food dish. I was waiting for a project to come back to me at work so I had a few minutes to kill. What resulted was a love story gone terribly wrong. I sent these as picture messages to Natalie and she thought it was pretty funny. And now for your viewing pleasure I present "The Rat, the cat, and the end: A story of feline fatalism."

Post #92

I just checked and we are almost to 100 posts! I thought that was exciting. As I was reading everyone elses blog I realized we really needed to update. So here is an update.

Life is good right now. I'm so happy about the weather. I love 75 degrees with a breeze. I know It won't last long here so I'm savoring it for the time being. We are learning many things about owning a home. Its a lot of work (if you don't want to be "that" house on the street). We have gone through 3 lawn mowers (don't ask) so far. Josh has been good about mowing the lawn. For last Mondays Family Home Evening we did yard work. I pulled weeds while Josh mowed the lawn. This past weekend we took our weekly trip to Lowes and purchased a hose and a spray nozzle and a push broom. No one tells you how much money you have to spend on yard maintenance! I actually don't mind yard work too much. I love a pretty green yard. We are lucky to have beautiful trees and plants which came with the house. The apricots are starting to grow and I can't wait to eat them! Hopefully the deers will stay in the mountains in the summer. I will post photos soon of our progress.

Our calling at Church is teaching the primary children 7 year olds. We had 11 kids, but they split the class last Sunday and now we have 6! 11 seven year olds were out of control to teach. It is much more manageable to have 6 kids. We really enjoy our calling. Kids are really comical. It always amazes me how much they know about the Gospel.

Work is going great for both of us. Josh has been assigned to write on a few projects these last 2 weeks and is really happy to finally write!

For a summer concert update, Blink-182, Weezer and Fall Out Boy are touring together this summer!!! They haven't released any dates yet, but we are so there!

Hey Jude—let's dance!

Some months back T-Mobile commissioned an ad to promote its "Life's for sharing" campaign. Saatchi & Saatchi London (T-Mobile's ad agency) came up with one of those simple, clean, huge ideas to accomplish the task. They decided to plant a group of dancers in a busy London underground station and on que have them perform a routine to a few songs. The idea was that people would join in, share the experience with their camera phones, and generally enjoy the spectacle. They were right on all accounts. The first video is the result of the T-Mobile underground dance party.

The second video is a continuation of the campaign. This one happened just a few days ago in London and, in my opinion is the more successful of the two spots. Saatchi & Saatchi didn't use planted performers this time. Instead, they sent out a text message blast to T-Mobile subscribers inviting them to the event. 13,000 people showed up to have a giant karaoke party and sing "Hey Jude." Now I've never seen the Beatles, but I would imagine this rendition of the song would please John Lennon very much—even if it is technically promoting a consumer product.

Advertising doesn't have to be just about product selling points. Good advertising should make people feel something. That's what makes the Sony spot so good, and that's what makes these spots so good as well. I'm not going to change my service to T-Mobile anytime soon, but my perception of the company has certainly changed. Take a look for yourself and leave a comment of your thoughts about the spots. Do you think they are effective advertisements, or just good entertainment?

The perfect TV commercial

This is an old commercial from around 2006 I think. Mostly I just want to post it so I have it to look at whenever I want. It's beautiful. Natalie showed this to me when we were still in school and I watched it at least ten times in a row. Fallon London is the agency responsible for the spot, and they won all kinds of awards for it in 2006. This spot has become a landmark in advertising for the new aesthetic of simple, clean, huge ideas. Sony wanted a spot that highlighted their emphasis on color in their tvs. So Fallon came up with a simple idea—get a bunch of bouncy balls and let them loose down a hill. From there they exploded it to huge proportions—get 200,000 plus bouncy balls and throw them down a hill in San Fransisco with 24 high speed cameras capturing every bouncy, ricochet , and roll. The result was this amazing and arresting commerical. Every time I watch it I'm captivated. You can't help but feel good about the world after seeing this spot. The first video is the actual spot that ran on television, and the next is a behind the scenes, making of video produced by Fallon. This is a piece of advertising that makes me proud to be part of the industry. I want to do advertising like this when I grow up.