That's as appropriate a name as any for the execution that claims to be Facebook's first-ever photo game "completely using FB photo albums," per Joe Sabia of that one agency I'm in love with until I die.
Brought into your (hopefully) lovin' arms by Whirled for LA's Spot, the idea behind Choose Your Own One Night Stand is to make decisions, driven by a series of photos, by clicking on links:
I love Whirled and would marry it if I could, then divorce it three times just so I could marry it four times.
Here's its latest for Law & Order: UK. Bonus: it uses the voiceover actor from our version. You'll learn how the justice system differs on that side of the Atlantic, as well as new words like "copper" ("policeman!") and "mum" ("mom").
It's a little long but you can just feel the glee that went into the scene-mashing. It's infectious and slightly crazed. Also...
I've become a big fan of Whirled since yonder days of Every Cigarette Smoked in Mad Men. Their holiday greeting is light fare but it will still make you crack the wee-est of wee little smiles.
Today is Christmas Eve. It's around this time that I get sentimental for things past and anxious about what happens after the 31st. I measure my life in these links to a new year.
Whatever you celebrate, I think our thoughts are moving in the same general direction: toward trepidation and hope, an eagerness to not waste time or people. They're hand in hand, drifting toward the ether.
Here's to this strange and wonderful period of exponentially-improving technology and the memes that bookmark our mastery of them. Here's to us and what we'll make.
At the end of every year, Google Zeitgeist releases an intuitive report about how the world searched over its course. The lists are impressive data sheets of golden calves ("world cup," "chatroulette," "swine flu," "slum dog millionaire") dearly departed: a tribute to how quickly time moves, and we with it.
This year they gave that information an extra touch: a video illustration that manages to promote the existence of Zeitgeist, serve Google's Search On manifesto, and strike the nostalgia key pitch-perfectly. (A thin tightrope, artfully walked.) We give you the world's collectively shared 2010, neatly packaged in less than three minutes:
The video's remained within the top five of the Viral Video Charts for the last handful of days. It also got a tributory tweet from @ericschmidt hisself - that can't hurt. But more importantly, it left us with the sense of having witnessed and shared an important blip in time with millions of others. Was 2010 really that epic? Are all years like that?
We get to the heart of what makes something catch an audience's eye, why mediocrity might not be so bad ... and why the internet may be the best thing that ever happened to really boring people.
Also, Joe busts out the Morse Code chops. It's a riot in dots and dashes.
That's a lot of puff-puff, and nice work by Whirled.
The drinking and smoking are integral to Mad Men, and not just because it's a gesture of fidelity to a period. There's a close association between creatives and artists. In those two camps, you've always got this tragic notion of burning on both ends: being constantly hopped up on something and doing your job anyway - maybe even needing the former for the latter.
Also, still fresh out of Cannes, I can attest that this attitude, this lifestyle, is still alive and well in the industry. (The hyperlinked post is about people discussing ways to quit, but that's also part of the mantle of smoking.) The world may have moved on, but the lone creative still gets something out of lighting one up. It's a legacy, nicotine-laced shackles of genius and suffering that bind us not just to Don Draper but to Mark Twain and Sartre.*
