NY Part I

Well,

I didn't really blog while I was away...did I? I can't remember. I think I'm still hungover.

I did have fun though. The flights were an absolute bitch. I once said I like flying, not the case anymore.

I pretty much just walked around the entire time. As a result of my wanderings, various things happened:

Josh from heeb.
Josh was cool. I'm glad I met him. After failing at the Jewish geography game of "who do you know" we managed to stumble across a random connection which was gratifying in some kind of way. I wanted to take a picture of me and heeb together, but he doesn't like his pic being taken.

So I took a photo of his T-Sauce and glass instead




Celebs
I did see a lot of celebs, well a lot if you think about the amount of people in Manhattan and how many days I was there. Ed Begley Jr, that wierd guy from Mad About you, Morgan Spurlock and Billy from Melrose place. He was actually at my conference! He is launching some crazy social network called CafeMom. I wish him well.

I was very hungover in that pic.

Apparently I had a spack attack when I saw Morgan Spurlock. I turned all celeb crazy. I happen to think my accent allows me to get away with it. You see, cops, I hear, never do this:

My roomies

Fuck. We had fun. i don't think I have watched as much TV in one week as I did there. So much reality TV. Dori, Neeley and Olga- thanks for the apple martinis, the memories and the marijuana pasta.



The Crazy JDate billboard in times square




Conference

Was a parade of nerds. End of story.

The guy on the left, Erick Schonfeld, he is the KING of all nerds.

WTC
I did happen to walk past Ground Zero. It wasn't really somewhere I aimed to get to, but when you're downtown, you can't really miss it. I noticed there was a visitor centre across the road from the site. People could donate money I guess, or buy souvenirs as a mark of their respect etc. Only what, 3,000 or 5,000 people died? Not as many as other catastrophes in the world. But I realised that the reason Western society is so mortified by 9/11 is because the potential for so much monetary wealth was also destroyed that day. That's what people relate to and that's why it was such a tragedy.



Other cool shit

I saw a car on fire.



And loads of coloured Wellingtons



I guess that shall be all for now. Part II when I remember it.

Uptown, downtown and all about town

I'm having fun in NY. Me likee.

My flight wasn't fun though. Probably worst fight ever. United is shit. Worse than Alitalia and that's a big call. I hope their Blog scourers find this.
Everything was delayed, I missed my connecting flight from LA to NY. So my 21 hours of transport became 23/24 hours. Not fun.
I still got the train from the airport which had its benefits - weirdos. I now know always wear iPod headphones, prevents people from talking to you.
One dude, during conversation, kept on telling me "you only live once", he probably said it 15 times. I told him to write it on a Tshirt. He wanted to pick up some hot chick on the train, so I told him to go for it, you know, you only live once! He was a pussy. Clearly doesn't practice what he preaches.

The mystery shopping escapade
Yesterday I was sitting in Dori's apartment (thanks Dori for having me, 2 days in and it's been awesome, flatmates are fun too) and there is a knock at the door. The supermarket had all this shopping for us. I didn't know if any of her flatmates ordered it, so I took it. Turns out none of them ordered anything, we won free shopping. I didn't know why one of them ordered a whole roast chicken, but shit happens. Some retard also put the watermelon right next to the hot chicken. Who does that??
When we looked at the delivery card, 4D looked more like 4J so we took it down. They didn't order it, but she said that in spanish a G is a J, so we took it there. No dice either. It was really ours.
But then I realised the address was 110, not 101! The poor delivery guy was a tad dyslexic. There was no way we were getting off our asses to take it back to the supermarket. I was worried the guy would get fired for stealing it. You know how prejudice americans are...
In the end, whilst I was having a nap they came back and picked it up. But, we still took the milk. Thanks guys.

Other than that, I'm just walking around, going to a couple of shows, museums, the park.
I'm managing to work it here too. It seems like New Yorkers don't know my tricks either...

My random unknown friend, Josh, from Heeb magazine, I shall be meeting this week. Once it happens we'll put the whole story up here. But until then, Josh, we will see how you perform!

My response to a terrible marketing exercise

Your offer of a $50 voucher for 1.5 hours is insulting!
In addition, making it seem like Seduce is doing the customers a favour and seeming to offer them an exclusive is a further insult to their intelligence!
Shame on you marketing people!

ps. The correct spelling is: Definitely.

---

From: sbnewsletters@seduce.com.au
To: wisemandebbie@hotmail.com
Date: Thu, 10 May 2007 02:05:56 +0000
Subject: SEDUCE EVENING FOCUS GROUPS

Seduce Black

Hi Deb

It's that time again and Seduce are inviting the first 40 SeduceBlack members who respond to this email to attend an exclusive focus group and receive a $50 gift voucher.
We are offering you the chance to attend a 1.5 hour session to view the new Seduce Spring/Summer 2007 collection and tell us exactly what you think of our new range!
When:
Monday 14th May 2007: 6 - 7.30pm (18-21YRS)
8 - 9.30pm (22-25YRS)
Wednesday 16th May 2007: 6 - 7.30pm (26-30YRS)
8 - 9.30pm (31+YRS)

Where: Seduce Head Office, St Peters
To be considered, all you need to do is reply to this email and tell us:

• Your name
• Your age
• The suburb where you live
• The Seduce store where you most often shop
• Your mobile telephone number

Have your say and contribute to the ongoing success of Seduce, and receive a $50 gift voucher on the night as a thank you!
PLACES ARE STRICTLY LIMITED
Only the first 40 replies can be considered, so REPLY NOW!
We will call you shortly to let you know if you have been chosen.
Please confirm only if you can definately make it next week.
PLEASE NOTE: You must receive an email invitation to attend and you will be required to bring a print out of your invitation on the night.
We look forward to hearing back from you!
The SeduceBlack Team

Visit the Seduce website
www.seduce.com.au

The art of pranking

Whoever is pranking me between 1am and 2am (any night of the week), or 6am (usually on a Sunday morning)- please do it some more.

I'd like to chat.

And you liked it last night, didn't you? I asked you how you were, you said fine and then you had no more material and YOU hung up on ME!

It's time to get creative, show me what you got.

It's not like it's the Logies, it's just the MTV awards!

This was my perception at the beginning of the night (Which is kind of ironic because I think the Logies are bigger than a joke).

I went from no ticket at 1pm the day of the awards, to ticket in grandstand, to MTV corporate suite to after party travlling by booze bus. And I mean booze bus!

see:


The story unfolds as such:
I wasn't going to the AVMAs at all. I had no tickets, nada. And when a friend called to say he had a ticket for me, I was definitely happy. Although as it dawned on me, no after party ticket is a bit shite. Everyone knows award ceremonies are as boring as piss. What's the point in getting dressed to go home again?

So- I didn't want to go anymore. I tried calling a couple of people for theirs, but in the end I had to go to the AVMAs. I only needed to go to freaking homebush to pick up a spare after party ticket.

However, after a couple of drinks, Eb spilt me into a taxi and we went to homebush.
My seats were pretty good, I saw Pink, see:
And Fergie Ferg and I don't know, some other shit people. And it was getting mighty boring.

Apparently these people were flown to Sydney from my work's Hong Kong office. They were sitting in the MTV office. We made it our mission and theirs to get us to the Corporate MTV suite.
Of course we ran in to the usual anal lift security people who can't take you anywhere without the correct documentation. But we managed to overcome that hurdle with the flash of a bullshit business card.
The suite
This was like Havana. I do not know the rest of what happened in the award show. I proceeded to drink drink after drink (it sucks when a noun is also a verb of the same action).
We had photos, we ran around, we ate. It was fun.
The only thing I did see/hear was Nicole Ritchie mispronouncing Shannon Noll's name. Boy, it was great.

When we left the AVMAs we got the booze bus. MTV hired 10 buses to take people to the after party. Every seat had a bottle of Jaeger on it. I took 4. Then booze hags were going around passing out more drinks. It's a long drive from Homebush back to the city!

When we got to the after party it was MASSIVELY crowded. The person who was collecting tickets just dumped them in this massive bin. I reached in and took out a handful, called up a couple of my closest friends at midnight to see if they would get out of bed and come. They were pansies and didn't.

We couldn't move.
And all I really wanted to was get in the gold area where all the VIPs were.
That didn't work, and it was so packed we left. As we were going they shut the doors for entry.

We got in a cab and left. Our cab driver was such a star fucker. He wanted 2 of our after party tickets. If we gave them to him he would give us a free cab ride. Signed, sealed, delivered baby. You can for sure have 2 worthless pieces of paper.

The whole night got me thinking about celebrity. I don't know why I wanted to go to VIP areas, celebrities are just people with massive insecurities. Maybe I just want all the plebs looking on in envy. That's really the only benefit out of the whole thing....

Well, whatever it was fun. Suite and booze bus were definitely the funnest.

Why these awards are dumb

These Jib Awards are spastic.

First reason: The nominations
Every man and his dog could enter which is fine- but now there are lists of 20 blogs in one category. That's not cool. If I want to honestly vote for a blog I think is worth it, I have to spend tonnes of time trawling through shit to find the good ones. Which I actually doubt are in there.
Organisers made a fatal flaw in not filtering out the crap ones.

Second reason: It's purely a popularity contest
In addition a friend emailed me saying "ooh ooh ooh. Vote for me!" so now the whole thing is a popularity contest anyway- who has the most readers. You as may well just send in a screen shot from your site metre.
I thought they had a problem last year of people voting multiple times for the same entry. Looks like they didn't think beyond that issue in correcting the major faults of the award system. All they did was verify the "human" factor. I'm sure there is some bot that exists that generates the answers they are after.

And who is this committee anyway? What, they have an idea to do awards and that's it? Shouldn't they get some validation?

I see they want people to connect- but have a blog index with descriptors and synopses of each blog. That's a good list. Maybe categorise so people can find what they are after.
Each award should really only have about 5 nominations. Now it's just going to be a Facebook mode of communiqué, to get people to vote for you. Rubbish. Rubbish effort.

And before you even think it, it's been thunk... I'm not pissed I'm not nominated, I just wish people thought things through before going live.

Ye goode olde times

Last night I watched Caddyshack.

I probably haven't seen that movie since I was 7. I can't believe my parents even let me watch it. There is a lot of boob. A lot of sex going on. My parents must have been hip.

In any case, that movie has not lost its charm. There was probably a lot that went straight over my head back then, but overall I think I got most of it. Really what else is there to get besides tits, ass and fart jokes?

I don't know anyone who did anything else after that movie. Although Danny was nominated for an Oscar a year before he did Caddyshack. Who goes from Oscar to Caddyshack? And he looks bloody scary these days. He is some cult member.

Then the chick who was the classic hot 'babe', is legally blind without glasses or contacts...

And I like Rodney Dangerfield. He is such a putz. I think that's why I like him. He also has the same birthday as me. Good to see he is a dead with a myspace.

There is even a documentary on the making done in 1999. I might try find me a copy. All the people who were in it are in the film.

It just goes to show that those old gems can live up to their expectations. I could even watch it again.

Advertisers are the fleas on a social networking dog's back

Well, this has got to be the dumbest title I've ever come up with for a blog post.

However, even if that is the case, I still have some unresolved issues with these social networks. Maybe I should get out more, maybe I should find a new passion. But, sometimes it's a good service, at other times it's just too in your face.

Example of good:- you can reconnect with someone you've lost contact with in a way that is really unobtrusive. It's good because if the person doesn't really like you that much and there is a reason they lost contact with you, they can just ignore you once you've been accepted. The rejectee just thinks the rejector is busy or doesn't really use the site that much and all parties are in the clear and guilt free.

Note that the key word above was unobtrusive. This is important, because advertisers who have hopped on this ride have no idea what the word means. Nor do they know what meaningful and valued is either. This is an example of bad.

When mySpace first started and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou got on board that was cool. It was original, it was clever and it was entertaining. It also gave information about the movie that viewers could utilise in a practical way. This is also important.

Second Life has also succumbed to pressure. I don't know who else is on there. But, it's now old hat, it's stale and everyone has seen it all before.

Now the mySpace profile is old hat and costs a shit load. If you are going to get up there and do it, don't do one of these. I don't know what you want to achieve. I don't know what you want me to do with it. I'm not a compulsive competition enterer. If I want something I'll just buy it, and frankly so will anyone tapped into the disposable income demographic that is, well, basically your target.

This is an example of something good. I think one of my friends on Ning made this. It goes above and beyond the current use of mySpace. Typical think outside the square type stuff. Plus it has cool stuff you can do. Being in the travel category it's a natural fit to the nature of the industry- you can book through it. Clever stuff. Ingenuitive.

Someone asked me today about what I thought of a brand going on mySpace. Is it worth the mula? Quite frankly, no. Unless you tap into an existing base. That Wrangler profile only has around 500 friends. Not a very good figure for a campaign that's been running for a good few weeks.

Then once you find an existing base and tap into it- get them to promote your product in some way through their profile. It's the next stage in the process, not as creative as the gnome, but at least it uses the space in a smart way with a pre existing user base.

I just don't understand why people want to connect with a brand's myspace. It just doesn't compute on my end.

People have less and less time on a daily basis. If they connect it will be with their mates for the 5 or 10 minute or hour interval they have online. I don't why they would connect with a brand. Maybe the real brand, in real life, but certainly not something virtual (I see where Second Life comes in there, having a drink of Cola or whatever, but it's getting tired, real tired).

It's just getting on the band wagon. It's being in the space your competitor is just to be seen. You lose value, you waste cash and you become unoriginal. I say bin it all. Think what's best for you and your consumer. Screw the bandwagon.

The top 8 friends thing

The other week, I was invited to a soiree. This wasn't the usual soiree, it was an event where only the top, close friends were invited.
It kind of made me feel that this person had gone to their mySpace and invited their Top 8 friends only. I felt rather exclusive, I felt kind of cool.

I just heard of another case where someone has invited his top 15...close to 16. Same thing. It is clearly an epidemic.

It got me thinking: MySpace has one foot in the grave. We know it's true. I've thought it for a while. A long while. Even the kids at Lifelounge have proved it with their latest Urban Market Report.
So now that this is true. Maybe this is the jumpstart that the mySpace needs.

What happens is they start a competition- mySpace will hold a party for you and your top 8, whoever they may be. If you win, mySpace will get all your top 8s and ensure they get to your party. You could have Steve Zissou in your 8 or the Pussy cat dolls. mySpace won't care and you won't care as long as your top 8 are there.

Even if they do it, I think I'm going to start having top 8 parties. I have an issue in that I only have 6 friends on mySpace, because I don't really care for it, but I'm sure I can adapt.