Bottom of the Barrel

So, you know when you've once been the cream that rose to the top and soon sunk to the bottom of the celebrity barrel when you're Ben Affleck. I was paroozing movie trailers the other night and I happened upon a charming little film called "Extract" with Jason Bateman. When I noticed a suspiciously familiar but down-hill face in the clip, I checked the credits to see who was listed at the bottom with ("He's Just Not That Into You") as notoriety:



If this could happen to him, what could happen to the rest of us? Seriously, though, the movie looks pretty funny.

Some things

Well it's my first summer spent here in my collegiate residence, Eugene. So far, it has been a marvelous time, excluding the blistering heat. Going for a bike ride intended to refresh onself felt more like pedaling on a stationary exercise bike inside a dry sauna, in front of a hair dryer. But! those times have passed. And now it's prime time to work on projects and dawdling around, noticing things that are worth less than a penny during the academic year.

Around Eugene, telephone poles are the analogue facebook and craigslist, advertising public events, services, things lost and found. Though some people would say that these telephone poles are no more than cut up, dead trees, I would encourage them to look closer. Look at the layers of paper skins that these things still grow! They have faces! They have souls! I wonder if someone could do a cross section on one of these poles to find out how old they are, in respect to the amount of flyers stapled onto them.

Best $5 Ever Spent

A little while back I was privileged enough to experience "The Project", a Brooklyn based ensemble, at the University of Oregon. Originally I picked up on posters advertising the arrival of the beatboxing flute player, but I left the show completely enamored with the group as a whole (not to mention two cd's, autographs, and a how-to manual).

Almost Run Over!

I was almost crushed under the wheels of a small SUV. Here's what happened: This morning I was biking to school as usual. I took a right turn at a green light, in a continuous bike lane. I was watching closely for pedestrians, and suddenly I was jolted by the side of an SUV. I strained against the vehicle to keep upright. I yelled to the driver, but she made no response as she lowered her cell phone and straightened the path of her vehicle.
After pedaling for a few yards I was able to get my head around what just happened. Luckily, I was okay. But it could have been catastrophic. If she didn't run me over with her back wheels, someone else certainly could have; I could have broken an arm on the curb; my bike could have been demolished. Thankfully, it was all the "could have's" that kept me unharmed. They also pushed me into action. She could have sent me to the hospital or an early grave and she didn't even know it.

So with new found resolution in my two skinny wheels I raced after her. I followed her through another right turn and caught up on Alder. As I paced with her passenger window I shouted again. This time she looked over but figured it wasn't important, I guess. So I followed her as she turned left and finally got right up to her driver's window at the next stop sign. I yelled for her to roll it down. I shouted that she drove right into the bike lane a couple turns back and almost flattened me. She needed to be more careful. She needed to watch the bike lane. All she could say was, "Really? I'm sorry."

And isn't that the way it goes.

We have to watch out for one another. It's easy to tune out your surroundings and text while you're driving and listen to music with the windows rolled up, wishing that you couldn't hear the outside world so distinctly as you sped through it. I am not a drone. I am a real person sharing the world and I nearly paid the consequences for someone who wanted to disregard their responsibility and occupy it alone, selfishly. Even though we think we can live in our own comfort-attention bubbles, with iPods and cell phones and earplugs, we can not. It's just not an option. We share the world, and when we forget that, we forget each other. And that does us all great harm.

AWARENESS TEST

Getting It Right This Time

So, it's normal to now say that people have screwed up. We've done a lot of terrible things to each other and to the planet we live on. But, it's also optimistic, and not uncommon, to say we're heading in the right direction. We have the opportunity, and maybe even the foresight, to make better choices in the future, and possibly fix mistakes.

Here is some of my favorite work showcasing this new confident optimism from environmental groups: World Wildlife Foundation, and National Geographic. A step in the right direction for advertising, and the human race.

NatGeo by AmuataLab


WWF "Panda" by Nexus Productions