My 5 Favorite Commercials

I decided that I wanted to make a video blog of my 5 favorite commercials. Let me know what you think of these...

5. Heineken Mustache

I love the message in this commercial. There are some things that are just right for the occasion. While the rest of society might think, 'That's weird. Why does he has a handlebar mustache', you just know that some day, in your most epic moment, while the skeptics change their hearts and cheer you on, your handle bar mustache will be the one thing about you that causes people to say 'He's doing it! And look at the mustache... it's perfect'

4.  Michael Jordan 100 foot rim

I love the message of this commercial. The measures in basketball, that were designed in the beginning to contain the physical capacity of the men playing the game, were broken by Michael Jordan. One man was so good at what he did, that he not only beat his opponents every night, but he also beat the game. To make this game challenging enough for the best, you have to change the rules. These rule-breakers exist outside of the limitations of our imaginations, and yet they are the ones...who change the world.

3. Tiger Wood's Nike Chip Commercial

The build-up is the best part. What I love about this commercial is the limitations on words. The non-verbals say everything. There is a lot of pressure here. Tiger is the leader. It is hole 16 of the Masters and he WANTS TO WIN! His back is against the wall on this chip. The ball is right on the cusp of the fringe and the rough. Not an easy shot. And to top it off, the green has a major dip from back to front (left to right if you're watching it and front to back from tiger's perspective). Tiger has to measure every element of this near impossible shot and the audience is just mesmerized and lays in waiting. And then...

In the complete silence,

Tiger lines up to his ball, gives a few practice waggles, resets his footing and swings away. The ball comes up quick and lands about 15 feet behind the hole (left if you're looking at it, behind in actuality). 'It's going in' Tiger thought, before anyone else knew. And as the ball started to break hard-right. The audience starts to mumble and the volume rises, slowly as the reality of this possibility started to seem inevitable. And the ball rolled slowly, looking as though it might be a little short (right if you are looking at it, short if Tiger is) and then all the sudden it starts to curl back left and your toes do a little curl right along with it. But then, it doesn't look like it has enough and in fact... it doesn't.

It stops.

And everyone is completely silent and they start to think 'wow, what a good effort' and the 1/2 second feeling that 'wow that could have been something special' diverts your conscious for one second until the ball falls in the hole and everything you envisioned, after all the calculations and planning comes to fruition and all the crowd is yelling at the top of their lungs! And then you see Tiger Woods body is overcome with that same joy, only amplified and in that moment, he is completely and utterly unstoppable.

2. Google Breakup

This commercial puts to practice a good concept that's used in advertising called, enthymeme. An enthymeme is essentially a message that let's an audience fill in the back story and the take home point, without ever saying it'. What Google did here, was just that. They showed you a very common activity that you do every day and they made the consequences bigger. Even though all of us search for things on Google and use all the functions displayed in the commercial, we still liked to be reminded that there are bigger journeys that await us than just trying to find out 'Who's voice is Lois on Family Guy'. At some point, we will use Google to guide our journey through a fairytale of a story of adventure and learning and love.

And the beautiful thing is, Google didn't have to say any of that... for you to get the message. 

1. Ebay Toy Boat Commercial

I have a hard time explaining this commercial without bursting into tears. It is by far the most powerful ad I have ever seen and I think the messaging is stellar. At face value, there is a story about a boy who loses his boat and finds it again on eBay years later. But this commercial speaks to something well beyond that. It hits on the complexity of the universe and the destiny for each memory and each relationship that we have.  Even though we never see it, we can imagine the moment in which the boy discovers that he's lost his favorite boat. It's painful. It is in those moments, we ask:

'why did this happen to me?' and we are overcome with sadness.  More importantly, we start to believe that is the end of the story.

A wise friend of mine recently told me, 'if the end was not what you expected it to be, then it probably isn't the end'. I think that is relevant here as we discover that every thing in this world and every person has a destiny that is in some correlated to our own. When we think we've gone off the path of our own destiny, we need something to come along that reminds us that we're still connected in a grandiose web that, in some way, that supersedes our ability to understand it. When you recognize this truth, you begin to see that there is way more to this story than just you. There is a greater force at work.

Ebay recognized this truth well before you did and that is why the tagline of the commercial is not 

Ebay, 'happiness for all' or 

Ebay, 'find your life'.... 

The message truly is...

Ebay, 'The power of all of us'

Free Invention Idea

If you've ever thought to yourself during an infomercial...

'man, I wish I could invent something and make a million dollars like the rest of these idiots. Ah, but then I'd have to think of something that people need and that never happens until after I see the informercial for 'my idea!'. And I shout, 'Hey! That's my idea!'. I just never came to verbalize the little complaint that was always in my head that I knew needed to be fixed and I had an idea how to fix it, because I think about it all the G**Damn time!...but that's my idea.'

To anyone who's ever thought that they've never thought of a good idea, here is a gift..

Answer this complaint: 'Man, I wish I could sit naked in my home office chair without feeling weird about it'

My Favorite Piece of Writing From a Screenplay - Gangs of New York

William Cutting

I know your works. You are neither cold nor hot.
So because you are lukewarm I will spew you out of my mouth.
You can build your filthy world without me.
I took the father, now I'll take the son.
You tell young Vallon, I'm gonna paint paradise square with his blood. Two coats.
I'll festoon my bedchamber with his guts. As for you Mr. Tammany Fucking Hall,
you come down to the points again and you'll be dispatched by mine own hand.
Now get back to your celebration and let me eat in peace. I paid you fair.

Jesus & Twitter

It doesn’t make sense to me that Jesus would come to Earth 2000 years ago, travel around the desert on a donkey trying to spread a message of peace, hope and love designed for all to hear. I mean, we‘re talking about a guy who sees all, hears all and knows all. Why didn’t he just wait until Twitter was invented? 33 years of work could have been accomplished with one 140 character message.
#inefficiency

‘Are you a Christian? No, but I follow Christ on Twitter.’

Restless Here

A swift flight amongst stars unknown.
A swirl of deep red in the most comfortable seat above the clouds.

The solace of Home is one I'd rather miss
than shackle myself to all that has come and passed before.

The sweet sight of continents rising
from barren horizons.

Forgotten so quickly, those universes that stop at the mat of our doors.
Yearning again to step beyond the threshold of my content.

I remain. Forever restless here.

Home from Russia

Finally the wheels of the gargantuan Boeing 767 were back on the runway. The plane was late. The passengers were furious, their faces tinged a sharp red, derived directly from a devilish mix of displeasure and the absence of any sort of circulation for the past 21 hours. A mumbled and ingenuous 'Welcome to Chicago' purred from scratchy speakers above, once in English and then again in Russian. The Captain's monotonous explanation that it was 'not yet safe to remove your seat belt', was ignored completely as the un-clicking and un-buckling in the back cabin rebelled against his somewhat turbulently tainted cockpit authority.

When the plane came to a stop at C14, a scurried frenzy of commotion began. As everyone around him bustled through overhead bins and checked their pockets for phones and wallets, Jeff remained motionless in the sophistication of his business class seat. He stared aimlessly out of his window at the ground staff surrounding the plane. They were moving stiffly through the snow-mixed wind, bundled under layers of heavy coats, hats and over-sized mittens. One man, possibly a woman (it was difficult to tell), was waving flashing orange sticks towards the front of the plane in some rhythmically premeditated pattern. Jeff realized he was staring but thought there was no way the he-she glow stick bearer would ever know. Plus, in his somewhat drunken state, he didn't really care. Jeff was 4 hours late, had undoubtedly missed all of the connections to Minneapolis, and, just 6 days before, had met the most beautiful girl he'd ever know... and left her in Moscow.

Pick-Up Games w/ Black Guys

I love playing basketball with black guys. It's so much more entertaining than playing with the whites. When a white guy makes a shot in a pick-up basketball game it's nothing special. He turns, runs back to get on defense, and doesn't say much.
When a black guy makes a shot, it's a show! He'll pound his chest, point to God, and run down the court backwards shouting something that makes little to no sense...
'Don't you eat that broccoli on Thuuuursdays!'
'Don't you eat that broccoli on Thursdays y'all!'