Category: Stuff

Despite the sketchy weather (would it just rain already!), the weekend turned out to be quite interesting and fun.

Saturday was the annual Yaletown Days. And it was definitely Yaletown in all it’s glory – expensive cars and cute dogs. There were some pretty cool vintage cars, everything from what were originally called horseless carriages, to 1950s convertibles to 1960s Minis to low riders to 2000 Minis. One thing that was obviously missing were SUVs, not that I’m complaining.

Then came the doggie pageant – Yaletown’s Cutest Dog. And on a slow day Yaletown is filled with cute, spoiled, overly pampered pooches. You had your familiar cute doggie faces that you see everyday and some new ones that came out just for the show. And their owners. Now they’re not as bad as stage mothers, but you did have ones that brought their pooches dressed in costume and pushing them to perform. After the first dog did the first trick, some of the owners got a bit catty. “If I knew we could perform tricks, MY puppy would have gotten into the final round”…bitch, bitch, bitch. But in all honesty, it was a cute pageant, and I don’t know how the judges could have made a choice.

After a bag of mini-donuts it was on to the fireworks!

Armed with a bucket o’K-n-F-n-C, blankets and a flashing l.e.d. dolphin, we sat back along the coastline in Vanier Park and took in the Celebration of Light (Symphony of Fire is a much better name). The Czechs were pretty dead on in their syncronisity, Canada blew, and China, well they have been blowing things up the longest, they were the best in my opinion.

Then after waking up very late on Sunday, I poured over Mists of Avalon. Then we went to a BBQ that Farshad organized since his DJ friend Ludo Llorca was in town. For a world famous DJ, Ludo was nothing what I expected – down-to-earth, sweet and very friendly. Anyway, we BBQ’d at Spanish Banks well into the night, accompanied by the primal sounds of a local drum circle.

All in all, your typical Vancouver summer weekend.

I’ve finished Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and I must say it’s bloody brilliant. I won’t go into any details here in regards to what it’s about. However, you know it’s good when I spent the entire weekend on the couch reading it cover to cover. That or I’m just a tad bit of a Harry Potter fanatic.

Brendon and I bought it at the witching hour on Friday night / Saturday morning. I managed to squeeze in a chapter or two before crashing to sleep.

In other Harry Potter related info, I found a wicked site where we wizards in training can pick up house scarves, wands, brooms and even a Sorting Hat – Alivans. Of course, this may be common knowledge that I have yet again not been privy to as I do not watch most morning talk/news shows. But since they do not have a wand made out of Ash, I will not be buying one as of yet. But I may give in around Halloween time.

So now Brendon has started on the book. I can’t wait for him to finish it so that I can finally talk to someone about it!

Happy Reading!

What is it with this hunger for reality shows nowadays? I’m as guilty as the rest of them for wasting precious evening hours killing brain cells watching who’s going to be the next silly girl to get ousted from Joe Millionaire, but I can’t stop!

Perhaps we all feel a little better by watching them. It’s like watching that cocky so-and-so back finally get their comeuppance and falling flat on their face. Or it’s the fact that if you start flipping through the channels you inevitable fall upon CNN, MSNBC, FOXNews, Headline News, C-SPAN, even PBS at times, fear mongering and telling us that we’re all going to die either by terrorists, super bugs, Iraq, North Korea (or the latest axis of evil member), the crumbling economy or the latest Cancer causing food. It’s just too much to take 24×7. Imagine if CNN had been around during WWII everyone would have committed suicide with the coverage they would have been doing of Hitler!

So instead, Americans turns to things that we can handle: Are you Hot or Not?,The Bachelorette, Survivor, and Living with “Wacko Jacko” Michael Jackson. Americans are tired of listening to the warnings, the conjecturing, the what ifs. If I see something that looks a bit odd, I’ll call the police, FBI, anyone that will listen. I think the government has gotten through to us that we must be on alert. If there’s a man walking around with a giant winter coat in the middle of summer, trust me, I’d tackle him myself. Just stop the incessent fear-mongering.

Give me the time when it was just the Russians that were the enemy, we had to beat them to space, to the moon and in the Olympics. There was not talk of all out war. But that ain’t gonna happen. Instead, I’ll happily live in my own little la-la-land, watch the crap on TV, and forget about the world for a little while.

That or just turn it all off completely and start reading.

So many books, so little time. I’ve started up an Amazon
Wish List because I can’t keep track of all the books that I want to read.

This past week alone I heard about 4 different books that are supposed to be
must reads:
Life of Pi,
Fall on Your Knees,
The Lovely Bones, and
Unless. I used
to devour books left and right and would know which are the must reads that
just came out. I suppose its because a) I drive a car to work and b) I’m surrounded
by computer geeks who’s idea of a good book is the latest edition of a fantasy
series. Not that there’s anything wrong with fantasy books, its just that there
is so much good fiction coming out that it would be a shame to miss it because
your reading the next great saga of a fantasy soap opera.

I’m guilty of that myself. I got into the Diana
Gabaldon
Outlander series and that’s also part of the reason why I haven’t read anything
else. These books are becoming at least 1,000 pages long and just when you think
the action is slowing down, something happens and you can’t stop reading. Well,
at least the first 4 books were like that. This last one I had to trudge through.
I think she’s just writing everything that comes to mind rather than choosing
what is good for the story. It’s a sign that perhaps you as the author can’t
keep track of what you’ve already mentioned in the book when you remind readers
3 times in the story about something that happened in another book. Mentioning
it once will suffice, unless you as the author can’t remember what you’ve written.
Makes me wonder if her editor is doing her job. Isn’t this something that an
editor should catch?

That’s enough of that series for me. I must get back to reading contemporary,
thought provoking literature. Well, until the next one comes out or until the
next Harry
Potter.

So here’s my highest circulated ad yet.

This is some of what I’ve been doing for the past few months. We’re launching our new brand, InsideTrips, this Sunday, October 27, 2002, in 6 major US papers: New York Times, Washington Post, Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle, Chicago Tribune and the LA Times. (see ad to the left) So basically this means that over 6.6 million households per week for the next 6 weeks will see my work.

For this piece, the exact words “great destinations, great prices”, “best destinations”, “best prices” and “best information” must be in there. So we ran with it, incorporated the “You. This Fall.” that we’ve been using in our Yahoo Monster Ad campaign, and this is the end result.

What I’m learning from all the ads and collateral that we’re creating for InsideTrips.com
is how to better work with clients on creative: the necessity of a well-formed, well flushed out
creative brief makes sure that everyone is happy with the end result. Also I’m
learning how to convey to the client why certain words were used to lure the
consumer in.

Although I’m a web copywriter by trade my heart wants to be in print. Slowly my print portfolio is expanding. . .