Whilst traversing the vast plains of the interweb, I came across this great idea for the new series of MadMen in the US. The site complete with sultry 60s tones lets you kit yourself out in the style of advertising’s golden era. Try it out, I already did. See – that’s me chillin’ with Donny D. He likes my new jingle by the way.

To get your MadMen on click here.

This music thing is becoming a bit regular. Maybe I should have a music section. That way I don’t have to tag the post ‘(not) album of the week’ or something silly like that. Who says you have to be a magazine to have a song of the week? Not me!

This week, the blogs are alive with the sound of Atlas, Atlas Sound (Bradford Cox’s release from Deerhunter). Everybody’s talking about this song – “Walkabout”. It’s the first released track on the forthcoming album ‘Logos’, and features none other than Panda Bear (Noah Lennox) from Animal Collective. Turns out that all the noise is justified. It sounds exactly like what you’d expect from such a pairing, all hazy, atmospheric and layered deep enough to lose yourself in. Like a jungle full of animals (I had to say that –Deerhunter, Panda Bear – you get it..). Have a listen and while away your Friday afternoon deadline anxiety. Then get back to work CHACHI!

Oh, and just to keep things interesting I’m going to introduce the tim-o-meter. A sophisticated rating system to give an honest appraisal, and general yardstick of music related blogosphere hype. Think of it as somewhere between pitchfork, hipster runoff and stereogum (I wish). Just on a really small scale.

Atlas Sound Ft. Panda Bear, ‘Walkabout’.

Sa-weet.

When I was working in Windsor I got $800 worth of parking tickets. I always wished I knew when the parking inspector chalked my wheel. I even tried parking outside the window of the restaurant. But anyone who has worked in a restaurant knows you can’t move your car once things get busy. Unless you had this to remind you..

A few days ago I was part of a focus group for a branding company. The focus group was about beer. Interestingly enough the main point of conversation wasn’t about taste or brand perception of beer – it was about packaging. In particular what young kids thought about beer in plastic bottles.

This intrigued me. So for the last few days I’ve been thinking about how plastic packaging could be effectively used.

This idea is inspired by one of my favourite communication companies Kessels Kramer.

A few weeks ago I was having a browse on the website Wooster collective.
I came across an amazing video of a subway art installation called ‘masstransiscope’. Read more about it here and here.

This video gave me an idea. One that I can’t believe hasn’t been done before (please comment if it has).

Here is my idea.

Ps. From now on I will be posting as many ideas like this as I can.

I don’t have an album of the week section. That’s because I’m not a magazine. But if I was (a magazine), this would be it.

Hands up if you like Vampire Weekend? Shit, that’s a lot of hands! Well, what if I told you that Rostam Batmanglij (of said weekend vocation), was secretly collaborating with Wes Miles of Ra Ra Riot under the guise of a band called Discovery? You’d either tell me I’m a dick and you’ve been listening to the torrent of this for 8 years. Or you’d be pissed that you didn’t know about it. If your palate is partial to dreamy electronic pop in the mould of Passion Pit, then you’ll eat this like corn flakes. The release comes the right side of solstice for us ‘Southern-Hemispherians’ as we count down the days towards sun and warmth, of which these sweet tunes will make a handsome backdrop. It’s called LP.

Look out for chameos from Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig and The Dirty Projectors singer Angel Deradoorian.

Ps. Does anyone think the name of the band may be inspired by Daft Punk’s 2001 album, Discovery?

Awesome.

It’s that time of the year where in high mountainous regions, white stuff falls out of the sky. We have a word for that. It’s called snow.

Now I’m no Pro at snowboarding. In fact – the last time I dusted off the old moon boots I nearly broke my neck. And that was just getting off the lift.. But it’s videos like this that make you want to get out there, freeze your ass off and break shit all over again.

Another slow-mo masterpiece worth a look is this skate promo of last year for Fully Flared, directed By Spike Jonze doing what he does best – blowing shit up!

Enjoy.

Next time your client wants you to do a viral communication, show them this and see what they say..

The campaign – put together by Mainframe – accompanies the unfurling of James Palumbo’s first novel, Tomas. Palumbo co-founded Ministry of Sound, so it should make for some interesting geezing.

When asked about the brief, Mark Warrington of Mainframe said, “The client gave me a lot of creative freedom, and I knew that for this to work it would have to be shocking.”

It’s perhaps the best use of viral communication I’ve seen since, Pete The Meat Puppet, the Diesel campaign of late last year.

If you’re going to use the Internet, you may as well get your wang out I say.
Now to get me some TOMAS.

Hey folks. Well I guess I’ve got the awkward first post out of the way. And like my very first sexual encounter it was probably not as good as I imagined and was all over too soon. I fumbled around, tried a few different strategies but ended up just closing my eyes and pressing the post button in the hope that something great would magically appear. It was – for want of a better metaphor – a ‘missionary’ post. But hey, it was late and I was young and inexperienced.

So now that my post has slept with your eyes – like a well-mannered teenage boy drunk on cheap goon – I will take the time to remember your name, tell you some stuff about myself and then figure out who we know (and get to the point of this post).

A few years ago (before blogs ruled the world) my cousins started a fashion label called Vanguard out of their Garage in Brisbane city (It’s now huge). This was a big inspiration for me to try my hand at something creative. So I enrolled in the Creative Advertising course at RMIT University where I befriended a couple of innocuous goons with grand visions. These goons (comprising of one half Tait Ischia) have since invented the aptly titled website ‘Junior’, for young creatives trying to make sense of the world.  Some more (newer) friends started Comeback Kid, the ‘it’ laneway clothing store of the Melbourne grid and of course there is my other uni alumnus, Lady Chameleon a walking blog-o-matic of topics from A to Z who had a finger in the Tangerine Pie. I also recently found out some guys I went to school with started this magazine.

The point is everyone around me has started things, and it’s my turn to put my gonads on a razor and see what happens.

Ps. Keep dropping by – I will be posting big Walrus-Cock sized ideas soon.

We all know blogs are old news. I may as well be rattling a stick into a
Campbells soup can attached to a long piece of yarn or sticking Post-It notes to Pigeons, wearing tiny pigeon-sized leather helmuts.

But it’s time to draw a line in the sand. I’ve sat back and read Wooooo magazine and anonymously commented on Hipster Runoff for long enough. It’s time to make some shit of my own. And by shit, I mean the kind of shit produced by rainbow surfing Unicorns. Pure gold-lined shit of genius!

So here goes…

Ps. Tune in regularly for Gold-Lined Shit (and by that I mean – Ideas).

Tim.