Video Shoot in Binghamton, NY

I had the opportunity to direct a video shoot today at the McIntosh Labs facility in Binghamton, NY. For those of you unaware, McIntosh is one of the most expensive stereo and home theater brands in the world (try $200k for one of their systems!). We're doing a video shoot for a segment that will appear on a TV show called the "Word's Greatest". My alterior motive is to take all the great B-roll footage and use it for the new McIntosh website that we will be launching in September. As you can see, the current "Mac" website does not do a particularly good job representing this luxury brand. Some sample shots are below. Caution, photos taken with a Palm Treo - quality stinks.

Charlie Randall, McIntosh President, going through the introductory interview and talking points.

The glass cutter guy. McIntosh uses a glass cutting machine (in background) to cut glass for the front faceplates. The machine in this picture ejects a stream of highly pressurized water to cut the glass. The water is ejected at such a high pressure that, if unobstructed, it would end its journey three football fields away.

A Day In The Adirondacks

I journeyed to Chimney Mountain on a beautiful Sunday morning. Chimney Mountain is known for some good rock climbing and spelunking. After a rather intense mile of steep incline, I arrived at the top sooner than I thought. But I was rewarded with some spectacular views.

Here is the "chimney", up close and personal.

View from the chimney.

A view from the chimney: my next objective. This is where some cool cave entrances are.

Now off the main trail and following the foot trail of spelunkers. I had a great view of the camp where I parked my car.

After sitting down to take a Trail Mix break, I was quickly joined by some new friends. Fearlesss and hungry, a pair of chipmunks began to share in my meal. You may notice the little one above...his cheeks are full with trail mix...he's storing the food there.

Here's the other chipmunk. He was 20 yards out when I started eating but quickly sprinted in my direction, let out a high pitched squeak to get my attetion, and proceeded to dine. I ultimately fed the little guys by hand but unfortunately couldn't get the right shot.

Cartoonishly anti-American Canadian interviews Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Not quite parody but dangerously close. How can she be so disgustingly pro-American, he wonders, and yet so stridently anti-Islamic? Doesn’t she see that Islamists and “Christianists” are two sides of the same coin?

Here's a good explanation: On Islamophobia, Christophobia, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and the exculpation of the Weak

This Canadian blog deconstructs the interview in entertaining fashion: Deconstructing the Avi Lewis/Ayaan Hirsi Ali Clip

I had the pleasure of speaking with Ayaan during a one hour Q&A session and book signing at the Commonwealth Club.

Online Marketing in Boston

I had the pleasure of participating in the "Big Brands, Big Plans" panel at the Online Marketing Summit in Boston yesterday. While many conferences last too long and have been polluted by agencies and vendors, this series of Online Marketing Summit conferences packs a lot of punch. About 120 marketers showed up to teach and learn from each other. The panel covered a lot of ground including:

• the use of business blogs and forums to engage customers
• web 2.0 within a corporate site (user/customer reviews)
• online marketing trends for 2008

I'll be joining the Summit as a panelist in San Francisco and Los Angles in early August to do my best at imparting additional morsels of online marketing wisdom.

Politically Incorrect Theater in San Francisco

Susan and I just enjoyed a different sort of San Francisco comedy act. While we both felt the first half of Will Franken's show was excruciatingly unfunny, we did have some great laughs during the second half of the show. To borrow a write-up from a San Francisco Chronicle opinion writer, Cinnamon Stillwell, the show touched on the following:

• The flying imams
  
• Woven "anti-war scarves" (keffiyehs) from Urban Outfitters
  
• The cult of "celebrating diversity"
  
• The inspired silliness of the Burning Man festival
  
• San Francisco activists "counter-protesting" Christians in Golden Gate Park
  
• The never-ending obsession with the 1960s
  
• Marketing to the LGBT community
  
• The self-indulgence of therapy culture
  
• "The Final Broadcast of the Christian Faith" (a cautionary tale)
  
• Bush Derangement Syndrome (otherwise known as BDS)
  
• The left's irrational hatred of Israel (otherwise known as IDS)
  
• Using the Crusades to justify Islamist terrorism
  
• Modern-day moral relativism and its intellectual underpinnings(Foucault, Derrida)
  
• The Danish cartoon controversy and the "bravery" of mocking Christianity
  
• Everyone's favorite "political prisoner," cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal
  
• PC-ism running amok at our airports, to the point where a man clutching box cutters and a Koran, and wearing a ski mask, keffiyeh and suicide belt while asking for seat-belt extensions for no apparent reason, is waved cheerfully onto a plane

Best part of the show: knowing that so many members of the San Francisco audience were blissfully unaware that they were the source of Will's parodies.

John Stossel Whips A Kennedy

I love common sense and logic. Maybe this is why I find this video of John Stossel, an Emmy award winner and one of my favorites, so enjoyable. Stossel won me over as a champion of liberty with a great presentation on government growth at a FreedomFest event in Vegas a few years ago. And Susan happens to be a big fan as well and she has a signed book from Stossel to prove it.

At a "Live Earth" global warming alarmism event, Kennedy called Stossel a "flat-earther", "liar" and "traitor". You be the judge:

Mike on the Radio

Here I am on the radio talking about a new Home Theater Makeover promo I just launched for my company. They got my title wrong (they gave me a demotion and ego can be a fragile thing!) but other than that it was a decent interview.

July 4th on the USS Hornet

We took a trip with our French friends to celebrate the 4th in patriotic style. The idea was to go to Alameda, check out an aircraft carrier, the USS Hornet, and then take in at least three surrounding fireworks shows from the flight deck. Little did we know that the Oakland show was cancelled last minute while the other shows were too far to really enjoy. Consequently, you won't see any fireworks photos here.


Backup Generator Room #2. One of the many "candid" action shots from the ship. Here we have Susan and Mike adjusting the generator settings. While the red helmets were most likely off limits, they beckoned to these full grown children.

Backup Generator Room #2. The Free French, Nono and Thomas, assisted us with the war effort.

Loading the gun. Susan on her way to becoming the first woman to load a .38 caliber gun on the USS Hornet.

Firing the gun. With a range of 12 miles, Susan will easily hit Berkeley. A patriotic 4th indeed!

San Francisco sunset

Video. Going down

DJ "Mix & Mash" Contest Launches

Well, one of the three marketing intitiatives that has been consuming my life these past few weeks has come to life. Over 1,000 DJ's have entered the contest in just the first few days. Go ahead, listen and vote if you dare: http://mix.denondj.com

We Believe! Warriors Win!

Arguably, I just witnessed the biggest upset in NBA playoff history. WOW!

"We Believe", the tagline for the cinderalla Warriors.

The Golden State Warriors beat the #1 Dallas Mavericks by a convincing 111-86!

I was fortunate to be invited to a suite for this game....

The team came out for a curtain call after the game...Utah here we come!

Playoff Video

What's it like to be courtside in Oracle Arena during the playoffs? Check out the videos below:


Warriors take a 91-90 lead with 2:30 minutes to go.

Warriors up 99-93!

Warriors win 103-99!!!

Warriors Win!

Labeled as one of the most exciting NBA playoff games ever, Susan and I got to experience it first-hand.


Loomis Group, one of my ad agencies, invited Susan and me to the game....here's our view from the suite.

For the fourth quarter, we moved down to the courtside seats...here's a view of our suite from down below.

Not a bad view!

Some Scintillating Knitting Photos

Here is the first scarf I made (the one I referred to in my first posting) when it was still on the needles and about 75% completed.
The same scarf, now finished. Woo hoo!
A little pink hat - the only thing I have made so far that isn't a scarf. I made this in a two-part class at ImagiKnit called, appropriately enough, "Hats".
Everything I have knit so far - minus one blue scarf sent to my mother in New York and one orange scarf made for my friend Sarah.



From left: The scarf that started it all (big, chunky wool); lt.blue scarf made for "Knitting 101" class (silk & linen, tiny stitches, took a loooong time); purple & green wool scarf (long and skinny, first time using rib stitch); multicolor pastel scarf (done as experiment using acrylic yarn and giant needles - finished the whole thing in less than 2 hours!); pink wool hat made in "Hats" class; black,purple & blue short scarf (made from "fun fur" - yarn label said it was for a beginner but it was actually kind of a pain to knit. Oh well - it looks cute on!)

Morpheus Learns To Knit

Here is a photo of Morpheus next to a pile of "in progress" knitting projects. The blue yarn on the metal needles turned into a scarf for my mom, the light blue yarn turned into the first project for my "Knitting 101" class and the red yarn was for practicing on.

Susan Speaks! (or, if you want to get technical,writes)

Hello!

This is my first foray into blog posting, something Mike has been after me for a while to do. I still have to learn how to add pictures, which will undoubtably make my postings more interesting. I plan to take a picture of my first knitting project and put it up. That's right, I am taking a knitting class. There is a cute little yarn store right at the end of our block, and every time I go past it I think "Wouldn't it be fun to learn how to knit?" Well, it took me three years to get around to it, but I've been to two of the four classes and have mastered the two basic stitches. This has allowed me to start on what has historically been every beginning knitter"s first project since the dawn of time - a scarf. When that sucker is done I will be so proud of myself I'm going to wear it every day, even if it is made out of thick ropy wool and the temperature hasn't dipped below 60 degrees in weeks.

Well, that's it for this evening. I'm going to try to post this now and see if it works. ( Extreme skepticism surrounding technology + knitting = I am turning into an 85 year old woman!) Now if you'll excuse me I have to remove my hearing aids, take out my teeth and set my hair in rollers before I go to bed - I want to be well-rested for my bridge game tomorrow. Good night!

Susan

Willy Wonka Factory? Not quite.

We set off with our new French friends to visit the Scharfenberger chocolate plant in Berkeley!


Before we were allowed to enter the chocolate factory we had to don hairnets and endure a lecture on the history of the cocoa bean. Highlight of the talk was a guy who took issues with Scharfenberger not being "Fair Trade". Hey, it's Berkeley afterall. Click the image to watch the video.

A chocolate machine of some sort.

Cat Blogging

Friend or foe?

Hank learning to blog. Who will publish a post to this blog first? Susan or Hank? Odds anyone?

The Great Global Warming Swindle

Here's a great video with real scientists and real science countering the almost religious-like dogma of the man-made global warming (MMGW) crowd. Most important points to take away from this video:

1. Throughout earth's history, ice core analysis shows that CO2 levels actually have FOLLOWED temperature trends. In other words, CO2 is an EFFECT of temperature change. This evidence is directly contrary to the implicit MMGW assumption that C02 is te CAUSE of temperature change.
2. Solar patterns are a much better indicator and predictor of global temperatures. Also, as the earth is currently warming, so are the other planets in the solar system.
3. MMGW logic dictates that the earth's troposphere should be warming faster than the surface temperature of the globe...it isn't.
4. The earth has been much warmer than it is now...and has had had bigger "mood swings" than now. The Arctic and Antarctic have been much bigger than they are now. They've also been smaller before, no thanks to human CO2
5. During the post-WW2 boom in industry and CO2 production, global temperatures actually fell (from 1940-1970)
6. CO2 is a MINOR greenhouse gas that comprises a tiny fraction of the greenhouse gas total pie. Human contribution to the total CO2 mix is even smaller. Water vapor is by far the biggest greenhouse agent.