I thought he sucked for a long time until I saw this video.  He just chills in the background for a good 3 minutes… but at the halfway mark, he unleashes his fury upon the helpless strings upon his guitar.  You’d think he had something to prove. (He was pretty upset when he didn’t make the Rolling Stone’s list of top 100 Guitar Players of All Time.)

And now I invite you to partake in the most appallingly put together videos you’ve seen since Charley the Unicorn.

One of my most recent discoveries absolutely blew me away. Pogo is a breakout electronic artist from Perth, Australia. In the video below, he has taken sound bits and sweet beats from the movie Disney’s Mary Poppins and mixed them into a soothing yet very catchy tune.  His talent isn’t limited to audio editing, however.  If you watch the video, you will note that nearly every image is in complete harmony with the steady thump of the electro-bass.  The dancing, the singing, everything is in sync.

The time that was put into the editing of the video and audio of this production has to be unimaginable, but it’s worth every delicious second.

The ability to take something ordinary, or even extraordinary and turn it into something that is yours, something that is unique is something I admire greatly.  There is an entire world of plain, average, mediocre, vanilla things out there.  We are surrounded by the bland and common.  Every so often, someone takes a piece of the average and creates something unbelievable out of it.  When will that person be you?

If you like the Mary Poppins video, he has a few others based on Disney and Harry Potter movies that are just as phenomenal as this one.  His music is also up for free download (by the artist, so it’s legal) here.

Also, if you want to keep up to date on all the cool stuff I see and read. You can subscribe to my Google Reader Feed here.  You’ll get 10 times the cool stuff there than you will here… although the occasional nugget of goodness will always turn up on TheBigBags.com

Apparently this commercial required over 600 takes before they got it right, and it involves absolutely no computer graphics.

This giant chain reaction is amazing to watch. My favorite parts are the weighted tires that roll uphill, and the walking windshield wipers.  Super creative stuff here. It’s creativity like this that makes me obsess over solid, creative marketing.

This is the kind of company I hope to work for one day. One with an incredibly outrageous personality and a group of collectively creative minds to match my own. Don’t forget to browse through a few of the links on their Youtube vids. I really hope you enjoy it as much as I did…

P.S. I know this isn’t much of a triumphal return to the blog-o-sphere, but it will have to do for now.  You will be seeing more regular posts in the future, most of which will have some sort of advertising or humorous theme.  They will, of course, be peppered with the occasional absurd life experience from yours truley.

Thanks for reading, and may your camel always be humpy.

The doctor surprised me with his news. My headaches were either a result of too much tension, or a brain toumor. It was the best news I’d had all week.

Rather than scheduling a bran scan to determine whether or not there was a cancerous growth inside of my skull that could potentially lead to imminent death, we took the more obvious (less time consuming) procedure and gave me some ibuprofen and sent me to a chiropractor.

I had never been to a chiropractor before. But everyone had great things to say about these dudes, so, to be honest I was a little excited. I showed up early to my appointment expecting to be broken, and rightfully so.

The good doctor began by evaluating my spine and neck, all the while moaning to himself. As he finished, he looked at me and said, “Do you want the good news or the bad news first?”

“Bad news.” I responded.

“You’re a mess,” he said.

“Uh, thanks…” I interrupted.

“But I can fix you,” he concluded.  He then proceeded to ask me to roll back over onto my stomach, because he liked to start his procedures with a deep tissue massage.  Now, don’t worry…  I know there will be someone who reads this who’ll wonder if I was half (or all) naked, face first in this cushiony torture rack. The answer is no. I was fully clothed. And then came the pain.

This dude must have had some pent up anger from his childhood, or maybe I reminded him of someone who owes him money.  Whatever the case was, he was not holding anything back.  He was digging his knuckles into my shoulders, neck and head as if trying to rub through my flesh and into my spine where he could gain access to my central nervous system, thereby sucking out my life force with the help of his alien brothers hiding quietly in the next room.

Half way through the procedure, I noticed the door was open. There were people waiting in the lobby. I asked the good doctor if he always kept the door open. “Yes,” he responded. “It keeps people from yelling.”

“Oh, so rather than yell, they just cry quietly into their face cushion like myself?” I asked.

He just chuckled.

I took that as a yes.

After the torture massage came the contortion exercises and snapping of joints I never knew I had.  Seriously, if you were there, you would have thought I was smuggling a roll of bubble wrap in my neck. I left his office feeling a combination of better and worse.  I thought it was all over until I went home the next day to help my parents prepare for new carpet by tearing up the nasty old stuff.

My mom was standing behind me as I was prying some staples out of the floor when she gasped. “WHAT is WRONG with your NECK?” (My mom emphasizes specific words when she gets impassioned for dramatic effect.) “Does it hurt?”

“Yeah… but the chiropractor said it should when I left, so I didn’t worry about it. Why?”

“It’s covered in BLISTERS!” She announced.

Yup. The chiropractor rubbed my neck and shoulders so hard that the friction caused them to be covered in hundreds of little, white, puss-filled blisters, much like the wretched sunburn I experienced in California last summer. No bueno, my friends. No bueno.

Here’s the kicker though.  When I came home and showed my roommates the grotesque display of nastiness, one announced that he had a magic elixir that would help! I was stoked.  He ran in his room and fetched me a tube of “BikiniZone Anti-Bumps Shave Gel.” Seriously folks. You can’t make this stuff up.

“Why the heck do you have this?” I asked him.

“Oh… uh… well, I waxed my chest last summer, and I thought it would be good to have this handy to avoid any unsightly bumps and irritation.”

“Right… your chest…” I replied.

Needless to say, I am officially worried.  I mean, what deep dark secrets will my roommate unearth about himself next time I go to the chiropractor?

Also, this is for you because I thought it was funny:

So, in life, sometimes we’re presented with a doughnut. The doughnut is a metaphor for something else in your life.

Now, sometimes we start to eat our delicious deliquescent when we suddenly realize that the people around us are also eating doughnuts. Suddenly the innately competitive nature eeks out of us and we start to see who can be the best doughnut eater. Will it be the fat, funny dude with the big mouth? Will it be that skinny blond girl who always gets everything her way? Will it be you?

It’s easy to get so distracted with other people chowing on their pastries that you forget that you have your own plate of goodness right in front of you.

At times, the opposite occurs. In order to prove a point, we devour our doughnuts so quickly that it can’t even really be considered ‘eating.’ It’s more just ribbing it all over your face to make it look like it’s gone… Thirty seconds later you get that thought. “Oh crap. Why did I do that?” You look like a mess. You feel gross because whatever doughnut made it into your mouth was not chewed more than 2 times before forced down your greedy gullet, and you realize that all of that hurry was worthless… there wasn’t even anything in the middle of the dang thing.

We need to learn that everyone eats their doughnut differently. It’s important to savor it. Enjoy it. Relish it. Because when it’s gone, all that’s left is that sick feeling in your stomach that reminds you that last time you ate a doughnut you had promised yourself that you wouldn’t do it again, even though you knew you would anyway…

*Ok, when I started this post, I thought there would be an obvious conclusion or lesson or something. The more I wrote, the more I realized that doughnuts have nothing to do with life lessons… except that it’s easier to put on 3 pounds than it is to take it off… even though you look attractive with or without the 3 pounds… er… yeah.