What are some of the darkest comedy takes on iconic childrens playtoys? Robot Chicken has done many such re-takes to great hilarity for established pieces: GI Joe, Super Friends in a Reality Show, Batman, She-Ra and He-Man, and many more. Now the Legos have been given a new dark humor side with a special edition set for the movie Babel!

Disclaimer: if you loved the after-scenes from the hilarious Waiting for Guffman (Corky St. Clair: Here’s the Remains of the Day lunchbox. Kids don’t like eating at school, but if they have a Remains of the Day lunchbox they’re a lot happier. ).
If you found THAT funny, you’ll LOVE this LEGO takeoff!

Enjoy this comedy TV gem – Victor Borge and Dean Martin demonstrating the value of phonetic pronunciation in songs!

This was a beautifully crafted tribute letter to Farrah Fawcett that I wanted to share with you.

(AP) Dear Farrah Fawcett,

I’m sure you understand why Michael Jackson’s death has taken over the airwaves and blogosphere, but the folks you’ve touched remember you, too. You might not be on the front page, but people are still talking.

People are talking about The Poster. People are talking about The Hair. People are saying you were a pretty face, but more than that, too. They’re praising your battle with the disease that finally killed you. And they’re talking about The Poster some more.

One swath of your adoring public is isn’t talking about The Poster so much. Gen-X women are talking about Jill Munroe, the character you played on “Charlie’s Angels,” and how you taught us to kick butt.

For an entire generation of girls, that was your legacy. And even some of the girls born later who are fans of Sigourney Weaver in the “Aliens” franchise, Carrie-Anne Moss in “The Matrix” and even “Xena,” know that Jill Munroe & Co. were the first soldiers on the female action hero front line.

The grown-up critics at the time derisively called the show “jiggle TV,” and maybe it was, but that was lost on us. To us girls, “Charlie’s Angels” was an exciting fantasyland where cool ladies in sweet outfits got to pack heat and run down the bad guys.

The feminist elders at the time dismissed the show as sexploitation, and it certainly may have been, but that went way over our heads. All we cared about was that now we had this fun game to play with each other after school. Some kids escaped into cops and robbers, but the girls of the ’70s played “Charlie’s Angels.”

It went down like this: Everyone would pick which Angel they wanted to be. Farrah, I hope you know that everyone fought over who got to be Jill Munroe. And then, we’d run around together, our fingers twisted into pistols, acting out all sorts of scenarios where we’d outsmart the criminals while flipping our hair.

It felt like true liberation to find this funnel for our energy: to run, jump, roll on the ground and have purpose in our play. We fed off of each other the way we saw the Angels do it: friends before all with a little sass for everyone else. It wasn’t lost on us how the Angels often used their feminine wiles to entrap clueless men. So who was being sexploited again?

Farrah, you only stayed on the show for one season, but your gift of Jill Munroe still lives on with the grown-up girls of the 1970s. They took to Twitter to offer homage, and they loved you even if they couldn’t spell your character’s name correctly.

“I was a Charlie’s Angels gal. In the neighborhood, I was Jill until Kris Monroe came along. I had the silk jacket,” said one. And another: “RIP Farrah! My 5th grade hair do was the Farrah and Jill Monroe taught me girls could be beautiful AND kick butt! Best hair toss ever!” And this one, too: “So sad that Farrah Fawcett lost her battle with cancer. Rest in peace Jill Monroe (I was totally her when we played Charlies Angels).”

Know that there are lots more just like it out there, Farrah. It’s not wrong to be remembered for The Poster, The Hair or The Battle, as long as it’s not forgotten that you’ve left a lasting legacy for something very different among a bunch of women who used to be little girls.

Yours forever,

Girls of the ’70s

On the subject of public speaking and innovations to the mediums of presentation, a lot of focus has been given to David Byrne’s creative genius and artistry with the Microsoft application, PowerPoint. Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information, as he calls it, has been featured in many art exhibits since its debut several years ago and has now been reproduced in a DVD and companion book for purchase. His PowerPoint creations are particularly inventive for creating, in Jungian terms, a new neural pathway for our collective conscious…contriving a liaison between creating pure, specious art executed through a rational Microsoft application.  It’s so brilliant and unexpected, it’s almost an oxymoron in and of itself — creating abstruse, ethereal concepts within the boundaries of a defined executable script!!

Wow, breaking barriers in conceptual thought…I hope he rewarded himself with an afternoon off for having single-handedly reset the thresholds of Cartesian philosophy!  This is, of course, above and beyond his tremendous musical legacy, mind you. [In sharp contrast, sometimes I feel pleased with myself just if I make it over to Costco...or finish all of my laundry!]

But just as almost every new conceptual thought is constructed on the shoulders of our philosophical forefathers, David Byrne’s radical art nouveau opened a critical path to re-thinking the presentation of ideas and concepts through the platforms and applications of pc technology.  Enter Gapminder.org, founded in 2005, a Swedish organization that has re-engineered the presentation of statistics into beautiful, moving pictures. This powerful translation of statistics into an evolving story – right before your very eyes – not only translates statistics into language-based concepts, but imparts the lay spectator with access and a sense of ownership to the concepts and  – the story!

Let me phrase this in a different way: cast your mind back to high school, the English Literature class in your Senior year…what was the most difficult book you read? The one that was so hard for you to grasp…do you remember? The words, sentences, syntax and chapters were there, but it was just so hard to see the meaning behind it all!  Was is The Stranger by Camus, The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Kundera or Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky?  Then (Heavenly Father be praised), your teacher let you watch part of the movie adaptation – and all of a sudden, the emotions, the motivations, the sequence of events – i.e. the story – came flooding out of the TV and straight into your brain!  A bolt of lightning blazed through your mind and – presto!  The cerebellum processed all of the details in the novel, linked them to the center of your limbic system and emotional comprehension and…. you finally just GOT it!!

That’s what Gapminder’s proprietary technology does with statistical data, in almost the reverse-but-same method of David Byrne’s art-through-technology creation — the Gapminder group makes technology translate into moving art!  By taking the measured, defined data, inserting it into an executable technological application and revealing the art and story behind the statistics they have found a way to “unveil the beauty of statistics for a fact based world view” !

Here is a paragraph from their mission statement: Gapminder is a non-profit venture promoting sustainable global development and achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals by increased use and understanding of statistics and other information about social, economic and environmental development at local, national and global levels. We are a modern “museum” that helps making the world understandable, using the Internet.

This video presentation by co-founder Hans Rosling is a must-see and it will completely transform your thoughts on effectively presenting statistical data.  Set aside several minutes and watch his video, entitled “Debunking Myths About the Third World.” Enjoy!

more about “Debunking myths about the “third worl…”, posted with vodpod

After Citibank becomes nationalized, you can expect everyone to be liquidating their stock…

I started my professional career as a corporate language trainer in Switzerland.  Although I had already achieved a considerable measure of fluency in French and German – two of the three major languages spoken in my beloved, surrogate homeland Confoederatio Helvetica , experiencing the language acquisition process from the perspective of my adult students gave me fascinating new insights into what really gives students a sense of ownership in the target language.

So what is it that really give them that elusive sense of ownership, that first heady taste of foreign language ROI? The moment when they complete their first freeform language transaction? They understand, are understood…and then they get the emotional payoff – to feel like a conqueror of undiscovered lands!

Well, there have been several evolving theories as to what constitutes this sense of target language ownership, heretofore referred to as language acquisition theories – and anyone who’s studied a foreign language knows that memorizing verb conjugations isn’t the way to make friends with your new foreign language!!  Although certainly a necessary component of language education, what really makes students fall in love with language is to bring the perspective down to the reality of everyday life – verbs, nouns, idiomatic phrases, and simple automatic responses. What are automatic answers to questions that their mother asks them daily? Or what’s the foreign translated title of their child’s favorite disney film? Over the holidays, I liked introducing my students to US Christmas traditions – the original Grinch cartoon (so memorably narrated by Boris Karloff), Christmas carols in English and working through recipes for traditional holiday foods like cookie cutter, frosted sugar cookies, etc.

Most importantly, I found that humor was a very seductive incentive; give them a comic book or joke that they can practice and then repeat to friends and colleagues offers exposure, not only to idiomatic phrases and timing, but to the critical component of the target language’s humor psychology. (And believe you me – humor psychology is NOT universal!!)

Which brings me to the point of today’s blog entry: getting to simple, everyday applications of the target language/culture’s psychology is a powerful and effective method of creating that sense of ownership – and it doesn’t even have to be verbal! In other words, getting a student to replicate  (not just write a book report) some small gesture – and know WHY they’re doing it – gives the student that elusive, sought-after feeling of ,”I’ve got this, I can do this!”

The website that I’ve cited here below does an unusually great job of presenting these psychology bits in a simple and extremely accessible way, as applied to the French language!  At the bottom of this French Culture & Communication page, the teachers give a few etiquette points and then move into some fun and accessible hand gestures. (Not THOSE kind of hand gestures, mind you!!) For example, the site teaches students how to count on their fingers as French people do (it’s not quite the same as in the US), how to make the French ‘ok’ sign, what hand signs should accompany the expression for “I promise to…”, and how to non-verbally tell someone, “It’s over!” (Which is especially appealing to high school students who can relate to that phrase to their relationship high-dramas…)

So, if you’re related to anyone studying a foreign language – be it a child, neighbor, spouse – look for websites like the French one cited above that can supplement the book lessons with some of these fun, reality-based applications of the target language….and then encourage them to go beyond reading about it. Get out and use it!!  Be your own part of globalization!!

From an early age, I have been an active fan of the rich detective novel series, The Deadly Sins, of the late Lawrence Sanders.  But I never anticipated indulging in any of the deadly sins myself!!

That is, until I found Nancy Pearl’s website and book! Her expertise and knowledge have tempted me into BOTH book Envy and book Lust!

For your reading and recommendation pleasure: “The New York Times calls her “the talk of librarian circles.” Readers can’t get enough of her recommendations while bookstores and libraries offer standing room only whenever she visits. Since the release of the best-selling Book Lust in 2003 and the Librarian Action Figure modeled in her likeness, Nancy Pearl has become a rock star among readenrs and the tastemaker people turn to when deciding what to read next.” (from her bio page)

Check out her website, Book Lust….just be ready to ask for forgiveness!

In a slight departure from my primary focus on language, communication, marketing and advertising I would like to share a music video with you…

In this case, the visual artistry and whimsical/dreamy music were exquisitely blended to culminate into a poignant statement that I felt compelled to share.

So, for your consideration, here is: Her Morning Elegance by Oren Lavie.

I have been caught up in a tornado of excitement around my new volunteer opportunity, and in sharing my experience with you here I’m hoping to bring more awareness to this fantastic service!

One of my favorite senior Marketing Communications mentors, Deborah Galloway, introduced me to a specialty radio station called GaRRS – the Georgia Radio Reading Service.  Part of the Georgia PBS family, it’s a 24/7 radio station dedicated to reading aloud for people with visual impairment conditions.  Their official tagline is, “Providing Access to the Printed Word and Information for Georgia’s Blind and Print-Handicapped.”  So at any point in the day, “readers” are selected to read aloud various books and periodicals; some broadcasts are pre-recorded and others are broadcast live. There are even specialty programs, such as the National Enquirer hour and Golden Oldies from the heyday of radio programming (Abbott and Costello, Jack Benny, George and Gracie Burns, etc.).  It’s an inspiring service  – an entire radio channel dedicated to keeping visually impaired people engaged in all current events and best sellers!! My family has been very fortunate to avoid any visual impairment issues, but I do regret not having learned about or come into contact with this service earlier.

I just can’t say enough good about it – imagine THAT!

Last week I auditioned at GaRRS, and was selected to be on their reader team…and even more exciting, I am now part of the Friday news radio broadcasting team! Every Friday night from 6-8pm, I’ll be one of three readers covering the AJC print and online breaking news – LIVE!!  It’s a nurturing, caring and supportive service for the visually impaired — it’s also a fun, exciting and thrilling opportunity for me and I’m very grateful to have the opportunity to contribute my time.

I would invite you to read more about their service – and to either pass along the word to anyone in need or, if you love reading aloud, offer to volunteer your time to support their efforts!  You will be richly rewarded for your good purpose works!!