Zombie Suburbia

We've all seen the haunting pictorials of abandoned urban centers, Detroit being the most popular for photographers to document, but the abandonment has reached many suburbs as the housing crisis continues to claim families.

On the two-mile trip to our local 7-Eleven in a middle class suburb, there are quite a few sad stories; homes that have been left to rot as the Florida jungle, ever creeping, tries to swallow them up.

So here's a little Fourth of July trip through our Central Florida neighborhood.

Things Could Get Ugly...

I've always said the next Great Depression is going to be very different from the last. And by that I meant that the whole "help a brother out" mentality will have totally disappeared. We'll be holed up in our homes with MREs, bottled water and a stockpile of ammunition. "Trust no one" will be the mantra of many. We'll be scraping resources together to keep our cell phones from being turned off or our cable from being cut. We have our priorities. But those brave souls willing to go down to their local church or homeless shelter when they run out of food are going to face a new kind of horror the people of the 1930s could never have imagined.

Enough with the Porsche Spec Ads, Dave

Yeah, they ain't calling me, I know. I'm just entertaining myself. (Make it large by clicking.)

The other Porsche spec ad I made is here. They ignored that one, too. Luxury sports cars are a tough sell in this economy, I'm sure.

Spammy Banners Will Get Us Out of This Mess

A quick scan of my spam folder this morning and I find some fun subject lines:

"Nothing beats a huge stick"
"See your organ increase right before your eyes"
"The lady will love your monster snake pants."
"Donation from Mrs Sarah Dandr"


You probably don't know Sarah Dandr. She's from "Serbian." and has a "longtime cancer of the breast." Long, sad story. but she's a widow now with a ton of money and she needs my help. As soon as I finish this blog post, I'm sending her my bank account information. And I believe her, too, as she signed her letter to me "Yours in Christ."

And today I was checking this here blog, looking at some of the banners I have allowed to appear. I note I'm starting to get some big name sponsors like Netflix and Progressive Insurance. It's an awesome program, Google's ad thing, and since I started allowing ads on here, I've made $100, which over the life of this blog, averages out to about a nickel a day.

But when you're creating ads, do you think you might employ a proofreader; one who speaks English? My readers expect better than this ad to your left. I feel like I'm being approached by a fast talking, shady dude on the streets of Tijuana with this ad. Maybe I'm supposed to read that headline and think, "Wow, exotic. Love how she phrased that. I can hear her hot accent already."

I've always said the Internet is the Wild West, the new Frontier, where it's wide open to everyone, from Sarah in Serbia to Latin Beauties, every man and woman for him/herself. Everyone hoping to make a dollar, a euro, a peso or pound. I guess there's room for headlines like "Seeking For Latin Beauty?" Actually, I should expect more of them and welcome them. It gives the blog an international feel. We're all in this together, Sarah, this chick above, you, me. So click those banners people; shop and travel. The world economy ain't gonna fix itself.

Tricycle Repo

Forget Your Troubles

Click

An Xtranormal Job Search - Part II

After my interview, the people doing the hiring discuss the candidates.

An Xtranormal Job Search

I'm on a campaign to find a job by Thanksgiving.

Get a Job, Loser

A local staffing firm said they were referred to me for a position they're trying to fill. They asked that if I wasn't the right fit, could I please send them someone who was. I wouldn't wish the job they're offering on anyone.

Is it just me, or is this job profile depressing, insulting, ludicrous and a sad commentary on the state of creative opportunities out there of late? (Click for large.)

To top it all off, you'll obviously be creating keyword-loaded content for a law firm - likely one specializing in personal injury.

Lemme Get All NPR On You

I took that little story about my neighbors and recorded it. I suppose my delivery isn't "hypnotic" enough by NPR standards, but here it is anyway. (Probably doesn't show up in RSS, so you have to go to the site.)

Let Me Introduce You to My Neighbors

Being a home-bound unemployed guy with sporadic freelance opportunities, I have developed a routine that keeps me outdoors a lot, able to observe my neighbors as I ride a bike or take or walk or work in the yard in between searching for work online. Not that I really know too many of them, being the typical American neighbor that I am. I think this would make a good NPR monologue. I'll deliver it to the first station that requests it. 

We'll start at the top of the street with the couple I call the Washed-Up Porn-Stars because they're super-tan and manicured and super-fit but a little too much for their ages. Then we move on down to the white-haired guy who's always crouched down picking at weeds but his yard always looks like crap no matter how many hours he spends out there in his too-short shorts, cigarette dangling from his lip. He lives not very far from the English couple; she runs a house-cleaning service and he had a Quizno's for a little while and I recently got some really good computer peripherals at their garage sale. We'll bypass the gated community that recently shut their gates full-time because they were tired of people like me using their exclusive circle for a bike or jogging path. Over on your left you'll see the home of the NBC affiliate's lead anchor who can always be seen jogging nearly naked against traffic in nothing but some silky shorts. His wife works for Fed-Ex and she comes home at lunch to walk their Golden Retriever while talking on her phone. Coming up ahead is the home of the couple who I think were the models for the classic painting "American Gothic," and they are just as dour now as they were when they posed for Grant Wood back in 1930. Not much can make them smile, except I suppose the Greyhounds they enjoy rescuing, but their recent one doesn't like bikes and I have to be careful when riding by him because he thinks I'm something he should chase, years of Greyhound racing making him think that anything moving is a mechanical rabbit. Up ahead is Abe who walks this little one-mile loop at least nine times around every day. He told me so when we passed one day. He's a foreign currency trader and takes meetings on his phone during his walks. I once heard him cussing out an employee very loudly and expressing how deeply fucking disappointed he was in their performance and how the fuck could they have done what they did and what the fuck were they thinking. Here is the family that loves Mustangs. They have three mustangs from the mid-1980s, all the same year I'm pretty sure. Here's the cop's house. She is an Orlando cop. Up ahead and on the same side is the sheriff's deputy's house. It's nice to have cops and sheriffs on your street. There's the house that burned down a year ago. There's the home of the family who keeps lights on the palm trees in their front yard year-round. They don't turn them on, they just leave them up, wrapped around the trunks waiting for their special time come December. Oh, look! Speaking of December, it's Menorah Man! He erects in his yard every year at Hanukkah a gigantic menorah, tiki lamps serving as the candles. I think he was in a rock band because he used to have long hair that he dyed brown. It's easy to tell when a man dyes his hair because it always look lame. He was either in a rock band or maybe he played a knight at the Medieval Dinner Theatre thing down by Disney. Either way he must not be doing it anymore because now his hair is short and grey. Here's the home of the Realtor lady. (Did you know you have to capitalize Realtor?) Her slogan is "I Move Houses." She also loves her Boxer dog and has a flag on the front of the house with a picture of her dog on it. Her husband is her helper and he goes around putting the "for-sale" signs on the lawns of the homes she's listed. I know this because his truck is always packed with for-sale signs. There's the dude who builds pools. When things are bad, like right now, he cleans pools. He told me he cleans Dwight Howard's pool twice a week. On Halloween he takes his kids around the loop while he pulls a wagon-load of beer. I'm going to ask him if I can join him this Halloween. And now we're coming around to my house. I'm probably known by the people on my street who don't know me as "the guy who's been home a lot these past few months."

Job Seekers Who Do Not Meet All Requirements Need Not Apply

It doesn't matter that you can demonstrate award-winning skills in a variety of disciplines. They know exactly what they want in a candidate, and you are not it.

What few job offers that are out there these days have a specific specialist in mind. The days of the creative generalist seem to be winding down. I saw a quote from Tina Brown in the paper today:

"No one I know has a job anymore. They've got Gigs."

In today's "Boys of the Credenza" comic, The Creative Team meets with the Human Resources Director. (Based on an actual ad I found on Career Builder. Click for the big.)

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

Casa de Jetpacks sits on a canal near the Wekiva River Conservation Area, so it is not uncommon to encounter all manner of wildlife in the yard and around the neighborhood. Sand hill cranes are regular tenants, as are otters. Lizards, snakes and turtles are of course ubiquitous. Every morning and evening you can spot deer so tame that they just look at you as if you've interrupted their private breakfast or round of cocktails in their reserved room at the club. Hawks are always on the lampposts, and they are always being harassed by smaller birds, but the hawks just sit there cool as hell while being darted at by noisy little pests. The occasional alligator wanders into the yard. Earlier this week I got so tired of an armadillo rooting around in my garage and yard that I dispatched him to Armadillo Hell, where I'm sure all armadillos go upon expiring. And then sometimes we get bear, but only at night when the trash cans are on the street waiting to be emptied the following morning. Until today, that is, when a bold bear decided he'd have a broad daylight lunch of pears from the tree in the yard. The dog followed me out and scared him/her off with some vicious barking that had it been tested, would not have been backed up by any sort of bite. 

Got my copy of Mad Men Unbuttoned today in the mail. (I had already received a galley.) Written by Natasha Vargas-Cooper, it is a complete dissection of the era in which the hit series takes place, as well as THE authoritative history of ad agencies of the time - and just in time for the new season. Copyranter has an entry in there. So does Bad Banana. So do I. Buy it for the fan in your life. Now. (That was a call to action.)

Saw a tweet from Flashman of Sydney this morning. Seems there's a course on media, society and politics at the University of New South Wales that uses one of my Mike Adams cartoons on a handout promoting the course. Cool.

Saw another tweet today from Ad Pulp that announced a contest being put on by BBR Saatchi & Saatchi of Tel Aviv. They call it "The Impossible Brief." They're asking people to solve the Middle East Crisis, since Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush and Obama or any of their staff of career diplomats, or the UN, or Bono, or Madonna, or Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie couldn't. Hell, no one can, can they? Since I'm not doing anything this summer in the way of real work, I took a stab. Frisbee, after all, is universal.

And I will commute weekly to Tel Aviv if that's what it takes to get an ad job in this economy.

Super Saturated Street Views - "Moving Pictures" Edition

Some time back, I was cruising around the world on Google Street Views and came across a Porsche just south of Bellagio in Italy, meandering along the shores of Lago di Como behind the Google Street View Car. I thought, "That'd make a nice Porsche ad." Then recently, I was watching a Rush documentary and wondering, "How come no Rush music has ever been featured in a commercial?" UPDATE: MTLB thinks Rush music was used for a Nissan Pathfinder commercial some years back. Regardless, this will make that look like trash.

So, I'm combining the two interests - Rush and Street Views. Here's an ad made entirely from Google, including the pull-away at the end using Google Maps. I even took the tune from YouTube, where every song you ever wanted to hear resides for free, except the music of Prince, who has a crack legal team that will sue your ass in two shakes of a backup dancer's tail if you so much as THINK of one of his songs without asking.

And every Rush fan, be they old school headbangers or fans of "The Mullet Years" will agree, YYZ is the tune that unites every generation of Rush fan, and I've selected the best :30 of that tune. So here goes: I'm ready to be a one man crowd-source with this thing and take a couple hundred grand, 'cause I need a new roof. (And a Porsche, s'long as I'm at it.)

Here's the reasoning:

• Rush and Porsche are a natural fit: Power + Precision
• Some older Rush fans are wealthy now, even in this recession, and Rush fans are out of the closet. This tune will stop them in their tracks, guaranteed.
• Porsche HAS to be hurting in this economy.
• It rocks.
• It was easy and cheap. Took me a few hours. Keep in mind, this is spec. We'll make it HD and pretty in a nice studio somewhere. (It's the IDEA that counts, bitches.)
• It's an opening for Google to license their Street Views for commercial usage, seeing as they're out to rule the online revenue world.

Well, I guess I've opened up an opportunity for at least three entities to order me to cease and desist, and to them I say, "Live a little and lighten up." (And feel free to hire me. And of course we can work on my lame tagline at the end. But it's easy, cheesy and obvious, in anticipation of the client's desires.)

Forget Your Troubles, Friend! Dance-Band Fame is Yours!

It's the Great Depression and Japan has yet to bomb Pearl Harbor, sending millions to work, and every magazine is filled with ads selling items or ideas that will help John and Alice Dustbowl make some much-needed cash. You can be a tattoo artist, or learn how to make big money in the promising field of cartooning. You can buy a saw-sharpener and go around sharpening people's saws. Learn to stuff birds. Be a baker. Be a diesel mechanic or get into Air Conditioning, "America's next big industry!" Others are just as vague as can be, and only promise happiness, riches, fame and the ability to get whatever you want if you will only send a dime for the book. The modern counterpart to these ads in our tough economy would be, "Learn to be a Social Media Guru in Your Spare Time!"

I liked this guy. He sells marimbas. Now that's a sure route to happy-land.

Necessity is the Mother of Repair

Or "Google is Your Friend"

One of the household Dell monitors crapped out. Four months ago, when I was employed, this would've been solved by buying another monitor while cursing the shoddy workmanship of the Chinese who toil night and day at pathetic jobs that pay shit to give us the cheap, disposable stuff we demand. But as a man slowly learning the value of thrift, a Google search revealed that you could find bad, bulging capacitors on the power supply board. So I tore it apart and sho nuff, there the little bad bulging bastards were.

Regardless of what you're trying to do in your life, be it diagnose your own ailment, hang a ceiling fan or fix a power supply board on a cheap monitor, the forums are trolled by people slowly finding themselves out of work. They resent that you are trying to do their jobs and they hate thinking of themselves going the way of travel agents, encyclopedia salesmen, graphic artists and copywriters. The doctors get on the medical forums and say, "See a doctor! You probably have a horrible disease!" The electricians get on the "how to" forums and say, "Hire a licensed electrician or you will probably burn your house down!" and the computer techs get on the computer forums and say, "Stand in a puddle of water, plug the thing in and then stab it with something metallic and non-insulated! DIE, you stupid know-nothing fucks! And I hope all your porn gets deleted in the process!"

Despite the dire warnings from the computer techs, I set about saving some money.

So I tried to remember how to de-solder something and got those ugly-ass capacitors out and took them to Radio Shack, where the worthless clerk said, "Nope. I suppose I should have those since everyone seems to want them." I guess crapping-out Dell flatscreen monitors are all the rage. So I went to a crazy place in Winter Park, where a flying saucer and a pair of rockets have been landmarks for years. They have everything a mad scientist or a terrorist could want, including a wall of capacitors, none of which were of the rating I needed. So back to Google, who said, "There's an area of Orange Blossom Trail where it starts to go from ugly-industrial to totally sketch. In that creepy region is a place that goes by the name of Acme." Acme is staffed by a grey, long-haired guy who looks like he might be in a cover band at a beach bar on the weekends and a super-tall lanky dude who looks like he might be a refugee from the German techno scene. These gentlemen had the capacitors, for like 28 cents a piece. I only needed two, but I splurged and got four.

Then I tired to remember how to solder something and got those cheap bastards secure in their holes. Then I buttoned the thing back up and was quite pleased to only have two leftover screws when I was done. (Someone needs to tell those Chinese women and children making our monitors that they can save a couple steps.)

Then the test; that all-too-scary moment when you will be revealed for a fool or a hero. I was a hero. Actually, all credit goes to Google and the people who, for whatever reason, offer help at no charge, dispensing their little piece of knowledge on obscure sites so that someone else can save a few bucks. And apologies to the computer techs who didn't get my repair business. And to Best Buy or Target who didn't get to sell me a new monitor. We're all doing what we can in this economy. See you on the soup line.

Will Repair Small but Critical Shuttle Component for Food

Locally, thousands more will be unemployed very shortly. (I hear Disney's hiring part-time "cast members.") The US Labor Secretary will be down this morning to announce some federal money to help those about to be out of work.

Elaborated on more at Radio Free Babylon.

WINNER! Best Handmade Corner Sign in The Down Economy

Everyone else just says "We Pay Cash for Your House," or "I'll Buy Your House - CASH." I love the innovation of this local shark, looking to help you out of your personal financial crisis.

You Are Not a Ninja

Children, the happy heyday of cute, irreverent titles is over. Your startup failed, your VC dried up, your dreams of being bought by Google vanished. Even the speaking circuit you carved out in tiny ad clubs in rural areas is coming to an end. Update that resume and hit the bricks, dicks.

Supersaturated Street Views - Music Video Edition

If you search Google Street Views on this blog you'll see how long I've been fascinated (obsessed) with this aspect of Google's Total Domination of the Earth. They own my email, this blog, YouTube and the street I live on.

This video combines my one-guitar, one-voice rendition of the very dark American Blues classic "Dock of the Bay" with images of the San Francisco area as seen on Google Street Views, with the saturation pumped up a bunch to give it a dreamy quality. (Assuming you dream in color.) I found the mundane, the sublime, the silly and the sad just by dropping that little yellow man onto the map and moving him up and down the streets of this great American city, trying to frame each scene just so. I've only been to SF a few times, but I was captivated, just like most people who visit that very unique Golden State town. Now I feel like I've been there again.

If I get 1 million views of this video, I might just ride my bike from Orlando to San Francisco in support of some worthy cause, perhaps homeless veterans. I figure it'll take a little over a month. ('Course I'm gonna need a few sponsors, like a motel chain and a restaurant chain, probably a bike shop as well.) If not, I might attempt to sell this song or video on iTunes and try to get enough money to fix the roof, because it's leaking. If the estate of Otis Redding or the monolithic monster Google come after me, I'll jump from that bridge when I come to it. Short of that, just enjoy. And for best results, please crank it up.