I went to Target today looking for some shorts and “The Untouchables” on DVD. I succeeded on both counts, and even found an extra pair of shorts, an extra DVD and some new mascara to try. Anyway, back to my story.

Target is currently running a promotion of DVDs tied in to VH1’s “I Love the 80s” for $7.50 each. The wall display included seminal 80s movies like “Airplane!”, “Pretty in Pink”, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”, “Better Off Dead”, “Crocodile Dundee”, and the two I purchased: “The Untouchables” and “The Explorers.” I’d have squealed with joy if “Flight of the Navigator” was also there, but it wasn’t.  There were many more, but I thought two would be enough for today. Other positives: good selection, low price, and each comes with a CD of some 80s music.

What’s very disappointing is what they’re doing with the marketing. I’m not a marketing guru by any means, but it’s what I do for a living (I was actually promoted earlier this week, but that’s work life, so I didn’t blah-blah all about it here - but I must be doing something right). Back to my analysis of their marketing efforts.

The packaging is kind of lame and 80s - and that’s actually fine by me; I get it. They want to tie them together as a series, so each DVD has a similar design treatment framing the actual movie art, as seen below:

If they’re actually supposed to be related to the “I Love the 80s” show (which is what the overly helpful Target clerk said, after practically spitting in excitement over the fact that they included “Friday the 13th”) they should have included a VH1 logo; it would’ve made the artwork seem a bit less cheesy and bit less “some dude designed these to match a pair of swim trunks he owned in 1985.”

Perhaps it’s not actually tied into the show or perhaps Viacom didn’t want to use the VH1 trademark/brand identity in that way. All the movies (at least the ones I could remember and checked on IMDb) are from Paramount (which merged with Viacom not too long ago) so they’re all the same company in the end and I don’t think there would be too much trouble getting that done. Either way, fine - this is just my observation and opinion. I would’ve leveraged that brand and placed the logo somewhere on the package.

In any event, I wanted to look them up and see what other movies were being released in the series, so I went to the website listed on the outside of the DVD case (The80sonDVD.com).

It’s a lame-ass landing page on many accounts. Shot from today, below (I’m HOPING that it will change this week):

Yes, The80sonDVD.com was designed by a 3rd grader using Microsoft FrontPage.

Never mind that it’s July 6th and the awesomeness should’ve started almost a full week ago. Never mind that the site should be about the series, and not just the one DVD. Never mind the retina-searing use of lime green and the lamest headline ever. If you’re going to make the promise of total awesomeness, you’d best deliver on it, my friends.

Lastly, if you click on Matthew Broderick’s youthfully mischievious face, you’re taken to a Facebook page (!!!) where you can become a fan of the movie. That’s it.

Opportunities missed: countless. A simple site with a bit of content would have been a good move; nothing extravagant - say, a list of movies to be included in the series, plot synopses (the usual stuff you’d see on Amazon, etc.) and perhaps some movie trivia.  The wastefulness bothered me enough that I was moved to devote an entire post to it. So there!

Also - that bonus music CD? Four songs, and you get the same CD with every DVD you buy. And I already owned two of the four songs. Boo-hiss.

Still, I’m glad I got these movies. I’m going to watch “The Untouchables” right now for a little Connery/Costner/Pacino fix.

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Today, I drove down to Philadelphia: 270+ miles round trip. That’s about 3/4 of a tank of gas with my car’s nice fuel economy. Sweet!

My reason for going was that my friend Sara alerted me to the presence of the Art Star Craft Bazaar. So, my friend Theresa and I drove down, met up with Sara and went over to experience the crafty joys. And spend some money. I was actually there for work purposes, but I won’t write about those here (church vs. state, you know?)

It was held along the water at Penn’s Landing. Lots of tents filled with beautiful handmade, incredibly creative and unique pieces… clothing, jewelry, pottery, toys, stationery, prints, paintings, health and beauty products. Nice nice.

I picked up a few fun things - like this really cool alphabet print from The Small Object (# 107 of 300) which I will be framing as soon as I can spend more money on something like that. “L” is for lint. “U” is for underdog. It’s adorable.

I’ve been wanting smallish earrings, and these were inexpensive and lovely - those are small pictures of tree branches against a blue sky. As recent posts have shown, I’m having a tree thing lately. And I’m trying to remember the name of this shop, but I’m blanking right now. I’ll look through the business cards I collected and go from there.

My favorite, though, is this necklace. I saw several silver necklaces I really liked, but in the end, I chose this one since I thought it was the most “me.” It’s from 12linden, the company name for jewelry designer Eliza Mundy. I’ve admired her pieces on Etsy, but I was able to touch and see… and that made me buy it.

You can see a bit of the pink I developed from being out in the sun. Finally, I got this cute hair clip/bobby pin from Art School Dropout. The gray is a bit lighter, actually, but you get the idea.

I also purchased a handful of Mean Cards (when you get to the homepage, click on Mean Cards) - these very minimalist but hilarious greeting cards. There’s one they didn’t have in stock, but which I will most likely order online that says on the front, “Thank you for thanking me.” - inside, “You’re welcome.” One I did buy says “everything dies” - inside: “A friendly reminder.” Good times.

There were so many other things. I could’ve easily spent an entire months’ wages there. Thankfully, I did not. Nowhere close. I controlled myself. But this means the temptation factor on Etsy will be even higher since I’ve now SEEN these things in person. Goodness gracious.

This week seems interminably long, even in light of a half-day at work tomorrow and a day off on Monday. It’s just been chock-full of activity - possibly because one of my co-workers is on maternity leave and the other is on vacation. This might just be me catching the overflow, but I’m thinking it’s something more. This doesn’t feel temporary.

But I’m feeling good in a small-scale philanthropic way because I just donated some moneys (not a lot, but apparently their most popular pledge amount) to my local public radio station during their pledge drive. I was going to forgo the thank you gift (another tote bag?) but then I saw that I had the option to get an iPod cover. I’ve been looking for a new iPod cover. So I’ll have this (mildly pretentious) cover in a few weeks:

I might have to start putting some of their podcasts on my iPod just so the inside matches the outside. Right now, my radio listening is NPR (WNYC, more appropriately), the oldies station (rarely now because DJs really annoy the crap out of me these days), or my iPod. That’s it.

I don’t think I’m alone in these listening habits - it’s a bit of the DVR/TiVo mentality:

a) I don’t want commercials
b) I want to hear/see what I want when I want it
c) I’m willing to pay a little more for this privilege (which is a little f’ed up if you think about, but it’s modern life - we pay a lot to maintain our respective levels of peace and quiet in life)

And now, I think I’m going to go by my local bagel shop and get a bagel before I catch my train. It’s a rainy morning and I’m feeling tired, but OK.

Once more into the fray!

Well, today was the first of my two days at New York ComicCon. The annual east coast comic convention at the Javits Convention Center. I was at the booth alone from 3:00 on, so I didn’t get to wander the floor and see what was going on, but I did get some photos. Kind of boring photos since they were taken from the confines of my company’s booth:

In the two images below, I’ve circled a light-saber battle for you. They were pretty far away and I don’t have a true telephoto lens for the camera, and there was a lot of motion and I didn’t have a chance to change the shutter speed since I just saw this craziness happening and NEEDED TO CAPTURE IT.

There was a girl and a guy, both in weird Captain America-esque outfits. Just -boom!- in the middle of the aisle as people sort of scooted around them, totally nonplussed by the sword battle going on in their midst. It’s amazing how one’s acceptance of the non-traditional really reaches new levels here (half-naked women wearing red contact lenses and 8″ high platform boots? Ain’t no thing!)

Yeah. There was that. And lots of other interesting things and people. Thankfully, unlike the last convention I attended, the time passed by rather quickly and before I knew it, it was time to leave. I took the ferry back over to New Jersey and took this photo in the ferry parking lot - that’s the New Yorker building, among others… :

Yup. Rinse and repeat - doing it all again tomorrow, though not for nearly as long. That will be nice; I looked up an old friend from my bookstore days who is a comic book artist and learned that the studio he co-founded has a booth at ComicCon. I went over to say hi to him before I was due at our booth and we chatted for a bit, but I’d like to pop over again and perhaps buy a sketch from him or some such Fun.

Phew. I am planning on spending the rest of the evening watching highly entertaining silliness with my sister and her boyfriend - “Wet Hot American Summer.” From the folks responsible for “The State.” Yes. It’s quite funny.

I don’t even know how much time I’ll have to write in the next week. Seriously.

Today I drove my friend to the airport in the morning so he could catch his flight to San Francisco, and I will be flying out there to hang out with him next Wednesday. The seven days between now and then will be both interminable and far too short.

For example, I’ll be working every single day, including the weekend. That’s when I’ll be working the New York ComicCon to represent my company’s Shakespeare: The Manga Edition series. It should be pretty cool (if providing a little bit of geek overload - which I might even enjoy a bit if I didn’t get scared by people who are crazy hardcore about [insert comic book/graphic novel/manga/TV/movie series here] ) and the days should fly by since it will be busy.

Neil Gaiman is doing an appearance and signing sometime during the convention, but one part is a $500-a-ticket fundraiser for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and the other (reading - $20 a ticket) is most likely going to have lines spilling out the door if it doesn’t sell out. Since I’m working Saturday and Sunday, Friday is my only free night this week (and I’d like to see my other friends before I disappear for about two weeks), I won’t be attending, as much as I enjoy Mr. Gaiman - and I do.

All that coolness doesn’t change the fact that I will have spent all the hours between noon and 8 pm (you know, hours when I could be taking care of things like laundry and shopping and packing) standing in a noisy convention center.

It just puts a lot more pressure on me to get things done in the evenings. My usual evening routine is to get home from work around 6/7pm, change into running clothes, run for 30-45 minutes or so, shower, eat, check email/RSS feeds, and then read or watch a movie until I fall asleep. Tonight, I was unable to adhere to that routine; I got home at 6:30, checked email quickly and then ran out to stores to get vitals like sunglasses, shorts, a couple of tank tops and such. I got home at 9:00 and ate some dinner (leftover spinach and a piece of toast - PATHETIC) then tackled email, checking tracking on some stuff I ordered for said trip (durable rock climbing pants since Old Navy cargo pants won’t cut it), put away purchases, did some cleaning… and now it’s 11:00. Where does the time go?

Somewhere I can’t see. And the reasons for my blindness may vary.

But I’m glad to know that the title of a mix CD I made provided the possible title for a story my friend is writing, that I am basically guaranteed to have non-stop fun during my vacation which makes everything coming up to it worthwhile, that the stress I’ll be feeling at work will be productive stress because I’ll be getting lots of things done, and that I’m going to go rock-climbing tomorrow and it will feel good.

One of the benefits of not being wealthy, not being involved in a multitude of investment opportunities and not being a homeowner/married person/parent is that my taxes are so easy to do. Really. I used TurboTax this year and last year because it makes it so redonkulously easy, but I’ve done it the old school way, too. And an even older school way before I knew any better — going to an alcoholic accountant/family friend who used to do my taxes until the fear of an audit made me think better of such things.

I guess I’m a reluctant fan of TurboTax. The end part of the process (just before you file) is annoying because they try to sell you on their professional tax review, audit-proofing, etc. (all at an additional cost) but I have to appreciate that - it’s the cross-sell. The rest of it is pretty painless so I can’t complain overall. However, I do not use them for the state taxes. While they include one free state tax return with the software, they charge an additional $17 or something if you want to e-file the resulting return through TurboTax. Ha ha. There’s the catch.

Most states offer a free e-file option through the official state website - and most state taxes are simple-simple -simple. No itemized deductions, no craziness. Just “How much did you earn?” and “Did you buy a house or spend insane sums of money on medical care?” then “OK, well you should’ve paid this and you paid this. Your return/amount owed is _____. Have a nice day.”

In any event, I’m all e-filed for state and federal and should be seeing my moderate federal return magically appear in my bank account in the next 9-14 business days. My whopping $1 return from the State of New Jersey should appear even sooner.

Guess who’s going to be putting that mad-cash-money towards a new tube of lip balm?!??!

I’ve been talked down off the MacBook Air “ledge” by my well-informed and technologically über-savvy brother.

His reasons and logic were compelling; the only thing I could do when he was done with his solid list was issue forth a feeble, “But it’s so slick-looking…”

For around or less than half the price, I could buy a comparably-sized, equally lightweight notebook computer that would have a built-in optical drive (CD/DVD), memory expansion, a bigger/better hard drive, more than one USB port, and a replaceable battery (rather, a user replaceable battery).

MacBook Air, while slick, has these shortcomings. CrunchGear has a good (and entertaining) summary entitled, “MacBook AirHead: why Apple’s new laptop is basically useless“:

And the inputs. One USB, one Franken-DVI. Hope you like plugging and unplugging things! It says it’s built for the wireless world - yeah, okay, but that world is make-believe right now. Sure, you could bring a hub along, but this goes along with the earlier complaint: what’s the point of a mega-portable laptop if you have to bring along a whole support team? It’s like a ditzy model-actress’s entourage: you just want to take the girl out, but she has to have her make-up guy, her photographer, her PA, and she’s totally incapable of doing anything on her own.

See? Entertaining. And informative.

Maybe I’ll just focus my energy on cell phone/smartphone/Blackberry research. That decision will have to be made in May, and there might be new stuff on the market by then, but I’d best get myself up to speed ‘afore then.

I read today that one of my favorite music videos of all time (and definitely of 2007) for a song I really like was selected by Directors File as one of their top ten videos of 2007. Well, yeah. I know I’ve posted it before, but I think that was on the “old” blog, so here it is on the new - “What’s a Girl to Do?” by Bat for Lashes.

And one that’s quickly moved to a top position in 2008 (though that’s not a big deal since it’s only the 22nd of January) is this one by Hot Chip for “Ready for the Floor.” Other versions have been pulled down by the record company (when will they learn??) so here’s hoping this one stays up for a bit:

The video made me love the song. The song made me really like the band (and yes, I downloaded some free mp3s from music blogs to learn this), and THEN I bought their previous CD and pre-ordered the upcoming CD from Amazon. They got $30 of my consumer spending dollars. See how that works?

Also, I want to make this herb bread.

All right then. “O Fortuna” is up in my playlist. I think I’ll call it a night after that thunderous finish and finally finish reading “Seeing.”

I’m glad I didn’t purchase a laptop this year. Because now I will have an excuse to seriously consider the MacBook Air.

Of course, it’s been all over the interwebs. I’ve just been reading and looking and absorbing. I do like the Mac (though I use a PC mainly, I have ready access to a Mac and the fun that comes with it) and since a notebook computer might be a good thing to have (it’s come up a few times) this would allow me to have both. And at something like 3 pounds and less than an inch thick? Oh, yes, please.

Here’s a nice little Wired piece on it (about its unveiling at the Macworld expo).

Clearly, I won’t be able to buy it when it comes out - and that’s just fine. I’m sure they’ll be hard-to-near-impossible to get at first, and it’s usually a good idea to wait a while before buying a brand new Apple product (prices drop, bugs are worked out, etc.)

But when I do finally acquire it (maybe next summer or fall) I already know what kind of case I’ll be getting for it. I’m sure you’ve heard the gimmick from Steve Jobs’ presentation: he pulled an Air out of a manila envelope to show off the slimness and size of it. Some hipster designers have already taken that and run with it. They call it AirMail.

“handmade out of durable upholstery-grade vinyl, and lined with fuzzy, soft fleece, a manila envelope for your MacBook Air.”

I’ve been noticing a few blogs/sites lately that have been posting images of old-time advertisements that are pretty damn creepy. The focus of the creepiness seems to be overt misogyny (hmph - like that’s ever been a problem), but a baby with a razor is rather disturbing as well. At least it’s an illustration and not a photo.

Mental_floss just linked to a selection of ten of the creepiest including these (click for full-size - really, do):

And the gossip blog Jezebel has a collection of what they call “oldies but goodies” with these horrifying examples:

There’s some overlap on this Daily Mail (UK) page entitled, “The outrageously politically incorrect adverts from the time equality forgot” but a few additionally crazy ones (which were collected in a postcard book called “You Mean A Woman Can Open It?: The Woman’s Place In The Classic Age Of Advertising” - seems to be out of print as it’s selling for $35 via sellers on Amazon):