Old Spice sells deodorant, after-shave, and body wash right?  Hogwash!  They sell ‘lady-getting’, and right now…. they sell comedy.

This new “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” ad campaign is a great mix of ridiculousness and genius.  A good looking, svelte, black man goes from being in a shower, to on a boat, to on a horse, in 30 seconds… offering theatre tickets and diamonds to your lady along the way.   All playing off the exaggerated, almost sarcastic idea that your man switching to Old Spice body wash will instantly turn him into the man of your dreams, yacht included.  Not a single person watching these commercial takes even a glimmer of truth about the product claims to heart, and that’s just fine by Old Spice.  The spots have been parodied all over television… the first one has been viewed 7.7 million times on youtube… and “I’m on a horse” is undoubtedly becoming part of daily conversation for guys in college and beyond.  Is this destined for the immortal ranks of “where’s the beef”, “hey mikey, he likes it”, or “got milk?”?

I think it’s hilarious and can’t get enough, but I wonder if it’s selling body wash.  Anyone know?

Just when you thought this little guy was all about the cover songs… he surprises you with a little lyrical magic of his own! Mainakumana is destined to top the pop charts.

We’ve heard this question asked and answer 1,000 times in different, equally trite, ways… with romanticized examples and all.  If I donate that $0.66 cents a day, I will make a difference in the life of a child.  If I turn the lights off when I leave a room, or ride my bike instead of drive, I will be cutting down on some energy use and pollution emissions and therefore playing a role.  So yes, it’s indisputable that one person can make some sort of difference; how much of a difference, or how influential that difference is… now that’s debatable.

I think about this kind of thing a lot -- but when I do, I’m usually thinking about the ‘difference’ that one person can make in the energy or perspective of people and things around them.  I think about how laughter is contagious.  How hearing, saying, or even reading the word yawn has the ability to actually make you yawn.  (sorry if you’re yawning right now)(damn. I just did).  Anyway, I came across this silly video that’s quickly become viral and is flying around the web because it’s of a guy in tight shorts dancing like a stooge by himself… and a couple other guys who quickly followed suit (probably in attempts to subtly mock the first guy).  Regardless of their reason for joining, the 1 dancer becoming 3 grabs 3 times the attention.  The 3 become 9… and the 9 becomes 81 (or hundreds. but you get the idea).  Point is, stuff like this is about energy.  There’s nothing more powerful than it, and nothing is more contagious.  That said, positive energy is the most influential and invasive kind… whether that’s a smile, a compliment, an unconscious whistling, or a guy in tight, short shorts having a solo dance party.

I just loved this.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GA8z7f7a2Pk

I get the whole cleanliness and personal hygiene thing… but I should really shower daily, if for no other reason than because my shower is like an incubator for genius ideas.  I just took a little 5-minute rinse and came up with a couple zingers that just might change my life.  I don’t know if I have a magic shower, but I swear, if my little studio had a bathtub I probably would have cured cancer by now.  Someone get this post to Pfizer and the rest of the pharmies… it just might behoove them to install a tub in my place and get me on payroll.  Maybe even buy me a house with several tub/shower combos.  I know for some people it’s the can, or the car.  That would make things so much better for me, cuz: A. I spend way more time in those places than I do cleaning myself; and B. yall don’t have to go online right now and buy The Droodle – Waterproof Notepad for $14.95 plus $3 per replacement pad.

This morning, in the midst of the standard wake-up rituals, I began thinking about toothpaste tubes and our relationship with them.  My interest was sparked because my current Crest Fresh-mint with Baking Soda & Peroxide is nearing its final days of life.  I squeezed a couple times and yielded almost nothing.  Mindlessly, and by experiential habit, I laid the tube flat on the counter, grabbed my little black comb, and ran the backside of it along the tube from bottom to top.  Apparently, this is my method.  If you had asked me yesterday “hey Jeff, what do you do when your tube of toothpaste is on its last leg?”, I would not have had a decent response.  Hence, the mindlessness of ‘my method’.  But this got me thinking, as many random, generally irrelevant things often do… what does this say about me?  And of course I take it one step further and wonder – what do our toothpaste tube habits say about us as a people in general.  I’m sure a psychologist could give you an educated and reasonable take on this (and maybe I’ll ask one. I have enough in my family), but here’s mine…

I’m thinking to myself  – what compels us to expend any real effort at all to keep this tube of toothpaste on life support?  Is it a concern with general wastefulness and the environment?  Well maybe, I do consider myself pretty conscious in that department. But I use a trees worth of paper on an annual basis and don’t bat an eye, so I don’t think that’s it.  Is it thriftiness? A tube of toothpaste can’t be more than a few bucks and I think I usually grab a new one when I see one of those Albertsons Member Special “3/$6.00″ signs.  That’s not it either.  After careful consideration, I think I’ve come to the conclusion that we do this out of laziness.  For whatever reason, we would rather drag the tube along the edge of the counter top, roll it up into a little taquito, or massage the paste upward inch by inch with our tired thumbs… than just go snag a new one off aisle 5.  And have you seen that you can now buy a ‘toothpaste roller’ or ‘squeezer’?  Thanks to modern technology/ridiculously bored inventors, these new-fangled, handy contraptions can help get you that extra drop of minty freshness.  Are we seriously doing this?  At least the comb method and the taquito rolls required some creativity and resourcefulness when those methods were originally discovered.  When you think about it, it’s probably more about a culture of procrastination than a culture of laziness, because all this tube wrangling requires far more energy than a trip to the drug store.  This is an anomaly, and it’s enough to make your head spin.

What I haven’t yet tackled (but certainly plan to) is deciphering what your individual method of toothpaste cpr means about you.  It’s really akin to the neverending psychological mystery of the toilet paper folder vs. the toilet paper crumpler.  And yes, I will be tackling that one too. Just you wait.

So I found this thing online that I can best describe as a photographic sociological study of style trends and how they define (or are defined by) groups of people.  Sounds funky, I know.  I’ll do my best to explain, but I promise you have to check it out yourself to really understand…

It’s called Exactitudes (www.exactitudes.com), and it’s the result of a 14 year collaboration between two Dutch artists, photographer Ari Versluis and profiler Ellie Uyttenbroek.  These guys were interested in the patterns of dress that typified particular social groups within their area of Rotterdam and around the world.  They took hundreds, if not thousands of photographs of people with identical framing, lighting, and background; put the people in exact poses; and had them wearing the clothing styles that unite them into groups.  Looking at the result of their efforts now, each set of 12 photos is a visual record of our human psychological need to express individuality and distinguish ourselves from others.  As a whole though, the project takes on a contradictory air when you think about how these individuals are using their style to differentiate themselves, but their defining characteristics are societal trends… and they’re really just assuming a group identity.

All that might be too deep or ethereal to take on a Friday morning, so let me give you the lighter side.  I design clothing for a living.  I do my best to follow trends and I’m constantly trying to think about who wears what, who would wear what, and how those people would feel wearing the next garment that’s on my radar to make.  So, if nothing else, the little photography experiment these Dutchmen did can keep me busy for hours with those thoughts in mind.  Maybe you just want to thumb through the menagerie of pics to see twelve swim trunk-clad older Gentlemen in Rio de Janeiro, some Mohawks from Rotterdam, a dozen assless chap-wearing Leathermen, or  The Girls From Ipanema.