theLaconic

Guess the number of balls

Ok its fun time on The Laconic, well as much fun without posting any naked photos of myself...

Ok how many balls rain down the outside the Reuters Sign in Times Square (This sequence runs for approx. 4 seconds)?

And the prize? Well what should that be?

Oh by the way...

...its stinking hot:

According to the weather page it feels like 99 degrees. I concur.

And then the drunken bits

This is a photo of the restaurant in little korea that I went to on Wednesday evening. In between working hard I have somehow managed to party pretty hard too, and yes I know I didn't manage to do this in London, it was either one or the other.

Anyway this restaurant is Korean Barbecue, which is exactly what happens. We ordered (to be precise Tres who is Korean ordered) the food - mainly uncooked beef and chicken and assorted side orders. We then brought a full sized charcoal barbecue which we cooked the said meat on.

Now barbecues are hot, especially when one is only two foot in front of you for an hour, and being hot makes you thirsty. I think you can guess what happened next. Plenty of drinking. This carried on until one o'clock in the morning.

Thursday followed a different pattern but ended up in the same manner. Team building drinks which started at five o'clock ended up in a bar at ten o'clock. This one was little less energetic but I still felt it on Friday.

Now Friday. My friend from Oxford: Richard is in town with some friends staying in Times Square and it would rude of me not to show them around this great city. Meeting the guys at four o'clock ended in a pool hall at ten or eleven last night with several bars and restaurants in between.

Now if I can survive tonight I have Fraser and Julita arriving on Thursday. Oh dear. I can't wait :)

First the good bits

As you can see from the post below my work on the US Open is just hitting the streets, seems a little weird to see my work in a physical form, I am so used to seeing it only on monitors.

In fact this is the first 'Outdoor' work I have ever done, this little lorry has a screen on the other side that will show the live tennis scores and a little bit of branding from the campaign. There are quite a few of these that will be driving around New York and showing the scores I might even see one or two of them...

The Times Square billboard goes officially live on Monday although we have seen it running live on Thursday and Friday when Reuters did some live tests. This photo is a render of what it looks like, because the sign is so big its hard to take a photo of it without a wide angle lens.

If it was full size you might be able to make out that its my face on the umpire (it was a legal issue honest - we couldn't use the image without it!).

It's funny we have be so focused on getting the work done on time, that it's only now that we have time to step back and realise what we have done. I think that if I had time to think about I might have been a little overwhelmed. But then again maybe not :)

I always liked trucks

and now I have one... some better photos once I have taken some.

You knows it

Now I'm probably slightly behind the times here but Goldie looking chain are amusing me greatly. I managed to get hold of some bad quality mp3s (cough) and was listened to them as I was walking thru New York this afternoon almost laughing out aloud.

Their website is bordering on genius. have a look. YOU KNOWS IT.

MoMA

I should of written about this during the week but I never got round to it, with our current project at work beginning to wrap up (hence the lack of posts) we have been assigned to the next one. No rest for the wicked eh?

So off we trotted to look around the new MoMA - Museum of Modern Art in the centre of New York, half of it is still being finished but from look of it it is going to be an excellent gallery which will easily be comparable to the Tate Modern in London.

Observations from the weekend

You get a lot more bang for your buck in Brooklyn.
I went to my copywriters housewarming party on Friday night, their flat is twice as big as mine and their rent is 25 percent less. No this isn't size envy, just an observation, and part of that observation is that I am only 20 minutes from work.

No matter what the weather I'm still Sweatin'.
New york is very humid even when it's not even hot, I never knew warm weather (about 17-20C) could be so uncomfortable.

Good shops can be found near Wall Street.
On Saturday I walked downtown to go this discount department store that sells designer gear at decent prices - Century 21. On the way I had walked thru an area of New York called Tribeca. I hadn't explored Tribeca at all, while I was wandering the streets I found a decent bike shop, and was given some advice about some trails upstate and in New Jersey, so thats something to do soon.

Celebrity observation.
Michael Imperioli who plays Christopher from the Sopranos - well chuffed about this one, one of the first real celeb spots that I've actually gone 'wow thats X from X' and not been a cynical twat - usually 'its thats X from X what a tosser'

Always take an umbrella everywhere.
The remnants of Hurricane Charley swept up the Eastern Seaboard and soaked me on Saturday night as I walked 4 blocks home from a Chinese bar on Avenue B.

Candy is not the only funny one.
So chocolate or as we(sorry they) call it; candy does not have the exclusive rights to amusing names, here are two other products that I have purchased:

my gay cleaner and rather oddly named washing liquid - can't see why it should be so joyful, surely the bottle is the wrong shape.

Waiting for Charley

Well this is another new experience:

HURRICANE LOCAL STATEMENT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE UPTON NY
558 AM EDT SAT AUG 14 2004

...A WEAKENING HURRICANE CHARLEY WILL BEGIN TO AFFECT THE TRI-STATE AREA LATE TONIGHT...

...PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...
A TROPICAL STORM WATCH MEANS THAT TROPCIAL STORM FORCE WINDS ARE EXPECTED WITHIN THE NEXT 24 TO 36 HOURS. RESIDENTS SHOULD BEGIN TO PREPARE FOR THE ONSET OF WINDS IN EXCESS OF 39 MPH...

...WIND IMPACTS...
SUSTAINED WINDS OF 30 TO 40 MPH OR GREATER WILL BEGIN TO ARRIVE IN THE REGION LATE SATURDAY NIGHT AND EARLY SUNDAY MORNING. A FEW WIND GUSTS OF UP TO 55 MPH ARE ALSO POSSIBLE. WINDS OF THESE SPEEDS MAY DOWN SOME TREES...TREE LIMBS AND POWER LINES. THIS MAY RESULT IN SCATTERED AREAS OF POWER OUTAGES...ESPECIALLY IN THOSE AREAS THAT HAVE RECEIVED SIGNIFICANT AMOUNTS OF RAINFALL IN THE PAST SEVERAL WEEKS.

Don't worry mother, I should be ok :)

One single post

Fucking hell its has got to this almost one post a week, Well I knew it was coming but I had expected to last a little longer.

Work is now taking up a large proportion of my time - we are mid production on all the work that we have been concepting for the last few weeks so I know have some time back for myself. I'm not sure if I mentioned this in the blog (i know I have spoken about it an phone conversations and emails) but we are developing a electronic billboard for Times Square.

Now the board is very impressive being approximately 15 stories high and is comprised of 11 screens in total, it has been a bit of a head fuck to deal with but I would say we are now on course. They have a website, that can be seen here.k

Our work will go live in three weeks and I can't wait until I get a photo of me in front of the board, in the middle of Times Square. Look mum its your son... :)

What a week

Last week was all about working but this week has taken that workload and added a whole lot of partying on top and that hasn't left much time for updating this blog or replying to emails.

It all started on Monday with Hannah's 'Gentleman friend' (her words not mine). The band he plays in (adem - which were very good) played a really good venue called joe's pub that is just 3 blocks from my apartment. Well it would be rude not to pay my respects especially since Hannah had arranged for me to be on the guest list (nice). adem were supporting a rather good Scottish band called Sons and Daughters which I highly recommend and even might buy their album.

Joe's Pub is an excellent venue, completely different from most band venues I have been in - think up market, in fact think jazz club, nice.

Tuesday night was a quiet night in. nice.

Wednesday, was the first time I have seen an American very very drunk. I was asked if I wanted to join some friends after work and go for a Japanese meal in East Village restaurant. And yet again I would of been rude to say no, so off we went for some excellent yakatori, beer and saki.

After a pleasant meal it seemed a shame to waste the rest of the evening doing sensible things like going to bed, so off we trotted to another local bar for Lychee cocktails. not nice. While we in the bar I noticed to 30ish suited business men sit on the small bench outside the front of the bar where the proceeded to fall asleep and then vomit on each other. Josh's friend who runs the bar called the paramedics who dully arrived and carted the now semi unconscious and slightly bedraggled looking business away to presumably have his stomach pumped.

Watching this real life drama put a damper on our drinking spirits and the evening was put to bed.

Good job really because I needed my beauty sleep for Thursday.

One of our creative managers left the company today, Kim has been a great help to me and as I discovered rather early on shares a very european sense of humor with me. So yet again I felt it would be rude not bless her leaving party with my presence. nice.

Kim as it turns outs is a bit of a karaoke champion, in fact it seems that most of the creative floor I sit on is pretty good or believes they are. :) So last night was spent singing songs I don't really know in front of complete strangers funny enough I think I did rather well. nice.

Or was it the huge amounts of beer I consumed over the course of five hours. ouch.

Today has not been good.

The Weekend

As you can probably guess from the lack of posts over the weekend, I was quite busy. Looking back I had a very pleasant weekend that contrasted nicely against the hectic week.

On Saturday night I was invited to a cocktail party at Alun and Louise' apartment on the upper west side. Catherine and Brian had asked if they could stay over as they live in New Jersey and with Ali joining us too we were able to reunite the 'fourth of July' posse (apart from Big Nige obviously).

So my first chance to mix it in the Big Apple and I think I did particularly well, I mixed some killer daiquiris, white russians, long island ice teas and even a famous white mexican. I took it easy on myself, which is pretty amazing for me, just three of four drinks over the course of 4 or 5 hours.

Here are some photos of said evening.

Project Rockstar restart

After hearing The Bobbin and Alex talk about this web site/online game on the train up to Edinburgh for Bobbin's stag weekend. This game is excellent but a real slow burner, suffice it to say I am now addicted - just 5 minutes a day and I can build my pop/rock empire. The game has just had a restart (after almost a year) so we are now on a level playing field.

For those of you who have: eat my dust!

For those of you who haven't got a clue what I am talking about check it out: www.projectrockstar.com

Manager Name = BigAl