the breakup

it's my last day here at bbdo.
i feel like summer school just ended and despite the great year ahead, reality hits that we still have to say goodbye.

it's a strange and sad feeling.
but we'll always have 6th avenue.

onward, captain!

i lovez the internets

Charlie Rose To Host First Live Online Presidential Debates

Yahoo!, The Huffington Post and Slate announced today plans to host two online-only presidential debates during the 2008 campaign. These first-of-their kind debates will be hosted on all three Web sites and give voters the opportunity to ask questions directly to the candidates, participate in the debate in real-time, and even determine which candidate is giving the best performance. The debates, scheduled to take place after Labor Day, will be hosted by PBS' Charlie Rose. The Democratic debate will feature opening remarks by DNC chair Howard Dean.

"We intend for these debates to be a groundbreaking mix of old and new traditions in politics," said Charlie Rose. "2008 will be a momentous year for the electoral process in America, thanks in large part to technology and politics connecting like never before. I am proud to host the first ever online only debate, which will reach and engage the voting audience in a whole new way."

"With presidential candidates announcing online and with campaign ads and fundraising increasingly online, presidential campaigns are moving to the Internet at breakneck speed. Online debates are the inevitable next step," said Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post. "We are thrilled to be joining with Internet pioneers Yahoo! and Slate to host the first online presidential debates, and to have Charlie Rose as our moderator. These debates represent a further merging of new media technology and politics, and are a great opportunity to bring more people into the political process, and engage the new generation of young voters who spend so much of their time -- and get so much of their information -- online."

There will be two online-only debates, one for Democrats and one for Republicans, with invitations extended to candidates who have formally announced their candidacies. These online debates will allow the candidates to participate from whatever location they choose, brought together live via the Internet, and will feature real-time questions sent in by the online audience, as well as viewer questions uploaded on video.

"The 2008 campaign is going to unfold on the Web in a way no previous election ever has," said Jacob Weisberg, editor of Slate. "We hope these first online debates will be a breakthrough, both in terms of technology and political communication. The candidates will be able to have a real discussion in real time -- but without having to be in the same place. We think the Internet can bring the same kind of immediacy to presidential debates that it has to other aspects of the political process."

"We're opening the doors of democracy for American voters to participate in the Presidential debates like never before," said Scott Moore, head of news and information, Yahoo!. "Armchair politics will take on new meaning this election season, as we're offering voters the opportunity to ask the candidates what's on their mind."

About Yahoo! Elections 2008

Yahoo! Elections (http://elections.yahoo.com) is a destination for voters to connect with the people, candidates and communities most important to them this election season. The site is made up of key Yahoo! social media properties, including Answers, Groups, Flickr, News, MyBlogLog, Yahoo! Video and Upcoming.org. The site also features a comprehensive election news offering, including breaking news, opinion and commentary, and video reports from the nation's leading news providers. Yahoo! Elections is working with the campaigns for all officially announced candidates on ways they can interact with voters on the Yahoo! Town Hall platform, offering a valuable platform for reaching millions of voters on a daily basis.

About The Huffington Post

The Huffington Post has become, according to The New York Times, "a well-known, oft-cited news media brand in the blink of an eye." The Web site has over 3 million unique users and over 70 million page views. Later this spring, the site will expand its original political reporting. Also, in conjunction with newassignment.net, The Huffington Post will be adding an entirely new dimension to coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign, deploying hundreds of volunteers to report and blog on the race and add their unique perspectives on American politics. The Huffington Post continues to provide breaking news and opinion from more than 900 contributors from the worlds of politics, entertainment and media.

About Slate

Slate Magazine is an award-winning Web site that offers fresh angles on stories in the news and innovative entertainment coverage. Slate won the 2006 and 2005 EPpy awards for Best Internet News Service (over 1 million monthly visitors) and the 2005 EPpy award for Best Internet Entertainment Service (over 1 million monthly visitors). Slate can be found on the Web at www.slate.com and is owned by The Washington Post Company. Slate attracts over five million unique visitors each month.

The Unnamed Podcast, Episode 2

The Unnamed Podcast, Episode 2

my first podcast

hola ladies and gents,
so i've started a podcast.
this is an EXTREMELY preliminary version but take a listen and join me as it progresses.

THE UNNAMED PODCAST, episode 1

VideoVets

my friend laura dawn just sent this to me.
take a moment to consider.

Dear Friends,

Please take a few minutes today to go watch these videos and rate them. I've been working on this project non-stop for the past 6 weeks, and I'm so proud of the work we've all done together here.

Best,

Laura

Laura Dawn, Creative Director

laura@moveon.org

MoveOn Civic Action/MoveOn Political Action

Tel: (718) 673-8588

-----------------------------------------

Dear MoveOn member,

Today we're launching an important new project with our friends at VoteVets.org that will use the power of internet video to help spread the truth about how veterans and military families feel about the war.

The project is called VideoVets: Bring Our Troops Home and it contains some of the most compelling stories about this war that you've ever heard. These brave men and women want to put us on a course to start bringing our troops home.

Please watch these videos and tell us which one you think is most compelling. Academy Award winning director Oliver Stone will take the video you choose and turn it into a TV ad—spreading this message even further. Believe me, once you get started watching these you won't be able to stop.

Click below to watch now:

http://pol.moveon.org/videovets?id=10216-7266096-yvhoOx&t=3

Every day at MoveOn we get letters from military families and veterans who're outraged that the president hides behind the troops to justify his policy—a policy that's leaving tens of thousands of them stranded in the middle of an unwinnable civil war. We talked to our friends at VoteVets.org about their members, who felt the same way. We realized we had to help give these folks a platform to speak out.

Over 700 MoveOn members around the country volunteered their time to interview and videotape the veterans and military families. Then we put them up on our website—and on YouTube—for you to watch.

Today, we have over 20 interviews, each less than 2 minutes long. Here are just a few examples of the moving stories we heard.

• John, a former sergeant who served in Iraq told us "I feel used and I feel misled by the administration. I feel that my patriotism has been used and exploited—my willingness to fight for this country was used and exploited."
• Peter, also a former sergeant who served in Iraq said, "If there was a manual written on how not to fight a war, it would be this administration's playbook."
• Pam, whose son was deployed to Iraq as part of the escalation told us "They are young kids and they are now going to be placed there, on the frontlines, with an abbreviated month of training, with poor equipment, with inadequate equipment and they know it."

This is really powerful stuff.

The administration tries to call anyone who criticizes their policy in Iraq 'anti-troop,' but these stories show that 'supporting the troops' does NOT mean supporting an endless war. The voices of these veterans and military families are missing from the debate in Washington. Together we can make sure they become a vital part of the national dialogue around ending the war.

Click below to watch the videos and tell us which one Oliver Stone should turn into an ad.

http://pol.moveon.org/videovets?id=10216-7266096-yvhoOx&t=4

Thanks for all you do,

–Nita, Laura, Karin, Patrick and the MoveOn.org Political Action Team
Thursday, April 19th, 2007

PS. The views expressed in these interviews do not necessarily reflect the views of VoteVets.org or MoveOn.org Political Action. They are the views of interview subjects only.

P.P.S. We will close the rating process at midnight PST, on Wednesday, April 25th.

Support our member-driven organization: MoveOn.org Political Action is entirely funded by our 3.2 million members. We have no corporate contributors, no foundation grants, no money from unions. Our tiny staff ensures that small contributions go a long way. If you'd like to support our work, you can give now at:

http://political.moveon.org/donate/email.html?id=10216-7266096-yvhoOx&t=5

PAID FOR BY MOVEON.ORG POLITICAL ACTION, http://pol.moveon.org/
Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

brand new things

first and foremost, thank you to everyone who came out on tuesday night. it was a fantastic experience for us to see so many people filling the Canal Room. i don't know about the rest of the band but i was floored and honored by the turnout. thank you to Megan Bienstock, without whom the show would have never happened, and thank you to the awesome organization GenArt for plugging us and getting so many of their people out to see us. i am going to be posting a clip from the show shortly, as soon as i have time to load the concert footage that honorable mayor (as he's known) Christopher J. Scott took. thank you CS. as usual, you're our hero.

there's still a bunch more going on this week. tonight, there is the Amend.org fundraiser/party; friday, Moby's new band is playing at arlene's grocery; and saturday, David Gaynes is throwing a huge fundraiser/party for his documentary SAVING HUBBLE, at which i will be taking part in the reading of a docu-play constructed around the letters of nikola tesla.

as for other news, i quit my advertising job on tuesday (well, gave notice. i'm not actually done until the end of the month) and am officially striking out into the freelancing world. i've already lined up most of my year's work and i am thrilled about the future. as i wrote in my parting letter to my wonderful co-workers here at the agency, "I just wanted to take a minute to let you all know that after two+ wonderful years here, I will be leaving the agency at the end of the month to start writing and producing for a new PBS show, as well as associate producing (and co-directing in one case) three other documentary films, among other things."
i am sincerely going to miss all the people here at BBDO. they've been fantastic to me i am extraordinarily grateful to have been fortunate enough to work with them.

to do this week

A REMINDER about this coming TUESDAY, THE 17TH:
crystal ponzio (and band [and me!]) and tim sheff play the canal room.
tres sexy. (we rehearsed last night and seriously- it's going to be absolutely amazing!!! COME!)



AFTER THAT, there's a wonderful benefit for a wonderful cause: AMEND.ORG's childhood injury prevention programs in africa.
it takes place on THURSDAY, THE 19TH at the william beaver house. this is a fantastic organization that deserves much support.

THEN, on FRIDAY, THE 20TH, moby and his brand new, as of yet unnamed rock and roll band- featuring the gorgeous and electric vocals of songstress laura dawn- will be playing their first ever gig at arlene's grocery. (10pm)

LAST, BUT ABSOLUTELY NOT LEAST- documentarian extraordinaire, mr. david gaynes, is throwing a big ol' party/fundraiser for his new film SAVING HUBBLE on SATURDAY, THE 21st. it will be "a three-ring circus, three sheets to the wind."


ON THE 7TH DAY- we rest.

vonnegut

we lost a great literary voice today.
here is a fairly recent interview from the august 24 copy of rolling stone.
kurt vonnegut, RIP.

Vonnegut's Apocalypse
He survived being captured by the Nazis and the suicide of his mother
to write some of the funniest, darkest novels of our time, but it
took George W. Bush to break him

DOUGLAS BRINKLEY

In the annals of American literature, Vonnegut has been categorized
as a black-humorist -- a post-Hiroshima novelist who encouraged
readers to laugh at the ghastly absurdity of the modern condition.
More than any other fiction writer, Vonnegut has been unafraid to
peer into the apocalyptic abyss of our lives. This is likely why,
after five and a half years of the Bush administration, Vonnegut's
signature bleak wit seems more relevant than ever. His most recent
book, A Man Without a Country, a collection of essays, was a surprise
best seller last year, spending more than eight weeks on the New York
Times best-seller list and selling more than 250,000 copies. It would
be simple enough to say that Vonnegut is having a major late-career
resurgence, except for the fact that he never really went away.
Vonnegut is that rare literary figure who never stopped being cool.
Ever since he rose to prominence during the 1960s, Vonnegut -- with
his Twainian mop of curly hair, bushy Bavarian beer-hall mustache and
carbolic-acid smirk -- has been dubbed a prose shaman with a trick
bag full of preposterous characters. Harper's deemed him an
"unimitative and inimitable social satirist," and The New York Times
anointed him the "laughing prophet of doom."

On this day, though, as Vonnegut sips coffee and his tiny white dog,
Flour, yaps in the background, there is no wry amusement or social
satire in his repertoire. There is only burning dissent about the way
modern technology and global capitalism are usurping the last gasps
of goodness from honest laborers' lives. And deep sadness that
everyday humans are butchering their most civilized impulses. But
then Vonnegut starts coughing, clearing his throat of phlegm,
grasping for a half-smoked pack of Pall Malls lying on a coffee
table. He quickly lights up. His wheezing ceases. I ask him whether
he worries that cigarettes are killing him. "Oh, yes," he answers, in
what is clearly a set-piece gag. "I've been smoking Pall Mall
unfiltered cigarettes since I was twelve or fourteen. So I'm going to
sue the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company, who manufactured them.
And do you know why?" "Lung cancer?" I offer.

"No. No. Because I'm eighty-three years old. The lying bastards! On
the package Brown & Williamson promised to kill me. Instead, their
cigarettes didn't work. Now I'm forced to suffer leaders with names
like Bush and Dick and, up until recently, 'Colon.'"....

"I'm Jeremiah, and I'm not talking about God being mad at us,"
novelist Kurt Vonnegut says with a straight face, gazing out the
parlor windows of his Manhattan brownstone. "I'm talking about us
killing the planet as a life-support system with gasoline. What's
going to happen is, very soon, we're going to run out of petroleum,
and everything depends on petroleum. And there go the school buses.
There go the fire engines. The food trucks will come to a halt. This
is the end of the world. We've become far too dependent on
hydrocarbons, and it's going to suddenly dry up. You talk about the
gluttonous Roaring Twenties. That was nothing. We're crazy, going
crazy, about petroleum. It's a drug like crack cocaine. Of course,
the lunatic fringe of Christianity is welcoming the end of the world
as the rapture. So I'm Jeremiah. It's going to have to stop. I'm sorry."

For the most part, this sort of apocalyptic attitude is to be
expected from Vonnegut, who, after all, in his futuristic novel Cat's
Cradle (1963) created Ice-Nine, a substance with the capacity to
obliterate the Earth incrementally, like the "great door of heaven
being closed softly." The naive protagonist of the novel -- a
character named John/Jonah -- actually struggles to write a book
titled The Day the World Ended. (Cat's Cradle also includes a
hilarious faux religion known as Bokononism, whose religious texts
carry the warning "All of the true things I am about to tell you are
shameless lies.") In the interview collection Conversations With Kurt
Vonnegut, he even dismisses the notion that his fourteen novels, six
essay collections and dozens of short stories have a long shelf life,
saying, "Anybody with any sense knows the whole solar system will go
up like a celluloid collar by-and-by." Add to that doomsday scenario
Vonnegut's notorious bouts of chronic depression, daily doldrums and
suicidal longings, and you get a literary Cassandra of the first order.

Later, remembering his hyperagitation about global warming, I
telephoned him at his Long Island summer cottage, curious about
whether he saw Al Gore's documentary An Inconvenient Truth. "I know
what it's all about," he scoffed. "I don't need any more persuasion."
Not satisfied with his answer, I pressed him to expand, wondering if
he had any advice for young people who want to join the increasingly
vocal environmental movement. "There is nothing they can do," he
bleakly answered. "It's over, my friend. The game is lost."

exhaustion

I thought I would write about a little thing called exhaustion. You see, exhaustion is my closest companion these days. The crucible event that brought this to my attention occurred yesterday when I boarded the F train headed uptown, as I do everyday, to go to work. Standing near the door and holding onto one of the poles in the tightly crowded car, I noticed I was getting very hot. I began to sweat as the train pulled away from the station. My vision started to go black and I could no longer tell if we were moving or standing still. I gripped onto the pole harder. I heard my bag plummet to the ground, but I could not feel it fall off my shoulder. All I felt was heat and more heat.

I collapsed, my weight falling onto the pole I’d been gripping, my vision gone to pitch black now. The car was crowded enough that when I collapsed, there was nowhere to fall and when I came to, I wasn’t sure if anyone had noticed me black out. I couldn’t tell because I still couldn’t see. It was another minute and a half before my vision returned. All I really cared about was getting off the train anyway. The doors had already closed and we’d left the Broadway and Lafayette station. I counted my way to the next station, trying to stay focused and present. I got off at W.4th Street and walked around the platform, finding my bearings. It felt better to move than stand still.

I walked across to the other side of the platform trying to catch the train back down to my apartment. This proved to be more difficult a task than anticipated and I found myself on the wrong track for the wrong line, still disoriented. Eventually I found the right train, a seat on it, and went home.

I spent the rest of the day in bed for what might have been the most glorious 12 hours in recent memory. I watched bad TV (deliciously trashy bad: Hollywood’s 100 Most Juicy Couples on E!, The Workout on Bravo, etc.), ate strawberries and pineapple, slept, and watched more TV. I skipped work, class, auditions, dinner. I pretended that the world, and my obligations to it, did not exist.

It took my alarm going off four times for me to get up this morning, but I am back at work now, reminding myself that I have only five weeks to go before I am done with school, done with this job, and done with the big life transitions overwhelming me now.

I’m ready for the small time.

spamalot

after getting one spam too many this morning, i decided to write back.
just thought i would share.

from marionkellen@hotmail.com
to Alexis Stember

Dear Good friend.
I don't really know who you are, but peace is unto you as you read
this letter. My Instinct tells me that I can trust you by my
proposition.I got your contact through Internet directory and My
Instinct directed me to send this money to you.
I am a widow and a devoted Christian, my name is MRS MARION KELLEN
from UNITED KINGDOM. Since my husband died, I have been suffering from
arthritics and lately doctors have diagnosed me with terminal cancer,
which left me with approximately twelve months to live. I am currently
on wheelchair and being looked after by a nurse and some of my late
husband's relatives in turns.

Before my husband died, he left some money to the tone of $6.8m United
State Dollars (Six million, eight hundred thousand dollars) and he
made me promised him that it should be used for humanitarian work,
because we have no children and he don't want his brothers to lay hand
on it,
since they don't believe in God, they have a different vision and i m
willing to offer the individual that is going to assist me a percentage
of 25% and the rest should be for humanitarian work.

This money is currently in a vault with a bank . If you will
promise me that you will use this money to achieve the wish of my
husband and me, then I will instruct the bank to release the content of
the vault in your name.
1.FULL NAMES:
2.RESIDENTIAL ADDRESS:
3.SEX:
4.PHONE NUMBER:
5.FAX NUMBER(IF ANY):
6.COUNTRY OF ORIGIN
7.OCCUPATION
God bless you as you walk in the light and glory.

Yours in Vineyard,
ms. Kellen

from Alexis Stember
to marionkellen@hotmail.com

Mrs. kellen

thank you for your offer. as a matter of fact, i have some wonderful real estate to sell you.
it's worth millions but i can tell that you're a good person so i will give it to you for only $5.
all i need is your:
LEGAL NAME
RESIDENTIAL ADDRESS
PHONE NUMBER
BANK ACCOUNT NUMBER (to verify the legitimacy of you identity)
MOTHER'S MAIDEN NAME
SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER

love and light.
ms. cleo

reel

i just put up my reel on youtube. new reel, new hair, new... it's going to change so sorry for some of the extended scenes. waiting on other clips to arrive in the mail, which i will edit in.
check it out.

THE BIGGEST ONE YET!!!

alright people. i am super excited about this: crystal ponzio's biggest show yet! it's going to be incredible. she will have her full band, myself included, and we hope to fill the canal room with your wonderful smiling faces.
the night will also showcase tim sheff, who is releasing his first album after earning billboard chart success as a producer and songwriter. the man is talented.
so seriously, COME!!!
ps- check out crystal's newly vamped myspace page.