Okay, I have a pronouncement to make: the most evil embed code I have ever encountered is the one from NBC that should have allowed their video to appear here. Never in my life have I tried harder to overcome idiocy, lunacy and stupidity, but to no avail. I want those 90 minutes of my life […]

Cognoscenti Dan Roitman of Philadelphia sent this to our attention. It’s an interesting ad on multiple levels but the question I would like to pose is this: what would have been the outcome if the colors of the car and the truck were reversed? NOTE: The color of the guy’s shirt blurs him into the […]

Okay, I have a pronouncement to make: the most evil embed code I have ever encountered is the one from NBC that should have allowed their video to appear here. Never in my life have I tried harder to overcome idiocy, lunacy and stupidity, but to no avail. I want those 90 minutes of my […]

NightSweats

Anthony Vincent is a student of the peculiarities and anomalies we call “style.” The wizard was using this video to make a point in class the other day when Mike on the front row said, “You know that guy’s my client, right?” Wizzo had no clue. But isn’t that often the case with him? Clueless. Heh, […]

The London Underground – usually referred to as the Tube – is a comprehensive public transport system with 270 stations and 12 lines that will take you pretty much anywhere you want to go in Greater London. Here’s a sign you can read these days while riding it. Heh, heh, heh.

Our Canadian buddy Dave Lofranco is keeping his eye on Matt Masters Burgener, the guy who is challenging Stephen Harper – the Prime Minister of Canada – in the next election.

Anthony Vincent will be attending Wizard Academy soon. I’ll tell you why that matters when we get to the terminus page. (That’s the page where I give you the BeagleSword. You knew that, right?)

Kenneth Fearing’s Love 20 Cents the First Quarter Mile was published in the New Yorker on Sept. 28, 1940.

Here’s a link to that “Pounce” memo if you’d like to read it.

When Shakespeare wrote his play (1599) about the life of Henry V of England,  the battle of Agincourt had faded only 189 years into the note pages of the past. (Abraham Lincoln and our Civil War are already 150 years gone, so 189 years is not really so long as it seems.) Shakespeare celebrated Agincourt as a victory of David […]

Led by the young King Henry V, the weary English army – on foot – was attacked by a heavily armed and mounted French Army that outnumbered them five to one. At the end of the battle, more than 9,000 French soldiers and knights were dead. Exactly 112 English had been killed. The battle of Agincourt is well […]

“You’re Just Trying to Sell Radio Ads” They say, “One picture is worth a thousand words.” I say platitudes are not proof. They say, “It’s not what you say, but how you say it that matters.” I say every person is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. They say, “But it’s […]

What is the Story of Your Life? I had an interesting moment a couple of weeks ago. A client came to Austin for his annual marketing retreat and brought his top lieutenants with him. His company has a couple of hundred franchisees that do about a quarter-billion dollars a year. Everyone was anxious to hear […]

 

DonQuixoteAndMe_Cervantes

“If you listen carefully, you get to hear everything you didn’t want to hear in the first place.” – Sholem Aleichem

Years ago, when Henry Kissinger was one of the most admired men in America, my friend Ronnie mistakenly dove into the shallow end of a hotel pool late one night and scraped his scalp pretty badly. Holding his hand over it, he staggered into that little room where they keep the ice machine. The man […]

I’m doing fantastic, thanks for asking. You know I could not have gotten here without the training I received at the Academy, right? This one’s for you and the gang. Kyle “I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I […]

Playing music together, all across the world, is one of the coolest uses of the internet, ever.

Fixing the roof on the tower is kind of a big deal, but we got it done! Ciao for Niao, Indy

When you aspire to wear notable shoes, the kinds of shoes that make young children point and pretty girls blush and old people look away, the man to admire is Wesley Schmidt, the owner of Snug Harbor jazz bistro in New Orleans. Music, with Creole and regional cooking, uh-huh.

The wizard’s partner, Manley Miller, sent this photo of himself looking in the mirror at the shoe store and added the following observation: “I cannot follow the teaching of any person who wears a tie with a short sleeve shirt. Now if you roll your long sleeves up, it’s cool. If you got a jacket on and I can’t see […]

It was a typical Friday at the Toad and Ostrich. We listened to every song that anyone said they hadn’t heard in awhile and we drank wine or Scotch and didn’t talk about business. Dan Morman found a pair of white Florsheims and transformed them before our eyes into a spectacular pair of Zebratized Wonder Shoes. […]

Following the death of their parents (Elizabeth in 1968 and Walter Ward in 1970), Nelly and Matthew, still minors, moved in with their older sister Annie and her husband, recording engineer and producer Buck Herring. Annie was a self-taught singer/songwriter who composed and played her songs on the family piano. Her brother and sister would […]

New Testament translators often interpret kairos as “opportunity” or “the fullness of time” (verse 10) or “the proper time.” Altogether, the Bible contains the word kairos 86 times in the New Testament.

“Kairos is pregnant time, the time of possibility – moments in our day, our week, our month, our year or our lifetime that define us. It is a crossroads. It has the ripe opportunity to make you bitter or better. It is a teachable moment. It is the right or opportune moment. Kairos is rarely […]

Another Quixote from the private collection of Walt Peregoy, the Disney illustrator who moved that company from the look and feel of the early Mickey Mouse cartoons to the lavish and lush backdrops of One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961,) The Sword in the Stone (1963) and The Jungle Book (1967.)

“You’ve heard it said that, ‘Every person is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.’ Yet we routinely craft our own facts from the fabric of personal experiences, preferences and prejudices. A stereotype is nothing more than a pattern we’ve observed. This pattern isn’t always predictive, but it is a pattern nonetheless […]

This is Whittington and me warming up for the benefit concert last week in Nova Scotia. It was epic. Wizard of Ads partners Scott Fraser, Paul Boomer and Jane Fraser put it together to raise money for Chrysalis House, a battered women’s shelter. “Sarah invaded the room in full cocker spaniel romp, flinging her paws and […]

When I was watching Bernie Sanders talk at Liberty University, I was just really shocked, and something kind of magical happened for me, because as I watched that guy stand up on that stage, here’s what I saw. I saw a wild-haired Jew crying out in a hoarse voice, in a very forceful and forth-speaking […]

Dear Roy, My grocery store received the Master Marketer Award for Radio Spot, Tier 1, at the SuperValu National Exposition in Minneapolis last week. Simply put, our commercial, voted on by an independent group of ad students from two universities, was named the best in the grocery landscape for last year from the list of […]

This is the definitive white wine in all the world. And this is its music.

“People in the arts represent something integral and kind of secretive in everybody else. So the reason people like some artists is because they’re saying or doing something that they would like to do or say, but they don’t have the balls or the means. People are really afraid to put their ass on the […]

What Does Your Ocean Whisper? Part 3 of Living for Real Psychologist Carl Jung saw life as a journey on water. Above the waterline is the conscious mind, this place of sunshine and familiar scenery that you and I call home. Below the waterline is the unconscious, a wet and moonlit world of symbols and […]

You can see LOS enter and rap at about 1:45 in Whittington’s Bring the Dark version of the BeeGees’ Stayin’ Alive (below.) That concert was in Tuscan Hall on the campus of Wizard Academy. HEY! Have you registered for the October 3rd Academy Reunion? Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. – Indy

The first video (below) was sent as a tease to all the clients of Morris-Jenkins in Charlotte, NC, via FaceBook last Wednesday. The next day, the second video appeared and got more than 12,000 views on FaceBook in the first 24 hours. I’m posting the YouTube version because YouTube’s embed code is beagle-friendly. Zuckerberg code is not. – Indy […]