"Rave Slut Party Blog"

Well, someone found my blog by searching the terms "rave slut party blog" on Yahoo!. Sadly, none of these words have ever appeared together in a sentence before, but I'm sure after this post, even more traffic will be driven here, even more than the photos of Peter's beautiful girlfriend do.

Why I Love San Francisco

It's official. A year in Miami is 363 days too long. I was beginning to think the problem was me: that despite living in perpetual sunshine and heat, that I was destined for unhappiness. After only a few days back in California, I suddenly find that I'm full of joy again. My cheeks hurt from laughing. I feel relaxed, open, positive. I don't normally share so much emotion on this site, but after a week of a few nice meals out (despite working like crazy on my portfolio) with friends, drinks in Sausalito followed by drinks at Place Pigalle on Wednesday, a great night at Pink in the Mission on Thursday, my hardened heart began to melt. Friday was drinks at Zeigeist with a bunch of different friends from different corners of my life. Saturday, we went to Crepevine in the Castro for brunch and found a giant mass of people protesting the war. It hit me. It's nice to be in a city where people actually care. There's something beautiful and glittery and magical about San Francisco. Here are thousands of people, peacefully walking down the street, united by a common cause, totally open-minded and positive and friendly. And just down the street, where the parade ended, was the Love Parade, the giant outdoor rave that started years ago in Berlin. People in costumes, face paint, glitter, capes, platform shoes, all congregating in the city centre, a giant mash-up of hippies and ravers and old people and young people all out enjoying the day and having fun and thinking about the world. Later that night, I had dinner with my parents and sister in Hayes Valley, had a drink with my sister down the street at Jade, then headed over to the Dubliner in Noe Valley before ending up at a crazy after party for the Love Parade at some house/warehouse in SOMA. It sounds weird but it's nice to be around freaks again. After a year surrounded by a low of bland, empty, pretty people, it's nice to just see a lot of people dressed up in the funkiest, craziest attire, dancing around to a bunch of techno at a house party. Yay being back! Hooray San Francisco!

Wait, does this mean Barbie's a slut?

Apparently this Barbie-esque doll has Muslim values. For those curious as to why Mattel hasn't already tried to market to this demographic,

Mattel markets a group of collectors' dolls that includes a Moroccan Barbie and a doll called Leila, designed to represent a Muslim slave girl in an Ottoman court.

That's why.

Amazing Photograph

Every once and a while, a truly amazing photograph catches my eye. This photo, courtesy of Reuters, was found on Yahoo!'s Photo Highlight Show, and depicts an Afghan woman voting in recent elections.

Back, But Not Finished

Having been back since Saturday, you'd think I'd have scores of photos to post of partying in San Francisco with my legions of best friends. Ha. I've spent most of the hours home in my sister's old bedroom, hunched in front of my laptop, putting my book together. After receiving an email that we should bring our books to Amsterdam for review, it dawned on me that after a year in portfolio school, I should actually have a book. Thus the ongoing, frenzied assembly that's ensued since receiving the email last Monday.

Anyway, in between sporadic email checks and instant messaging sessions with friends, I've been hunting for a coat, teaching myself needlepoint (why am I single, you ask?), and reading "Vanity Fair" (the book, not the magazine), The Wall Street Journal, which is one of the real joys of staying at my parents' house, and the occasional online article. I stumbled upon this one on CP+B from a link on Adrants, which might interest some of you fellow ad school folk.

Back in San Francisco

I tried to change the template back to blue, a change that's long overdue. Something's screwed up, though, and is reformatting the left sidebar all weird. If anyone has any ideas of how to fix this, I'd really like to know.

Reason #4520 to hate Miami

As my flight back to San Francisco is a mere week away, I've been trying to keep my cool and see the positive about Miami (and, specially, life on South Beach) in the meantime. Beautiful sunsets next to the bay, beautiful though ridiculous people hanging out at the Starbucks on the corner of West and 9th Avenue, beautiful blue skies over the Atlantic. These were my thoughts as I walked from my apartment to the Thrifty Rental Car location on Colllins Avenue. "It's only a week, Jenne," I tell myself. "See the good while you can, leave with good memories."

As I'm waiting for my rental car to arrive, who shows up at the rental agency but my current roommate. She and I are chatting about the end of school, and I'm making a comment which software I feel is best suited to executing a particular kind of ad.

"Actually," interjects a short, tanned man flaunting long, curly locks, a mesh tanks top, soccer shorts, fanny pack and fake Dolce & Gabbana sandals. "You shouldn't use Illustrator. You should use Quark."

We ignore his interjection for a variety of reasons, the main reasons being that a) we don't use Quark because it doesn't come in the Adobe Creative Suite software package that we get discounted, and b) my personal annoyance for people who see it as their perogative to pipe up in other people's conversations. Why must we pause our conversation and waste time explaining our software situation to this random person? We resume our conversation. Again, he interrupts, asking me, "Are you a designer."

"No."

I turn back to my roommate. I think I may go down as the most unfriendly person in the world, but I just don't see the need to make friends with people in the Thrifty Car Rental office, especially when they suffer from that 'I-Must-Offer-My-Unasked-Opinion-In-A-Conversation-I'm-Not-Having" Syndrome. (Men, it seems, suffer from this syndrome more than women, I might add, especially when it's two girls having a conversation.) You know when it's appropriate to butt into someone's conversation? When you have information that could potentially change their life for the positive. Here is an example.

Woman A: We are going to take Highway 1 and then Route 45 the rest of the way.

Strange Man: Oh, just so you know, Highway 1 is closed! You will be better off taking Highway 2.

Now that we're all clear on this first social faux pas, and how it may be avoided (namely by keeping your mouth shut), we can return to the scene at the Thrifty Car Rental. As my roommate and I turn back to our conversation, it dawns on me that our Curly-Haired Interrupter is in the process of clipping his fingernails. That's right, just clipping away and letting the clippings fall to the ground. Somehow, the standards of society do not apply to our Curly-Haired Interrupter. Maybe clipping one's finger nails passes at, say, Burning Man (where they are perhaps traded as currency or something), but the last time I checked, one's bathroom rituals were supposed to be kept in the bathroom. As far as I was taught, this includes hair brushing, eyebrow plucking, armpit shaving, zit popping and, yes, fingernail clipping.

I think I've had a fairly good upbringing, but I would hardly think of myself or my behaviour as relegated to the most upper crust of society. Just your average, upper middle class, Californian childhood, with attention paid to things like chewing with your mouth closed, writing thank you letters and saying 'please' and 'thank you.' Genteel aristocracy we are not. However, the longer I live in Miami, the more I begin to think that I may have in fact been raised in strati of society that actually very few aspire to -- something along the lines of well-mannered and dignified may be a good way of putting it. Every day I've lived here, I've seen or experienced something that strikes me as incredibly gauche, and incredibly rude, impolite, tacky, or uncivilised. I wish I could be more open-minded and embrace it; instead I just find myself offended and wishing for the comforts of my (polite) home.

Let's Lemon

I should have posted this news about VW dropping Arnold and handing their account to CP+B (whom, according to gossip, promptly ditched BMW's Mini Cooper). I normally shy away from 'industry gossip' on this site, but since CP+B is partnered with our school (where we are inundated with an excessive amount of their genius or, at least, work ethic) and we worked on Mini Cooper's upcoming Certified Pre-Owned Program, only to learn that the head of Mini's marketing had moved over to VW shortly after the live pitch.

ad-gasm!

I have a confession to make. When I first returned from my two year hiatus in Spain, I had trouble reacclimating to the American pop culture terrain. It's been nearly a year, and I'm (not really) proud to admit that I have finally been sucked into following a few "reality" shows with something that resembles diligance. That's right, when I'm not watching cooking shows, I'm watching some of Bravo's finer programming. My new favourite show -- and I am embarrassed to admit this -- is Laguna Beach. I'm intrigued. Is it fake, or real? I spend the entire episode trying to determine whether these Laguna Beachers are really good actors or just really bland. Anyway, now that I've discovered TVgasm's brilliant ongoing discussion of the show, I can watch in good faith, knowing I'm not the only dork mesmerised by this strange slice of teenage life. Then I discovered that tvgasm also does commentary (too unfrequently, I might ad) on television advertising. Yay! People who don't work in advertising, talking about ads, and, more importantly, making fun of them!

New Links

I've added two new sites to the links on the right, Boing Boing and the homepage for BBC Radio One's dance music page. I am literally addicted to the different dance music radio shows. I can't get enough! The shows I'm most addicted to are, in no particular order, Annie Mac, Annie Nightingale, Fergie, Fabio & Grooveride, and Bobby Friction & Nihal. How come the UK has such a great music scene, and here in Miami all we have is one or two horrible "urban" stations that have wretched mainstream R&B and hip hop played over and over, one "pop" station, one "hard rock" station and a handful of "latin" stations? On all of these shows from BBC they'll spin popular hip hop or rock tracks in the middle of wonderful stuff coming from more underground scenes. At least in San Francisco there are a few college radio stations that provide sporadic bursts of breaks, drum n bass, house, indie, etc. I've searched the dial here in Miami, and other than NPR (which has great jazz broadcasts every night), there's little else on the dial to be found.

I Should Be Working, But ...

I was led to this interactive site for Bubblicious Gum via AdRants. A cool concept, clearly aimed at preteen gals, where you can create your own 'bubblicious character' and send it on to a friend. In playing with the site for a few minutes, it struck me as sad that as much as I would have thought this game cool when I was 11, I would have been disappointed with the lack of options. Sure, you can choose from 6 different hairstyles, none of them particularly unusual and some different hats and sunglasses. 11-year-old girls (and boys) are probably more creative and imaginative than the options given to them -- how about allowing preteens to actually get really creative with their own customisable personality. It's sort of like cutting out papers dolls. Once you've seen the outfits on the cut-out, it really isn't interesting anymore. Part of the success of things like Barbie Dolls, Lego, Brio, even The Sims, is that they give boys and girls the tools to assemble whatever their imaginations dream up. Little girls, unless they are supremely uptight, will generally mix and match as many Barbie Doll clothes as they can. While the Bubblicious site is cool, it's a shame it's not even more interactive, thus encouraging preteens to stay on it a lot longer and get truly involved with their characters.

Me, the Wit

the Wit (76% dark, 23% spontaneous, 15% vulgar)

your humor style: CLEAN | COMPLEX | DARK You like things edgy, subtle, and smart. I guess that means you're probably an intellectual, but don't take that to mean pretentious. You realize 'dumb' can be witty--after all isn't that the Simpsons' philosophy?--but rudeness for its own sake, 'gross-out' humor and most other things found in a fraternity leave you totally flat. I guess you just have a more cerebral approach than most. You have the perfect mindset for a joke writer or staff writer. Your sense of humor takes the most thought to appreciate, but it's also the best, in my opinion. You probably loved the Office. If you don't know what I'm talking about, check it out here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/theoffice/. PEOPLE LIKE YOU: Jon Stewart - Woody Allen - Ricky Gervais The 3-Variable Funny Test! - it rules - If you're interested, try my latest: The Terrorism Test

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 96% on darkness You scored higher than 4% on spontaneity You scored higher than 3% on vulgarity

Link: The 3 Variable Funny Test written by jason_bateman on OkCupid Free Online Dating

Travels

Interesting observations on recent travels, especially regarding a slavery museum in Ghana. The photos are really cool, too!