WARNING: Penn State Campus Lies Ahead

            The Penn State campus can be a hazardous place sometimes. I recently saw a meme on the PSU Facebook group that played off of the Dos Equis “Most Interesting Man in the World” ads:

Let me just say that there was a time when memes were not funny to me in the slightest. However, I hit a point where many of them were so unbelievably accurate that I had to accept them for what they were. I laughed quite a bit at this one about the Forum, considering I have been the victim of those tiles multiple times during my Penn State career. In fact, if you set up a video camera there during the first ice of the winter season I would be willing to bet you’d get a YouTube video similar to this one: Beaver Ave Slips & Falls.

This footage was taken downtown last year during State Patty’s day, and while the considerable levels of inebriation probably contributed to the falls, this is pretty typical of any icy or rainy day at Penn State. In other words, Penn State students as a whole probably have a higher average of weekly tumbles than any school set in a more hospitable environment.

To the architect that chose to use tile and marble in any and every opportunity on this campus, I’d like to ask if you had any ulterior motive besides just the look and appearance of the buildings. I’m sure Penn State students would agree with me that they have felt personally attacked by the materials on this campus at one point or another, such as the time I found myself sliding on my backside down the stairs outside Carnegie in the pouring rain.

While there may be some rough spots on campus, I can’t deny that I love each and every square foot of Penn State University, and if the laughs from these falls can’t outweigh the pain that results, then maybe we just need to lighten up. I mean if you can’t watch that YouTube video without laughing or at least feeling a small amount of pleasure from watching people’s feet fly above their heads while caught in a total state of shock, then maybe Penn State isn’t the school for you.

Cookie With a Hat!

In the spirit of THON happening this past weekend, the 46 hour no sleeping, no sitting student run Dance Marathon at Penn State, I thought I’d talk about something strange that happened during last year’s THON weekend. It’s a known fact that the dancers in THON often become delirious after so many hours of standing up dancing with no sleep. Last year, my roommate Jess and I were both on a committee called Morale, where our job is to be assigned a dancer that we will keep pumped up and moving throughout the weekend. I expected for my dancer to be delirious at a certain point, but I didn’t expect it as much for myself.

Around hour 32, Jess and I were on the dance floor when we saw a dressed up sugar cookie wearing a baseball cap walking past us. Since there are many dressed up characters that come onto the floor during THON, we didn’t think anything of it, until it registered to us about 3 seconds later that the character seemed….odd. We both did a double take then looked at each other, and since we have that special roommate bond, we both knew we were thinking the same thing. WHAT… was that? “Did that thing seem…really, freakishly short to you?” Now for Jess, with a stature of 5’1”, for anything to seem short to her needs to be, childlike.  Since the purpose of THON is to raise money for the Four Diamonds Fund, supporting families with kids who have pediatric cancer, there are many kids running around the Bryce Jordan Center during the weekend. Naturally, when you see anything less than 5 feet tall you think, “Was that a child?” But then we realized, it was almost 2 o’clock in the morning! What on earth is a child, unaccompanied by a parent I might add, doing walking around in a cookie costume at that time of night??

Then the next freakish thing hit me. While most costumes have visible places for the wearer to see out, in the 0.2 seconds I saw this thing, there was no such hole or screen. It didn’t have eyes! As we discussed this and got more and more confused by what we had just seen, we were determined to find it again. We thought, don’t worry, it couldn’t have gone far, it’s only been a few minutes.

We looked around and saw nothing resembling this character. Nothing. And at 2 o’clock in the morning, the floor at THON isn’t extremely crowded, yet we could not seem to find this mysterious…thing. We began asking, “Did you see that cookie? That cookie walking around with a hat on?” “Do you know which way that walking cookie went?” Based on the looks we got, we may as well have been walking around in coconut bras singing Christina Aguilera songs (…that’s really a story for another time).

Jess and I started to think this cookie character didn’t exist. After all, we couldn’t find it anywhere and no one else had seemed to notice it, so…maybe we had imagined it? We hadn’t slept in almost 40 hours, so maybe we, like the dancers, were starting to experience some delirium. But how had we hallucinated the same thing?

It wasn’t until about 40 minutes later that we finally added some clarity to our story. The walking cookie passed by again. And we were not about to let it get away this time. We started running after it yelling, “COOKIE WITH A HAT!!! COME BACK! COOKIE WITH A HAT!” We practically tackled it before it realized we were chasing it. And I say “it” because it still remains an extremely ambiguous character. We finally had proof that it was real and immediately whipped out our camera.

By the time THON had ended on Sunday afternoon, we had completely forgotten about the whole thing. Later that night, I loaded my camera card on my computer and it all came rushing back to me. I couldn’t show her the pictures fast enough.

 

We had located Cookie With a Hat, which appears to have been a mascot for Eat n’ Park, and gotten hard proof that it existed. However, the photos still did not answer many of our questions.

To this day, Jess still insists that the character and these pictures only exist in our minds due to the bizarre level of obliviousness displayed by the people in the background of the pictures. I’m more confused about how and where in the world this person, if what is underneath this costume is in fact human, sees where they are going. And I don’t think either of us will ever lose our concern about the fact that Jess, about 5 feet tall, is squatting next to this thing resulting in what appears to be a freakishly short cookie. A freakishly short, aimlessly wandering, forever mysterious cookie with a hat.

An Introduction

In an attempt to define my life and make every day a little different, I try and take notice to the ridiculous things that happen to me on a daily basis. I’m not sure why I choose this to help define myself; it’s just something I’ve always done. I text my best friends every day about the little things in a day that make me laugh, make me want to scream or hide, make me happy to be where I am, make me feel unbelievably stupid, or just give me pure entertainment. I figure that they’re relatable in some ways, so why not post them for others to read?

Most likely, I’m going to express some opinions that are not agreeable to everyone. However, so as not to offend, I will warn that my tone is often not meant to be taken seriously. This is simply the way I interpret different events, piquing my own curiosity through sarcasm and rhetorical questions.

In thinking about this blog and what would come of it, I thought of a lyric written by one of my favorite artists, Idina Menzel. “I wonder if God is trying to make a fool out of me.” I’ve always been a spiritual person, but not necessarily a religious one. In fact this will probably be the only religious reference I ever make in this blog, but it’s an interesting and sometimes humorous thought to wonder if the little nuances that happen in a day are put there on purpose. I wonder if the mishaps that leave me frustrated, bitter, or even laughing during the day are actually inconveniences, or whether they are put there by some higher power for God’s own entertainment or even for other reasons. The following dialogue that I recently found on a friend’s Facebook wall sparked many of these thoughts:

Me: God, can I ask You a question?
God: Sure.
Me: Promise You won't get mad.
God: I promise.
Me: Why did You let so much stuff happen to me today?
God: What do u mean?
Me: Well, I woke up late.
God: Yes.
Me: My car took forever to start.
God: Okay.
Me: At lunch they made my sandwich wrong & I had to wait.
God: Huummm.
Me: On the way home, my phone went DEAD, just as I picked up a call.
God: All right.
Me: And to top it all off, when I got home, I just wanted to soak my feet in my new foot massager & relax. BUT it wouldn't work!!! Nothing went right today! Why did You do that?
God: Well, let me see. The death angel was at your bed this morning & I had to send one of My Angels to battle him for your life. I let you sleep through that.
Me (humbled): OH.
GOD: I didn't let your car start because there was a drunk driver on your route that would have hit you if you were on the road.
Me: (ashamed)
God: The first person who made your sandwich today was sick & I didn't want you to catch what they have, I knew you couldn't afford to miss work.
Me (embarrassed):Okay.
God: Your phone went dead because the person that was calling was going to give false witness about what you said on that call, I didn't even let you talk to them so you would be covered.
Me (softly): I see.
God: Oh and that foot massager, it had a shortage that was going to throw out all of the power in your house tonight. I didn't think you wanted to be in the dark.
Me: I'm sorry, God.
God: Don't be sorry, just learn to trust Me.... in all things, the good & the bad.
Me: I will trust You.
God: And don't doubt that My plan for your day is always better than your plan.

It’s an interesting concept, for someone who isn’t very religious to wonder on the days when I feel that every single thing has gone wrong that maybe it was supposed to be that way. I may never figure it out, because then again, there’s the possibility that I’m just an unlucky person sometimes, finding myself in the wrong place at the wrong time, or that God is just trying to have some fun. The only thing I can do is to tell my stories and hope that others find the same enjoyment from them as I do, instead of trying to solve the mystery. Maybe I just have to give God the last laugh and accept the fact that life is funny that way.

Google Chrome

The Grammy Awards this year shocked me with their advertisements. I was more drawn in by the commercials shown during the Grammy air time than ANY of the Super Bowl ads from a couple weeks ago, which I find slightly disturbing considering the cost of Super Bowl air time. However, it made for a more entertaining awards show for me, as I am always glad to watch commercials that I actually enjoy.


My favorite from this week, which I felt compelled to Tweet about when I saw a spot aired during the Grammys, is the Google Chrome campaign. It first caught my eye last year sometime with the "It Gets Better" spot, involving the online project that is aimed at giving hope to struggling teens coping with their sexuality. It is an extremely moving ad- the interesting and rare thing about this campaign is that every spot gives me chills at some point. Other spots include "Dear Sophie" where a father keeps videos and journal-type posts about his baby daughter as she grows up, and "Justin Bieber" that chronicles his journey as an internet sensation.


Each and every one of these commercials is made as a montage, using different features of Google Chrome to transition between cuts. They show the features without the voice over blatantly talking about them, which let's face it, unless it's one of maybe 5 celebrities with an ear-catching voice, is extremely boring. The final tagline, "The web is what you make of it." It seems so simple and cliche, yet there is a stroke of genius in the fact that it's never actually been said in a way that is this blunt before. It resonates with me after each spot has ended and the TV has long since changed to the next ad. Most recently, the ads are less specified at one story or person, and much broader, in a way that I can only imagine was done to appeal to a wider audience.


However, the one thing I liked about the earlier spots of this campaign is the boldness of the topics. There is obviously a lot of debate about the gay community, and I suppose the same goes for Justin Bieber- not that one can really draw strong parallels between these two and the issues that face them (just bear with me). Either way, there are so many opinions amongst audience members that the advertisers simply cannot account for all of them. That was something I found very shocking about my search for a link to these ads- the third or fourth Google link that came up was a Yahoo question, "Was anyone else completely appalled by the new Google Chrome campaign? I will no longer be using any Google products." ....Really? This is something I suppose I should get used to, the fact that there will be extreme views of certain issues and products one way or another, but the fact that this was one of the immediate searches that came up with numerous comments agreeing with this post made me realize just how big of a step Google took with this campaign, and I applaud them for that.


I look forward to seeing where they take this campaign in the future because I think it is an extremely strong concept, and they could certainly adapt by placing the newest internet sensations and YouTube videos into their spots. I wonder, though, with a product with this many capabilities and this broad of a tagline, if Google will stick with this campaign path. The bigger question is if they will continue to do television advertising at all after they've made a big enough splash; after all, their other advertising has been solely online and maybe even unnecessary.

Superbowl Commercials. Best of the "Meh"

Being the Monday after the 2012 Superbowl, I felt compelled to write a post on the anxiously awaited flood of commercials we get on Superbowl Sunday during the pre-show, during, and post-show coverage. At an average of 3.5 million per 30 seconds this year, they should've all been eye-catching and memorable. When I saw the title of this article, "Best Superbowl Commercials 2012: The Best of the 'Meh'," that summarized my Superbowl commercial viewing experience. I'm not a die hard fan of any NFL team, so naturally I tune into the Superbowl simply as tradition and with an interest in advertising, for well, the commercials, but I was underwhelmed by what I saw. However, there were a few campaigns that stuck out to me and that I thought were incredibly clever.


Interestingly, I saw many more car commercials than I ever remembered. I don't know if that is a difference from previous years, or simply due to the fact that I am working on a campaign for Nissan right now with the National Student Advertising Competition. I was surprised to see that this site rated theVolkswagen ad "The Bark Side," on which I negatively wrote my last post on, as the best commercial from last night. I preferred their other ad "The Dog Strikes Back," rated here as #3. They brought in their last year's Star Wars concept at the very end in a comedic spoof, but the rest of it was focused on advertising the car, which I thought "The Bark Side" lacked.


My other favorites included the Acura "Transactions" ad featuring Jerry Seinfeld trying to get himself in the first slot for a new car, using his connections to bribe an everyday consumer and ends up losing to Jay Leno, and the Oikos yogurt "The Tease" ad with John Stamos annoyingly taunting his girlfriend over a bite of yogurt. Of course the E*Trade commercials have stayed amongst my favorites since they exploded a few years ago, but those are now going strong year-round so it wasn't a shock to see one of their ads featured during the Superbowl.


Overall, I did see some extremely creative concepts. Nothing that will last long as far as brand image, since many companies went with the route of celebrity endorsements for these ads, but they were nonetheless enjoyable. I have always wondered though, and I may be asking too much of the creative teams and copywriters for these companies, but my question has always been, besides an increased budget, why isn't this much effort put into the creative ideas behind these commercials all year long? Just a thought.