Killing Time, murder consultants: Custom murder mystery cocktail entertainment for groups of 16-30 adults.
We use no actors; your guests play all the roles—even the murderer and the victim!
This didn’t come out as well as I had hoped, but I’ll share it anyway. I used my DLSR to do a time-lapse video of several stages of my Tiki transformation of my basement bar, as discussed in these Tiki Month posts, Basement Bar Design #9: Tiki Bars and This Year’s Final Exam. Specifically, I will note that the video does not include the changes in lighting I made, as those frames ended up looking so dark they weren’t worth it. Still it’s fun and illustrative of what I did, so here it is!
Yeah. That guy. I had thought that Vince, the World’s Most Awesome Pitchman® was gone forever, after his little misunderstanding with a hook…the Lawpolite society. But no! He’s back, with a new product and a long-form infomercial that is playing now. It’s even better than the one he did for me way back when.
I know it’s Tiki Month and all, but you need to take two minutes out of your busy schedule to see my man use what he’s got. It’s almost Shatnerian at its zenith….
Oh, alright. You should watch it build from the beginning, but if you must get back to your life immediately, go to about 57 seconds in from what looks like the Moment of Awesome.
But wait! There’s more…
That’s right, Vince. Because the flight attendant is just warming you up (so to speak) for the big moment right after that. Keep all beverages away from the keyboard while you watch.
I’ve been in a bit of a blogging funk of late, with all sorts of posts piled up in the draft folder and none ready to post. So I thought I’d put up this little palate-cleanser to make folks smile and perhaps be a bit of a slump-buster….
Beer ads have for a long time been sort of the pinnacle in advertising, booze or otherwise, of the Sex Sells meme. Whenever a latter day Don Draper comes up with a ridiculously over the top sexy idea, his agency just puts beers in the participants’ hands and pitches it to Budweiser or Miller. Every once in a while the result is pure, trashy genius. Most of the time, it is pretty much trashy hackery.
Of course, sometimes, Don’s descendants’ imaginations get a little carried away. The following Guinness advertisement is a case in point. Once conceived, it had to be made. But it was never gonna air. I should advise you that this is very likely not safe for work. (But if you are at work, is this or any other cocktail blog all that safe a site to be surfing in the first place?)
Frankly, I’m not sure where to categorize this one. It is definitely trashy, but it is also pretty clever in how it forces speculation on the part of the viewer. The mind is engaged on this. But I’m thinking it wouldn’t move that much Guinness, because while you are perhaps supposed to focus on the bottle and why it doesn’t fall over, that is not what most people are going to be furiously trying to work out in their heads. What do you think?
A tip of the hat to the the good folks at Cracked for this one. Their article has six other ads that similarly were way beyond the pale. I recommend the post, but for the love of God, do not play or even read about Number 5!
I stumbled across a blog post recently that made me go back and look at my own draft folder. E.E. Southerby of Points in Case is a wrong-headed individual who reminds me of my own younger self, only with a better writing ethic. He has a regular feature he calls “Rejected Column Ideas“, in which he does a collection of short blurbs about posts he never finished. Gizmodo does something similar. I took a look at the 34 posts in varying degrees of decomposition in my draft folder, and decided I ought to give the idea a shot.
You are welcome.
First up, I have two booze stories from far-off, fading Avalon.
Number one is about beer. I don’t blog about beer, so I set this one aside. But I just gotta say that if you are going to brew 64 proof beer, “Tactical Nuclear Penguin” is a pretty good name. (H/T: Ace)
Number two is about Scotch. The English have introduced a whisky of their own. Apparently the only reason Scotland has not declared war (yet) is that they spell whisky correctly. Me, I just am hoping for a sample bottle of $75, three-year-old scotch to come from the Liquor Fairy….
A while back, I had a moderately well-read post on a recent IP dustup about Gosling’s Black Seal Rum and the Dark ‘n Stormy (which can only legally be called thus if you use Gosling’s). Among the several others who also wrote on it was Jacob Grier, who plots to storm the Trademark Bastille with a yet to be invented, “Dark ‘n Sue Me“. I love Jacob, but I suspected he had his head lingering dangerously near the wrong parts of the anatomy on this one. While I usually do not shy away from a good Rule 4 dust-up, I did here because… well, Jacob and his crew sound much better educated on the subject than I do. And it is less than fun to get into a public debate with people who appear more educated than I.
Even when I am, of course, right.
Descending from the rarefied air of intellectual property rights to the Basement Bar, I bring you these things for the PeTA member who hungers for an old-school, drawing room-type mancave:
A company named Cardboard Safari has a whole raft of these things, up to and including a full sized, whole body rhino. (H/T: Streetlevel, via Asylum)
I was thinking about one of these for my Basement Bar a while back, when I was noticing a slight shrinkage in the waistbands of many of my trousers (a condition that has yet to abate). Behold the Stationary Bike Blender Kit!
But then I got one of these, and I decided to look elsewhere for exercise. Especially since I’d only use it enough during Tiki Month. (H/T: OhGizmo)
The next item really ought to be it’s own post, but I’m sticking it here because, well, I’m on a roll and it has been in the queue for almost a year.
Understanding Cocktails pointed out that one of the exploding trends in 2008 was cocktails, so much so that Google’s Zeitgeist report for 2008 gave us a list of top ten drinks searched for as one of its featured lists.
I used Google Trends to check a few other search histories and found that our area of interest is as fresh and new in the public consciousness as we think. But I am dismayed to see that it is not growing as much as I’d like. I searched for Cocktail Bars, Mojito, Manhattan, and Martini. Only Mojito goes back before 2005 as even a blip on the radar. The others all appear out of the blue around 2005-2006, but don’t grow much from there. We cocktail bloggers are not doing our jobs, folks!
And last, what would a post like this be without a video? Here is the finest (IMHO) in the Cooking with Andy series from YouTube. Beware FoodBuzz types! This is the way a lot of people out there view food bloggers!
Via WyBlog and Rule 5 Sunday, comes the following web advertisement. At least I assume it is web only, due to it’s length and, well, the whole naked woman rolling around while pouring wine on herself thing. (I’m experimenting with the art of the Googlebomb).
Now, I post this video because, um, I can.
But I also do so because I wish the distillers would learn just a little bit from the folks at Styring Vineyards, whose ad this is, about how to use sex to sell. Sex is a natural for selling alcohol, of course. But too much of the liquor industry’s effort in this vein is crude, and the less said about most beer ads the better.
Don’t get me wrong, this Styring Pinot Noir ad is over the top. It is just tasteful enough, however, to elicit a smile, rather than a snigger. (For examples of snigger-inducing ads, check out this blog I recently found. Possibly NSFW.) And the excellent production values of this video do not hurt it, either. But witness an earlier post I wrote about Cabana Cachaça’s infamous opening ad campaign. Cabana’s production values are every bit as high, or even higher. But the message there is crude innuendo, and unrelated to the product.
The Styring video gives one ideas about how to enjoy the product….
And this isn’t the only fun marketing idea Styring has on the web. Their Chief Odor Detection Officer (CODO?), Molly, has her own blog as well.
I haven’t tried Styring’s Pinot Noir (here’s a hint winemakers, the Liquor Fairy delivers wine, too!), but if I find it available at any of my wine haunts, I’m picking up a bottle.
And maybe a drop cloth….
[UPDATE: Ace of Spades Sidebarolanche! Welcome once again, Morons!]
Mix Rum and Coke in narrow highball with ice. Just before serving, squeeze the lime quarters and drop them into the glass, all without letting the recipient see what you are doing.
