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Creepers
By David Morrell
Rating: 6 out of 10

PREFACE: Now, I realize that this book is outside of my original list. Considering my existing pace, I’ll easily surpass the 25 books I planned to read, so I thought I would add this one. If I have another to read, I’ll likely read Holy Blood, Holy Grail in anticipation of the Da Vinci Code this summer.

A few weeks back, Brad gave me a book to read. He said that it was a great book - I think that I had just completed The Historian, which he loved, and so I thought I would give Creepers by David Morrell a shot. I started the book last Saturday during my downtime of the tournament. Having finished Ogilvy on Advertising, I thought that my trip to Seattle would be as good of a time as any to get the book done.

It was a really long flight to Seattle. I watched the entire first disc of Scrubs Season Two, but my battery ran out, so I thought it would be good to start the book.

Creepers is an extremely fast read (I feel like I’ve said that a lot during my reading project). Brad had indicated that I would probably be able to read it in about a day. Once I got rocking on the book, it was tough to put down. It was different than The Historian, though. It wasn’t hard to put down because it was written extremely well, but rather because the story just pushed the reader along as fast as possible.

Despite its horror-like title and cover artwork, Creepers isn’t quite as scary as it sounds. In fact, the word “creepers” actually refers to people who like to call themselves “urban explorers” who infiltrate old, abandoned buildings to study the history of the buildings and to learn more about the past. This activity is highly illegal, but there are groups all over the world that do so.

Creepers follows the exploits of a group of urban explorers who infiltrate an abandoned New Jersey Hotel called The Paragon. They are joined by a journalist named Frank Balenger who is doing a feature story on creepers. But, much like the hotel, Frank isn’t all that he seems. The ensuing evening is filled with nightmares as the exploration of the hotel turns into a desperate attempt for survival.

I liked the book, but I think that I went into it expecting more (sorry, Brad). And to me, the book felt a little like a Dan Brown book that was really good, but just got wrapped up hastily at the end. I actually think it would be a good movie, but it would be a tough one to make.

Anyway, it was an entertaining travel read, but I think I will look forward to the movie more (although, now that I know what happens, I don’t know what the point would be!). I have another book to read on the way back, The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell.

So the first day of the FlashForward Conference here in Seattle is over. And it was a pretty good day. Half a really good session on video (thanks to Robert Reinhart from FlashSupport.com) and a really sweet evening event put on by Adobe.

Started the day off well with a nice breakfast at the Top of the Hilton Restaurant here in our hotel. Nice view of the city from there. Snapped a decent pic of the view:

After that, we went and registered and proceeded to our all-day workshops. Also got a nice selection of schwag in our conference registration bag, exclusive with a premium pass:

The reason that I say “half a really good session” was because I spent the morning at Aral Balkan’s “Actionscript for Right-Brainers” workshop, a session that was aimed at designers wanting a better understanding of the Flash coding language, Actionscript. Unfortunately, Aral’s approach was really to outline what object-oriented Actionscript, which is something that is useful for building Rich Internet Applications, but rarely for designers like me. It also wasn’t helpful that this is what my view looked like in the room:

I decided after lunch at the Cheesecake Factory that I would go over to Rob’s workshop on video, which proved to be much more useful, considering our company is getting ready to undertake a pretty large video project with our upcoming customer portal where potential prospects will be able to watch videos of our existing customers telling stories of how our product has made their businesses more efficient, etc.

Not only was Robert a much better presenter, but he was presenting something extremely relevant to me and the rest of our interactive team.

Once we were done with the sessions, it was off to the VIP party at Gameworks, a giant arcade. Adobe paid for the evening with free food and drink as well as free games. The latter was the most important to me because I was able to play the Sega Derby Owner’s Club game that our friends Paul and Maria got me hooked on when we went to Dave & Buster’s with the a couple weeks ago. Basically you train and race a horse and as you train it, it gets better and better. My first horse was so awesome that I retired it (after it won 14 out of 20 races) and created a new horse, the unstoppable force that is CHUCK NORRIS.

It was a fun evening. I’m looking forward to the conference too. I think that I will really get something out of it, whereas in the past, it has been a struggle for me to connect with the material. We shall see. More to come.

First volleyball tournament since the ankle incident. Today in Ottawa, we played in a 5-team AA tournament and we ended up second. Again.

We played awful this morning. Awful. We just were not clicking at all and it sucked. We just couldn’t do anything right.

Then, we kind of turned a brief corner and we participated in the longest rally I can remember in my 10+ year volleyball career. We won one and lost won, finally getting ourselves into the win column, needing to win our final two games to make it into the playoffs. We were down 23-24, and managed to come back and win that game and another game to JUST make it in.

Then, in the semis, I got one of the nastiest floor burns on my left leg. It’s probably 4 inches long and 2.5 inches wide and it still is stinging me even today. Well, we won our semifinal match in 3 games and then went to 3 games in the finals against the team that we had needed to beat to get into the tournament. While they ended up beating us, I guess you could say that it was a “moral victory” considering how terribly we played the rest of the day.

Overall, it was a pretty good tournament.

Ogilvy on Advertising
by David Ogilvy
Rating: 6 out of 10

David Ogilvy was an advertising pioneer. His company, Ogilvy and Mather, has been one of the largest advertising companies in the world since he started it several decades ago. Published in 1982, Ogilvy on Advertising is considered the seminal text on advertising. Even over 20 years after its original publication, the book remains relevant.

Since my background was not originally in advertising or design, I thought it would be very important for me to read this, as well as his 1965 book, Confessions of an Advertising Man, in which he details his own rise to the top of the advertising world.

Ogilvy on Advertising is a fascinating read, considering:

• Ogilvy was over 70 when he wrote it.
• He resists the urge (for the most part) to toot his own horn and pulls examples of what work and what doesn’t work from agencies all over the world.
• As I said above, much of his writing is still very relevant today.

The reason I say most is because I think that Ogilvy often had a grand design for the industry that is advertising. The final chapter in the book is titled: “I predict 13 changes”, and in it, he lists the 13 things that he thinks will happen to advertising in the future (now).

The thing is…all of those changes were things that he outlined in the previous chapter “What’s wrong with advertising” and so I think that they were more wishful thinking than actual predictions. My favorite of the 13 changes was this:

8 Candidates for political office will stop using dishonest advertising.

Now we all know that isn’t true, at least it hasn’t been true in the 20 years since Ogilvy’s book came out. He also predicts that highway “billboards will be abolished” and “the clutter of commercials on television and radio will be brought under control.”

Ogilvy’s self-aggrandizing predictions are really not much more than pipe dreams. It’s likely that during the late 80’s and early 90’s that Ogilvy’s book would have been like the Bible for advertising, but times have really changed considerably since the heyday of Ogilvy + Mather. For that reason, the book is very out of touch.

That’s not to say that all of it is out of touch, just about 60% of it. Ogilvy focuses on many different types of advertising in his book, but most of his focus is print. And while he is still is the foremost authority on print advertising, he admittedly knows his shortcomings when it comes to other areas (although he was a pioneer in direct response marketing).

When he started in advertising, he was a researcher and a copywriter, so his experience certainly leans toward the print side. Now, I like print advertising a lot. It’s fun to design and write, but I don’t think that it is the primary advertising medium anymore. And unfortunately, Ogilvy’s scorn for television (or, at least, his misunderstanding of television), makes the book tough in a lot of ways. Not only that, but I really would like to know what Ogilvy thought about the Internet and its implications on advertising. I imagine that he would have had a lot to say on the subject. Unfortunately, he passed away in 1999 at the age of 88.
Honestly, the most fascinating thing about the book is the author himself. His writing style is conversational and extremely funny. He is pompous, but not in a way that comes across as too arrogant. And while his views on society could be called somewhat dated, so is the book, so I’ll give him a pass on that one.

One of the last chapters in the book is called “Six giants who invented modern advertising”. In this chapter, Ogilvy writes love letters to his deceased mentors…the men who taught him his craft at different times during his career. All of them eventually competed with him when he started his own agency, but you can sense that there was a mutual respect between them; that despite their competition for clients, employees, etc., they might even go on a vacation together and smoke their pipes and reminisce about the golden age of advertising.

I’ve never worked in an agency. I would like to…I think that I’d be good at it because, according to Ogilvy, true “ad men” draw from a wide range of experience (he himself was originally a chef in a restaurant in France, originally). That’s really what I’m all about. I’ve always maintained that I was born in the wrong Era…I would have been a great Renaissance Man.

I really enjoyed the book for the most part, but just had a hard time ultimately finishing it. I sped through certain chapters, while others droned on and were difficult to stomach either because they were about research (a favorite of Ogilvy’s…something I’m not very familiar with) or because they were out of date. I am glad I finally read it though. Many of the concepts that Ogilvy presents were before their time then and could even be argued are ahead of the curve even in the current atmosphere for advertising.

I’m headed to Seattle all next week for a conference. I’ll be posting from there and trying to keep my flickr photostream updated.

Before I go, I have a volleyball tournament tomorrow and we’ll see how my ankle handles a day of jumping up and down. Cross your fingers! As for the rest of the weekend…tonight is the Gardner Dance Team’s Light Show…it’s their final performance before their big Spring Show.

I’m interested to see what Seattle is like. While I’m not a big fan of seeing it without Alli, I still am interested in the city. We are planning to go to the original Starbucks location as well as see Pike’s Market and all that other touristy stuff. But mostly we’ll be in sessions from 8 in the morning until 6 at night.

Watching Sasha Cohen skate tonight, you couldn’t but recognize the flat-out fear in her eyes. Watching her warm-up, you almost expected her to fall.

And she did.

It was tough to watch. Cohen has all of the ability and artistry to be at the top of the medal stand, but she has yet to prove that she can come through in the clutch in the Olympics.

I really wanted her to succeed. I did. But tonight wasn’t her night. And you really have to give it to the Japanese skater, Arakawa. She really had ice running through her veins and skated fantastically. I don’t even know if Sasha doesn’t fall twice if she beats her because her program was pretty great.

Sasha’s got at least 1 or 2 more Olympics in her if she wants. Hopefully she’ll be able to mature enough to get over her fear and self-doubt.

The other night, Alli and I went to Chipotle with my mom. After we were done (and despite the fact that I am trying to lose weight), my mom offered us some baked goods that she had in her car. In the selection of pastries she had was an Almond Poppyseed muffin from Hen House.

Hen House gets their muffins delivered to them fresh everyday from some local vendor whose name escapes me right now. It’s unfortunate that the name escapes me because these muffins could just about solve the world’s energy crisis. If you could harness the awesomeness of these muffins…great things could happen.

If I could, I’d have an almond poppyseed muffin every day for breakfast. I don’t think I’d ever get sick of them.

For further proof that I know ENTIRELY too much about pop culture, feast your eyes on this:

Everyday, IMDb runs a “Truly Trivial” section where they list some really random fact about a celebrity or a movie. Up until now, I think I hadn’t got a single one right.

Emphasis on “until now”

Today’s question:

This actor, a former professional skateboarder, co-founded the company Stereo Skateboards out of California.

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The media is all over this conflict between Shani Davis and Chad Hedrick, a pair of the United States’ very best speed skaters.

The conflict stems from Davis’ refusal to take part in the team pursuit event, a crazy sort of relay that was to take place 2 days before Davis’ best event, the 1000m. Hedrick wanted to try and win 5 gold medals this Olympics, eclipsing Eric Heiden’s record (Heiden is Hedrick’s mentor) from the 1980 Olympics in Lake Placid.

I honestly think that Hedrick is the one who is in the wrong here. The only reason that he wanted Shani Davis to race in the team pursuit was so that he could get another one of his gold medals. Without Davis, the US had a much slimmer chance (and ultimately, they didn’t win). Even so, the US got sixth. Davis, who has never really skated the team pursuit, may not have even helped.

The thing that a lot of people ignored in “Chad Hedrick’s Quest for Five” is that he had to race Shani Davis. Twice. First in the 1,000 (which was won by Davis), then yesterday in the 1,500. Neither came out a winner yesterday, with Davis getting the silver and Hedrick right behind him with the bronze.

One assumes that the lack of ability to focus on the race may have affected their concentration. Davis was actually ahead of the leader’s pace until the last 400m and could have won.

Unfortunately, Davis has been pegged as the bad guy here because Hedrick will give an interview anywhere. Davis is somewhat of a loner and prefers to let his skating speak for himself. Hedrick is out there in the media claiming that Shani Davis is unpatriotic because of his refusal to participate in the team pursuit, but the truth is this: Hedrick’s own motivations have nothing to do with the concept of “team”. They have more to do with getting more gold medals for Chad Hedrick.

And Hedrick is taking advantage of the fact that Shani Davis won’t respond. The most fiery we saw him was at the press conference after the 1,500m when Davis said that he thought it was rude that Hedrick did not congratulate him after he won the 1,000m, especially considering that Davis had done that for Hedrick when he won the 5,000m.

So who was in the wrong? I think that Hedrick tried to take advantage of the unfortunate timing of the team pursuit to try and get inside Shani’s head because that was the only way that he was going to beat him in the 1,000m. And it still didn’t work.

I’m glad it didn’t. Davis is the only one at this Olympics who will be setting any records, becoming the first U.S. African-American to ever win a gold medal in speed skating. In my opinion, that’s more important than any medal in the team pursuit.