Waltzing Matilda

So I'm off to the airport, for 24 hours of air travel on the way back to Chicago. I will miss this place...and will return as soon as I can... I'll leave you folks with this classic Aussie song... what it means, I couldn't really tell you, i believe the lyrics tell the story of a man camping by a billabong (watering hole), while calling out a lonesome lament at the fact that no one will share his sleeping bag with him. Or something like that, I have yet to hear anyone offer anything resembling a truly concise explanation of this song, but the words aren't the point - the story resonates... And once you get the hook in your mind, you'll never be free of it. The first version above is from an Australia Day celebration, and it's some kind of all-star jam that turns into a big singalong... My fiance calls these kinds of concerts hootenannies, and I must admit I get quite a kick out of the word. It's hard to argue with a big ol' crowd singing a song everyone knows...

If the version above doesn't do it for you, here's Kylie Minogue dropping a lush gorgeous version at the opening ceremonies for Sydney's Para Olympics from 2000...(I thought initially she might be lip syncing, because people do that with high-tech productions like the Olympics, but then I realized that it's just the video track of this youtube clip that's a little off beat. She segues into a disco party after a sweet gorgeous and minimal rendition of Waltzing Matilda... I'll be humming this for weeks to come, and dreaming about my crazy sleepless stretch in Melbourne until I find my way back... Stay righteous, Melbourne... You folks live well...

Why I Love this Country

“What’s more, and here we come to the real crux of things, I liked it, straight off, without quibble or doubt, in a way I had never expected to. Something about it just agreed with me. I suppose it helped that I had spent half my life in America and half in Britain, because Australia was such a beguiling fusion of the two. It had a casualness and vivacity-a lack of reserve, a comfortableness with strangers-that felt distinctly American, but hung on a British framework. In their optimism and informality, Australians could pass at a glance for Americans, but they drove on the left, drank tea, played cricket, adorned their public places with statues of Queen Victoria, dressed their children in the sort of school uniforms that only a Brittanic people could wear without conspicuous regret. I felt extremely comfortable with this…”
another perfect quote fromBill Bryson - from In A Sunburned Country

Thank you, good folks of Melbourne, for your wonderful hospitality, exquisitely tasty coffee, fine steaks, cold beers, memorable weather, and good company. Every time I visit Australia I feel terribly sad that I have to leave...such is the deep abiding affinity I have for the civilization you've created Down Under. The world would be a better place if we were all more like you lot...

For the Ladies

This one's for my girl, who loves the movie Australia. The trailer is below this first clip from the movie, which is a glimpse of the man candy that is Hugh Jackman washing himself clean after a long day navigating the bush. Aussie men make the rest of the world's guys look like girly men.

Connex Railways - LB/Melbourne

The good folks at LB/Melbourne put this campaign together a few years ago to promote better etiquette on commuter trains in Melbourne. This is why we're here, because the agency produces fantastic, funny, memorable work that's unlike anything else around the world. This campaign resonates with anyone who uses public transportation, and is forced to deal with the seemingly insufferable and oblivious people you're forced to share train/bus/tram space with.

News Coverage and more footage from Today's Storm

Hail Stones like Golf Balls.

This is footage I took outside the theater when the hail storm hit. There's a lot more footage that's gonna find its way to YouTube. This storm was CRAZY.

freak weather meltdown in melbourne

we just finished up our meeting when a freak storm fell onto the theater like a sign from God
Hail the size of golf balls, 19 inches of rain in 18 minutes, says Big Pond news.

Morning with the Earth Hour client

Had the pleasure of starting this morning with an hour long meeting with the client from Earth Hour. If you haven't heard of Earth Hour before, it is quite simply the largest mobilization of humanity ever in support of a cause. This open source movement was ushered into the world by Leo Burnett Sydney on behalf of Earth Hour, a partner of the World Wildlife Foundation. It's changed a lot in the last few years, but continues to grow exponentially, enlisting new friends and allies along the way. The Earth Hour 2009 posters above were created by Shepard Fairey, the artist who created the famous Barack Obama "Hope" poster that became the iconic image of the Obama Presidential Campaign in 2008. Anyhow, Earth Hour began as an initiative to get everyone in Sydney to turn their lights of for an hour in 2007, to raise awareness of the perils of climate change. It's transformed now, and has become a tool to remind people that there are limited resources on this planet, and we must share them equitably and responsibly in order to guarantee a future for our descendants. Powerful stuff. Our very productive and inspiring meeting with them concluded, and a few hours later we were all swamped in a flash flood/weather anomaly that came out of nowhere. It's been a strange day contemplating the state of the planet.

Melbourne Sunrise Time Lapse #2 -

Shot the time lapse video below this morning from my hotel room window. It's crazy to think this almost cloudless dawn became the insane hail storm we felt later... Check out the 3 hot air balloons that appear about a minute through... they apparently work for a company called Balloon Sunrise. I've watched them appear each morning, wishing I was on one of those things instead of heading in to work...

The Stokehouse

Last night our group piled into a bus and drove down the shoreline to St. Kilda, to a glorious restaurant overlooking Port Phillip Bay. We dined at the Stokehouse, pictures above, an institution and what the web tells me is a definitive Australian restaurant. It was a FANTASTIC meal. Had a piece of tenderloin, a piece of steak so delectable that my friend Abesan from Tokyo declared it made him "think of steak different from now on." True words, and I washed it down with some good Aussie wine and a few bottles of Cooper's beer, which I've been asking for over the last few days but haven't actually found. It's a good brew. The whole night pretty much redeemed what has been a rough couple work days, with not much good work to see. I was carrying around a lot of bad energy, but upon arrival at the restaurant, the cloud around me blew away at my first glimpse of the endless water on the southern horizon... what a place... we learn profound lessons from vistas we canvass...

Carlton Draught Beer Ads

Here's an Aussie beer ad for children of the 80's...


And here's another one that's just ridiculously ambitious and epic...

Good Aussie Beer

Here's a pretty comprehensive web site serving as a guide to Australian Beers. This country has a long tradition of producing great beer. Foster's, however, does not count, and anyone who tells you "Foster's is Australian for Beer" is someone who's been suckered by a good tagline. Most Foster's in the USA is actually made in Canada, and people out here aren't particularly fond of the brand either...there are far better brews out here, and more interesting brands as well. Had a conversation with Alan, our tech guy at the MTC about national beer brands and the rise of microbrews out here. It's a good time to be alive and a beer drinker, because the industry is changing, and there's a huge influx of creative innovation that's changing the way we drink. Here's an AWESOME article that will change the way you think about beer, originally printed from New York Yorker Magazine, entitled "The Annals of Drinking - the Rise of Extreme Beer" about Dogfish Head breweries and the rise of the microbrewer movement in the USA. Well worth a read. In fact, here's the opening paragraph:
"Elephants, like many of us, enjoy a good malted beverage when they can get it. At least twice in the past ten years, herds in India have stumbled upon barrels of rice beer, drained them with their trunks, and gone on drunken rampages. (The first time, they trampled four villagers; the second time they uprooted a pylon and electrocuted themselves.) Howler monkeys, too, have a taste for things fermented. In Panama, they’ve been seen consuming overripe palm fruit at the rate of ten stiff drinks in twenty minutes. Even flies have a nose for alcohol. They home in on its scent to lay their eggs in ripening fruit, insuring their larvae a pleasant buzz. Fruit-fly brains, much like ours, are wired for inebriation....The seductions of drink are wound deep within us..."

The varieties of beer Down Under haver their own unique merits. Below is a passage from an essay I found online entitled "what is the best Australian beer."
"Up against big, centuries-old producers like Germany, Belgium and Great Britain, Australia’s beer producing ability is often seen as second rate. This perspective is flawed; a failure to appreciate Australian beer is a failure to appreciate Australian drinking attitude and habits. Australian beer is adapted for hot-climate drinking, and is dominated by a mix of ice cold draught and ale styles, along with a newer market for low carb ‘dry’ beers and boutique styles. Australian beer is unique and appeals to lovers of bold, slightly fruity beer with a typically bitter finish."

Road Meditations - Bill Bryson & Slim Dusty

"Almost all Australian highways are still just two lanes wide, and what a difference that makes. You’re not cut off from the wider world, as you are on a superhighway, but part of it, intimately connected. All the million details of the landscape are there beside you, up close, not blurred into some distant, tediously epic backdrop. It changes your whole outlook. There’s no point in hurrying when all it’s going to do is put you in the feathery wake of that old chicken truck half a mile ahead. Might as well hold back and enjoy the scenery. So there’s none of that mad, pointless urgency-gotta pass this guy, gotta keep pushing, gotta make some miles-that makes any drive on an interstate such an exhausting and unsatisfying business. When you come to a town on such a road it is an event. You don’t fly through at speed, but slow down and glide through, in a stately manner, like a float in a parade, slow enough to nod to pedestrians if you wish and to check out the goods in the windows on Main Street….So, you drop back and take it easy. You lean an arm on the windowsill, lay a finger on the wheel, and cruise. You haven’t one this for years. You haven’t been on a drive like this since you were a kid. You’d forgotten motoring could be fun.”

Bill Bryson - from "In A Sunburned Country"

...in the spirit of that passage, here's a song from Slim Dusty, one of the most popular Country singers in Australia, whose music is full of references to the Great Australian Road. Search his name on YouTube and hundreds of homemade music videos come up, most of them elaborate montages of big road train trucks barreling across the outback as Slim sings lyrics about the journey and lonesomeness of it... Driving in Australia, apparently, is not like driving anywhere else...

Sarti

Spent a few bleary hours after work at Sarti eating dinner with the group. It was a great meal with good company, but truth be told, the majority of us were weary after a long day, and I think the travel and jet lag caught up with all of us tonight. Some more than others. I had the pleasure of finding myself next to Shapoor Batliwalla, a man of Bengali heritage like myself, but transplanted to Melbourne some thirty years ago and with a rich treasure trove of experiences to share. I enjoyed dining with him, and he convinced me to join him in drinking a gentleman's drink as he sipped Johnnie Walker black label. I rather foolishly joined him by sipping on a few glasses of bourbon, and the rest of my night was a tad fuzzy. I haven't slept properly and I'm a bit irritated with certain frustrating technology issues (a spotty wireless internet connection is a recipe for stress). Anyhow, the meal was lovely, and on my other side, I found myself catching up with Todd Sampson, the MD of Leo Burnett's booming office in Sydney. He was just in for the night, in transit from a meeting on the western coast of Australia, but it was nice to hear about what his folks have been up to lately. LB/Sydney recently won Agency of the Year in Australia, and they're the one who've produced the Earth Hour campaign I posted below. Todd also told me a little about some of their agency's rivals, so here I present a spot from another great Australian agency, Clemenger BBDO/Melbourne. Good team that does good work. But this year, top honors went to my buddies in Sydney over anyone else. ;-)

My Country - Dorothea Mackellar (1885 - 1968)

Before arriving here I read through Bill Bryson's fantastic book "In A Sunburned Country," a travelogue of his wanderings through Australia. He named his book after a poem written by one Dorothea Mackellar, entitled "My Country," a few stanzas of which are quoted below. Check out the full poem. It's an ode to Australia, written by someone with an aching love for this place...

"...I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me!
....
An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land-
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand-
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly."

Earth Hour Campaign - Leo Burnett Sydney

This case is an incredible example of how to create global activism and mass participation around a cause people care about. The concept is to raise awareness of the perils of climate change and the need for human energy conservation, by simply collectively turning off lights around the world for one hour. 1 Billion people participated worldwide in 2009. This is the beginning. For the handful of climate skeptics I know, regardless of your beliefs, it is an indisputable fact that we do not have infinite energy reserves, and conservation is inherently a responsible action. This work was ushered into being through the ceaseless efforts of the good people at Leo Burnett Sydney.

AC/DC "Back In Black"

I used to play this in front of my mirror when i bought my first electric guitar. Lordy, these guys can riff... Aussie rock at its finest, yes?...

Sunrise from South Wharf, Melbourne

This is a time lapse video I made of the sunrise outside my hotel room.

The Front Fell Off

Here's a little comedy sketch to liven up the a mood a little.

...A Camel is a Horse Designed by a Committee...

Day two of this meeting was a beast. We did a lot of work, and with clients sitting in for the morning and early afternoon sessions, it proved to be a long day. I found myself over-caffeinated and progressively descending into a darker and uglier mood, perhaps because I found myself disagreeing with some of the things I was hearing. They say there's nothing personal about constructive professional criticism, and I do believe that, I suppose. We all need to be open to having our work improved upon, right? Every piece of communication can always be refined...right? Except today, I saw a campaign I really felt strongly about get voted down because the group did not understand it. Not because it was bad work, not because they could point out real flaws in it, but because they did not understand it. I found that appalling and unacceptable. It's because it hit close to home...

The work was for Detroit Public Schools, and LB/Detroit had put together a successful campaign that increased enrollment numbers, rallied the district together to meet a budget crisis, and reinvigorated a moribund system. My fiance and most of her friends work in Chicago Public Schools, and I don't think the group of panelists sitting around the table really understood the problems faced by this client. They rather sheepishly dismissed a case study with what can only be called flimsy reasoning. The conversation upset me. Teachers are a breed unto themselves, and they are on the front lines of our society, dealing with serious problems and dishing out life lessons with a certain stoic nobility. The educational system in the US is facing deep, entrenched problems, and it's amazing that my agency had an opportunity to help address some of them in one particularly troubled district. That's an initiative that deserves applause. I guess I just want to see the folks at LB/Detroit recognized for their accomplishments...or maybe I just want to give all the teachers i know an award, because what they do is vastly more important than what I do. Either way, this one particular vote on one particular campaign threw off my whole afternoon and left me muttering to myself in the corner. I guess that's democracy, for you, right? If you're in the minority, you're screwed. I believe Thomas Jefferson said it best: "A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine."

Earth Hour "Cathy Freeman" LB/Sydney

This is Australian Olympic Champion Cathy Freeman running around Sydney turning off lights for Earth Hour.

Earth Hour "Candle" LB/Sydney

I'm sharing space this week with the boys who helped usher this campaign into the world.

7-Eleven "Sports Slurping" from LB/Melbourne

This campaign was developed by the folks at LB/Melbourne for 7-Eleven. We hold it up as an example of a fantastic integrated campaign that involves people and gets them excited about an iconic product.

2008 Cannes Lion winner from George Patterson Y&R / Melbourne

Nicely crafted spot for Schweppes...it's been done before, but this classy film still collected accolades from numerous award shows...

The Invisible Indigenous

Thought I'd take a quick moment to write a little blurb about the indigenous population of Australia, the Aborigines. Like many nations that were once colonies, Australia has some shameful anecdotes and stories in its history regarding its treatment of the land's original inhabitants. I saw the movie "Rabbit Proof Fence" a few years ago, as I'm a huge Peter Gabriel fan and Gabriel composed the soundtrack. The movie is focused entirely on the historical reality of the "White Australia" principle and the practice of taking children from their Aboriginal mothers to retrain and educate them to be members of white Australian society. The children who were separated from their parents in this manner are known as the Stolen Generations. It's a hard thing to wrap your head around a government taking kids away from their mothers, and the movie can be hard to watch sometimes. Below are two scenes from the movie:


I know that's heavy material. Ready any history on any indigenous people from any part of the world, and their story is always bleak and riddled with atrocities about mistreatment. "Civilization" has not been kind to native peoples. Neither has modernity, for the most part... This story always gets a certain set of my friends all hot and bothered, but we all have these chapters in our history. The idea that the settlers of North America and the native Americans got along is a sad little myth we continue to abuse our children with each time Thanksgiving rolls around. Every government in the world has given the shaft to the original inhabitants of the land. Hmmm...I'll leave you with this quote from Bill Bryon regarding the original ancient inhabitants of Australia....
"At some undetermined point in the great immensity of its past-perhaps 45,000 years ago, perhaps 60,000, but certainly before there were modern humans in the Americas or Europe-it was quietly invaded by a deeply inscrutable people, the Aborigines, who have no clearly evident racial or linguistic kinship to their neighbors in the region, and whose presence in Australia can only be explained by positing that they invented and mastered ocean-going craft at least 30,000 years in advance of anyone else, in order to undertake an exodus, then forgot or abandoned nearly all that they had learned and scarcely ever bothere with the open sea again..."
Bill Bryson, from In A Sunburned Country

Drinks @ the Agency

After a long day in the theater, we were invited to cocktail hour at Leo Burnett Melbourne. Spent two very enjoyable hours getting to know the office's lovely folks, who proved to be friendly and gracious hosts, and provided us with delightful drinks and hor dourves. In addition to the beer bottles, they were mixing a superb concoction called the "Melbourne Mule," which I was told was a knock off of the Moscow Mule. Vodka, Bundaberg ginger beer, fresh lime leaves, and a cinnamon stick for good measure made for quite the tasty libation... I had a few, I'll admit it, and then promptly at 8 I joined the rest of the gang for a bus ride back to the hotel bar. Had some very illuminating conversations with the folks from LB/Melbourne over the next two hours at Sotano, and closed out the night with a charcuterie sampler. Looking forward to tomorrow and starting afresh. I love this country, and granted, although I haven't spent much time out here, in my two visits to Australia I have yet to encounter anyone who hasn't been incredibly gracious and delightfully entertaining. Not every nation is quite so accommodating towards tourists... Thank you again, folks. Looking forward to sharing some more good times over the next few days...

Nina Conti @ the Melbourne Comedy Gala 2009

...the monkey sings an aria...

Another Great Aussie Campaign

Eat lamb if you love your country. :-)

Australian Gold Rush History according to Bill Bryson

"The history of gold in Australia is a lively and generally heart-warming tale. It begins with a fellow named Edward Hargraves, who in 1849 traveled from Sydney to the California goldfields hoping to make his fortune. In two years of digging he found nothing but dirt, but he did notice an uncanny similarity between the gold-bearing terrain of California and the land of New South Wales beyond the Blue Mountains...
Hastening back to Australia before anyone else was struck by a similar thought, Hargraves began to hunt in the creekbeds around Orange and Bathurst, and very quickly found gold in payable quantities. Within a month of his discovery a thousand people were swarming through the district turning over rocks and banging away with picks. Once they knew what to look for, they began to find gold everywhere. Australia was swimming in the stuff. An Aboriginal farmworker tripped over one lump that yielded almost eighty pounds of precious ore, an almost inconceivable amount to be found in one place. It was enought o ensure a life of princely splendor-or would have been except that as an Aborigine he wasn't allowed to keep it. The rock went instead to the property's owner.
Scarcely had this rush gotten under way than gold was found in even more luscious quantities over the border in the newly created colony of Victoria. Australia became seized with a gold fever that made the California rush seem almost pale and indecisive. Cities and towns became visibly depopulated as workers left to seek their fortunes. Shops lost all their clerks. Policemen walked off their posts. Wives came home to find a note on the table and the wagon gone. Before the year was out, it was estimated that half the men in Victoria were digging for gold, and thousands more were pouring into the country from abroad.
The gold rush transformed Australia's destiny. Before it, people could scarcely be induced to settle there. Now a stampede rose from every quarter of the globe. In less than a decade, the country took in 600,000 new faces, more than doubling its population. The bulk of that growth was in Victoria, where the richest goldfields were. Melbourne became larger than Sydney and for a time was probably the richest city in the world per head of population. But the real effect of gold was to put an end to transportation. When it was realized in London that transportation was seen as an opportunity rather than a punishment, that convicts desired to be sent to Australia, the notion of keeping the country a prison became unsustaibnable. A few boatloads of convicts were sent to Western Australia until 1868 (they would find gold there as well, in equally gratifying quantities) but essentially the gold rush of the 1850's marked the end of Australia as a concentration camp and its beginning as a nation."
Bill Bryson from "In A Sunburned Country"

HumanKind 101

Here's a video documenting the Leo Burnett network's focused approach on how we cultivate communication for our clients. Some might call it corporate jargon, but in truth, it is a marketing perspective that puts people at the heart of every piece of communication produced by a client. Worth a listen...

The Scale of the Universe

My buddy Bill just pointed out this site to me...It's a visual representation of the scale of the universe, presented as a flash file online. Have a look, load it up and scroll back and forth to grasp how small and insignificant we all really are... Humbling...

http://primaxstudio.com/stuff/scale_of_universe.swf

First 7 Plus of 1Q10

Car One "Inheritance" - LB/Buenos Aires

Brekkie

"In the morning I treated myself to a big breakfast...Breakfast is, of course, our most savage event in Western society (if you hesitate to agree, then I urge you to name me another occasion-any occasion at all-when you would happily devour an embryo), and Australians seem to have a good fix on this. A lot of it comes down to a mastery of bacon. Unlike the curled shoe tongues that are consumed in Britain or the boringly crisp, regimented strips we go for in America, Australian bacon has a rough, meaty, fair dinkum heartiness. It looks as if it was taken off the pig while it was trying to escape. You can almost hear the squeal in every bite. Lovely. Also, they cut their toast thick. In short, the Australians know what they are about with breakfasts."
Bill Bryson, from "In A Sunburned Country"

Comedian Hannah Gadsby

Mark Watson - British Comedian @ Melbourne Comedy Gala

South Yarra & Record Shopping

At the recommendation of the hotel concierge, Rosalie and I ventured down Toorak Rd towards South Yarra, "one of Melbourne's most affluent inner-city suburbs." I don't really know what an "inner-city suburb" is, that seems to be quite the oxymoron, but then again, my understanding of the term "inner-city" has been shaped by my experience of America, where white flight has led to urban centers largely abandoned by the middle class, leaving only crime-riddled pockets of ghetto left. It's not like that in other parts of the world. South Yarra, for instance, is a vibrant shopper's paradise, a fashionable corner of Melbourne filled with mansions and upscale shops. I did some damage with a credit card in a short amount of time, which was to be expected, I suppose. I have yet to be able to go on one of these trips without hitting up a record store, and I've been looking forward to buying some sounds in Melbourne. Wandered into a Virgin Megastore and emerged a little later after finally getting my hands on two albums I haven't been able to find in stores in the USA. Also picked up a compilation put out by Vicious Vinyl, a local Melbourne dance music label, and found a few other odds and ends I look forward to poring over. Raiding these record stores on these trips defines my sound. A DJ is only as good as the places he digs...

Speaking of good sounds, the two albums I bought were by my latest favorite band, Fat Freddy's Drop, a incredibly soulful 7-piece dub reggae band out of New Zealand that I only discovered last year after stumbling over one of their tracks on a compilation I purchased in Madrid. The song below is a remix of one of the best tracks I've heard in YEARS, and I've been spinning it out at virtually every DJ gig I've had in the last 6 months. While this house remix by Jazzanova is juicy, the original is just indisputably gorgeous, and has a nice slow lilt that makes me close my eyes and bop my head each time I hear it.... This is called "Flashback," and it's the soundtrack for how I feel about my fiance, the love of my life. enjoy...

James Boag's "Pure Waters"

Over lunch, I had my first sip of James Boag's Premium. I had never heard of it till last year, when Jason Williams recommended putting the company's commercial "Pure Waters" onto the 2009 Cannes Predictions reel, and was subsequently proven right when the spot won a Gold Lion at Cannes. Great commercial. Pretty fine beer, too. Apparently the waters in Tasmania have magical properties...

New Melbourne Football Stadium

Drove past the construction for the new Melbourne Stadium, the future home of the Melbourne Victory and Melbourne Storm, the city's professional football and rugby teams. The stadium is an incredible-looking piece of architecture, and stands on glorious riverfront property. Even in its unfinished state, you can tell that it's going to be one of those magnificent sports venues that people delight in visiting. Check out the model below for what it'll look like once it's finished....

The Ugg Shop

Found the boots my fiance wanted! After venturing into one dubious shop, where the saleswoman quoted me the outlandish price of $250 for a pair of questionable tall lace-ups, Rosalie and I ventured down the incredibly hip Chapel Street until we found ourselves in a far friendlier store with much more reasonable prices. Bought my girl exactly what she wanted, a pair of genuine Australian-made Uggs, hand-crafted sheepskin boots "that keep your feet warm from the big chill, or cool from the summer heat, due to the amazing attributes of sheepskin (it’s true!)." My girl's got good taste...

Melbourne Shuffler

The dance community out here apparently invented a dance move that goes real well with electronica and raver music. It's called "The Melbourne Shuffle." Below is a clip from a documentary on it.... hmmmm... a little too much hard house for me...

Vegemite - spreadable yeast at its finest...

In our little bag of goodies from the folks at LB/Melbourne was a tube of Vegemite... If you're not from the Brit-diaspora, you may have never come across this stuff, or it's English equivalent, Marmite... Rich in B-vitamins and theoretically a nutritional powerhouse, its benefits are largely overshadowed by a taste its detractors compare to axle grease. For real, this stuff is POTENT. The advertising for both Marmite and Vegemite has centered around the idea that "you either love it or hate it," and the flavor is incredibly polarizing. Below is a classic vegemite ad from way back when, and below that, a newer installment. Below that is a Marmite ad from the UK constructed around the same premise.

Melbourne Theater Company

The good folks at LB/Melbourne decided that their office conference rooms weren't quite large enough to accommodate a week-long meeting of 30 people, so they booked a fantastic venue for us in the cultural district of the city on Southbank Boulevard. The Melbourne Theater Company, a new performance space that houses the oldest professional theater company in Australia. Walked into the room this morning and was blown away... We've congregated in some amazing hotel conference rooms over the years, but never in a full-scale working theater. This room could stage operas, and probably has... Worked all day setting up the room, as the tech guys from the venue rigged lighting and wired up all the technology we've dragged across the world to run this meeting. Gotta love it. Thank you Jason & Melinda for setting this up...

Melbourne vs. Sydney

The folks at the hotel were kind enough to deilver LB/Melbourne's lovely bag of welcoming goodies, including maps, an introductory letter, and a fistful of local delights, including a miniature Australian rules footy, a couple bars of local chocolate (violet crumble), a bag of Kangaroo jerky, and a tube of Vegemite... The letter pits this lovely city against it's longtime rival Sydney:
"For those of you who only know Sydney, we should tell you that the two cities have a ferocious rivalry. It's a sport in and of itself. Here's how the story goes: Sydney has the looks; Melbourne has the substance. Sydney is noisy and proud; Melbourne is sophisticated and understated. Sydney has the harbor; Melbourne has the arts and fashion. Sydney is one of the most expensive cities in the world; Melbourne is one of the most livable cities in the world."

Indeed, this city has a reputation for being the arts capital of Australia... Here's a promo I found online for the Melbourne Writers Festival, a gathering of the leading lights of Down Under's literary world... While Sydney is overrun with beach bums and sun worshipers, this city is well-stocked with people looking to tell stories... Not that the two are mutually exclusive...

Great Ad from Australia #1 - Carlton Draught "Skytroop"

Here's one of my favorite Australian ads from a few years ago... The humor in this work far transcends the cheap gags that characterize so many American beer ads. Yes, this may be silly and ridiculous, but the sheer scope of this film and the scale of the idea goes way beyond anything you've seen for Budweiser or Miller Lite lately...

Dylan Moran on "The English Voice"

Adam Hills on Australian Accents

Yoga with Yatren

It's a beautiful thing knowing I can find a yoga class anywhere in the world that will give me what I need to get right in my body and mind. My fiance and I are both certified teachers (she's way better than I am), and a huge chunk of our life together revolves around yoga. Simply put, it's the oldest, and most comprehensive system of health & knowledge ever created by our species. If you've never tried it, you're missing out on the best preventative medicine money can buy, and if you have tried it, well, then this entry is for you...

Desperate to do something nice for my body before this week of beer-drinking debauchery begins, I sought out a yoga studio today to get at least one practice in before I start typing 70 words a minute, 7 hours a day, for the rest of this week. I try to practice wherever I travel, and I've been to some really interesting classes in Bangkok, Buenos Aires, Sydney (at this absolutely gorgeous studio on the water), and now, Melbourne. Today's class at the Yoga Arts Academy was easily the best class I've been to outside of the US, though, and it's gratifying to find a system of yoga that I had never heard of before that was comprehensive, systematic, and taught with authentic mastery and creative sequencing. The good folks at this academy teach what they call Sakshin Ghatastha Yoga, "a flowing style of Yoga comprised of techniques for transforming the subtle essences of the body and developing its energy channels." Check out the link, it's an interesting and effective approach. I always find it inspiring to come across someone who shares the same passions as you, a similar education, and yet manifests that knowledge in a completely different way. Enter Yatren.

The teacher was a desi guy with an aussie accent, rocking a kesh-style ponytail and a friendly and approachable demeanor. He made me feel comfortable right away, and welcomed me into the large, carpeted studio with a big smile. I changed and lined up my mat in what I thought was the back corner, only to discover at the last minute that I'd lined up in the very front of the room right next to Yatren. I was mortified. It takes a special kind of narcissism to want to be in front of class and on display, and I'm not that type of guy. I like to hide in the back. Well, ultimately it didn't really matter, because the class was engrossing, stimulating, profoundly satisfying, and really quite a learning experience. I picked up some things I'm going to have to try...or convince my love to incorporate into her teaching... I left the studio refreshed, revitalized, attuned to my inner workings, and fully free of the jet lag that had plagued me all day. Thank God for yoga...I'd be a broken man without it...

Mall Trauma

Landed in Melbourne at 9:30 in the morning...a 17 hour difference from Chicago... Rosalie and I were out of the airport by 10:30 and safely ensconced in our rooms at the Hilton South Wharf an hour later. Great hotel, right on the riverfront, attached to the mammoth Melbourne Convention Center and an even bigger direct factory outlet mall. I went shopping for an item my lovely wife-to-be requested, only to discover, after two hours of endless wandering through a bright maze of fashion retailers and shoe stores, that it wasn't available at any of the thousand or so vendors in the mall. Lordy. There's nothing like a seemingly endless maze of shops to discombobulate a jet-lagged tourist. We retreated back to the hotel with a few impulse purchases, and I beat a hasty path back to my room to collect myself. Wasted away the afternoon getting settled in and wired up, while realizing just how out of whack my body was...everything was creaking and cracking and all sorts of novel aches and pains started to come out of the woodwork, all while I was stumbling around in a thick fog of sleep-deprived stupidity. I watched 4 movies on the plane, a documentary, and read a bunch too, and only got maybe an hour of sleep in over the course of that long, long flight... In desperate need of a reboot, I got online and sought out an early evening yoga class to help me get settled into the here and now... best move EVER...

Waiting for My Bags

Twenty-Four Hour Loss of Existence

"Each time you fly from North America to Australia, and without anyone asking how you feel about it, a day is taken away from you when you cross the international date line. I left Los Angeles on [February 27th] and arrived in [Melbourne] fourteen hours later on [March 1st]. For me there was no [February 28th]. None at all. Where it went exactly I couldn't tell you. All I know is that for one twenty-four hour period in the history of the earth, it appears I had no being.
I find that a little uncanny, to say the least. I mean to say, if you were browsing through your ticket folder and you saw a notice that said, "Passengers are advised that on some crossings twenty-four-hour loss of existence may occur" (which is, of course, how they would phrase it, as if it happened from time to time), you would probably get up and make inquiries, grab a sleeve, and say "excuse me." There is, it must be said, a certain metaphysical comfort in knowing that you can cease to have material form and it doesn't hurt at all, and, to be fair, they do give you the day back on the return journey when you cross the date line in the opposite direction and thereby manage somehow to arrive in Los Angeles BEFORE you left Sydney, which in its way, of course, is an even neater trick...."
-Bill Bryson - from In A Sunburnt Country