One Big Pissing Contest
Here’s a fact, ladies and gentlemen. The world is one big pissing contest. Particularly in the corporate world, it’s all about throwing your weight around, marking your territory, one dog sniffing and then pissing where another dog has just relieved itself 10 seconds before…
I bring this up because today’s unnecessary work stemmed from just such a situation.
JK is a brand manager at a big skincare company. JK is notoriously difficult to please, as proved by weeks of trying to satisfy her with a launch campaign concept. Once the campaign is approved, JK goes on a month’s leave. The copywriters and designers cheer. In her absence, JK has a replacement overseeing and approving the trade presenter and DVD product launch. The replacement is one of those minimalist types who likes bulleted lists and greatly reduced amounts of copy. Under the replacement, the trade presenters are designed and pretty much finalised- they just need to be sent to print.
Today JK returns. And relieves herself all over my trade presenter. Of course, JK’s sweeping changes sit in direct opposition to those made by her replacement. You can only imagine the mutilated condition of the trade presenter copy- large portions are now irrelevant and the structure disjointed. But the client is always right. Even when the changes will, of course, reflect back badly on me.
Such destruction stemming from ego is bloody frustrating…
This is all at a time when I’m drowning in multiple projects (including a very uninspiring tyre website when I know absolutely nothing about tyres) with very short deadlines. Or I’m being pulled into hour-and-a-half long meetings when I desperately have to do other work. The worst is that I have a very strong sense of my lacking creativity at the moment…
Anyway, I’m writing and uploading this post at home because I’ve been too busy to do so during the day.
This last weekend was a long one, but I don’t want to bore people with a day by day recap of my weekend so I’ll just sum it up with a few single sentence highlights packages.
Friday evening: Settlers of Cataan with Paul, Robin and Warren.
Saturday: Headed down to Toti to the Scottish Highlands festival / fete to meet the forum’s Bolo… in a skirt. Kinda.
Bolo in action
Sunday: FEAR Multiplayer, hard-drive raiding and a braai in the rain with Robin, Ian and Ashley.
Monday: With the rain and cold, the perfect lazy DVD watching day, followed by Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in the evening
The two movies we watched on Monday were Doom and Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.
Doom was OK, I suppose. It definitely is the first video game film to include a full on proper FPS (first-person shooter) sequence, and there is the definite novelty of seeing The Rock in foul-mouthed mode. But in the end I thought the film was retreading the same turf as Resident Evil, and missed so many opportunities by chopping out the whole ‘Portal to Hell’ aspect of the game’s storyline.
Plus, Doom proved to be yet another example of how The Matrix has ruined movie one-on-one final battles for all time. No longer can the hero and villain just punch and kick it out. The ‘Matrix Rule’ insists that the characters ignore the physics rules of reality, twirling about in the air and becoming quite literally superhuman in terms of their strength and resilience. Doom is about frantically reloading your shotgun while dodging fireballs. It is NOT elaborate wire stunts.
My ‘true’ Doom movie remains the very faulted but chilling Event Horizon. And if I was going to cast the anonymous marine lead from the Doom 3 game, I would definitely choose Prison Break / Blade III’s Dominic Purcell.
Oh, a plus in Doom’s favour is the inclusion on the DVD of 2 very nice, quite intelligent features on the evolution of the Doom game series.
As for The Legend of Ron Burgundy, I loaded with disc having heard rave reviews and numerous quotes from friends. The film was a great support cast that includes Paul Rudd, The 40 Year Old Virgin’s Steve Carell, Christina Applegate and numerous cameos from the likes of Luke Wilson, Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn. I imagine Run Burgundy is one of those acquired tastes that requires multiple viewings to really ‘get’ it. Having only seen the film once, I’m kind of reaching the conclusion that I prefer Will Ferrell more as a supporting character than a lead (with Ferrell’s portrayal of a deranged fashion designer in Zoolander being the rpime example). He’s definitely funnier in smaller doses. It had its moments but overall I wasn’t wowed by the film.
Anyway, and my DVD box set of Batman: The Animated Series Volume 2 arrived yesterday. I’m looking forward to watching all 28 episodes of this instalment of probably the finest animated superhero series ever made. I will have to get Volumes 1 and 3 at some stage though to complete the Bat experience…
I bring this up because today’s unnecessary work stemmed from just such a situation.
JK is a brand manager at a big skincare company. JK is notoriously difficult to please, as proved by weeks of trying to satisfy her with a launch campaign concept. Once the campaign is approved, JK goes on a month’s leave. The copywriters and designers cheer. In her absence, JK has a replacement overseeing and approving the trade presenter and DVD product launch. The replacement is one of those minimalist types who likes bulleted lists and greatly reduced amounts of copy. Under the replacement, the trade presenters are designed and pretty much finalised- they just need to be sent to print.
Today JK returns. And relieves herself all over my trade presenter. Of course, JK’s sweeping changes sit in direct opposition to those made by her replacement. You can only imagine the mutilated condition of the trade presenter copy- large portions are now irrelevant and the structure disjointed. But the client is always right. Even when the changes will, of course, reflect back badly on me.
Such destruction stemming from ego is bloody frustrating…
This is all at a time when I’m drowning in multiple projects (including a very uninspiring tyre website when I know absolutely nothing about tyres) with very short deadlines. Or I’m being pulled into hour-and-a-half long meetings when I desperately have to do other work. The worst is that I have a very strong sense of my lacking creativity at the moment…
Anyway, I’m writing and uploading this post at home because I’ve been too busy to do so during the day.
This last weekend was a long one, but I don’t want to bore people with a day by day recap of my weekend so I’ll just sum it up with a few single sentence highlights packages.
Friday evening: Settlers of Cataan with Paul, Robin and Warren.
Saturday: Headed down to Toti to the Scottish Highlands festival / fete to meet the forum’s Bolo… in a skirt. Kinda.
Bolo in action
Sunday: FEAR Multiplayer, hard-drive raiding and a braai in the rain with Robin, Ian and Ashley.
Monday: With the rain and cold, the perfect lazy DVD watching day, followed by Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in the evening
The two movies we watched on Monday were Doom and Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.
Doom was OK, I suppose. It definitely is the first video game film to include a full on proper FPS (first-person shooter) sequence, and there is the definite novelty of seeing The Rock in foul-mouthed mode. But in the end I thought the film was retreading the same turf as Resident Evil, and missed so many opportunities by chopping out the whole ‘Portal to Hell’ aspect of the game’s storyline.
Plus, Doom proved to be yet another example of how The Matrix has ruined movie one-on-one final battles for all time. No longer can the hero and villain just punch and kick it out. The ‘Matrix Rule’ insists that the characters ignore the physics rules of reality, twirling about in the air and becoming quite literally superhuman in terms of their strength and resilience. Doom is about frantically reloading your shotgun while dodging fireballs. It is NOT elaborate wire stunts.
My ‘true’ Doom movie remains the very faulted but chilling Event Horizon. And if I was going to cast the anonymous marine lead from the Doom 3 game, I would definitely choose Prison Break / Blade III’s Dominic Purcell.
Oh, a plus in Doom’s favour is the inclusion on the DVD of 2 very nice, quite intelligent features on the evolution of the Doom game series.
As for The Legend of Ron Burgundy, I loaded with disc having heard rave reviews and numerous quotes from friends. The film was a great support cast that includes Paul Rudd, The 40 Year Old Virgin’s Steve Carell, Christina Applegate and numerous cameos from the likes of Luke Wilson, Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn. I imagine Run Burgundy is one of those acquired tastes that requires multiple viewings to really ‘get’ it. Having only seen the film once, I’m kind of reaching the conclusion that I prefer Will Ferrell more as a supporting character than a lead (with Ferrell’s portrayal of a deranged fashion designer in Zoolander being the rpime example). He’s definitely funnier in smaller doses. It had its moments but overall I wasn’t wowed by the film.
Anyway, and my DVD box set of Batman: The Animated Series Volume 2 arrived yesterday. I’m looking forward to watching all 28 episodes of this instalment of probably the finest animated superhero series ever made. I will have to get Volumes 1 and 3 at some stage though to complete the Bat experience…
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