WEBSITE: I Believe In Advertising

Novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, "Advertising is a racket, like the movies and the brokerage business. You cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero." And most of the time he would be right. But then there are those exceptional pieces of advertising that transcend the rest and become epiphanous works of art.

I Believe In Advertising is a great blog that hunts down and compiles such works of commercial genius from all over the planet, and displays them here, free of charge to the product's company and providing congratulatory kudos to the firm and artist(s) who designed the ad. Most of the featured advertisements are print ads from magazines and newspaper sources, however a few television commercials make the cut, as well as other unique and creative advertisers who choose to think outside the box a bit, like this "ad" for McDonald's from Zurich, Switzerland (below).


Wouldn't it be great if all advertising was this fun?!?

Sergio del Limonar

WEBSITE: Catalog Living

Have you ever been flipping through a Better Homes & Gardens magazine or Pottery Barn catalog and think about how you'd love for your house to look just like the photo spreads inside the pages? Everything is perfectly coordinated and there is never any accidental clutter. There are clearly designed themes and color-wheels are strictly followed to a T. Well, those rooms might not be that good of a fit for anyone's house.

The blog Catalog Living cleverly, well, catalogs, the oddly placed or bizarrely accented rooms and designs in your favorite publications devoted to home furnishings. Take, for example, the starfish scattered around the patio table decked out in seashore decor. What happens when there is a breeze? Or when someone wants to use the table, maybe to eat or something?

Sergio del Limónar

WEBSITE: What Would Emma Pillsbury Wear?

Going through a bit of Glee withdrawl? Take solace in the blog devoted to one of its most unique and gratifying characters. What Would Emma Pillsbury Wear? is centered around McKinley High School's own germophobic counselor, featuring a sort of cheeky how-to guide for this wishing to emulate her style.

Taking stills from the show and hunting down the exact (or similar) sources of her costuming is only one part of the site. The other entails finding things all over the web - from J. Crew to Etsy - that Miss Pillsbury could/should be wearing. So, while your coping with a Glee-less summer, you can always find ways to dress up like one of your favorites until it returns in the fall...or would that be weird and obsessive? Probably. Better to just enjoy the site instead.

Sergio del Limonar

WEBSITE: Bike Snob NYC

When I'm on a bike, I hate cars. They don't know the biking etiquette or signals, nor do they respect the right of way or bike lanes. When I'm driving a car, however, its the opposite; I hate bicyclists. They think they're smaller cars. I'm sure I'm not alone in this socio-ethical dilema.

The author of Bike Snob NYC has some similarly strong feelings, only his are a little stronger and probably much more knowledgable. As the blog's heading claims, he is "systematically and mercilessly disassembling, flushing, greasing, and re-packing the cycling culture." With a strong dislike for fixed speed bikes - "fixies" - and hipster bikers, the blog is as cut-throat as it is humorous. Ranging in posts from goings-on in the Big Apple to international biking news, the site will keep those who don't want to make a biking faux pas in the correct lane and out of oncoming traffic!

Sergio del Limonar

WEBSITE: I Can Has Internets

Random, witty, and even a bit snarky. I Can Has Internets has everything we here at ZONINO! love in a random, witty, and snarky blog. Taking the best of all that crap your friends forward to you in email or post on your facebook wall, the site filters out all but the stuff that is not wasting space on the web. This is a bookmark-for-sure page!

Sergio del Limonar

WEBSITE: My Ex-Wife's Wedding Dress

In 1697, William Congreve wrote, "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorn'd" in his poem The Mourning Bride. Well, the opposite is apparently true for Kevin Cotter, the author and creator of My Ex-Wife's Wedding Dress, a site devoted to the many uses a beautiful white gown can have if your spouse up and leaves.

In the era of green thinking, Cotter, who's wife of 12 years packed up and left him, develops creative ways in which to be practical, and evidentally, therapeutic with his ex-wife's dress. Forget "halloween costume;" these ideas range from the practical - scarecrow and tablecloth - to those bordering on blatent revenge, like a coffee filter, hammock, or mop.

Now, think carefully about all the useful things you could do with all the crap in that box your ex left behind before you just ceremoniously burn it in a backyard fire pit.

Sergio del Limonar

WEBSITE: My Dad Is A FOB

One of my first months living in Colombia I was invited to a potluck BBQ and was tasked with bringing boneless chicken breasts. As my Spanish at the time was less than adequate, I ran into a snag at the supermarket describing what I wanted. I knew how to say chicken (pollo) but "breasts" was not a part of my vocabulary. This scenario ended with a lot of blushing and a possibly inappropriate public game of charades. Nevertheless, cultural differences ultimately create good stories.

Cultural differences between family members, however, have got to be even more entertaining. No doubt they are more frequent as well! The contributor-driven website My Dad Is A FOB contains quotes, emails, and stories from cross-cultural families, usually where the parents have immigrated and not fully assimilated to their new host-country's language or nuances. "Fresh Off the Boat" parents telling their daughters to not date casually with emailed lessons such as "If you are in sandy beech send will be all over your body and so does it blacken you if you are in a coalmine." or conversations misusing "sexy" instead of "sexist" color this humorous site.

Some people don't have to go further than a family dinner to have a "cultural experience!"

Sergio del Limonar

WEBSITE: 10-Year-Old Movies

With the vastness of the internet and ease of creating a website, I am always amused with new and creative themes people come up with. When I first read about 10-Year-Old Movies on another blog, I had to check it out. The concept is simple: review, dissect, and discuss films that were released ten years ago. This is a fantastic idea, in my humble ZONINO! opinion, because the year 2000 brought us an interesting collection of movies, many of which are comically dated as we leave the single digit years of the first part of the new century. My favorite part of this site is that each re-review begins with a bulleted list entitled "Year 2000 Trademarks".

A lot has happened in the last ten years. Watching some of these movies brings to mind a simpler time when our big concerns were Y2K, starting a successful "dot com," and who was better - Britney or Christina. From a time when a Blackberry was still a fruit, Rihanna and Obama were not part of our collective lexicons, and no one knew what an iPod, "social networking," or a Kindle were, take a journey down memory lane with films such as Reindeer Games, The Skulls, Scream 3, and Down To You...and smile because you know you loved them once upon a time.

Sergio del Limónar

WEBSITE: Shadow Art

Art blog Beautiful/Decay has an interesting post about the newest in shadow art. Forget the hand puppets you made on the overhead project in elementary school when your teacher wasn't looking, these will blow your mind! According to the website, "the main artists featured here are Kumi Yamashita plus the art team [of] Tim Noble and Sue Webster." (Pictured below is a piece by the later.)



Bee

WEBSITE: Hipster Puppies

My disdain for LOLcatz and the like is widely known. However, Hipster Puppies found a place in my funny bone. Based out of a Tumbler blog, the site features photos of the canine variety, some dressed up and posed, others not, with faux-pretentious captions of the "hipster" persuasion.

For example, a resent post features a small lap dog with a studded collar, slightly cocked head, and Tucan Sam mohawk hairdo. The captions reads "Falcor begrudgingly explained to his mom that wearing girl’s jeans doesn’t make him gay." Another caption, with a picture of a Boston Terrier wearing white-framed "Risky Business" style specs and a cardigan straight from your Grandpa's closet in 1976, says "Popeye insists he doesn’t have 'a thing for asian girls,' even though his last four girlfriends have been Pekingese."

Oh, hipster puppies, you slay me!

Sergio del Limónar

WEBSITE: My Life Is Average

I heard an interview with a famous author the other day where he was asked how he comes up with some of his descriptions. His response was that he carries a small notepad around with him at all times at jots down the often inane thoughts that drift through his head as he experiences life. The color of some lady's dress, how the waiter said the word "water" in a slightly nasal way, the irony of the old man walking a puppy after dinner. Anything.

Now, imagine if you did this. Kind of like Twitter but less annoying and completely non-invasive in the self-centered attention-craved way. That is the idea of My Life Is Average. A blog that is anything but.

The tagline of the site is "Life is pretty normal today..." which is true but this "normal life" is intriguing. Reading the quick musings of its posts makes me think about what it would be like to travel around inside one of my funnier friends' minds for a couple days, eavesdropping on all their minute by minute internal dialogues.

As the entries are all super short it is great for just "popping in" from time to time as well as wasting away several hours laughing to one's self. So, in comparison, how "average" is your life???

Sergio del Limonar

WEB: Racialicious

Diversity.

The word is thrown around a lot. What it means to one might mean something completely different to someone else. The fact is though, that we, the people of this planet, are diverse. We are diverse in appearance, language, beliefs, heritage, culture, music, dance, food, dress, everything! And this diversity is becoming increasingly more, excuse the overuse of the word in this post, diverse as the world becomes a smaller place.

The blog Racialicious is a sort of watchdog group that both celebrates victories for us a human race and calls foul on people, organizations, and events that run aground on these same issues. Intelligently written and researched, each post gives a fascinating and insightful look at different perspectives on the idea of "race."

A recent analysis of the CNN series "Latino in America" was widely criticized by the site for promoting stereotypes and not following through with many promises the program made in it's outset. Another interesting recurring feature on the blog in the discussion of race, racial archetypes, and importance of certain characters on television and in movies.

Whether one agrees with the points of views of the various bloggers, it is a freshing taste of different opinions on topics that I know I often don't think about; I do now. Bookmark this site immediately!

Sergio del Limonar