Big Leather Couch

Can you believe gas is down so low already...not sure what the cost is by you, but today I filled up for $1.79/gal - actually, to be honest, it was $1.69/gal, because I got a $0.10/gal discount by buying groceries last week. Both of the major supermarkets here give gas discounts.

TIME TO DONATE SOME RICE TODAY!
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Build your vocabulary, feed the hungry...
16,618,642,590 grains donated at this point...16 BILLION TOPPED!



Well, it has been a real tiring trip...

Landed in Atlanta and got a call from the plant telling us they were ready for us...Headed on over and began making some color corrections...

Then we had some press problems and it extended the approval until about 7:00 pm...

Went right to dinner and began with a plate of 1/2 & 1/2 (half homemade potato chips and half fried onions), shared by the table as we had a couple of cocktails...

This was followed by clams on the half shell...sweet and yummy...and then a nice blackened rib-eye steak, cooked pink but not bloody...we shared some potatoes au gratin, sauteed green beans and sauteed mushrooms...

During dinner we knocked off two bottles of Silver Oak Cabernet, a most wonderful wine...

Dessert was a shared slice of NY Cheesecake, and a couple of espressos and Sambucas...

Headed back to the hotel around 11:00 pm and got into bed...phone rang about two minutes later at 2:16 am and we threw on the sweats and headed over to the plant...

passed at least 4 cops on the 15 minute drive, all doling out tickets...kept our speed to the posted 55 mph...

approval number two ended and we were back in the car...cops still all around...and climbed into bed at around 4:00 am...

Two minutes later at 6:24, the phone rang and we threw back on the sweats and got back into the car... no cops spotted on this journey...

approval number three ended and we were happy we had grabbed our sunglasses since the sun was bright...we were back in bed at around 9:00 am... slept until 11:30 am...

Spent the afternoon doing emails (business and personal) and sliding down our sidebar visiting our friend's blogs...and writing this post...

real drained, it is not as easy as it used to be...when we were in our 30's we did 56 hours straight in Chicago and when we were done we went out drinking to try and break the buzz...drank for about 3 hours and then headed to our hotel where we watched a movie on HBO until 6:00 am...slept for 12 hours...

Last approval will be at around 8:00 am this morning and then we will probably head to the airport and see if we can get out of dodge by going stand-by on an earlier flight than our schedule 5:26 pm flight...weather seems to be in a flux for today in Memphis with some possible ice and even snow...should make for some fun travel

We are wondering why our visits are really down recently...we see people on other blogs who were regulars here and yet they do not show up and take their seat on The Couch...it makes us wonder why...

we will just accept that some people have decided they are not pleased here or with us any longer...

You can talk about posting for yourself as much as you want, but when you see these kind of things it is sad and frustrating...

OK, enough...we are tired and allowing ourself to blabber about this and feel all creepy...

If we had not made a vow to never delete something we wrote here early on, you probably would not even be reading this...



Sunday is the big day for the NFL...BIG BLUE vs. THOSE OTHER GUYS...and in case you didn't know, our son Matt is a huge NE fan...OK, so making him live in MA from 5 until 10 did have a lasting effect, sue us !

We will leave you this week with more more commercial and a wish that the commercials this year live up to the hype and not be as boring as they have been the last two years...

We always come back to this ad...arguably the most famous Super Bowl commercial ever... The story of the creation and decision to air the commercial is as interesting as the commercial itself.

It was directed by Ridley Scott right after he finished the legendary "Blade Runner".

The 60-second film was created by the advertising agency Chiat/Day, with copy written by Steve Hayden.

The film was shot in London and most of the actors were British skinheads hired for the day at a cost of $125 each, as the director was unable to find enough actors prepared to shave their heads.

It was shown to a large audience for the first time in October 1983, at Apple's annual sales conference in Honolulu, Hawaii. Based on the reaction of the sales team and management reviews, Apple executives booked two television advertising slots during the upcoming Super Bowl.

However, the Apple board of directors was dismayed by the ad and instructed management not to show it and sell the slots. Despite the board's dislike of the film, Steve Wozniak (co-founder of Apple) watched it and offered to pay for the spot personally if the board refused to air it.

The reason the commercial was saved from total cancellation was the result of an act of defiance and an act of bravado.

According to the book "The Mac Bathroom Reader" by Owen Linzmayer:
“ The board hadn't demanded the commercial be killed, nonetheless Sculley asked Chiat/Day to sell back the one and one half minutes of Super Bowl television time that they had purchased. The original plan was to play the full-length, 60-second 1984 spot to catch everyone's attention, then hammer home the message during a subsequent commercial break with an additional airing of an edited 30-second version.

Defying Sculley's request, Jay Chiat told his media director, Camille Johnson, "Just sell off the thirty." Johnson laughed, thinking it would be impossible to sell any of the time at so late a date, but miraculously, she managed to find a buyer for the 30-second slot. That still left Apple with a 60-second slot for which it had paid $800,000."

The commercial that launched the Macintosh is purported to have been shown only once; but to qualify for 1983's advertising awards, the commercial also aired on December 15 at a small TV station in Twin Falls, Idaho [CBS affiliate KMVT], and in movie theaters for weeks starting on January 17th.

It is now seen as the first example of event marketing, and is popularly credited with starting the trend of yearly "event" Super Bowl commercials.

It lives on in infamy...