Carl's Jr. Urges Doctors to Have A Bourbon Before Surgery

For a company like Carl's Jr. to say "Eat Responsibly" is a joke. Oh wait, it's supposed to be a joke or at least we hope it is because they've been hyping their fat-filled, artery clogging burgers for years.

It was one thing to watch a hot socialite seductively eat a burger while making love to a Bentley. It's an entirely different - and a bit disconcerting - to watch a doctor scarf down a Kentucky Bourbon burger between surgeries.

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Ladies, Join Wilkinson Sword's Garden Party

Looks like Philips Shave Everywhere, pretty cool at the time, has been upstaged by Wilkinson Sword's Ma Garden Party (se video here)which officially launches March 16. Hooking up with French singer Simone elle est bonne, the brand is out to show just how much fun it can be to "garden."

It's a catchy tune. We're sure it'd be even more catchy if we could understand the lyrics. But you don't really need to to get what's going on and understand the message.

Puma Tries Hand at Digi-Love

For client Puma, Droga5 produced "Lift," an ad in which an avatar-like couple engages in a sultry courting ritual where nothing's really what it seems, and everything changes, and expectations between man and woman differ -- and it's all out there for you to see, projected on the walls and riffing off their bodies.

Didn't do much for us. If you wanna play girl-meets-boy, you'd be better served by the naughty-naughty Levi's or even childlike, slightly macabre Scion.

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NASA Collabo: A Microcosm of the New Media Renaissance

Musicians Squeak E. Clean and DJ Zegon joined forces under the name NASA (North America/South America) to release their first album, The Spirit of Apollo, which has been in-progress since '03.

Promotion strikes me as general and disorganized, but the pair has many talented hands behind it. According to the pressie, the Apollo album was conceived "with the righteous goal of bringing people together through music and art" -- as a result, it's heavy with surprising collaborations and interesting visual media.

Tom Waits growls over Kool Keith, Karen O taunts while Ol' Dirty Bastard gives shout-outs to Wu Tang and N.A.S.A from the grave, and David Byrne, Chuck D and others expound on the evils of "Money."

Other collaborators include Method Man, Seu Jorge, Kanye West, Santogold, George Clinton. Then there's the charmed director team: Syd Garon, Paul Griswold, 3Legged Legs and Flourescent Hill.

Artists that donated paint and pens to the animated music videos include Shepard Fairey, Sage Vaughn, The Date Farmers, Mark Gonzales, Marcel Dzama and Splunny. Some also contributed original album cover designs, so CD buyers get five interchangeable covers per copy.

I realize this is a lot going on so I'm gonna just show you stuff. Here's the latest release, People Tree with David Byrne, Chali 2na (from J-5!) and art by Marcel Dzama. It's magically delicious.

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Whatever Happened to Progressively Smaller Handsets?

Riding Ad Land's current obsession with breaking into Guinness, Cricket has just produced the world's largest cell phone -- a gigantosaur Samsung Messager composed of "wood, metal, lights, wizardry, and love."

Video here.

The phone -- so big you risk cardiac arrest if you happen to be lying on it in vibrate mode -- kicks off Cricket's Get Some Respekt campaign. See it in person through March 15th in Chicago; the monster of mobile hits Philly on the 20th.

Orchestrated by Seattle's Cultural Engineers and events firm NEVERSTOP.

Future Lions Taking Entries. On Your Marks...!

Attention ad students: The Future Lions ad competition is now taking entries for 2009.

Hosted by AKQA and the chastened Cannes Lions Int'l Film Festival, Future Lions seeks ideas for advertising a global brand "in a way that would not have been possible five years ago." Sky's the limit in terms of product, target audience, media and technology -- and THERE IS NO FEE TO ENTER.

Winners will be given a customized Flip Mini HD cam and will also be honored at Cannes Festival on June 26 at the Debussy Theatre. The top five ideas get registration to the Cannes Festival from the 21st-27th -- hence the camera, because you're goin' to France, bitch! -- and a limited-edition AKQA-designed toy called the Future Lion Cub. (Not sure what it looks like, but it's gotta be better-looking than this bad-boy.)

Submission deadline: May 4, 11:59 PST. Sounds far away, but it's not; get crackin', kids. Think of the bikinis, and the HD cams, and your faux friends, all consumed with envy and whatnot while you get tanned for being talented.

Don't Just Dab Your Mouth; THINK.

We've all heard the legend that JK Rowling sketched the birth of Harry Potter out on a diner napkin while scratching by on welfare. The iconic "I Love New York" campaign was supposedly conceived in similarly humble circumstances -- on somebody's crumpled serviette.

To leverage the power of this unlikely muse, the School of Visual Arts re-imagines diner napkins, toilet paper, sugar sachets and other incidental scraps as college-ruled paper.

Across the bottom of each sheet is the message, "Think. School of Visual Arts." Nice, simple and instantly-engaging. We wish we had some doodle-worthy napkin now, and we're not sure we even remember how to use a pen.

Work by Knarf/New York; more photos at Toxel.com.

Office for Mac Schools Us in 'Not-Getting-Caught Feng Shui'

This short film on pretending to work was put together entirely on Microsoft Office for Mac -- which is more than what we can say for Crispin's "I'm a PC" campaign.

It's a fun little watch, loaded with sneaky new tips for feigning productivity while rehashing stuff you probably already do -- like keeping that Excel spreadsheet just within easy toggling distance.

We much prefer iWork, but MSFT Office for Mac does have its merits. Props to the magical, miraculous Krystalline Armendariz for taking it upon herself to share a few. To support her, pass the YouTube link around.

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