Space Hopping madness by SonyEricsson #pumpt

Pumping horny balls full of air and interacting with monkeys live on the internet.

The internet came alive again today, with a nifty interactive Space Hopper campaign from SonyEricsson.

Before I go on... Thanks to the nice girl [or boy in a wig] that responded to my tweet "Hey @chiefhopper Please give a Space Hopper a hug. Need a better screen shot for my blog ---> http://bit.ly/6nLoyl #pumpt ;-p". So funny, she gave me a big green one too. I think the chief hopper cracked his monkey whip.

I love it, about as much as the IKEA vs. Matrix thing yesterday, but in a different way. It's simple, genius, interactive, and highly contagious. It's mixing live streaming performance, by real people in a room full of Space Hoppers, with creative direction from the Twitterverse. This is a great example of a mega-budget mobile brand production vs. the on-the-cheap but ingenious IKEA production ---> I think there's an IKEA brand pun in there somewhere.

So the Twitterverse is bouncing ideas to the ring-master AKA @chiefhopper, locked away in a warehouse, somewhere in the real world, and a big screen is relaying the crowd-sourced crazy ideas to a team of white overall-clad SonyEricsson elves [it's nearly Christmas - give me a break - OK let's call them hopper-monkeys]. The aforementioned hopper-monkeys are performing tricks on demand e.g. Space Hopper pyramid building, Space Hopper races, posing for photos, and other cruel tricks [etc] - live on the streaming internet. Monkey business indeed.

Meanwhile, the Twitterverse is pumping life and more monkey-fun [OK air] in to shed-loads of deflated Space Hoppers. More air is pumped with every #pumpt hashtag tweeted. Hey Presto, the more #pumpt tweets you tweet, the more Space Hoppers the hopper-monkeys get to play with.

The campaign is cruel to animals, but I’m struggling to find meaning in the monkey madness. Oh, aside from some playful monkey cheerfulness on a cold, miserable, winter day. Which is nice - much better than going to the zoo. Thanks for the bouncy monkey nuts.

Unfortunately the whole bouncing monkey thing is nowhere near as funny as learning "how to say fu*k you in a pie chart" - which is puerile comedy genius from some crazy ape in OZ, that I also stumbled upon today.

Whatever will tomorrow bring? Dancing giraffes? Paint-balling crocodiles? Swearing snakes?

On Twitter? Hit retweet below [and add #pumpt to your tweet] and we can both have a #pumpt together. Offer expires in about ten days time.

Like this? Have some more inflatable fun <--- click there.

Freak Show at the Frieze Art Fair

Giving the art world a pasting!

I’ve been around the art block a few times and consider myself something of an expert in the art of artistic-mess. I’ve been an artist properly and lived on the poverty line and eaten rice with salad cream. I even sold a few bits n bobs, once to the bird who invented the Telly Tubbies and once to the guy who was chairman of the arts council at the time. Damon Albarn’s mum even paid my studio a visit once.

I’ve worked in the art world online for a dot com boom company selling limited edition artist prints. I met some of the big names and even spent a day at the shark mans house. I helped make his Eyestorm exhibition studio installation and was called upon to re-construct it when the cleaner tidied it up, thinking Hirst's window display [see slide 18] was a big mess left over from the exhibition opening night. Comedy. The truth revealed. And that's where and when I got Hirst to sign my own mini Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living plastic shark art.

Way back in the day I ran around naked with a guy called Alex playing football with a basket ball and other exhibits for goal posts after a boozy private view at the Decima Gallery. And once I got sent home by porn peddler Gavin Griffiths for getting inebriated on opening night cocktails. Think I got a kiss out of Tracy Emin at the Islington Design Centre, but that could be the wine too. I even met Bez from the Happy Mondays and kissed his wife/bird/girlfriend [I was never that sure which one & slight non art tangent].

Once upon a time many moons ago I had a studio in Colchester, then one in Cambridge and then one in gun-toting Dalston. I’ve got my own collection of art that’s probably worth a few bob too, by some of the above and some great artists of my time. I got lucky and got them cheap, because I got what I liked when it was fresh and new. Even Banksy’s first ever commercial rude copper print that I picked up for a song and now it’s worth a small bomb. So in many respects I feel I’m qualified to speak my mind; it works so many different levels etc. My BA honours in Fine Art stands for Bad Attitude [honestly] in Farty Art today.

I paid a whooping sum for a pair of tickets to the Frieze Art Fair in Regents Park and went along today [yesterday now] for what I hoped would be an inspiring day out with the family. Thank f*** I got my tickets 2 for 1. After pumping £6 in to the parking meter too. The best value for money today by far was the £11 for one coffee, a cold drink and 2 sticky buns. Ouch. And WTF is going on art world!

What of the Frieze art then?

Notwithstanding a few classics, like a stunning Gary Hume bird painting, and a couple of hidden gems; namely the chess wall of the world and some amazing David Shrigley prints [a snip at the asking price of four thousand Euros a pop]. The rest of the floor show excited me as much as a trip to IKEA, and I didn’t even come home with an ice cube tray. The most engaging artwork for me was the bins. I was blown away by one rude old art world hag clutching her clipboard who snipped "You wont let her touch it will you" talking about my little girl that was running rings around a painted tree. Bitch. It's a bloody tree painted white.

Now I know Frieze is a commercial show but still please, lighten up, liven up and try and blow me away with some NOISY stuff. Not this same old same old static fireplace tish tosh. In the good words of a good friend [@diggz] that I bumped in to on the day "Where’s all the interactive stuff" or words to that effect. Hasn’t the world of art moved on since I last paid it a visit? Frankly I'd say nearly half of the tish-tosh at FAF falls in to the "I could definitely do better with a paint brush stuck up my ass" category. I’m genuinely saddened to hear the art world is recovering from the recession and people are buying this shit. Wake up you beautifully dressed shoppers, buy something you really love, don’t fall for the white-washed sales pitch.

Before you go be sure to read why I think Frieze is Still Playing David Beckham and Missing a Trick Shot.


A few hidden gems and some tish-tosh...

Putting glorious spam in the spotlight

Is Eric Cantona the king of spam?

It’s been a wee wee time since my last post. I’ve been up to stuff. Stuff that means I'm checking my mail like a seagull relentlessly chasing a trawler looking for a tasty tit-bit, and I realized I that I seem to be getting inundated with the old spam.

I’ve come across a whole lotta spam spam glorious spam and it just keeps coming all day and all night long. Without usually giving spam the time of day I tend to just hit the delete button and blast it from the spam folder straight in to eternal spam hell. Hurray, no spam here! I don’t need that Viagra stuff, dating tips, handy advice for the bedroom stuff, another worthless degree, and I really don’t want a cheap Rolex at any price. Well that’s what I thought until I noticed that some of that spam stuff is pure gold. I thought, long and hard, and I started to see the wood for the trees, and realized that I should be putting some of the inglorious spammer bastards sh*t in the spotlight. So I have been collecting (preserving / dry curing etc) some choice cuts of fine spam.

Sure we can live without Mr Spam’s pestilence but lest we forget his/her relentless and occasionally truly creative efforts. Sure enough most of his/her work is worthless junk but you just have to confess that some of that stuff is award winning puerile genius, and some of it is really quite weird, a bit like the idea of cramming a dead pig in to a tin can, and certainly as mad as Eric Cantona.

Anyway below are a few recent unforgettable (subject) lines - the all new hall of fame for spam if you will. I’ll keep this up to date for as long time as I can keep it up or until the spam river runs dry. Thinking about it, Mr and Mrs Spam of Spamalottaville must be having a totally spamtastic time, generally rolling about laughing, writing loads of spam and creating occasional priceless porkers. You’re not exactly up for the Booker Prize but I’m a fan. Write again soon Eric.

Preserved spam: the spam hall of fame

21.08.09 ---> Gain the full control over your drilling machine

22.08.09 ---> In a Sieve we'll go to sea

22.08.09 ---> Get the longest banana

23.08.09 ---> Support your custard launcher

24.08.09 ---> Be a love rhino

24.08.09 ---> Oxford brain-test

25.08.09 ---> He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile

26.08.09 ---> Put your cork in every girl that your dream of!

27.08.09 ---> From now you don't need a crane to raise your instrument up

28.08.09 ---> Viagra Soft Tabs

01.09.09 ---> Maniac cut Hefner's balls

02.09.09 ---> Join online massacre

03.09.09 ---> Want 3D-slaves?

04.09.09 ---> And bells, and buttons, and loops, and lace

And I thought the spam river had really run dry... Until --->

02.10.09 ---> Mate like Clinton!

Stolen stupidness: The nut cracker

Pure ball breaking stupidity I had to steal. The nut cracker. Watch out Beadles about. From Pocketlint.

---> UPDATE: It seems the original video above has been removed from YouTube by the owner. I can only imagine that his ball busted friend was a bit cross and took legal action for making him look like such a dunce. So I've replaced it with something else that's totally irrelevant to the original subject, but still fairly stupid. I don't think the guys at Pocketlint can be arsed.