Although the Hebrew Hammer  did submit a great drawing on a ketchup-stained cocktail napkin, Gaius definitely scored himself some points by submitting an actual DIGITAL version of his design. Also, my very talented girlfriend refuses to help me with these sort of things for anything less than a fillet at Prime 112. Nevertheless, Gaius’ designs absolutely rock.

He also submitted some possible designs for the blog.

  Although I jokingly offered the prize of a tasty dinner for this contest, Gaius has been working as a designer for 8 years. He’s a professional in every sense of the word. Check out Gaius’ site to see some more of his great work.

My favorite was the first image I posted. Let me know which one you like best.

Do you consider yourself somewhat of an artist? Do you enjoy ethnic food that has been mutated and watered down to suit your blunt American palate? Do you have trouble feeding yourself on a regular basis? Well my friend, this opportunity is for you. The Suit in Sneakers needs a logo. Not just The Suit blog, but The Suit me, which is why I’m holding an open design competition. Anybody from the interwebs can throw their hat in the ring for the grand prize of dinner for two at a local family eatery of your choosing. The only restriction is that you choose a place with crazy crap on the walls, as those tend to be more affordable then say, a place that doesn’t have crazy crap on the walls.

Here are the guidelines:

I want this to be more than simply my blog logo. I want it to be a symbol that represents me. Something that can be projected into the night sky when there is an advertising account that needs servicing. Something I can stamp on every piece of correspondence I send out.

The only requirements are that it incorporates my initials JF,  and is somewhat of a compact shape so that it fits on a letterhead. It can have sneakers, some big dark framed glasses, big headphones, some sharkyness, something Miami related, whatever you like.

I would like all entries by Thursday, July 23rd so I can announce the winner on Friday the 24th. I can also post all the entries if you’re open to it. You can promote yourself as a freelance designer on my blog, which is read by literally dozens of people on a daily basis.

So please, tell a friend. Tell loved ones. Spread the word. There could be a basket of jalapeño poppers in it for you.

Over the past few days, some popular movie bloggers like Victor Holtreman fromScreenRant (image cred) and Johnny Wright from YesButNoButYes received mysterious packages in the mail. The packages contained an old rusty mason jar with a bunch of objects inside like a shark tooth, a shredded bathing suit and closed beach sign. The most unsettling object however, was an obituary describing how the recipient died because of a shark attack.

 For a full description of the contents of the jar and the notes, check out either link to the blogs above.

One of the objects is labeled with the URL FrenziedWaters.com. The page simply shows undulating dark water with four mason jars floating in the center. One of them links you to a Facebook window and asks you to login, which I regrettably did. What followed was a first-person view of what seemed to be a shark attack. It began with laughter and splashing and ended with blood, foam, and screaming. That was the pleasant part. The screen then began flashing pictures of me. Pictures with friends and family. Old pictures I had forgotten were online.  Then my profile picture was posted at the top of a newspaper obituary with the year of my birth and my death, 2009. In bold letters it read “Shark Attack.” The names of friends were placed under quotes talking about what a tragedy it was. My palms are sweating by this point.

Allow me to remind you about what I’ll be doing in September. Yeah. The site didn’t scare me into thinking twice about the trip, but at the very least it did elicit some nervous laughter. “Wow, they made it look like a shark killed me. Heh…heh…”

Apparently this is a  promotional campaign for some sort of movie or show.  But before being shocked by my own obituary, the first thing I thought was “more shark porn.” With the annual Discovery Channel hit Shark Week beginning on August 2, many shark conservationists have hit the web to discourage the production of shark porn. Shark porn can be described as overly violent and dramatic shark footage that place priority on shock value versus truth and education. Check out Shark Divers take on the issue and the fear tactics of the campaign. 

Strangely enough, although I’ve always been a fan of Shark Week, it wasn’t until I planned to actually get in the water with sharks that I realized how much of the Discovery programming can be considered “shark porn.” For the casual viewer who doesn’t seek out additional information on sharks, a lot of what’s being shown on Discovery might only reinforce the myth of the mindless killing machine. This in turn might cause people to think shark fishing is OK, and that ridding the ocean of these monsters might be beneficial to us. Case in point, this guy who caught four very large and probably very old tiger sharks off of South Carolina.

So shark issues aside, the mysterious package campaign has provided some decent buzz online. For what? We’re not sure yet. Let’s see if they can keep it up long enough for people to know what they’re talking about.

Part of the campaign for the much anticipated Ford Fiesta is the Fiesta Movement, which involves 100 “agents” performing special missions and then posting content about them online. Miami has its very own Fiesta agent in popular local blogger Maria from Sex and the Beach.  She recently completed her second Fiesta mission; a geocaching adventure that took her through some of South Florida’s most scenic yet relatively undiscovered locales. Hit the jump for the video.

Is it pronounced geo-cash? Geo-chachè? As in ”Ñoooo Que Cachè!” the sister store of ”Ñoooo Que Barato!” over in Hialeah. For the gringos, that translates to “daaamn that’s snazzy” and “daaamn that’s cheap.” The agents can’t seem to agree, but nonetheless the mission looked pretty fun. Geocacahing seemes like an emotional roller-coaster. “Yes, we found the treasure! It’s a Tigger doll and a note scribbled on a cocktail napkin. Sonofacrap.” However, it’s a neat activity that companies can really build fun ideas around, especially with GPS-enabled phones so common nowadays.

For the past couple of year’s I’ve wanted to visit all the hidden gems South Florida has to offer that locals rarely visit. For exaple, the Coral Castle, Fairchild Tropical Gardens and countless free parks like Matheson Hammocks and Pinecrest Gardens as seen in the video. Pinecrest Gardens used to be Parrot Jungle. The real parrot jungle that actually looked like a jungle. Not this Parrot Jungle Island crap on Watson that’s all concrete and charges $40 at the door. The good news is it looks like the jungle is still there and could make for a nice afternoon in the shade.

Apart from Maria’s blog, you can also follow the Miami Ford Fiesta team on Twitter. I look foward to reading about the next mission.

The countdown has begun. On September 28th I set sail from San Diego to Isla Guadalupe, a remote island off of Mexico with one of the highest seasonal concentrations of GREAT WHITE SHARKS on the planet. Yes, I will be in the water with them. And yes, the water may become slightly warmer when I lay eyes on my first shark.

It will be a five day trip, with three days worth of cage diving time. We’re using what looks like a great group called Islander-Charters . Check out the trailer for a documentrary called  Island of the Great White Shark featuring our future home away from home, the Islander.

For the next three months I will be going shark crazy. I’m reading  a great book called The Devils Teeth about the White Sharks off of the Farallon Islands near San Francisco just to get an idea of what to expect.

One of the great things about the trip is that we’ll have virtually unlimmited time in the cage during the three days at the island. I figured by the end of the first day I’ll have enough pictures, so I might take on a little photography project.  Send me a message you want written on a board and I’ll hold it up while inside the cage and surrounded by sharks. I’ll send you the pictures when I get back. It could be a “hi mom!” or “jim’s a douchebag!” Anything you want.

Laura Martinez from Mi Blog es Tu Blog never disappoints in posting the most ridiculous Hispanic news from the furthest corners of the interwebs. Today she posted a video from the cutting edge journalists at NBC’s Today show about the “emerging” Hispanic market. I laughed, I cried, I shook my head in disbelief. See the video below.

  First off, I’ll give them a B- for effort because I’m sure they had good intentions. I suppose it’s always a positive thing  for people to attempt to learn about, and appreciate another culture. However, doing so in the uber-cornball style of the Today show might defeat whatever purpose they were trying to achieve. Promoting things like the Miami Sound Machine, J-Lo and Zumba as our contributions to American culture might make people HATE Hispanics.

 My biggest problem with the piece by far is the tone of disbelief that we aren’t all border-jumping landscapers. “I would’ve never guessed that guy was Hispanic! He accomplished something!” As if success is a characteristic you don’t usually attribute to an Hispanic person. It was pretty much the equivalent complimenting a black person with, “you speak so well.” Um, thanks?

I was browsing through the New Times’ Best of Miami 2009 issue, when I came across an interesting category: Best Local Girl Makes Good.  The award went to a Debbie Attias, a former rapper who is now biking across the country to raise money for the World Wildlife Fund. A worthy feat no doubt, but I recently learned of a Miami girl who’s ‘made good’ on a much larger stage.  Dr. Mireya Mayor is an anthropologist and one of the star explorers in the History Channel’s new series Expedition Africa.

After reading The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon a few weeks ago, I began reading about other anthropologists and adventurers. As if by design, Expedition Africa premiered right at the height of my own obsession. The series features a team of explorers retracing the steps of Henry Morton Stanley, the reporter who braved the wilds of Africa in search of Dr. David Livingstone, who dissapeared while looking for the source of the Nile.

From the very first episode, I suspected that Dr. Mayor was a Miamian. No amount of doctorate degrees and months hacking through god-forsaken jungles can mask a Miami accent. Not to mention the name Mireya, a seriously old-school Cuban name. I checked out her bio online and sure enough, not only was she the daughter of Cuban immigrants and raised in Miami, but she had also been a Miami Dolphins cheerleader! Como??

After finding her calling for anthropology almost by chance as a student at UM, she went on to conduct some serious field work.

Mireya, then only 22, applied for her first grant. Though a Miami Dolphins Cheerleader and model, she received the grant and went on to spend that summer in the remote jungles of Guyana, one of the most unexplored regions of the world at that time. The following year she journeyed to the wilds of Madagascar into areas so remote, that she often found herself surrounded by local villagers who had never seen a foreigner before her arrival. Mireya completed the first ever long-term and genetic studies of two of the most critically endangered primates in the world, Perrier’s sifaka and the Silky sifaka.

Along with becoming the first female wildlife correspondent on the “Ultimate Explorer” series on the National Geographic channel, which got her a couple of Emmy nods, she also convinced the leaders of Madagascar to designate a lemur habitat a national park.  Her list of accomplishments goes on and on.  

If you have any doubt as to whether she is the real deal or not, just tune in to the show and watch her wrangle a cobra like she was born doing it. Not too shabby for a Cubanita cheerleader from Miami.

Nature and I have not been getting along lately. I try to be nice to nature. I love nature and want to do things to protect her. But she just keeps spitting in my face. Allow me to explain.

First off, part of the reason for the long blog hiatus is that I spent a couple of weeks helping girlfriend after her ACL surgery. Once I break my blogging momentum I’m usually done for a while. We went skiing in beautiful Vail, Colorado for spring break. As we enjoyed the pristine snow, majestic mountains, and itty-bitty bunny tracks around the ski trails, nature said “BOOM! Take that lovers of me…torn ACL for you little lady. Enjoy that.”

Nature claimed many knees during that week, as the sidewalks and restaurants were littered with a pathetic army of invalids crutching about. Nature also felt the need to give a 10 year-old in our group snow blindness for a couple of days. Gee thanks.

It wasn’t the first time. A couple of years ago during a trip to Argentina, we were horseback riding through the fields behind an estancia. Our guide spoke to us about the ecology of the area and the history of Argentina. Then nature felt the need to speak up and said, “Hey horse…no not you, the really big one. I need you to freak out and kick the guy behind you right on the shin. I’m talking square on his shin-bone.” As they rushed me to a small farmers clinic with blood streaming down my leg, I thought simply…why?

Numerous times since then I have tried to find volunteer positions where I can offer my time to help study and protect marine animals and the ocean. I would chop fish-heads and hand-feed sharks if they wanted me to, I just wanted to get involved and have a chance to get in the water. But my efforts led me nowhere.

A while ago I wrote about Sylvia Earle’s TED Talk and her efforts to protect marine life. Part of her TED page included an open request for volunteers who wanted to help her achieve her wish: “Protect the blue heart of the planet.” I offered my services and a young, virile, bilingual advertising exec. Today I received a response from the TED team. Below I will post the E-mail in its entirety. Please read it if you want to know what sentence (in bold below) made me punch a hole through my flimsy cubicle wall. Also, there’s a link to an important survey…or something…I don’t care anymore.

Update from the TED Prize – Sylvia Earle’s Wish
“Protect the blue heart of the planet”

As our TED Prize team moves forward with fulfilling Sylvia Earle’s wish to create more global ‘hope spots’, we would like to give everyone who so generously offered their support an update.
We have partnered with the amazing team at Razorfish and the brilliant Marc Mathieu of Bedo, who are creating an oceans awareness marketing campaign to be launched next year in anticipation of the TED@Sea expedition.  The campaign will be an integrated experience that generates broader awareness of the problems plaguing our oceans and compels individuals to take appropriate actions.

Taking place between April 3- 6th, 2010, a lucky group of TEDsters will be embarking on an expedition to the Galapagos Islands for a seven day, TED conference aboard the eco-friendly Lindblad National Endeavor Ship. Streaming live for the first time, with speakers ranging from marine scientists, ocean explorers, musicians, artists and activists, and with all talks focusing on the oceans, TED@ Sea should be an unforgettable experience.

Our goal is to influence policy makers and citizens to leave this experience with the determination and action steps to fight for more marine protected areas around the world. Our additional partners who will be working to make this possible include National Geographic, IUCN, Google Earth and Deep Search.
Attached is a link to a survey on the oceans. As we move forward with creating this campaign, we are trying to get a better understanding of the public’s knowledge of the dangers facing the oceans today. Please take a minute to take the survey and help us make Sylvia Earle’s wish come true!

http://webeffective.keynote.com/v.asp?inv=02BC9E393B1A4ABCA1F7BBE4E81F4B7B

A few months ago I was certain that T-Pain’s career would go the way of the Dodo and Jah Rule. How much more vocoder singing could we possibly tolerate? A lot, it turns out. T-Pain has actually been making some good songs with legitimate artists. It also turn out that he’s seems to be pretty cool.

After the critically acclaimed (by critics, I mean  this guy and myself) I’m on a Boat with Andy Samberg’s The Lonely Island, he proved to have a good sense of humor. He’ll continue his forray into comedic stardom among 20-somethings and fanboys when he stars in a live-action episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force on May 31st.

The special episode is tied to a promotion Burger King pulled way back in October where they searched for a real-life Carl via Miami’s Crispin, Porter + Bogusky. The winner of the contest (below) will star along T-Pain as Frylock, John Benjamin as Shake, and an exercise ball (really) as Meatwad. This will either be very funny, or a total failure, so it’s something to look forward to.

By the way, all the press I’ve seen on this referred to T-Pain as a rapper. If anybody bothered to do some research they would have seen that the Miami native’s first album is called Rappa Ternt Sanga. How about a little fact-checking people! Hat-tip to BrandFreak for the story.

PSFK always has fascinating stuff. This recent post of Celestine Arnold’s talk called “Ghosts in the Machine: Digital Multiculture” certainly did not disappoint. As you may know, I am an account person for my agency’s multicultural team. I also consider myself a multicultural gamer, so this topic hit particularly close to home.

The main focus of the presentation was that minorities make up a significant portion of gamers, yet are underrepresented in games with the exceptions of villains, stereotypes, athletes and punchlines. Apart from the Grand Theft Auto franchise, which more than satisfies the stereotypes category, I struggle to think of high profile characters from a recent game that represent something other than a white male. There’s the female character from Mirror’s Edge I assume is Asian.

The black guy in Left 4 Dead.

Oh, and all those people from Resident Evil 5. Actually…that one, not so much. There’s a very detailed analysis on the race and poverty issues in RE5 here via GameSetWatch.

Another interesting topic Celestine covered was the interaction between gamers on digital platforms like Second Life and Xbox Live. “It’s like the wild west … people are supposed to be all equal, but that’s not really how it is.” She mentions studies that have shown that racism on these platforms usually reflects similar actions taken in real life. For example, the schmucks who target my buddy when they see his gamertag “Hebrew Hammer,” would probably exhibit antisemitism in other situations.

These sort of topics always dance around a gray area, because exclusion is a very veiled form of racism. I’m sure many people will be very skeptical, but Ms. Arnold perhaps puts it best when she explains, “as the majority, you don’t see that everything has been created for you. In first person shooter games you have a white hand.”

UPDATE: Call of Duty: World at War just announced it will release another map pack featuring Japanese zombies instead of Nazi ones. So…there it is. Not, sure if that helps the discussion.