The Atkins Group Christmas 2006 FlashThang©

Seasons Greetings form moi and all the cool kids I work with over at The Atkins Group.

Check out The Atkins Group Holiday Message

Peace and Happy Christmas!

That's Right,

HMK

Hi-Fi Genius!

Stumbled upon this over here.

This is one of the coolest rigs I've ever seen!

They claim it's German - all I know is this thing is sweet and it need to be recreated and updated with new guts.

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HMK

The Magical Mystery Stream

The Magical Mystery Stream Is Going To Take You Away!

Launch The HMK Magical Mystery Stream

Copy the url and paste it into your iTunes:

iTunes>Advanced>Open Stream>Paste url

My friend Scott Blackwell took this awesome shot scuba diving last year. I helped out with a little retouching and just had to post this.

Enjoy!

That's Right,

HMK

Apes Hill Club, Barbados Site Launch

And here's another site officially launched today. Just one of the 9 sites we're working on for the Landmark Land Company - a group that specializes in Golf and Residential Development.

Checkout: Apes Hill Club

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HMK

New South Padre Island Site Launch

Sweet!

The first of 5 new sites we're launching this month is officially live.

This one is for the South Padre Island Convention & Visitors Bureau.

Go South Padre Island

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HMK

Vino What You Vant

Check out The Nice.

The Nice Ice cooler is a real deal wine cooler. Fill the mold with water, freeze for 24 hours, then remove to create a gorgeous bottle chiller made of ice. Throw in some fruit, food coloring, ornaments and more before freezing for a stunning effect, or place a candle inside after frozen for a dazzling light display.

Ordering Info: Dutch By Design

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HMK

Saatchi Creates an Online Hangout for Artists

“Being an artist is a solo endeavor, and this is a safe way to see what others are doing,” says Denise Parsons, an art student in San Francisco who shows her work, above, on the Saatchi site.

Julie Ann Travis , 23, a graduate student at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, is curious to see what her peers are up to and to share some of her latest work. So recently she posted a self-portrait in which her head is buried in a pile of dirt at Stuart, the latest addition to a recently redesigned Web site for the Saatchi Gallery in London.

The brainchild of the London-based advertising magnate and collector Charles Saatchi, this social networking outlet — a kind of MySpace knockoff for artists — is causing something of a sensation, boosting traffic at the gallery’s Web site overall to more than three million hits a day.

Read The Article: The New York Times

Check Out The Site: Saatchi Gallery


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HMK

James Bond: An Everlasting Brand

In 1962's Dr. No, a tuxedo-clad Sean Connery subdues assassins, foils the world domination plans of an evil genius, and seduces pretty women, all with an occasional bon mot thrown in. Forty-four years, 20 films and five leading men later, the James Bond film franchise continues to flourish by relying on that same basic formula -- and with good reason, film and marketing experts say.

Read It All

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HMK

Thanks to Angus Loten at FastCompany

Spyhole

Click Enlarge +

Model Eva Padberg personally presents the new Otto catalogue to thousands of homes across Germany and whoever looked through the spy hole to see who was there saw Eva with the catalogue and the order number.

Nice.

Agency: Kolle Rebbe, Germany
Via: Goodness

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HMK

And the winner is... Jackie Earle Haley!

This just in!

Jackie Earle Haley has just won the Best Supporting Actor Award from both The New York Film Critics Award and the San Francisco Film Critics Circle for his amazing performance in Little Children!

(Runners-up: Eddie Murphy for Dreamgirls and Steve Carell for Little Miss Sunshine)

Not too shabby!

The New York Film Critics
The San Francisco Film Critics

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HMK

Little Children Trailer

If this awesome trailer is any indication, it looks like New Line Cinema might finally be distributing Little Children beyond the indie realm.

I can't wait to see this film!

Go Jackie Earle Haley!

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HMK

Over A Billion Scared

Dude, the original Ronald McDonald was way scarier than the new guy.

And yeah, that’s Willard Scott behind the makeup.

Wow,

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HMK

Adverbatims

AdVerbatims

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HMK

New John Dufilho Video

The Bridge Of Stolen Bicycles - video powered by Metacafe

Strange things can happen when educational videos become public domain and join forces with a Grammy nomine for best alternative album. This is the 5th of 12 videos I'm been putting together for Sir John and his lable Glurp.

Warning: The Bridge Of Stolen Bicycles is not for those that creep-out easily...

Check out the rest, so far, at johndufilho.com

And this one is not up yet either...

My Circuits Are Blown


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HMK

Fly Finds!

If you're anything like my wife and her gaggle of friends during this Holiday shopping season you'll dig theses goodie gifts with a definite French twist, you'll save yourself some shopping time by check out this groovy online version of the P.O.S.H Chicago store.

There's some sweet brand new stuff - like these awesome these soup bowls, but their Flea Market Finds truly make it worth the click..




Check it out: P.O.S.H

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HMK

Flipperoo Clock

Ok, this is officially on my wish list .

Check out this sweet analog clock with flipping dates. They've hand drawn a whole bunch of numbers and little surprises on the flip things.

It comes in three colors: silver, orange, and green.

Each box is hand-numbered and the production is limited to just 200 pieces.

Get the Flipperoo Clock quick!

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HMK

Jeff

Ikea has clearly run out of names for it's products...

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HMK

Very Hip.

And Very Smart.

decor8

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HMK

Authentic Pseudo Sushi

So wer'e going to go sushi before Emily's play tonight.

Tonight's also the night that we meet Budros' new Russian girlfriend, Elena.

I only hope she's not Putin anything radioactive in my noguri...

And this just in... On a recent business trip to Colorado, Japan's agriculture minister popped into an inviting Japanese restaurant with a hankering for a taste of back home. What Toshikatsu Matsuoka found instead was something he considered a high culinary crime -- sushi served on the same menu as Korean-style barbecued beef.

"Such a thing is unthinkable," he said. "Call it what you will, but it is not a Japanese restaurant."

A fast-growing list of gastronomic indignities -- from sham sake in Paris to shoddy sashimi in Bangkok -- has prompted Japanese authorities to launch a counterattack in defense of this nation's celebrated food culture. With restaurants around the globe describing themselves as Japanese while actually serving food that is Asian fusion, or just plain bad, the government here announced a plan this month to offer official seals of approval to overseas eateries deemed to be "pure Japanese."

Some observers here have suggested that the government's new push for food purity overseas is yet another expression of resurgent Japanese nationalism. But the mentality in Japan also echoes a similar movement by several nations -- including Italy and Thailand -- now offering guidelines and reward programs to restaurants abroad to regain a measure of control over their increasingly internationalized cuisines.

So beware, America, home of the California roll. The Sushi Police are on their way.

A trial run of sorts was launched this summer in France, where secret inspectors selected by a panel of food specialists were dispatched to 80 restaurants in Paris that claimed to serve Japanese cuisine. Some establishments invited the scrutiny, while others were targeted with surprise checks. About one-third fell short of standards -- making them ineligible to display an official seal emblazoned with cherry blossoms in their windows or to be listed on a government-sponsored Web site of Japanese restaurants in Paris.

Matsuoka, who took over Japan's top agricultural job in September, is the mastermind of the new "Japanese restaurant authentication plan." He said it does not always take a culinary sleuth to spot an impostor. "Sometimes you can tell just by looking at their signs that these places are phony," he said.

"What people need to understand is that real Japanese food is a highly developed art. It involves all the senses; it should be beautifully presented, use genuine ingredients and be made by a trained chef," he continued. "What we are seeing now are restaurants that pretend to offer Japanese cooking but are really Korean, Chinese or Filipino. We must protect our food culture."

In recent years, few culinary traditions have witnessed the kind of global boom, and distortion, of Japanese food.

In the United States alone, the number of restaurants claiming to serve Japanese food soared to 9,000 in 2005, or double the number a decade ago, according to Japanese government statistics. The government projects that the number of Japanese restaurants worldwide will leap to 48,000 by 2009, more than double the current level.

Some have gone all-out to ensure authenticity. Masa in New York City imports its fish from Tokyo's Tsukiji Fish Market while Umu in London regularly flies in the soft water of Kyoto, Japan's old capital, to make its bonito fish broths. But they are largely exceptions in a world where the Japanese fear their food is being lost in translation.

In the United States, the proliferation of counterfeit Japanese foods now includes seaweed rolls stuffed with smoked salmon and cream cheese. In Canada, Vera's Burger Shack in Vancouver is offering tempura-battered onion rings. As the recent test in Paris showed, even such gastronomic bastions as France can be guilty of sushi sacrilege.

"You will find restaurants here that serve salmon sushi with a little yakitori [charcoaled chicken] on the side and call themselves Japanese," said Tsuyoshi Nakai, the Paris head of JETRO, Japan's overseas trade promotion arm. "Then there are the ones serving what they claim is Japanese sake, but of course, it isn't. What is it? I don't know. But it smells, and tastes, very strange."

With the demand for real Japanese chefs far greater than the global supply in a nation with a shrinking population and few modern-day emigrants, many foreign owners of Japanese restaurants have turned to cooks from other Asian countries to add a faux touch of authenticity to their establishments. Pan-Asian restaurants have also begun adding more healthful and light Japanese dishes to their menus to cater to new tastes, some of them going as far as changing their names to the inevitable "Mt. Fuji" or "Sakura" to lure broader clienteles.

That has infuriated Japanese sushi chefs overseas, leading some -- including those who formed the D.C. Sushi Society in the 1990s -- to unite into advocacy groups aimed at protecting an elaborate form of cooking that is tradition-bound and highly hierarchical.

Officials here emphasize that it is not the race of the cooks they are concerned about, but the fact that such chefs are rarely properly trained and know little about the culture behind the food.

In Japanese haute cuisine, for example, the aesthetics of a meal -- from elegant ceramic serving bowls to suitable flower arrangements -- are considered as important as the food itself. Quality quashes quantity; a single mouthful of otoro -- fatty tuna sashimi sliced just right -- can sell for $20 in Tokyo sushi houses. Japan's famously elaborate kaiseki ryori can take days to prepare and must be presented in small courses on plates and in color combinations that delight and amuse.

Most importantly, such meals must be prepared by highly specialized chefs -- some of whom apprentice for years before they are permitted to cook for paying customers.

Makoto Fukue, the head of the Tokyo Sushi Academy who trains about 75 Japanese chefs-for-export a year, insisted that the inexperience of some foreign sushi chefs may be driving customers away from more adventurous Japanese fare.

"Many Americans do not like the taste of conger eel sushi, but that is because the chefs are not preparing it right -- and so it tastes fishy and has an odor," he said. "If you had a trained chef preparing those same foods, you would find more openness to experiment with the same foods we eat in Japan."

But some here have expressed caution about the launch of the government approval system, arguing that Japan is a country also notorious for adapting foreign foods to local tastes. Indeed, that rare talent gave birth to Japanese seafood and mayonnaise pizza.

In addition, many so-called Japanese foods have foreign influences or roots. Batter-coated and fried food known as tempura, for instance, was introduced to the Japanese by Portuguese missionaries during the 16th century.

"The question is, what can we really call 'Japanese food'?" said Masuhiro Yamamoto, the Tokyo-based food guru. "Here in Japan, we believe that tonkatsu [fried pork cutlet] is essentially Japanese, but try and tell the French that isn't porc paner."

The government has appointed an advisory board of food luminaries and intellectuals to develop a workable method for the project ahead of its full launch in April. Matsuoka said the most likely scenario would be the creation of government-sanctioned food commissions in major countries to evaluate a restaurant's "Japanese-ness" based on authentic ingredients, chef training, aesthetics and other criteria.

Such a method might also coincidentally increase Japanese food exports, given that restaurants using Japanese products are likely to score some brownie points.

"Of course using Japanese materials would be preferable," Matsuoka said. "But our real purpose is to set benchmarks for how Japanese food is made overseas. We take our food very seriously."

And starting Summer 2007, I, H. Michael Karshis, will be heading a task force throughout Europe authenticating and then distributing either my TotallyBueno stickers at TexMex restaurants any my Real-Deal Texas stickers at Bar B-Q joints - who's with me?

That's Right,

HMK


Thanks to Anthony Faiola at the Washington Post Foreign Service

Vinyl Babes

There's Bond chicks and then there's Vinyl Babes...

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HMK

007 Rewind

I can't wait to skip out of work next week and catch the new James Bond!

And check out M16 for absolutely everything you ever wanted to know about Ian Fleming's JB.



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HMK

How Not To Rob A Liquor Store

Click here to see How Not To Rob A Liquor Store

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HMK

Meaty Resources

I shot this awsome sign in New Orleans.

Last night while researching some web gaga I found a couple of nice resource links for all you desigers out there.

If your looking for some off the radar stock photo options you'll dig Blue Vertigo.

And if you have anything to do with producing effective websites, een if you're already a pro, your sure to learn something new over at Design Meltdown.

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HMK

Compared To What?

Swiss Life 2006 ReBrand 100 Winners > best of awards
Industry: Financial Services/Insurance - Above: Before & After Image

Whenever I hear "That's great!" or "Very nice." whether in regard to a band, glass of wine, a movie, song, grilled cheese sandwich or a logo, my initial thought is this:

Compared to what?

In order to truly appreciate the result, value or execution of almost any endeavor, effort, task or product, one must have an understanding of it's origin and all things preceeding.

Think about it.

Let's say your only experience with coffee was from Denny's or random gas stations. (Poor you!) Then, by chance, someone with an elevated palet treats you to a Starbucks at the airport before your first plane ride.

Now we've got something to talk about!

ReBrand™ is a forum for case studies and programs focused on effective rebrands and showcases a nice Before and After addressing all of the above.

(Not the best example but hey, I'm still working on my first cup this morning - HEB's Taste of San Antonio spiked with some freshly ground dark Columbian beans.)

Anyway...

Along with the Center for Design & Business at Rhode Island School of Design and partners, they organize ReBrand 100®, the first and only global awards to recognize the world’s most effective rebrands: the repositioning, revitalizing, or redesign of existing brand assets to meet strategic goals.

Grab your self a fresh cup of your favorite, get comfortable and check out the showcased rebrands from around the world at ReBrand™ - it'll jump start your crit skills!

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HMK

This One Time, At Brand Camp...

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HMK