1. Ikea Lamp

Spike Jonz directed this commercial and did it with perfection. I think it got a lot of us, perhaps making us feel a little silly for feeling sorry for the lamp, but it also made me laugh.

2. Muscle Relaxant Commercial for ProLine

This Canadian commercial was brilliant. Such a simple idea, but well acted, edited and directed. Granted you tend to forget who it was for, but nonetheless we’re still talking about it today.

3. Vicks

This started my obsession with Anathallo, but really the music is what makes this commercial appealing and even emotional.

4. NHL Stanley Cup Commercial

It must have taken forever and a day to do this commercial, but it is an homage to the roots of hockey, a celebration of its stars of yore and a great salute to the greatest trophy in sports. The Stanley Cup.

5. Dove Real Beauty Campaign

I’m sure we’re all acutely aware of how much photoshop is used nowadays, but this put it in perspective…it was a brilliant commercial.

6. HTC You

I don’t know, maybe because I love the song Sinnerman by Nina Simone/Felix Da Housecat (Remix), but this commercial is decent enough to capture the essence of life with our phones. I prefer my iPhone…but still.

7. Jetta Shopping Cart

Simple, yet effective and decently funny. Frankly, I would have done this too. The only knock on this is the voice saying “I’m okay” at the end. Just took it far enough to almost suck. Almost.

8. Stella Artois Pirate Ship

The style, the visuals, the actors…a nice change from the old Stella commercials which were cheesy and not funny at all. This commercial was perfect and set the tone of ol’ Belgium (of which we’ve been we know). The frame of art for the pirate fight? Awesome.

9. Extra Gum Commercial

No surprise, it’s on the blog in another post…

10. Mitsubishi Outlander

This was another one of those commercials where the music made me a big fan of the band. Telepopmusik. This song, Breathe, is a hit. The commercial also tells a nice story too…one man’s journey through life with his car.

11. Yes, we’ll turn it up to 11. Chuck Storm Commercial…

Okay, shameless, shameless plug…our very own Chuck Storm in TransUnion’s TrueCredit commercial.

FUDDYTV Chuck Storm Video TrueCredit from FUDDYTV on Vimeo.

Let’s face it, the departure of our fine friend Dave kind of rocked our world and threw FUDDYTV into panic mode. Suddenly and out of the blue we’d lost an integral part of our group. So as we picked up the pieces and decided how we were going to move forward, we threw up some videos that had been sitting in the bank for a while – namely the Chuck Storm Wine videos and a couple blooper videos. What shook the old head the other day, was the feeling as though the “Zombie’s Guide to Survival in a Human World” was finally a step towards our former selves and perhaps a going back to what we had intended…funny sketch comedy that is off the wall.

So I think we’re getting back into the groove…heck I’m even putting keyboard to screen again. In fact I even changed the look of the blog and began redoing our About Us page to reflect the absence of Dave. That’s got to be a sign doesn’t it? Oh Momma yes.

One thing we’d planned to do is bring in a permanent replacement for Dave, and that’s still on the table for sure. We had an idea to do a “So You Think You Can Dance/American Idol” hybrid for the site called “So You Think You Can Fill Dave’s Shoes”, but as time kept on passing and inaction kind of ruled the day, we scrapped it. Who knows, we may do it someday but right now we’ll go with the odd trustworthy guest star who knows their FUDDY.

In any case, look for us to start ramping it up soon and get this red squared train back on track baby!

I witnessed “the was” when FUDDYTV was birthed on a warm spring evening. I have been a part of “the now” while FUDDYTV mustered up another humdinger of a video. However, I will not be a part of “the coming” during FUDDYTV’s rise to the bigger and better.

This last video, “The Roommates Series Finale: Dave’s Last Video” will be my final act with FUDDYTV, as I will be moving to Vancouver to pursue my thespian career there in the rain forest. It is a move that I am very excited about and looking forward to, mostly because it would be very difficult to drive to Vancouver while looking behind me.

I have had many side splitting laughing fits with Erik, Ryan and all of those brave souls that dared to knee slap along with us, but now the crazy shenanigans must go on without me. The journey that I have had with the FUDDYTV team and the fans was an awesome and memorable one. From the “Pest Controller” discussing scrotum bites, to “Boris and Juri” shaking that ass, I am proud of the work we have done together and will enjoy the videos for many years to come.

So, as I move on towards my dreams in Vancouver and leave FUDDYTV to pursue its dreams here in Calgary, I am hoping that our dreams don’t turn to dust, because I don’t have a vacuum cleaner and I ‘m pretty sure FUDDYTV doesn’t have one either. Although, there may be a broom kicking around somewhere, I’m not entirely sure. In any case, thank you to FUDDYTV and to the fans for two years of great fun.

I tip my hat to you for the last time,
David Haysom

I have a small and nagging problem. It’s my mother, and her utter lack of any expertise with the computer…bless her heart. You see, she’s stuck in the Windows XP world, waiting too many minutes to start up the machine and the constant crashes, bog downs and useless crap. It’s no surprise that many of you have this same problem, the late night calls, the early morning rants – “It said I couldn’t connect to the wireless network?”

“No, Mom, you’re trying to connect to someone else’s.”

So we, as Generation Me (ugh, that’s disgusting isn’t it?) have to come to the rescue and no doubt interrupt our Twittering and Facebooking to solve the complicated issue. How do we do it? As a PC user for all my life, I came to a realization. Now I’m no Apple Fanboy, though I have do have a large love affair with Logic, Final Cut, Soundtrack Pro and Motion. Yet the solution is true…

Get your parents a Mac.

I know, I know, you think I’m crazy. How will they live? How can they survive without right click? How will they know where the buttons are!? Ahhhh! Dogs and cats living together…mass hysteria! But really, it’s not that at all. When Apple says they work, they do indeed, just work. I’ve never had my MacBook Pro crash, never had it freeze, have updated seamlessly and run the crap out of it. In fact as I write this I’ve got Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, Logic and Dreamweaver open and running as smooth as you can imagine.

Recently Apple released Snow Leopard, the next step in the OSX world. So not only did they go ahead and make something that was already fairly awesome awesomer, they made it cheap. $34 CAD. Here’s a few things Snow Leopard improves on:

1. Malware Protection. If it thinks it’s malware, no dice, it’ll tell you.
2. Better Docks. Yup, no more bendy big long list.
3. Automatic Printer Drivers. No more searching for the elusive driver.
4. Exchange Support. What does this mean? It means all those business guys in the Outlook mail world can do it on a Mac.
5. Faster performance. Applications open faster, work is faster and logging on and shutting down are simple and quick.

With all this in mind, why would anyone stick to Windows? Well, that’s a tough one. A really tough one. They suck, let’s face it and I’m saying this as a life long Windows user.

So it’s time we all got together, prepared for the intervention and got our folks off PC. Not only to save our parents from Windows, but save ourselves. Heck, if they’re so hellbent on Windows, you can get them Parallels, which’ll run Windows on a Mac. Yeah, it’s that good. It may even turn those IT working sessions into a fresh beer and a burger, courtesy of Mom.

sweet disposition
never too soon
oh reckless abandon
like no one’s
watching you

a moment, a love
a dream, a laugh
a kiss, a cry
our rights, our wrongs
a moment, a love
a dream, a laugh
a moment, a love
a dream, a laugh

chorus
just stay there
cause i’ll be comin over
and while our bloods still young
it’s so young
it runs
and we won’t stop til it’s over
won’t stop to surrender

songs of desperation
I played them for you
a moment, a love
a dream, a laugh
a kiss, a cry
our rights, our wrongs
a moment, a love
a dream, a laugh
a moment, a love
a dream, a laugh

chorus:
just stay there
cause i’ll be comin over
and while our bloods still young
it’s so young
it runs
and we won’t stop til it’s over
won’t stop to surrender

a moment, a love
a dream, a laugh
a kiss, a cry
our rights, our wrongs (won’t stop til it’s over)
a moment, a love
a dream, a laugh
a kiss, a cry
our rights, our wrongs(won’t stop til it’s over)
a moment, a love
a dream, a laugh
a kiss, a cry
our rights, our wrongs (won’t stop til it’s over)
a moment, a love
a dream, a laugh
a moment, a love
a moment, a love (won’t stop to surrender)

Have a look…http://www.paintalicious.org/2008/11/20/thomas-allens-book-art-photography

What certainly doesn’t help my cause is the fact that I watch shows like Mayday on the Discovery Channel. One hour full of pure airline terror with awful lifelike reenactments and CGI graphics that kinda make a guy feel like he’s in the plane. Yeah, not so hot. Not such a grand idea. Yet I watch, slightly terrified and hoping I’ll never be on a plane that succumbs to bad weather, electrical failure or a miscalculation of fuel weight.

I can recall a flight I took to Grande Prairie, Alberta once in a rinky-dink plane with just a couple seats on either side. It was awful, probably one of the worst flights of my life. The turbulence tossing us about like a few school kids riding a bus on a bumpy road. The self-mutilating side of me decided to pull out the ol’ laptop when I got to the hotel and watch some plane crashes or near misses…fantastic idea (I say that with all the sarcasm I can possibly muster). Here’s the kinda stuff I watched….

So yeah, those are all good things to watch to instill confidence in flying. Lord.

When I was younger I was an avid flyer and loved going to the end of the runway to watch the planes takeoff and land. I loved flying so much, I was a religious player of the Microsoft Flight Simulators all the way from 95 to the last incarnation. So what happened to me? Pfft. I have no idea…all I know is that on a recent flight from Vancouver to Calgary I had to bury my head in T’s lap so as not to feel the awful turbulence. She’s a trooper.

When we were asked by Happiness Brussels, Toyota’s Ad Agency in Belgium, to travel to Belgium and bring our Boris and Juri characters with us – we never thought it would go this far. Car Dance Party began as an idea for one of our videos, Car Dance Party Moscow, where we follow Boris and Juri in learning the proper way to have a car dance. From the moves, etiquette and application the two Russian superstars taught thousands of viewers how to do it right.

The creative people at Happiness Brussels saw our video and two weeks later we were in Brussels crafting the idea for Car Dance Party Belgium. We finished shooting a mere ten days later and when all was said an done, the two videos, Car Dance Party Belgium and the Car Dance Party Moves video were instant hits. Generating thousands of car dance uploads from regular people all over Belgium, media attention, so much…well…have a look at the video below.

Now, after winning Eurobest awards (search Aygo), 4 MIXX Awards and other honors, perhaps the best of all is the Oscars of the Ad world – two Golden Lions at the Cannes Lion Awards.

Champagne’s-a-poppin’, so come celebrate with FUDDYTV!

Cheers,
Ryan