The Succulent Wife's Favorite Things

Hey Big Brand, Wanna Know How Bad Your Ads are? Check out 3iying.tv

Leave it to 3iying, an all-girl strategic and creative think tank that helps mass-scale brands become more relevant to girls (aged 15 to 23).Today most of the marketing that targets young females is rooted in ideas that actually turn off the very audience they to which they are looking to appeal.  In their words:

"If we, as an industry, want to be professionally accountable to brands and their investors then we have an obligation to make a change. Over the past couple of years 3iying has watched countless girls be turned off by media that directly targets them. They flip past magazines pages, TV commercials, and promo websites because they are bored and annoyed. The quantity of rejected media frighteningly large, but equally alarming is how aware the girl consumer is of this problem. Underscoring the intensity of the situation - we often watched the industry give prestigious awards to the very media girls hated most.

There is a giant problem—the girl-cultural disconnect is too massive to ignore.To jump-start a solution 3iying decided to invite the industry to listen to the girl market. We need to raise the bar on relevance."

Here are some 3iying.tv examples of how young girls are finding ads offensive and/or irrelevant:

It's about time that someone (3iying founder Heidi Dangelmaier and her team of girls) makes a fuss and broadcasts the fact that today's intelligent consumers are not falling for ads and campaigns or even products that are not authentic and not believable. And, BTW, this same issue needs to be expanded to benefit female audiences of all age groups.  Thanks Heidi!!

Catch the MonkeyBoy spirit. Egdy clothing for your little monkeys!

Anna Beard of Monkeyboy believes in making a child's life full of laughter, in giving them wings and dreaming right along with them. Monkeyboy is a pet name given to Anna’s first son. With him, came a whole world of imagination, wonder and fantasy.

From old-time circus characters to pirate scenes to vintage tattoo art to just plain cool one-off images, the MonkeyBoy collection take themes that capture kids’ imaginations.

Illustration ideas are a result of Anna’s own childhood memories and of things that make her and her family laugh. So, it seemed inevitable then that when Anna’s two year son said “look at my big, big muscles, mommy!” the Strongman illustration would be developed. The T-Bone shirt you ask? That was simply created because it was a funny thing to put that on a kid’s tee.

The MonkeyBoy onesies and tees make for the most original gift ideas for babies and other wee ones.
SHOP THIS COOL COLLECTION HERE

SpudWare Biodegradable and Compostable Cutlery - Made from Potatoes

Why go Spudware™? Currently, huge volumes of paper, plastic and styrofoam cutlery, tableware and food packaging are used and disposed of each year. To give an idea of the scale, an estimated 39 billion items of disposable cutlery are used in the US each year (source: The Food Packaging Institute, Washington, D.C.). That's just outrageous!  Switching to compostable foodware and packaging would remove the economic barrier to composting, as food waste, packaging, and tableware could simply be processed together.

Great for alternatives for restaurateurs who offer To Go service and for individuals or families with the smaller quantities available at Treecycle where you can get a set of 50 spoons-50 forks-50 knives for $20. Here's the scoop on the Spudware cutlery:

• biodegrades in 180 days
• made from corn and potato
• GM free
• heat resistant up to 105C
• durable and reusable
• good feel and weight

Isn't this what they use at Whole Foods for their takeout food service?

via IG Picks.

Sweet and Happy Collage Gift Ideas by Collage Artist Becky Shander

Give Positive Thoughts!                  

Becky Shander, an ingénue collage artist, proposes wonderful little gift tokens that are bound to lift those hesitant spirits or to spur on the perseveringly positive ones!

Truly, we all need these reminders in our lives:

• Dream
• Think Positive
• Celebrate Life
• Live Big
• Soar...                                                            

These inspiring thoughts can adorn your wall with Becky’s mini wall hangings or can be worn as pendants. Either way, gratitude will be the other positive feeling that will be manifested by this offering!

Shop Becky Shander’s Collage Collection Here at TheSucculentWife.com

...AND exclusively for The Succulent Wife’s Blog Readers - 20% off any Becky Shander Collage Piece!
Use Coupon Code “Sweet” to receive your discount! Valid till October 26, 2007.

Across the Universe by Julie Taymor - LOVED this movie!!

Visual poetry with really likable characters!  Loved every moment of this creative musical movie.

If you haven't seen it, make a date. In the meanwhile, here is a little avant-goût :

Las Vegas Show Review: Second City Was Second Rate

I’ll keep this one short, ‘cause really, I’m not that much into spending a lot of time tearing something up. That’s just not very rewarding to me. But still, I must share about my disappointment with the Second City performance at The Flamingo Hotel, Las Vegas.

Second City bills themselves as improv comedy troupe, but really, there was hardly any improv at all. Mostly sketches. The Second City website proclaims “Sin City’s favorite improv comedy troupe launches sixth season of side-splitting laughs”. Huh? Our group’s few and far between laughs were incidentally prompted by the painful attempts of the comedians to keep a straight face during certain skits. The few short minutes where actual improv took place were good but too rare.

I do believe that the actors that went on that night are truly talented. My favorite was Katie Neff, who might actually look like a normal person off stage when she isn’t contorting her features into some painful expression. She was quite the bundle of energy. Unfortunately for the group of them, the sketches did not do them justice. They were “professionally” executed, and transitions were excellent, but the problem was that most sketches were ultimately boring or did not touch on that all important “nerve”. It just did not resonate and fell flat.

So, my bottom line recommendation for this show is that unless you are a talent scout searching for new comedic talent, you might not want to attend unless the show is comp-ed. And even then, when you think about all the other great venues in town, why waste time on mediocre sketch comedy?

Besides that, the Flamingo is a lamentably boring property, stuck somewhere in 1985. I don’t understand. With all the razzmatazz of surrounding hotels and casinos, you’d think that The Flamingo would have thought about stepping up their game, no?

Not wanting to stick around the uninspiring premises for our après-show drink, we walked 2 minutes to the Barbary Coast. This hotel & casino is also definitely stuck in time, but at least it has a patina and an indescribable tacky charm. We sat at Bill’s Gambling Hall Saloon listening to a decent jazz band. The best part? Our drink tab for four totaled an astounding $14 (our reflex was “what? Did they forget a zero?”) and, even at our no-longer-a-spring-chicken tender age, we were still the youngest ones on the premises. That part felt great!!!

Father/Daughter Dancing Shoes

Aaaaaaaw!...

Via Pan Dan

Vivienne Westwood has got a point: "People must stop buying and buying"

via Telegraph.co.uk

Vivienne Westwood. I love her! Not just because she is still so sassy and provocative and sexy at age 66 years young, but also because - and this is so totally counter-intuitive to anyone who is in the high consumerist world of fashion - she has the courage to say what's right and what, incidentally, has been on my mind for some time.

"Dame Vivienne Westwood thinks we should all stop shopping for clothes. "If you ask me what I think people should be getting next season," she says in that softly bossy northern accent of hers. "I'll tell you what I'd like them to buy – nothing. I'd like people to stop buying and buying and buying."

In Britain, we're spending £38.4 billion a year on clothes. Pushing ourselves into debt and chucking our cast-offs into landfill, we'd be hard pushed to demonstrate that, as a result of this spending, we look any better".

Dove's Onslaught Campaign - Just Launched and Just in Time

I have a 10 year old daughter. I understand. And living in Las Vegas, where the "What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas" mentality is now pushing behavior and all visuals beyond the limit of what is acceptable, I get the importance of this campaign.

I do talk to my daughter on a regular basis, telling her that she should not think, for a single second, that she ever needs to look like those undressed-surgery-enhanced women that adorn billboards and the back of taxicabs here in Las Vegas.

Please talk to your daughters and pass this on to anyone who has a daughter. Oh, and feel free to use this space to discuss...