TV Ad Talk and a Request to Help Find One.

I like a good advertisement.

Some of the best work of television, print and radio, is done by advertisers. Marshall McLuhan, philosopher, Roman Catholic convert and social critic, said, "Advertising is the greatest art form of the twentieth century." I doubt he meant this as a compliment, but rather, as a matter of sad fact. That is, we are not producing art any better than our ads. Sad commentary of modernity, or not, I like advertising. Here are a couple of my TV favorites of late:

Apple Computer commercials are almost always good, though I am not a fan of the PC dork vs. Mac cool guy ads. I understand why they work, I just find the cool guy's smugness annoying. Apple's iPhone ad was perfect, and their current ad for the light and thin Air Mac notebook is almost as good. Apple understands the cool medium that is television. Less is often more. The ad communicates, what they want it to: lightness and smallness. The television ad doesn't tell you that that the notebook is about 9 inches by 12 inches, and only 1/2 inch thick. It shows you by showing one hand sliding it smoothly out of a document envelope. The red string on the envelope that is wrapped around the fastener is slowly unwound, creating the slightest bit of tease. If you want to watch it online: http://www.apple.com/macbookair. The "New Soul" song in the background is No. 7 on Billboard and the top phone ringtone, thanks to this ad, which means Apple is selling it's notebook and making money selling the song on iTunes.

My other favorite ad is by Verizon. A very attractive brunette charges out of an office building with her Verizon phone, her chutzpah and her daily mission of chatting with friends on the phone. I absolutely love the commercial, the copy, her attitude and it's movement towards me in perspective. Good stuff. But I don't know what she is saying when she looks at the guy and says "not Brad."

If you have a link to a transcript let me know. I can't find it.

Survivorman Talk. And a Hypothetical.

I like a couple of TV shows. One of them is Survivorman (SvM), another is, Man Against Wild. I prefer the former.

Last week SvM had two shows back to back on Discovery Channel. In the first he was in Labrador, Newfoundland. Think very cold. He was dropped off in the most desolate section of the area with a team of dogs, some dog food, one match, a hatchet and a rifle. I'm not sure what purpose the rifle was to serve, the only life out there was them.

Like all his shows he has to survive alone for a week. Which he did. But what makes the show so fascinating is, of course, the way he survives, but also that he draws you into the experience. I like the way he is there with his cameras alone, and that he doesn't hide his frustration, hunger and pain. When he looks into the camera at 3 in the morning, his face reflecting the eerie green light, and says how difficult the last two days have been, you believe him.

He did survive the snowy cold somehow but because he couldn't catch anything to eat he had to make broth out of some of the raw-meat, dog food. I won't go into all the gross things about that.

The following show he was on the Amazon river for a week. He pointed to a harmless looking ant and said, "these can kill you." He had every conceivable bug crawling on him, fungus on his feet from the damp, and was in constant fear of man-attacking jaguars.

Man I love this show. He survived there, too, but I was uncomfortable watching those bugs crawling around on him.

Here's the question -- if you had to survive for a week in either the hot Amazon, or the frozen Labrador area, which would you choose? I think I'd take the cold. Those bugs would drive me crazy.

Fort Worth -- #5 in Nation.

You have seen the report.

Fort Worth ranks #5 in Hottest Jobs in America. Not to shabby. Yesterday, I read about the ranking in a report by Anthony Mariani on Fort Worth Weekly's Blotch Blog. Today, it was a featured video story on Yahoo.

As I mentioned in a post last week, our job growth is "fueled" by natural gas, but also by good weather, plenty of land, an available work force, great infrastructure, and uncluttered local government. As far as cities and counties go Fort Worth is easy to work with. The other top five cities are also in the south or west, all sunshine cities, and all supportive of entrepreneurial activity. They are Atlanta, Austin, Wichita, and number 1, Salt lake City. The migration south and west continues, and will continue because of the 50 million baby-boomers who want to retire in warmer climes, and because the younger, new home buyers can find affordable housing with land.

So, Texas gets two cities of the top five. California got zero. I'm surprised that Florida didn't get one, but I don't know if this is a subjective report or a report based on hiring data.

Just in case you did not see the ABC News report, you can watch it on Yahoo.

Photo by Darwin Bell / Flickr