Ahead of the US Open, Lacoste paid tribute to its brand ambassador Novak Djokovic by transforming its crocodile logo into a goat, in a limited-edition set of five wardrobe pieces named the GOAT collection. Apparently, Lacoste gifted pieces to long-time believers in Djokovic’s greatness who were tracked down via social media posts going back to 2010.
To quote from a news report out of Canada:
A Mission, B.C. man has recovered his wife’s lost wedding and anniversary rings, after an unusual and rather stinky search through 18 tonnes of compost at the local dump.
Steve Van Ysseldyk’s wife, Jeannine, noticed the rings were missing after washing her hands at a restaurant.
“We left the restaurant, I’m like, I can’t even wait for the cheque,” she said.
The couple retraced their steps and realized the rings must have gone missing the night before.
After an outing at the movies, Jeannine Van Ysseldyk had brought some popcorn home, but spilled it on the lawn.
Somehow, while picking it up and tossing it into the compost, the jewelry must have come off.
By the time the couple figured it out, their garbage and compost had already been collected.
“I said I’d go to the dump in the morning and ask them if I could go through the compost pile,” said her husband.
Few people thought he had any chance of finding the rings, including an employee at the Mission Sanitary Landfill.
“My brain was trying to figure out a way to tell him to go buy his wife new wedding rings,” said contractor Denny Webster.
But admiring Van Ysseldyk’s determination, Webster agreed to help.
He used an excavator to isolate smaller sections of the compost pile so Van Ysseldyk could begin his search.
“When he has something on his mind, he makes sure he does it. He follows through,” said his wife.
So, Van Ysseldyk began sifting through those piles and began to recognize his household waste, including a popcorn bag.
Astonishingly, within an hour, he found one ring, and then the other.
That’s the strange message in a bonkers spot for air purifier brand Molekule that touts the virtues of its wares compared to pet canines.
To quote a news report out of Malaysia:
An 81-year-old resident at a nursing home in Kaki Bukit, Perlis, set multiple fires at the facility after staff refused to allow his 72-year-old female companion to accompany him on a hospital visit.
According to the nursing home’s management, the elderly man was scheduled to visit the central hospital to collect a hearing aid.
However, he insisted that his long-time female companion, who has lived at the facility with him since 2018, accompany him on the trip.
When staff denied the request due to the woman lacking proper documentation, the man declared, “If she doesn’t go, I won’t go either,” and abandoned the planned hospital visit.
CCTV footage revealed the man’s actions: He retrieved a container of petrol from the storage room, poured it on the kitchen storage cabinets and set them ablaze.
He then returned to his own bed area to start another fire before proceeding to the hall to set a third fire.
A new spot for pain relief brand Aspercreme serves as a delightful curtain raiser to the Spinal Tap sequel.
The latest in Texas-based Frost Bank’s ‘Unexpectedly True Stories’ series.
Links to videos:
From Scotland: Irn-Bru brings back its iconic tagline in a new spot anchored by a star-making performance by a Glasgow schoolboy with no prior acting experience.
From Mexico: a series of spots for Uber Eats that are inspired, we are told, by a belief in Mexican culture that food “has the power to improve any situation”.
Links to videos:
A PSA that transforms an intangible threat into something that feels very real. Here’s a hint:
What is Australia’s deadliest predator? The one that hits with more than 30Gs of force, strikes in under a second, leaves catastrophic injury in its wake.
You won’t hear it. You won’t see it. Not until it’s too late. Australia’s deadliest predator isn’t found in the wild.
Cadbury UK has a new campaign that makes fun of the pretentiousness surrounding dark chocolates.
Swedish lifestyle—and humour—take centre stage in this spot for the 900 series washing machine from Electrolux. It’s a splendid follow up to the brand’s ‘Tough Being Beautiful’ spot from a few months ago.
From Christopher McQuarrie’s foreword to Rare Stamps:
Terence has a deceptive face. And while this can be said about a great many actors, the deception often masks a disappointment—a revelation that an icon is merely human or, in certain cases, even less. Terence, however, has a face that hides his true nature. It is a lion’s face—forged to communicate cool indifference. In truth, Terence is indifferent to being cool. At our first meeting, he arrived wearing shorts, a casual cotton shirt and pink rubber crocs. He was carrying several bags, having stopped to do some essential shopping on the way. My partners and I were prepared to meet Billy Budd, the Collector, the Limey, Zod—yet here we were, opposite someone who appeared to have almost forgotten the appointment. Within five minutes it became clear, however, that the aforementioned roles were mere facets of the man. He controlled the meeting from the outset—evading nothing while asking more questions than he answered. He was not auditioning for anything. We were.
A sample of the man’s own writing (and lifelong reflections):
[J]ust before I got to see the film of Priscilla for the very first time – a midnight screening at the Cannes Film Festival – I received a telephone call from the Director of Photography. He was mumbling and seemed to be apologising to me for his lighting job on my character, Bernadette, during the film.
‘You didn’t do well by me – why?’
‘It was Steph’, he explained. ‘I told him “he’s gotta face for camera. Will only need a little front light”. “No”, he said, “I don’t want him looking good.” I’m really sorry, Terence.’
So there I was, dressed to the nines for my first midnight premiere at Cannes. The lights dimmed. The curtain went up; the film began; I was about to view my creation, Bernadette, my androgynous inspiration, a woman trapped inside the body of a man.
I took a luxurious breath in anticipation of the filmic results of my emotional rollercoaster, inspired by the wonderful females who had enriched my life: Christie, Shrimpton, Mangano, Princess Diana – any and all of whom I would be happy to be in a female incarnation, but no, up there on the giant silver screen looking back at me was an old tomcat. By royal appointment of Stephan Elliott.
Vanity, thy name is Terence.
From The Limey (1999):
- ‘Tell him I'm coming!’
- ‘Bide your time’
From the Philippines: a spot for pharmaceutical brand Stresstabs presents a singular, surreal vision of what a breakdown could look like.
Excerpts from The New York Times obit of American trial lawyer Gerry Spence:
Gerry Spence, the buckskinned legal maverick who called himself America’s best trial lawyer and dramatized that claim with a white Stetson, a dazzling courtroom record and a score of books that gunned down his opponents all over again, died on Wednesday at his home in Montecito, Calif. He was 96.
Mr. Spence often boasted that he had never lost a criminal case with a jury trial, as either a defense lawyer or a prosecutor, and that he had not lost a civil case since 1969. That was not actually true, but it was not far off. He was known to lose now and then, and several of his notable civil verdicts were overturned on appeal.
But in the tradition of Perry Mason, he seemed unbeatable…
He sometimes poked fun at his own cowboy imagery — the snakeskin boots and 10-gallon hat, the long silvery-blond hair and buckskin-fringed jackets that conjured Buffalo Bill Cody.
But he exploited it all, often in seemingly hopeless criminal cases.
A man who shot his former wife in front of eight witnesses: Not guilty. The white supremacist charged with killing a federal agent at Ruby Ridge in Idaho: Not guilty. Imelda Marcos, the widow of President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, accused of looting the Philippine treasury of $200 million for a lifestyle that included thousands of pairs of shoes and real estate in Manhattan: Not guilty.
Mr. Spence was big, loud, swaggering and outrageous in court. He once clapped his hands in the face of a drowsy prosecutor and thundered, “Wake up!” He barked at judges.
In a corn-pone drawl, he once told a jury, “You’ve got to get the hogs out of the spring if you want to get the water cleared up.”
He always put on a good show, with tricks and stunts to go with the fine arts of cross-examination and jury persuasion. But behind the courtroom magic lay extensive investigations and meticulous research, techniques he detailed in books and in five-week seminars that he gave annually at the Trial Lawyers College he founded at his 220-acre ranch near Dubois, Wyo., southeast of Yellowstone National Park.
To quote from a report out of Canada:
A driver who was pulled over while leaving an electronic music festival in B.C. was let off with a warning after he demonstrated “appropriate embarrassment” for the reason why, according to authorities.
The B.C. Highway Patrol posted a photo of the offending vehicle on social media Monday, saying the driver was “angry” when he was first stopped by police leaving Shambala last month.
However, when the officer pointed out he had a gas nozzle and hose hanging out of the side of the SUV he quickly became “apologetic.”
Spokesperson Cpl. Michael McLaughlin told CTV News, in an email, the consequences for this could have included a $109 fine under the Motor Vehicle Act, under a section that prohibits having a “sharp or ragged” projection from one’s vehicle. Refusal to return the hose could have resulted in a criminal charge for possession of stolen property, according to McLaughlin.
“In this case, the police officer was definitely on the lookout for potential impairment or distraction. However, the driver was not impaired or speeding, so when he offered to return the nozzle and felt appropriate embarrassment, the officer let him go with a warning,” McLaughlin’s statement said.
I’ll let this report out of Japan explain:
Japanese toothpaste brand Breath Labo and major milk brand Morinaga no Oishii Milk have teamed up to see if fresh breath can make a glass of milk taste even better.
The two companies recruited 100 people to brush their teeth with Breath Labo and then drink some Morinaga no Oishii Milk, and asked for their opinions. Of those surveyed, 78 percent said they felt brushing their teeth made the milk taste significantly richer and crisper, and a further 21 percent said that it did so to a certain extent.
It’s a limited edition offering from Heinz in collaboration with Smoothie King. To quote from the press release:
While everyone knows the age-old question “is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable?” recently, thousands have started asking, “if tomatoes are a fruit, is ketchup a smoothie?” Today, the global leader in ketchup, HEINZ, teams up with the world’s largest smoothie brand, Smoothie King, to go all in and settle the debate. Introducing: The HEINZ Tomato Ketchup Smoothie, the first-ever ketchup-based smoothie, which blends real fruits with HEINZ Simply Tomato Ketchup to create a delicious and refreshing summer sip.
The HEINZ Tomato Ketchup Smoothie blends sweet Acai sorbet, crisp apple juice, juicy strawberries, and tart raspberries with the unmistakable taste of HEINZ Simply Ketchup, which is all-natural and made with red ripe tomatoes full of vitamins and antioxidants. The result? A sweet and fruity smoothie with a bright, tangy ketchup finish, perfect for HEINZ and smoothie lovers alike.
As for its taste, this is what one reviewer had to say:
Having tasted and written about all sorts of odd food brand mashups and downright awful stunts, I was pleasantly surprised to be offered a refreshingly tart and slightly tangy fruit-forward smoothie. It’s red, but that’s one of its very few resemblances to drinking ketchup. The berries and açaí offer sweet, sour and earthy notes, while the Heinz adds just a hint of savory and tomato flavors, mostly noticeable on the aftertaste. Sure, ketchup may be more of a supporting player than the star, but this sauce is used to it.
The Director’s Cut of fragrance brand Ffern’s Summer 25 spot featuring Bill Nighy.
