video Archives

August 17, 2022 By Zinzin

Frisco: a name origin story that’ll blow your stack

When Zinzin gets hold of a name that intrigues us, we go all in. We dig into its past, present, and ponder its future.

Here’s a name that got our wheels spinning: “Frisco.” At first, we only thought it was a nickname that tourists sometimes use for our fair city of San Francisco, apparently cringe-worthy to the ears of all “real” San Franciscans. However, when Zinzin learned about it’s 165-year-old storied and controversial origin, let’s just say the namer-train left the station.

May 11, 2018 By Jay Jurisich

Get outside of yourself

From Yogi Berra to Confucius, history is ripe with wisdom and advice on our quest for knowledge. One of Zinzin’s favorite wise humans is author and motivational speaker, Simon Sinek. Specifically, he speaks about the quest for knowledge in our chosen disciplines. Where do we find it?

As it turns out, the answer doesn’t lie within. It actually lies with-out — outside of the familiarity of your home, office walls, industry publications and conferences.

We think Sinek nails it when he says, “There are things that you can learn outside of your discipline that can significantly contribute to the problems you’re solving at work. You only know what you know. You don’t know what you don’t know.”

March 26, 2014 By Jay Jurisich

A “Generic Brand Video” that tells the truth about the worst in branding and advertising

This brilliant parody of a blandly generic corporate brand video began life as a poem by Kendra Eash in McSweeneys, This Is A Generic Brand Video:

March 20, 2014 By Jay Jurisich

Symmetry and one-point perspective in the films of Stanley Kubrick and Wes Anderson

kubrick-anderson — Image: ProVideo Coalition

Here are two beautiful video compilations that demonstrate quite vividly Stanly Kubrick’s love of symmetry and how the director made use of one-point perspective in his films, and the influence he has had in this regard on the contemporary director Wes Anderson.

January 11, 2014 By Zinzin

Blackbird (rehearsal outtake), by Paul McCartney

A great video of Paul McCartney rehearsing Blackbird in the studio, c. 1968 Beatles White Album sessions. Love the close-up of the wingtips toe tapping.

Blackbird
By John Lennon & Paul McCartney

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to be free

Blackbird fly, blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
You were only waiting for this moment to arise

December 20, 2013 By Jay Jurisich

Word of the Year for 2013: Selfie

jj-selfie - December 2013 — A “Happy Holidays” *selfie* by Zinzin’s founder and co-creative director (*I, me, mine…*)

Happy Holidays everybody. The Word of the Year for 2013, according to both the Oxford Dictionaries and Geoffrey Nunberg, is selfie. Listen to Nunberg’s commentary on Fresh Air — Narcissistic Or Not, ‘Selfie’ Is Nunberg’s Word Of The Year — which he concludes:

I give the critics a lot of the credit for making “selfie” a contender for word of the year. When we look back on 2013, we’ll recall this not just as the year when everybody was posting pictures of themselves on social media, but as the year when nobody could stop talking about it.

November 28, 2013 By Jay Jurisich

Everyday mysteries: Saul Leiter, a master of lyrical color street photography

Saul Leiter, perhaps the most famous non-famous New York street photographer, has just passed away at age 89. A pioneer who worked mostly in color in an age when street photography was still a predominantly black and white medium, Leiter captured the ineffable details than can only be seen and appreciated if you slow down and pay attention. Notes the obituary in today’s New York Times:

October 10, 2013 By Jay Jurisich

Chips, chips: Via Con Me, by Paolo Conte

No matter how dark of a mood might ever overtake you, I defy you to not be happy when you hear this song. It’s wonderful…. Chips, chips!

The accompanying video scenes, though unrelated, fit the mood quite nicely. They were taken from the films, “Top Hat” (1935), “Shall We Dance” (1937) and “Swing Time” (1936), starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

August 5, 2013 By Jay Jurisich

What do Gertrude Stein and Jay-Z have in common? Picasso, baby.

If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso

Gertrude Stein, “If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso” (1923). The artist gets artisted upon. Upon the artist. Visited by she who by her by she who so by words visits upon. She who by words. Artisted upon visit upon by words she who by words unpaints his paint.

June 3, 2013 By Jay Jurisich

Stephen Fry on language, with kinetic typography

Attention all language purists: Stephen Fry is “an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter, film director, activist, and board member of Norwich City Football Club” (Wikipedia). In this video, Fry’s rant about language has been typographically animated by Matt Rogers, in the process crafting a beautiful and funny visual and verbal feast about the joy of playing with language, which is after all just a game that shouldn’t be taken so seriously.

“But do they bubble and froth and slobber and cream with joy at language? Do they ever let the tripping of the tips of their tongues against the tops of their teeth transport them to giddy euphoric bliss? Do they ever yoke impossible words together for the sound-sex of it? Do they use language to seduce, charm, excite, please, affirm and tickle those they talk to? Do they? I doubt it. They’re too farting busy sneering at a greengrocer’s less than perfect use of the apostrophe. Well sod them to Hades.” ~Stephen Fry

March 8, 2013 By Jay Jurisich

Get your yé-yé’s out: France Gall sings “Laisse tomber les filles”

France Gall has one of the best stage names ever. Often dismissed as a mid-1960s “baby pop” singing “doll” of the immortal and twisted Serge Gainsbourg, she was born Isabelle Geneviève Marie Anne Gall on 9 October 1947 in Paris, France, and managed to create (or was given) a galling Gallic name that James Joyce would have been proud to have coined. Gall was (is?) a popular French “yé-yé” singer.

I love France Gall’s song, “Laisse tomber les filles” (“Stop messing around with the girls”), written by Gainsbourg, and the pre-music-video video of the song below, from 1964 (age 17!), is wonderful, like a time capsule from a vanished world. Possibly the first example of really great terrible lip-synching.

February 11, 2013 By Jay Jurisich

Cristo Redentor by Donald Byrd, 1964

Jazz great Donald Byrd died last week at the age of 80. The the video below is his amazing jazz hymn, “Cristo Redentor,” which appeared on the classic 1964 album A New Perspective.

About the project, Byrd said: “I mean this album seriously. Because of my own background, I’ve always wanted to write an entire album of spiritual-like pieces. The most accurate way I can describe what we were all trying to do is that this is a modern hymnal. In an earlier period, the New Orleans jazzmen would often play religious music for exactly what it was – but with their own jazz textures and techniques added. Now, as modern jazzmen, we’re also approaching this tradition with respect and great pleasure.”

August 29, 2012 By Jay Jurisich

Regina Spektor: The Prayer of François Villon (Molitva)

There was a great Terry Gross interview with Regina Spektor on Fresh Air recently (On Growing Up A ‘Soviet Kid’). During the broadcast, Terry played Spektor’s recording of the song, “The Prayer of François Villon (Molitva),” by the Russian poet and singer-songwriter Bulat Okudzhava. The song appears on the Deluxe Edition of Spektor’s new album, What We Saw From The Cheap Seats.

June 7, 2012 By Jay Jurisich

Neil Young’s Americana: God Save The Queen / My Country Tis of Thee

The folk song collective unsconscious

Neil Young’s album, Americana features Neil Young and Crazy Horse cover versions of 11 classic Americana folk songs that many of us grew up singing: Oh Susannah, Clementine, Tom Dula, Gallows Pole, Get A Job, Travel On, High Flyin’ Bird, Jesus’ Chariot, This Land Is Your Land, Wayfarin’ Stranger, and God Save The Queen. Or, I should say, we grew up singing the sanitized versions of many of these songs, which are considerably richer and darker in their original lyrics, as Young sings them.

You might wonder why an album of Americana includes “God Save The Queen,” the national anthem of the country whose yoke the United States threw off over 200 years ago. Well, for one thing, “Americana” as an idea or regional identifier includes all of North America, not just the U.S., and as a Canadian Young grew up singing “God Save the Queen” every day in school. In the U.S., of course, our national anthem is “The Star Spangled Banner,” but prior to 1931 the national anthem of the United States was “My Country Tis of Thee,” sung to the tune of, you guessed it, “God Save The Queen.”

May 5, 2012 By Jay Jurisich

Neko Case sings Harry Nilsson’s “Don’t Forget Me”

Neko Case sings Harry Nilsson’s “Don’t Forget Me” on Austin City Limits. This is absolutely incredible, one of my favorite performances and songs ever. Seemingly simple, but incredibly powerful.

I’ve been a big fan of Neko Case for years, and she’s a fantastic songwriter. But something about this song, maybe the combination of the restrained explosion of Case’s voice with the great Harry Nilsson’s words, just slays me. Incredible. I could–and have–listen to it over and over and over.

Don’t Forget Me

In the winter time, keep your feet warm
But keep your clothes on and don’t forget me
Keep your memories
But keep your powder dry, too

In the summer, by the poolside
While the fireflies are all around you
I’ll miss you when I’m lonely
I’ll miss the alimony, too

Don’t forget me, don’t forget me
Make it easy on me just for a little while
You know I think about you
Let me know you think about me, too

And when we’re older and full of cancer
It doesn’t matter now, come on get happy
‘Cause nothing lasts forever
But I will always love you

Don’t forget me, please don’t forget me
Make it easy on me just for a little while
You know I think about you
Let me know you think about me, too

Harry Nilsson’s original version of Don’t Forget Me is pretty great, of course, but Neko Case manages to top the great master himself, which is no small feat.

video

If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso

The folk song collective unsconscious

Don’t Forget Me

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