"As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly."

Several years ago, I had the privilege of meeting Gordon Jump, aka Arthur “Big Guy” Carlson of WKRP in Cincinnati. He was passing through town on a PR tour for Maytag (he was the Maytag Repairman in the commercial campaign at the time) and did a live studio interview at the radio station I was programming.
 
What a pro! Mr. Jump was a PR person’s AND a media outlet’s perfect interviewee: he promoted the Maytag event for which he was the guest, but also was open to reminiscing about his WKRP glory days. It was near Thanksgiving, so he gave us his best on-air recreation of his classic quote from the WKRP turkey massacre episode. He was thankful to have had such a good run and to still be acting and portraying fun characters.
 
In honor of the late Mr. Jump’s spirit of thankfulness for lasting in his chosen industry, here’s my list of just a few of the PR industry folks who I am thankful for having worked with on some level recently:

@kstrumpf

@sjlz

@Hopes_BTW

@ArJay_Hayes

@payne_me

@jtidyman

@gojohnab

@tressalynne

@eckertt

@ThePRDoc

@stephkrol

@amylitt

@ginidietrich

@ShowhomesThomas

@PeterHimler

@9inchmarketing

@AlbertMaruggi

@ajeffrey1

@ggetto

@Chad_Cohen

@kdpaine

@sjshannon

@gail_nelson
 
Thanks Tweeps!
-Jack

 
Oh the humanity!
-Les Nessman, WKRP news

Watercolours

N. Homework at Barcelona.

Pigmented Ink pens
Pen Markers

N. Homework at Barcelona

Former chief executive at Marvel Comics is selling an apartment in the building he restored for $10 million.

Inquire About Property With Listing Agent

Watercolors

N. A present for young Andrea.

Watercolors

Watercolor

N. A present for Claire.

“Back in the mid 90’s the agency that I was employed by got me quite a bit of Disney work. I had a lot of fun penciling and inking such properties as The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, Lady and the Tramp, and Winnie the Pooh. I also worked on such classic characters as Mickey, Donald, and Goofy, amongst many.” — Ryan Brown

☻ ☺

–>> ** I have uploaded many pieces of Ryan’s Disney work for Western Publishing, Golden Books & Classic Media in a special set on my FlickR site .. CLICK HERE !! **

..umm , Ryan ..

.. wrong ears , dude !!

~ t

Story of a black woman in the south who was born to slvery in the 1850s & lives to become a part of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Studio: Genius Products Inc Release Date: 01/11/2005 Starring: Cicely Tyson Run time: 150 minutes

This 1973 television movie about 110 years of American history as seen through the eyes of a black woman from Louisiana (Cicely Tyson) is a terrific achievement, a window onto racism from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement. Tyson gives a career performance as the title character, whose personal life is inextricably woven into the fabric of the African American struggle for equality. A mixture of the sentimental and the unflinching, this is the kind of educational experience that fully engages a viewer. –Tom Keogh

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman is available at Amazon for $7.99. To Order click here
Amazon Product Pages contain a lot of other details on this product as Customer Reviews, Sales Ranking, Special Offers, Alternate products that customers are going for and much more.Want to read these details? click here

Want to get some other Format / Binding / Version? You can search for them from here

Other Products of Interest

• A Woman Called Moses
• The Rosa Parks Story
• Miss Evers’ Boys
• Once Upon a Time…When We Were Colored
• 4 Little Girls

“HEY, ROCKY, WATCH ME PULL A CLASSIC OUTTA MY HAT!”

Before Bart and Homer, Rocky and Bullwinkle defined smart TV comedy. Now they rule again on DVD!! Cartoon superstars Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Bullwinkle J. Moose are back with three of their funniest serial-adventures! (That’s 16 chapters, Low -I.Q.’ers!) In “The Last Angry Moose,” Bullwinkle discovers that audiences laugh themselves sick at his dramatic talent.

“The Three Moosketeers” When the Three Musketeers find themselves a couple musketeers short, it’s up to Rocky and Bullwinkle to save the day.

“The Guns Of Abalone” The dastardly Boris Badanov is up to his old tricks, but there is one thing that stands between him and world domination. Two things, if you count Rocky!

Wittily written and voiced, these timless classics are a fond salute to old-time melodrama and remain some of the funniest cartoons ever made.

SPECIAL FEATURE: CLASSIC LIVE INTROS & OUTROS

Run time: 60 minutes

The Best of Rocky and Bullwinkle, Vol. 1 is available at Amazon for $7.99. To Order click here
Amazon Product Pages contain a lot of other details on this product as Customer Reviews, Sales Ranking, Special Offers, Alternate products that customers are going for and much more.Want to read these details? click here

Want to get some other Format / Binding / Version? You can search for them from here

Other Products of Interest

• The Best of Rocky & Bullwinkle – Vol. 2
• The Best of Fractured Fairy Tales, Vol. 1 (1961)
• The Best of Boris and Natasha, Vol. 1
• The Best of Mr. Peabody & Sherman, Vol. 1
• The Best of Dudley Do-Right, Vol. 1

A spooktacular compilation of 12 classic Casper the Friendly Ghost cartoons. On this first volume “Trick or Treat,” Casper and his friends go on adventures and have some Halloween fun.

Casper: Trick or Treat is available at Amazon for $6.49. To Order click here
Amazon Product Pages contain a lot of other details on this product as Customer Reviews, Sales Ranking, Special Offers, Alternate products that customers are going for and much more.Want to read these details? click here

Want to get some other Format / Binding / Version? You can search for them from here

Other Products of Interest

• Casper & Wendy: Scare Up Some Fun
• Best of Casper, Vol. 1
• Best of Casper, Vol. 2
• Casper’s Spookiest Tales
• Sleeping Beauty (Two-Disc Platinum Edition)

A spooktacular compilation of 12 classic Casper the Friendly Ghost cartoons. On this first volume “Trick or Treat,” Casper and his friends go on adventures and have some Halloween fun.

Casper: Trick or Treat is available at Amazon for $6.49. To Order click here
Amazon Product Pages contain a lot of other details on this product as Customer Reviews, Sales Ranking, Special Offers, Alternate products that customers are going for and much more.Want to read these details? click here

Want to get some other Format / Binding / Version? You can search for them from here

Other Products of Interest

• Casper & Wendy: Scare Up Some Fun
• Best of Casper, Vol. 1
• Best of Casper, Vol. 2
• Casper’s Spookiest Tales
• Sleeping Beauty (Two-Disc Platinum Edition)

"What the hyeck?" No "Beany and Cecil" here (image from TVAcres.com)

Kevin mentioned it the other day, but now we hear it from the source: the upcoming DVD set from Classic Media will not contain any of the Matty’s Funday Funnies segments featuring Bob Clampett’s Beany and Cecil. Just this morning we received the following e-mail from  John Ruzich at Classic Media:

Dear Sir or Madame:

I am contacting you on behalf of Classic Media, an Entertainment Rights group company. Recently, your website reported on Classic Media’s upcoming August 26th DVD releases of Casper Classic Collection Vol. 1: Trick or Treat and Casper Classic Collection Vol. 2: Casper & Wendy Scare Up Some Fun. Although both releases will contain Casper cartoons that originally aired on television as part of the Matty’s Funday Funnies program, we wanted to clarify that Classic Media does not have any trademark or copyright ownership of Matty’s Funday Funnies including the characters associated with the show such as Beany Boy, Cecil the Sea Sick Sea Serpent, Uncle Captain Huffenpuff and Dishonest John. For the avoidance of doubt, Classic Media is the sole trademark and copyright owner of Casper the Friendly Ghost and Wendy the Witch. If you have any questions and/or require any further clarifications, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely,

John Ruzich
Vice President of Business & Legal Affairs
Classic Media, Inc.

Thank you, Mr. Ruzich–we, along with countless other Beany and Cecil fans, are crushed. But at least we know.

WHO: Vringo
WHAT: A way to share video clips between friends.
WHEN: Founded the beginning of 2006
WHERE: A U.S. company with offices in New York and Israel
HOW: Go to the Vringo website and sign up. They’ll ask for your mobile number, and then send you a clickable link. The buddy list, which requires a nickname and phone number, can be done on the website or mobile phone.
WHY: Why send the ringtone when you can send the music video?

Founded with two rounds of VC money and based on 26 patents pending, Vringo is based on the idea that friends send friends video. More specifically, “buddies” on Vringo can send ring-forward and ring-back clips. “Mobile phones have been traditionally designed so that a phone shuts down all applications when a call comes in,” notes Andrew Perlman. ” With Vringo, you see a clip that your friend has chosen for you.” That clip could be user-generated or licensed content; so far Vringo has over 1,000 clips-to-license from Discovery Channel, Universal Music Group, GoTV, Classic Media and others.

For user-generated clips, the user can record a Vringo from the Vringo application (“Record Vringo”), which automatically turns on the phone’s camera. A finished clip can be immediately uploaded and shared with “buddies” in the Vringo community.

Why haven’t video ringtones taken off in the past? “If you think about audio versus video, people have a tolerance of hearing audio over and over again but video gets tired more quickly,” says Perlman. “You can’t shuffle and see something fresh. Think about merging that idea with the best “recommender” on the planet — your friend. With Vringo, you’re shuffling based on the video your friend sent. It really becomes a community that’s socializing around video ringtones.”

Social networking is key to the Vringo business model. “We’re working our way more deeply into social networks,” says Perlman. “We started specing out our Facebook application, but we’ve tapped into other communities. We think a lot of the content will be user-generated, so we’ve partnered with communities such as Meez, an avatar site with 4 million registered users, that you can import to Vringo. People are already using avatars as a digital signature. We’re focusing on the way on mobile it would be natural to share an avatar.”

The Meez avatars move—they can wave and run—and the user personalizes them, choosing skin tone, features, attire. “It’s a phenomenon and a little bit addictive,” Perlman says. “The avatar is a discrete experience, but it’s a platform fo sharing.”

In the early beta stage, Vringo has “multiple thousands” of users,” says Perlman. What tweaks are they still working on? “We’re fixing it to make it easier,” he says. “The key is really simplicity and ease of use. The thing we really really think we’re good at but want to further improve is to make it as viral as possible. We’re focusing on elements of community and inviting friends based on the contact list on your phone.”

Right now, Vringo is free to users. For the future, Perlman sees the financial model as two-fold: the a la carte purchase of clips in the short-term, with “huge promise” in the ad-funded model down the road. That could be a range from a one- or two-second pre-roll, banner ads or even branded content. “Like BMW films, I think about a 20-second piece of branded content that’s being shared between friends,” says Perlman. “If we get critical mass, that’ll become a real part of our business. We’ve been approached by ad agencies, but this is a long-lead thing.

Vringo is expected to launch formally with at least one mobile carrier before the end of 2008 Q1.

Currently, any Internet-enabled phone can take advantage of Vringo, accessing it via the mobile browser where they cnan view, download and send Vringo videotones. But the full-featured Vringo–which includes installed client, automatic video ringtones and real-time Vringo synchronization, is only available on the following phones.

NOKIA
N70	N73	N76	N80
N81 (8GB)	N91	N93	N93i
N95	E60	E61	E61i
E65	6120 Classic	6290
SONY ERICSSON
K610i	K800i	W850i	W880i
MOTOROLA
Moto Q (8)
HTC
S620 (DASH)

Coming soon:
Motorola V3xx, V6, K3
Samsung Blackjack
Nokia N75, E62, 6110, 5500, 5700
What kind of network do I need to use Vringo?
You need a network that offers data (most of them do these days) and with reasonably good coverage. Vringo works best in networks with advanced data services and broadband-like service. This kind of service is frequently called 3G.

Right now, to be able to experience VringBack you must be on a GSM network (like Cingular or T-Mobile). We’re working on ways to extend this service to all types of networks.

Users on non-GSM networks like Verizon or Sprint can still use Vringo. VringForward will work fine, but you won’t get VringBack.

What kind of plan do I need to use Vringo?
You need to be on a data plan. Vringos are uploaded and downloaded with a data connection. The better your connection and your plan, the better the whole thing works.

Where can I get Vringo?
For the length of the private Beta period, you can get Vringo from the Vringo.com website. As we expand the Beta you’ll be able to get it from a variety of software vendors. Don’t worry, it’ll still be free.