how advertising works with Minnesota cultural norms

It is a defensible fact that the predominant cultural norms of Minnesota do not value directness. If it doesn't value indirectness, it makes ample day-to-day use of the less than charming practice.

Is it any wonder a culture missing such basics of healthy human interaction as eye contact with a smile has a bar on every corner?

And it's talk like this, some outsider reminding the locals of their failings, that really gets the passive-aggressives riled up behind the unblinking poker face.

Direct words or confrontation are not just strongly discouraged, they can instantly make you a pariah of what one photographer once described as "The Swedish Mafia." The silent society of emotionally stunted, severely truncated external persona.

There are many problems with this, not the least of which is the incorporation of this external/social persona into the personal/private realm. Witness the young couple that has nothing to say to each other. Happens all the time 'round here.

This non-verbal 'lifestyle' for a lack of a better word doesn't just happen. It happens because within this culture you learn to not put yourself out there - the unforgiving blade of judgment by your peers is poised to criticize and hack your stupid head off. Minnesotans are conditioned to hold it all in: observations outside the most trite and safe recitation/analysis of what the dog did last night, what the principal has been accused of or the horrible crime problem; complaint (probably with some success given how much people could complain about the weather) other than the snippy suspicions against the neighbors whispered between couples, and a host of other true feelings of disappointment and hurt.

The norm is to make the other party feel like they are putting you out. This is the 'passive aggressive' behind 'Minnesota nice' and it is manifest in a million annoying little ways - right up to being cut down at work or home.

This is not a culture about communicating the human condition and sharing in human flaws. The closest it gets to that comes in the form of groups of friends on alcoholic binges. That's showing vulnerability. This is a culture about a stoic face, no eye contact and absurdly repressed body language.

So...what of the communicators in this culture? Every culture has people who have been called to communicate beyond small talk, to say something universal, loved, appreciated - and to give the society as a whole a deeper understanding of itself.

Here in Minneapolis, where there are many 'legit' artists, I believe there also exists and army of 'freaks,' or exceptions to MN society who have found in advertising a voice and a way to make a living using clever tactics to break the ice that is unbreakable.

Devising communication which can be direct, indirect, clever or simply good is the activity of what I am guessing to be the otherwise under supported communicators of Minnesota.

Is it any wonder artifice and attention grabbing in media produced by Minnesotans is so successful? My friend Ted. Al Franken. The Coen Bros. Diablo Cody. The advertising industry in the Twin Cities: All very successful vehicles for communication by means of transformational media.

I believe this is the secret sauce behind the advertising success of Minneapolis. Only now am I realizing at what price it comes.

And on a personal note: Is it any wonder I'm considered with such suspicion in a land full of dorky men incapable of direct communication? I am a dork who loves to communicate; the insecurities of the horde, until this entry, are barely on my radar.

Or that's how I try to live. Like the culture dominant, I hold my posture with a growing sense of imminent defeat.

Defeated slump posture, here I come!

Despite my best efforts to avoid these elements, I keep running up against their myriad manifestations. It's a good exercise, once again, in my ability to adapt and be flexible in most any culture.

It just turns out this is the one, where, as my friend Ted puts it, people, instead of confronting you with some minor problem, will "turn their grievance into another block of ice for the wall of ice they are constructing between themselves and you."

Making this my toughest cultural adaptation to date.

Does anybody like this? Or is it considered inevitable like the weather?

That's the price of adaptation for foreigners attempting to function in a land devoid of verbal directness.

Viva New York. I miss you all the time.

the photography crib - available to rent

it's an atmosphere, it's an experience, it's a style, it's a way of being and it's yours for a day for 400 big ones.

comes with studio sitter, unique space has chill side and high key ultra-white side, call the crib or drop by for happy hour for a look - you won't be disappointed.

available for still and video without sound (music videos, etc). full video and still production services available for team assembly - producers, grip, lighting rental, director of photography, music video directors Harder and Bakkom.

everything but the star.

contact: Tobin or Mark
612-823-5497 - crib line

no shoots on shabbaz and other crib rulez

I find it's good to let people know your boundaries and limitations - so here's the new crib rules:

- unless extenuating circumstances exist: No shoots on shabbaz, that is slang for 'Sunday.' Sunday is church and suit day.

- "open late" is a good description of the studio - fashion shoots including the Throwdown, will be scheduled on Saturdays usually beginning around 9PM and going towards the point of exhaustion: When the minds get emptied out of agenda and preconceptions and the fashion begins to live in real time (see previous entry on Bruce Weber)

- i will always be available to photograph people in their Sunday Best - a project I started in Brooklyn in 2000 and will be continuing here at the crib and North Minneapolis

- if you come to happy hour Friday, bring something to share please

- no photography that occurs in clubs and no photo shoots that are half-produced


Other Announcements:

- the crib is available for music video production rental - contact me or Mark

- Mark Wojahn is available, and has a reel ready to screen - in fact we have a complete video production team that has already produced work for Muja Messiah and others

- I am developing commercial work, portraits of local hip-hoppers etc - fashion Throwdown is coming for the high minded stuff.

- Tobin available as a strategic business consultant. You know I know a lot. It's now OK to pay me for it.

architecture.myninjaplease.com - my new favorite blog

Without a doubt: this is the architecture site for me. Future forward, good design, lots of information on the development of new energy technologies, well researched, interesting topics - it's all there at architecture.MNP

MyNinjaPlease? It's so good a domain I wish I'd thought it up.

Eating alone in America

*note: This was originally published in another blog of mine.

There's a beautiful scene between an American FBI agent working on a murder case in Bangkok and the story's narrator, who is the son of a successful Bangkok prostitute and an American service man he never knew.

The scene elaborately describes her eating a pint of ice cream right in front of him. He's so shocked by her rudeness, he is rendered speechless. (He also happens to be a Buddhist adept).

Not only is eating this freezer desert absurdly counter intuitive to his nature - the Thai respond to heat with hot foods, but far more inconceivable is that she is able to eat in front of another human being without offering and sharing. It's a beautiful scene.

The book is generally a fantastic assessment of Western and Eastern values. Let it be known men in Thailand, despite being stupid, clumsy men like myself, do not go long without physical love - an act this Buddhist nation considers nothing more than "scratching an itch."

There is considerable pagination devoted to running parallels between insatiable Western consumption and it's ills, including the practice of Western adults shelving the actual practice of sex for the idea of sex. I'll get into my thoughts on Western masculinity when I'm feeling more controversial. Back to eating alone...

An acquaintance from Kosovo here in Minneapolis, when asked what he most missed about Europe, his response, not coincidentally I think: "I miss eating with neighbors. Every night someone would invite us over. Every night. Here no one shares."

I can corroborate. As a supplier of many a party and happy hour, you all - generally speaking - are a stingy bunch of human beings. This creates a certain lack of compassion among suppliers like myself - good heartedness turns sour. Then we all get jobs on Madison Avenue cynically making money on your gullibility when you could of bribed all us smart people with a little generosity please. A sad comment on our country, and more importantly you.

From what I understand, it's not the Thai or Europeans who are the exception in eating with their countrymen, it's us. I think it is a pitiful kind of existence that we can't share it on a basic level. I don't know if something was lost with the 'Get your own bag' Doritos campaign - maybe it was never there. Greed likely grew out of the (annoying as hell, completely dated mythology - god, how I hate Western American expansionist opensky, spread out industrialization, expansionist mythology) frontier days of super scrounging.

This doesn't mean There Will Be Blood wasn't a fantastic movie. It means I harbor serious antipathy for the main characters.

Whatever the reason, I find it a sad reminder that among the super abundance of the States, there's a poverty in our minds and imaginations on so low a level. It's pathetically juvenile for what is supposed to be an adult society. And this poverty manifests itself in the pettiness of our foreign policy, our Bushes and Hillarys.

Praise be to Obama: He appears to be the rare adult leader in a country of inexplicably successful children, many age 55 or more.

I find this lack of sharing lonely. We are one of the few places in the world where you will find truly lonely and isolated people in major population centers. It simply does not happen elsewhere. Canada doesn't count - and they're probably less lonely anyway. At least they found a way to share health care.

My guess is it's another melting pot hangover: Most countries are based on a shared ethnicity, implying a shared fate - what we call racism here in America - allowing a kind of participatory genealogy among the population. I think with all the possibility, prosperity and potential, America has sacrificed this type of human self-knowledge.

Eating alone, along with driving alone is a daily ritual exercise in self-alienation. What a waste of time and life. Now consider Americans eat 30% of their meals in the car. When do we stop paying to have our lives stolen from us?

the adventures of Brian's couch - part 3 (and some of 2)

So you missed part 2?

Hell yes you missed part two! Part two was when I spent an entire day Rug Doctoring Brian's couch in the studio. Jon Jon and Bakkom dropped by to see what Sarah Peterson was doing with the new Muja Messiah video. Never mind the bullets, Muja - looking forward to First Ave.





I was knee deep in mindless physical labor and dirty Rug Doctor soup foam spurting on the crib's whiteness, which lent itself to having a beer while the anti-foam did it's anti-magic. Upholstery Doctor needed a good few rests or it started puking up frothy foam out what can only be described as the machine's waste-hole, around the place an animal's bottom would be.

Part 2a of the Adventures of Brian's Couch (ABC) happened when woj asked me how I liked the couch, then explained the couch destroyed the feng shui of the entire studio. I'm more into Japanese art of beautiful askew, wabi sabi, myself. I did have to agree

He described the brian's couch, accurately I think, as "a three season porch, Ralph Lauren, nautical thing. It looks nothing like it did in the picture." I have to concur: It seems there's a salesman and a photographer somewhere deep inside Brian. The image of the couch was nicely overexposed, giving the rather yellowed, class-pirational searsucker couch a clean new whiteness. Kind of like the crib actually looks. oh well. I wasn't making no more trips to pick up no more 'not quite like the picture' couches around the Twin Cities. One's enough for getting shit done.

I had to agree with Mark: The first location for Brian's couch seriously interrupted the flow. His feeling that "every time I look over in that direction I get physically sick" was not a feeling I shared. I was too excited about solving this couch problem after all. I had to throw down my needs in the face of the attacks on Brian's couch: I couldn't sit in a f%ckin' office chair all day and I need a place to park the asses of all who may be on a photoshoot: art directors, stylists, models, cling-on know-it-alls from the office: they all show up. And they all need something like Brian's couch to sit on. A good example of this type of thing is Brian's couch.

Part 3: 'The DA' test drive Brian's couch - March 18
I know Brian's couch kind of blows, but I also know not having a place to park the asses of my loving clients and fellow vendors blows more. So much for being precious. I was never good at it anyway. (Shout out to liner notes in the Talking Head's Sand In the Vaseline (1995?))

Parking six Hip-Hop asses on Brian's couch the very next day "So, how'd the couch perform?" My mate knew after yesterday's shoot of 'The DA" the couch was pure, unadultered genius. How else to corral six 18-23 year old hip hop guys. Wait. I have the answer: BRIAN'S COUCH! I parked those guys right in Brian's couch so they could get up one by one. JR (pictured) even started browsing the Vanity Fair. Notice the double page spread he stopped on. Hot models wearing orange. Go figure.

All this to discover...right here in 'the adventures of brian's couch' - A.B.C. ;mofo

Cribbage, cabbage, crib notes - I was made for this

I like cribbage. I like cabbage real Czech. I write crib notes. I've even used crib notes to bet on horses.

I even like crazy architecture that combines modern material with the freedom to imagine.

I was made for notes from the crib.

Interface storytelling on steriods - visually stunning documentary application

This is by fare the most fantastic story-driven interface I have ever seen on the web. Gunar, whose wedding my mate Mark and I shot this winter to Anne, came by and hooked it up on Mark's computer...I had to share.

Gunar is from Germany, recently married and moved here I think this winter. Here's some of Gunar's werk. He has a refreshingly ethical attitude towards the internet that smacks of caring about people without the resources to buy the latest processor or browser plug-in - he calls it "progressive degredation" - designing websites that have compatibility straight backward - so a website works.

We don't really believe in that kind of democracy in the States, I explained. Instead you have the freedom to buy the latest crap with your credit card or be left behind.

I suggested he get with Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association. I suggest you get with them too if you want to network like the computer nut you truly aspire to be.

The good news is it looks like Gunar might be getting an American Client: minn -photojournalism, the photography agency/collective I'm launching with Woj, Ted and myself. Since Mark and myself already shot Gunar's wedding, he has plenty to work with. Can't wait to see the results. Good to see you Gunar - you're welcome anytime at the crib. And, btw, let's throw back a beer in Uptown.

Seeking video mixers

Cultural anthropologist who have the capability - with computers or whatnot - to mix visual bits into a collage of imagery, preferrably just by juxtapostion of various clips of video rather than the collage of video images.

To make it short - looking for someone who does visual djing. We'll be providing the music and the place at the crib - you bring your laptops, whatever and hook into our A/V digital projector to 20 foot wall, your canvas for cultural commentary from the archives of your video DJ.

If you have any idea what I'm talking about and are interested. Please contact the crib - 612-823-5497 - ready to start doing this as a regular event with various dj's within a month.

Just another Sunday terrorizing people on the street with friendly verbal greetings

Strapped in a nice suit, cashmere coat, I hit the Minneapolis Convention center to follow the wedding herd, press a few palms, get my name out there and possibly drum up a gig.

My friendly greeting on the streets of Minneapolis was met with a variety of responses - dismissive was one form of aknowledgement, just deal with this smiling guy is another. But by far the single most common reaction was glances of sheer terror. "Who is this crazy guy in a suit greeting me on the street."

There's simply no precedent for being approached on the streets of Minneapolis, unless you count interactions with black people. This crowd didn't seem like they'd count that in the legit category of human interactions - and that includes me.

The good news is I'll be wearing a suit every Sunday.

Why Europeans love documentary

European settings, a.k.a. 'reality', is simply more strikingly beautiful - even and sometimes especially when it's run down. The French love to make movies that actually look documentary.












The 60s Battle of Algiers is a perfect example of a movie that is so close to reality it could fool you.







Why do we Americans love our fake realities? Why does the midwest want to puke when a documentary shows up in your life - you don't want to be reminded your backdrop is big box strip malls and rows of prefab housing. Ironically, America is one of the better cultures for documentary work, as striking documentary benefits most from strong contrast, while Americans are one of the worst audiences/supporters of documentary work. "don't remind me of how ugly reality is" is the working m.o.

And yes, visually and intellectually, Europeans are better educated.

My first indulgence

The single greatest luxury item, seems so simple, is so complex. To never drive. To never, ever drive a vehicle again, for the rest of my life. And yet who's gonna drive you - either get with the walking cities or get with a driver and a car service - I miss you Arecibo, subway, Europe.

The ultimate Fashion Throwdown: Voltage 2008 in April

April 16 brings Anna Lee's baby Voltage 2008 to First Avenue for what I believe is the fifth year in a row. Kudos to Anna - and thanks for dropping by the crib today for a long overdue catchup. I'll say it right here and now - yo! Anna Lee - time to start blogging about all this leadup to Voltage 2008 at mnfashion.org (I'd hyperlink if you had a blog, Anna Lee) - give us the lowdown on all these kickn' Nick Marshall voltage look book photo shoots. Tell us what's going on, tell us what you need - send it in a letter, a blog I mean.

Fashion Week, April 18-20, might be a good time to host a Fashion Throwdown - I agree a Friday or Saturday night might be better to push the limits to make unreal good images in real time. Kind of like Bruce Weber on location on a lake for a couple of weeks making an Abercrombie catalog in black and white. There's no way in hell you'd be out there with all these Adonis guys on just some random gay man's wet dream of a frat weekend - no you've got to fabricate all that reality. Then...and this is where the magic begins I believe...let the reality play it self out over time, so that it does begin to mimick reality. Your alternate universe begins to appear in the photographs. (hello, gilded trap - but at least your working)

Hell, I'm doing my part: I made a beautiful little room. Make up, hair and styling - I need you in my army. Give me a shout asap so I can get you on the new list. Andrea, Maureen, I know you're out there doing something mundane...give the crib a lift. It'll lift you too, I promise.

A&E Casting upstairs here at the CAB might be a 'go' for getting all that unreality in a room...shout out to Toni and Eric for a little neighborly visit today. I like your attitude. It's been my motto as of late to say, "Fuck it. I'm not going to get it perfect. I'm not going to get it exactly right. Crap, I have only an outline of what I'm really going for - but I'm going for that - whatever that is. I do know 'the photography crib' is a big part of it.

My new motto is call to arms against the head-trigger mechanism so close to us humans, given as we are to exalt the trivial and eschew the challenge. If the French claim America's problem is that we - as a nation - take the path of least resistance, I have been asserting my French heritage my whole life. I want to be what the French don't think America has - an idea of how things might pan out in the future, with a mind flexible enough to get there. The world will not be forced by us anymore...the world must be wooed.

As Obama says, the difference between courage and naive hopefulness is that courage knows what it's up against and goes forward nonetheless. So I go with 'second guess=first death' these days. It keeps the inertia creep off.

"OPEN DOOR" hours coming soon. A good time to stop in and visit on Brian's couch. Beer and wine accepted at all "OPEN DOOR" hour locations.

Casket Arts Building, a.k.a. CAB, has a discussion forum

Wondering what people think in the CAB? I assume it's OK to share this forum with the public, so if you're looking to get up on the comings and goings of the denizens of CAB and the Casket Arts Carriage House (CACH) here's the place.

the adventures of brian's couch - pt. 1

I'm going to throw out a guess here about Brian's couch. This couch is Brian's. This couch has nothing to do with Brian's wife except that he happened to own it at the time he met her. As of Wednesday afternoon, Brian's couch was sitting in Brian's basement in Edina, lost and forlorn in it's bachelor stardom. Brian said he's had it for six years, so when his four and five year olds answered the door, I started making my lame conclusions right then.

The furnished basement made a neglected home for the couch, like a cat someone takes into a marriage that gets banished to the garage - it's depressing how humans can think of themselves as so important. The couch has a place, but it's not really welcome, Brian's bachelor couch. It has a place, but not a home.

Not until Raoul and I showed up in Raoul's nondescript white Flashlight company van. Raoul rents out top notch gear to photographers with unbeatable delivery/pu service for the entire Twin Cities area. (You'll proly see me lugging some sweet Profotos to a set near you one of these days.)

Anyhow, Wednesday was Raoul's last 'f#ck off' day of the usually deader'n'dead (except for Patrick Fox's studio of course) January-February season. Hallelujah! Wednesday was the day Brian and I had arranged for me to pick up Brian's couch! So it was not long after the 5:00PM window, Raoul's loud ass backup warning was sending Brian's Edina neighbors into conniptions that this massive load landed in Raoul's cargo machine strait to the photography crib.

Good thing we didn't bring Charlie, my Tacoma. All the backsplatter coming off 169, 394 and 94 would no doubt have turned the ass-end of the Brian's couch hanging out the back of my short-ass truck bed into Brian's splattered mess of a seersucker sectional. Lucky for me, and the crib, Raoul's cargo machine handled both pieces quite handily. I handed Brian the envelope of cash, talked him out of a few more throw pillows, said goodbye to the ugly ass couch the inlaws had purchased to replace Brian's couch, and slammed shut the backdoors of Raoul's death trip. We carefully weaved through the 'Everyday I Need Attention" 5-12 crowd playing in the street - careful not to hit them even if they were lingering in the road like they'd never seen an anonymous white cargo van - and sped off up 169 to give Brian's ailing couch a new life, a new run for it's money, in this here Northeast studio.

- To make a shot story longer...This is part of an ongoing series, "The Adventures of Brian's Couch" -

You left your (really cool) mitts here

It was that good a time. Someone, presumably a lady based on the design, was having such a rip roarin' time at 'a new level in low productivity | radio bartok at 4am' that she left behind these fly hand mits!

And in following with most experiences I've had with lost things that seem important - glasses, keys, and really cool mittens - I haven't heard a peep from the owner.

So here it be in public, in a well lit mit portrait: YOUR MITS! Come'n'get 'em. Or leave em here and play 'find my lambskin' in Fashion Throwdown shots. They'll still be here after.

fashion throwdown pt. 0: Dustin wears a coat

The potential for instant fashion photograhy in the big white box is too great: Fashion Throwdown is coming. Fashion throwdown is coming. FT is coming! A grip of designers with clothes, make-up people milling around, and some models and we're off for the evening - mixing up the clothes (finding copasetic designers to commune with on these themed nights) and using and reusing having the models available - call it a mini-Voltage with less lead time. It's all happening in an evening and the lights come set up and ready to blast. Look to the calendar. Thanks Dustin for sparking the idea, much like Erik's slow-mo helped hatch my first original children's book idea. I call it "My Shadow" and it features me and the shadow of my truck as a metaphor for my truck's status as a dark player in the global environmental future. More on that later. So Dustin, in David Bowie white - thanks for the inspire and let many more come to the crib dressed to make the blank walls look, well...interesting.

a new level for low productivity | radio bartok at 4am - revisited

How was the night?
First - to those who could not figure out this email, not your fault. The combination of words "low productivity" and "4am" conspire to imply I may actually be crazy enough to be serious about a 4am Thursday night/Friday morning event.

Of course I might be that crazy, but in this case the "4am" referred to the time zone Radio Bartok, Hungarian National Radio's classical station (much like BBC has various channels), broadcasts from. That time zone being Central European Time.

The event went off much as planned: a core of diehards showed up to hash out the details of a spoof on Hillary's 3AM ad in a concept my strategically minded wife cooked up. We got it figured now. Next step: Hillary look alike.

drawings from the crib
...and we don't mean sketches, we mean door prizes. Since we have a giant roll of tickets. We have decided the crib needs a promotion. Any time you are at the studio, you will be offered a ticket or one will be made available to you. At the end of the fiscal quarter, in this case March 31, there will be a prize drawing - the winning number will be posted prominently in the column to the right along with the claimant's prize. In this case it will most likely be on of a handful of tee shirts in existence that say "I had George Bush for 8 years and all I got was this lousy 600 bucks." The back says, "That's 20 cents a day."

More than a few of my favorite things....

Of all the lamentation I've been known to do about being behind the computer, rather than the camera, one aspect of WWW which I am an avid fan of is summarized by this single site: www.delicast.com -

No, it's not one of those "make your own radio station by selecting a song and having a computer select for you songs with similar attributes until you're listening to Michael Bolton and you have no idea why" sites. This is a well organized, non-iMusic dominated (as in has website listings as well as stream links), listing of radio stations around the world broadcasting live streams 24 hours.

Tonight's (Thursday March 6) event is based on one such station. I like to take my time with any station that's really good - good music operates in its own thematic time frame after all. So tonight, for 4 hours it'll be Classical radio out of Hungary (do they know their classical in Hungary? Yes, they know their classical in Hungary...and how.)

And to make matters even better: It's 7 hours ahead in Hungary - as in 4 hours of late night, low interruption, get on a good streak DJ lovin' radio. What's better?

doors 7.

4AM central european time, where radio bartok the Hungarian national classical station is located in Budapest, is 9PM here the night before. I expect to still be listening at 9PM/4AM.

The point is: it's kick ass late-night radio from 7 hours ahead. No conversation or traditional hosting expectations (as in the "host is ret." retired - or retarded - I'll say it for you) - just opening the doors for first Thursday, no lights, excellent music.

---

LISTEN: Do you hear late night Hungarian Classical radio in a big white echo chamber with candles?
this thursday, bring your own comfort - whatever that may be.

I HAVE: a very pleasant sound corridor hovering 7 feet off the floor, 4 white walls, one white floor, a couple of white furnishings.

IDEAL GUEST: Slouched against a wall with a pillow, eyes closed, remembering why music is written. all babies are quiet, all the time.

Doors 7.
Official greeters off 7:15
Until the music stops entrancing.

Directions to NE Studio: Contact page at www.tobinrussell.com