Our Space

Dan Borre is an Executive Producer at August Jackson who is passionately working on developing an interesting quirk for just this type of occasion.  

I drive my family nuts when I whip out the phone to check out IMDB.com for cast and production background on pretty much anything we watch, WHILE we’re watching. It’s the producer in me…

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Great combo: stumble upon a wide variety of interesting sites you’d never find on your own, and then save a few to read later from any device.

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Something about hearing this compilation of 5 seconds of every #1 song can bring me back to specific moments in time I had forgotten about. Must be hearing them one after the other, in the order they were released.

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And to make me laugh more than I care to admit, Awkward Family Photos. Now I feel like we let our kids down by not taking pregnant belly family portraits for them.

In celebration of April (both Poetry Appreciation Month and Jazz Appreciation Month), a poem by my favorite contemporary poet, which mentions jazz:

I Chop Some Parsley While Listening To Art Blakey's Version Of "Three Blind Mice"

And I start wondering how they came to be blind.
If it was congenital, they could be brothers and sister,
and I think of the poor mother
brooding over her sightless young triplets.

Or was it a common accident, all three caught
in a searing explosion, a firework perhaps?
If not,
if each came to his or her blindness separately,

how did they ever manage to find one another?
Would it not be difficult for a blind mouse
to locate even one fellow mouse with vision
let alone two other blind ones?

And how, in their tiny darkness,
could they possibly have run after a farmer's wife
or anyone else's wife for that matter?
Not to mention why.

Just so she could cut off their tails
with a carving knife, is the cynic's answer,
but the thought of them without eyes
and now without tails to trail through the moist grass

or slip around the corner of a baseboard
has the cynic who always lounges within me
up off his couch and at the window
trying to hide the rising softness that he feels.

By now I am on to dicing an onion
which might account for the wet stinging
in my own eyes, though Freddie Hubbard's
mournful trumpet on "Blue Moon,"

which happens to be the next cut,
cannot be said to be making matters any better. 

                                                -Billy Collins

Brad Younts is a Chicago based Creative Director. He has a life-size Yoda in his office and an unhealthy obsession for the History Channel.

www.aintitcool.com – I'm a pop culture nut and this site puts all my nerdy delights in one place for me.  I also generally agree with most of their movie and television reviews, so I use it as a pretty reliable barometer of what I should see.

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www.thedailywhat.com -  This site basically aggregates all of the coolest/most interesting viral videos and stories on the internet.  A good one-stop-shop for finding new items of interest on the web.

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www.macrumors.com – Everything Apple. News, rumors, speculative renderings.  If you want to find out what the most valuable company in the world is up to, this is a great site to check out.

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www.facebook.com – Come on, admit it.  We're all on here several times a day.  How else would we find out what the people in our lives are up to…talk to them?

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www.musicalofthelivingdead.com – This is the website for the Chicago Reader's "Best New Play" in Chicago.  I wonder who wrote it?  Hint: It was me.  Shameless self-promotion.

Now this looks it would have been fun to create and produce:

Will Benning is a Senior Producer at August Jackson, and is thrilled that his daughter is finally sleeping through the night.

Fun, cleverly animated videos on various topics.  My favorite, Death to Pennies

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All the passion of rabid college sports fans, with the complete lack of civility afforded by total anonymity.  This is the real reason the internet was created.

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The Oatmeal is my favorite site when I need a good laugh, and his latest post about the use of social media is pretty spot on.  

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Some well-meaning brand manager at Nabisco made the mistake of not understanding their spokesman.  That, or Wheat Thins was in on the joke and doesn't mind laughing at themselves.

A friend of mine is a digital media producer and photographer at Genuine Interactive in Boston, and she shared this with me. They believe this experience is unique on the web. Using a blend of video, embedded rich media, more video, photographs, tagging, and text to tell stories, this is a user-directed immersion into the Andover educational experience.

Try to take a few minutes with this.

Amber Vick is an Account Director at August Jackson with an obsession with onions - they make everything better! 

Although I am FAR from a Yogi, there is something very calming and cleansing about being in a hot room for 1 1/2hours with other spiritual people, getting my Zen on…

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What a great place to get great deals and great fashion! I like to online shop.

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Even though I've been invited, I really need to get my pinterest set up! What a cool way to share images and ideas with people around the world.

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Although this might sound cheesy I often like to check out Advertising Age and see what brands are up to. Keeps you on your toes!