Bill Cammack

Stephanie Frasco & Bill Cammack

Stephanie Frasco, Bill Cammack & Jessica Valenzuela

Stephanie Frasco & Bill Cammack

Modeling HE’BREW … “The Chosen Beer”

Sponsors, get at us!

Shalom!!! :D

Stephanie Frasco & Bill Cammack

I had an interesting conversation last night with a few of the ladies @ this party I went to. It jumped off, because one of them said she should hire a stylist (which is going to be The Kid’s new venture, right after I finish writing this post). Unfortunately for her, she had mentioned earlier in conversation that she had a boyfriend. So I immediately replied:

“Your boyfriend’s supposed to be your stylist.”

She immediately dropped back into this “what’chu talkin’ ’bout, Willis?” pose and was looking at me with this funny expression, so I was like AWWWWW HEEEEERE WE *GO*!!! :D

Her general position was that guys can’t dress girls. I was like “of course they can, because we know what looks good on you and what doesn’t”, to which she replied:

“Men know what looks good on women, but they don’t know WHY it looks good.”

So I stood there for a few seconds, waiting for her to say something that made sense.

…….

That didn’t happen. :)

Here’s the problem with her statement… Looking good is not OBjective, it’s SUBjective. You feel a certain way when you see something that looks good. A painting, a chick, architecture, whatever. Also, what looks good to one person doesn’t necessarily look good to someone else. So… The fact THAT something looks good is way more important than the reason WHY it looks good.

Stephanie Frasco & Bill Cammack

I’m sure you could ask a guy WHY some article of clothing looks good on a chick. You probably won’t get a response for a while, because auxiliary power has been switched to 1) looking, 2) thinking about what he’s looking at and 3) continuing to stand up straight instead of falling over. After that, he may or may not be able to give you a technical description of WHY that item looks good on her, but the fact remains that “WHY” doesn’t matter. All that matters is that he receives the proper physical stimulus from checking her out. :)

So anyway, I tried to inform her that she didn’t know what she was talking about. I think the next thing I asked was:

“So your man doesn’t buy clothes for you?”

Same “what’chu talkin’ ’bout, Willis?” pose + weirdo stare. :) That’s when The Kid realized he wasn’t going to get anywhere with this as a one-on-one conversation and opened the floor to some nearby females. At least there was a range of responses. One said that her man bought clothes for her, but then equated that to him being domineering and posessive. Another one agreed with the first one, that men can’t buy clothes for women. A third one said that she had been with a guy who would buy her clothes sporadically. Needless to say, this had ZERO effect on the original gal’s perspective, which is why, as of today, I am now a personal shopper…. or shopping assistant….. or whatever the title is of people that get paid to tell people what to wear, hahaha :D

As my first oficial act of … hmm. I guess this makes me ShoppingGenius! :D

As my first official act as ShoppingGenius, I will now inform the fellaz on how to dress your girlfriends…..

First of all, the most important thing is knowing how SHE likes to dress in the first place. This is important because you want her to WEAR what you buy for her. If she likes to dress like a dude, don’t pick up a sun dress for her. If she likes to dress like Little House on the Prarie, don’t buy her modern clothing. You have to find out what your parameters are, and then select appealing gear inside that range.

Second, you have to know her size. This is important because you want her to be ABLE TO WEAR what you buy for her. :) Being that she’s your girlfriend, at some point in time, you should have access to her clothes when they’re not attached to her body. Write down her measurements, or twitter them to yourself. Make sure you do this while she’s asleep or in the shower. You know how chicks get with hallucinating about their actual size, or at least lying TO YOU about what it is. This is why you’re not going to ASK HER what her sizes are. She’ll give you the sizes she wishes she was, and not the sizes of clothes she can actually fit in. This reminds me… use your judgement. If your girl loves to stuff herself in jeans, creating unnecessary Muffin-Tops, make sure you increase the value of the sizes you retrieved from her gear.

Also, buying clothes for chicks is seasonal. If you go out with one for an entire year, you’ll notice they tend to get more and less “liquid”. This is, of course, unless they actually diligently monitor their physical condition, which is optimal! :D Anyway, you have to know where your girl currently is with her volume fluctuation. VOLUME is the key thing here, not weight, which is why it’s so funny that chicks always talk about “I need to lose 5 pounds” “I need to lose 10 pounds”, when who cares how much you weigh, when you don’t LOOK any better? So make sure you err on the high side of her volume, or else she’ll only be able to wear the gear in like three month cycles.

Now, you might be wondering… “Why in the hell would *I* want to dress my chick?” :) Well… Why did you buy that fancy car? Why do you work your ass off all day to get some money? Why did you go to the gym to work off all that beer that you drank? The same way you’re hooking YOURSELF up, you should be hooking YOUR GIRL up. There are a few reasons for this…

Women tend to confuse “a clothing item which looks cute” with “a clothing item which looks cute ON THEM”. How many times have you seen/heard women compliment another woman that looks absolutely HORRENDOUS in some gear that doesn’t fit her? It’s not that they’re being polite. They actually believe it looks good, I guess because of the colors or the fabric? \o/ … If your girl has this problem, you need to help her out with her clothing selection.

Did you ever notice how Presidential candidates are always married? This is because (amongst OTHER reasons, hahahahaha) guys are judged by their chicks. If you Pair Bond with a chick, you’re saying “this is the best I can do”. Having your chick look better, rather than worse, is ALWAYS in your best interest.

On a personal note, you want your girl to look good because she should ALWAYS catalyze you to think/feel “Yes, Yes… Yes Sir… Cain’t wait to tap that, sunnnnnnn :D “. If you let your girl walk around like a slovenly hippie bum, she’s not going to inspire you… causing you to interact with her more platonically than you’re supposed to and your entire physical relationship to her is less efficient/effective than it should be. The better SHE looks, the more into her YOU’RE going to be, and the more SHE’S going to be into how into her YOU are.

One more thing is, you don’t want to overdo it hahaha :) You’re buying her clothes to go out in the street in, not to model for you in your own crib (which is another issue, entirely). You want her to look good, but not like a professional hooker. Actually… if SHE tends to overdo her gear, buy her some conservative clothing that still looks hawt on her. The first benefit here is that if your girl looks too good, drunk dudes tend to act like AssHats and you might get in a beef over it. Second, you don’t want to tip the “fail scale” and go from “damn… his girl looks HAWT!” to “I know he’s paying her” (as in, he’s a customer). Third, you want it to be gear that she’s comfortable wearing, and some chicks just aren’t comfortable with how attractive they really are.

So now you’re ready. Sneak her measurements. Add at least +2 to all of them. Hit stores that are along the lines of gear she likes to wear, except buy GOOD-LOOKING ish. Surprise her with her presents, then go sport your new & improved chick around town.

PS – You do NOT want to tell her HOW you were able to buy clothes for her that fit perfectly. Make up something romantic like “baby, I’ve held you so many times, I just knew…. :D ”

So go out there and make it happen. Remember…

DiY, or your girl’s going to pay me YOUR MONEY to do your job for you. :D

ShoppingGenius

 

 

Stephanie Frasco & Bill Cammack

Hanging out on Melissa Sconyers‘ blog (aka E-Stalking), I came across this post called Work=Life. Amongst other interesting things, Melissa had this to say about the work-week:

“People prefer to build a dam, stopping the workflow the minute that the clock turns from 4:59PM on Friday afternoon. And it’s no wonder that people feel inundated and overwhelmed on Monday morning, when the floodgates are lifted, and suddenly they’re in way over their head, desperately trying to tread and keep their head above the water that threatens to drown them.”

I’m a freelancer. As such, I have no work-week. I have deadlines. Friday means nothing to me… Neither does Monday… Neither does Saturday. They’re all the exact same day. The only thing that matters to me is how much time I have until my delivery date (meaning videos, not kids, in case you don’t know whose blog you’re reading).

I’m not a 9-5er. It’s not in my blood. It’s not in my father’s blood. I “can’t” go somewhere every day and waste my time in order to get some money. OTOH, I edited my Vlog Deathmatch video in three consecutive days of probably 17 hours each:

Bill Cammack & Action Girl | Vlog Deathmatch: Music Video Challenge

Recently, I had a project deadline change on me from “Probably a couple of weeks from now” to “Tomorrow morning”. This would have freaked 99% of the population the **** out, and they would have folded entirely or turned in garbage on time. I was perfectly calm, for two reasons:
1) I had approximately 20 hours left to deliver the video.
2) I felt perfect… (felt perfectLY? sounds like an action, not a status. :D)

It was important that I had 20 hours left to deliver because I knew I could finish the project to my own personal satisfaction within that amount of time. I knew there was enough time for me to do a really good video, and this added to my state of well-being, because I didn’t have to resort to some sort of 2-minute drill style which would have been more of a salvage operation than a creative edit.

It was important that I felt perfect(ly) because I knew that I was going to be able to utilize as many of those 20 hours as I needed. I knew I wasn’t going to fall asleep. I knew I wasn’t going to lose focus. Mentally and physically, I was in perfect condition to think and ‘perform’. I didn’t have some 9-5 to go to in the morning, so I wasn’t worried about what time I might have to stay awake until.

So, basically, 14 hours after I found out about my 20 hour deadline, I was finished. The project was delivered around 3 am when the deadline was approximately 9 am. I felt fine. I felt accomplished, and “another one bites the dust”. :D

I’ve always had intense dedication to goals that I felt were important, but I’m sure my emotional reaction to time and deadlines was crafted in college. In school, we didn’t get homework. We got “Problem Sets”. Basically, you were given your assignment on Tuesday, for instance, and you were required to turn in the answers NEXT TUESDAY. Often, what this meant was that I didn’t do JACK about it until Sunday, hahaha and then spent every extra hour at my disposal on Sunday and Monday to do what I should have spread out during the week.

Because of this, a brotha had to “get in where he fit in” :) You don’t eat in the morning and then at 12 noon and then at 6pm. You eat when you eat… IF you eat. You might have to take that trip to the candy machine in the lobby and get back at it. You don’t sleep at night. You sleep when you can’t stay awake any longer. Day and Night doesn’t mean anything anymore, and you wouldn’t even know if you didn’t have windows. You never know what day of the week it is, because it doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is how many days and then hours you have left before you have to walk into that classroom with the right answers for the professor. You never know what time it is, because that doesn’t matter either, unless you’re still working on a Problem Set on the day it’s due, and you don’t want to miss the class you need to attend to hand it in.

So there is no “stopping of the workflow” that Melissa mentions in her post. There can’t be… because the deadline is always there, and it’s always approaching. Not working on your project only makes you *MORE* aware that you now have EVEN LESS TIME to accomplish your task. Psychologically, it’s in one’s best interest to “clear the desk” and knock off projects as quickly as possible. There is no “time for work” and “time to not work”. There’s only the list of projects you have to complete and the time you need to allocate to complete each one.

Right now, I’m running into a birthday party deadline, so that’s a wrap!

Happy Birthday, Steph & Brett! :D

Jonathan Dingman, Justin Johnson & Stephanie Frasco

Stephanie Frasco & Bill Cammack

Stephanie Frasco & Bill Cammack

E.Factor launch party
Morrison Hotel Gallery, NYC

Tyme White linked me to Caroline McCarthy’s article where she interviewed Lindsay Campbell. I found this exchange particularly interesting:

McCarthy: The “girl in front of a camera, talking about stuff” has almost become a Web cliché by now. How do you hope that Moblogic will be different?

Campbell: One of the things that we’d like to move beyond is just being a Web talking head, like a Web counterpart to the TV talking heads. So a lot of the talking on the show is going to be done by people that we meet all over the country, and eventually hopefully in other countries, about the topics that we’re talking about. I’m not an expert, I’m just expert at talking to people, and that’s how the stories are going to get formed.

I found it cool that Caroline brought up what I affectionately call “the formula”, since it’s been my experience that everybody knows it’s going on, but nobody wants to discuss it.

“The Formula” for internet shows is that no matter how your content is aggregated, researched or scripted, make sure you have an attractive female in front of the camera to “talk about stuff”. That’s pretty much it. :D The obvious problem here is that it’s very tough (if not impossible) to tell who’s tuning in to hear about the content, and who’s tuning in to “check out the chick”.

Does it matter why they tuned in? No. Views are views. Sponsors and advertisers want to know how many times their ad is going to be shown. Revenue Sharing is based on hits, not “reasons why”. Also, I’m not knocking utilizing Eye Candy (EC) to draw attention to a show or product or get guys to concentrate on the screen long enough for your message to get across. :D It’s the same thing as having “booth babes” at conventions or car shows.

Or, is it?……..

I think it’s very important to note what percentage of your show’s props are due to content vs the looks and hopefully TALENT of the EC. There are several flavors of EC:

1) Entirely Talentless = Just looks
2) Knows how to read the teleprompter, but not theatrically
3) Enthusiastic and personable, but not knowledgeable
4) Researched and wrote her own material
5) Actually lives what she’s presenting about, obviously knowledgeable and speaking from a first-hand, in-the-trenches perspective.

I suppose flavors 4 and 5 might not qualify for EC, because you’re not “dressing up the show” by having her speak. She’s not a front. She’s the actual show. If you ran into her in person, she could intelligently engage you in conversation about facts that didn’t come up on the show or tangents she didn’t explore. However, for the purpose of this discussion, I’d like to include all the flavors as we consider how dependent your show is on the EC.

So… Let’s think about what happens when “The Face Of The Show” leaves the show…..

Let’s say you’re doing a show with an ECfl5. Actually, there wouldn’t be much for you to do except tell her when the camera’s on. :D She knows the material, she’s prepared what she wants to say, and really all you’re doing (if she needs you for anything at all instead of producing her own show completely independently) is helping HER to bring her vision to the masses. There is no “leaving the show”, because she IS the show. If she makes another show, it’ll be the exact same thing, with a new name, and without YOU connected to it. :)

ECfl4 is pretty much the same thing, except it’s likely that the research she’s doing doesn’t make her AS unique as an ECfl5, though she’s still extremely important for the show to have the same style and delivery. If she leaves the show, not just the look of the show changes, but you’ve lost the ability to write the shows in the same way that you did when you were building your audience. Also, if she joins another team or makes a similar show on her own, she automatically transfers the style of your show to hers. You can get another researcher, but if your viewers don’t appreciate her looks AND her new style, that might be all she wrote.

ECfl3 is a pretty good combination for both sides in a show break-up. :) Guys love to watch her talk. She’s fun and interesting. She’s someone that they would love to actually meet in person at a conference. Perfect. :D At the same time, since she’s not the writer or researcher on the project, none of the infrastructure disappears if she leaves. She’s “acting” what you tell her to act, so that’s what she’ll do on her new show. There are mannerisms that she’ll bring to the new venture that come from working with you or your team, but for you, transitioning to new on-air talent is seamless. She’s basically an informed spokesperson. The information doesn’t leave with her, and next week… (well… whenever you get new EC hahaha) the show goes on as planned.

ECfl2 is pretty much dime-a-dozen. Imagine the reading skills of a used car salesman in a late-night low-budget television commercial. “This. Is. Not. A. Lemon… Believe. You. Me….. I. Gah.Rohn.TEE. Ya. That.” In this case, you might be better off taking your chances and using an actual guy. :D … Or, at least a less-attractive female that can actually deliver the lines well and make your show look intelligent.

The problem here is in comparison to the better flavors. ECfl3 is like having a conversation with a friend. ECfl4&5 are like hearing a technical conversation… Like last year at BlogHerBiz ’07 when Lisa Stone moderated a panel which included Google’s VP of Search Products and User Experience, Marissa Mayer:

So, once you’ve heard knowledgeable women “kick it, off the top” about intelligent and progressive subjects, you’re just like “oh, come on :/” when the ECfl2′s trying to read sentences and pause because she sees a period, and didn’t understand until then that the sentence was about to end. :D

Also, that’s the fault of the producer or whomever’s in charge of the production. If there’s a bad read, have the talent DO.IT.OVER! :/

Which brings us to ECfl1, hehehe… This is when the producer says “I don’t care WHAT you people think! I know she can’t act and I know she can’t read, but she looks good, so I’m going to get hits and that’s all that matters”. Content-wise, these could actually be silent videos, or at least without her talking, because nobody’s listening anyway. It’s kind of a cycle… Since the EC has no mental connection to the material (if you bothered to write any material in the first place) the people who find out about your show and continue to watch it are tuning in to see how the EC looks this week. Because of this, if she leaves the show, your ratings leave with her because the EC *IS* the show, so you’re kaput.

So… Interestingly enough, if you’re a show producer, “middle of the road” is the way to go. If she knows too much, your show suffers when she leaves because she removes the infrastructure. If she comes off as a dolt or a simpleton, your show suffers when she leaves because NOW you have to survive off of the merit of your content….. Content which you disrespected in the first place by not selecting the right woman to represent your project from the giddyap.

And now, in the spirit of EC, I gratuitously embed pictures of Caroline McCarthy and Stephanie Frasco so people will click on my article! :D

Jeff Pulver interviews Stephanie Frasco of Ask Frasco and WhatCelebsWear.com live on Pulver.TV