Rémi Gaillard is a fairly notorious French prankster . He gained a certain amount of attention in the French media after performing a well-documented series of pranks, including a famous appearance disguised as a Lorient football player in the 2002 Coupe de France final match where he would eventually take part on the celebrations and even greet the then president of France Jacques Chirac.

It turns out he is tremendously accurate with a soccer ball as well. Wow!

Day late with the honorary French post as Bastille Day was on the 14th. Oh well, better late than never.

Liz, you’ll have to translate some of the video text.

Tags: commentary, silliness by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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Pick any of the social media networks you’ve joined (or I’ve joined…they’re in the column on the right.

Then watch the video.

Laugh.

Then double check that we’re not as bad off as this guy.

Great animation and voice work.

Thanks for reading.

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Tags: animation, character voices, commentary, silliness, social media, voiceover by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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This is a brilliant idea and it must get props.

Brian Clark over at Copyblogger has this awesome idea: tell a short story on Twitter in exactly 140 characters.

What?

Anyone who Tweets (posts) on Twitter only has 140 characters in which to get a thought across. Brian’s idea is to tell a short (140 character) story on Twitter. That includes punctuation, spacing, everything. Oh and it has to be intresting and engaging.

Here’s an example from Brian whose great idea will send lots of traffic to his great web site:

Three flies are bugging me on the deck. I kill two, and spare the third. “Go tell the others this is what happens,” I warn as he buzzes off.

Brian is giving away a prize of some sort for the winner but that doesn’t matter as the real prize is in the doing! You win simply by creatively expressing yourself in 140 characters.

You can read my entry here.

If you enter, after you post on Twitter and on Copyblogger, would you please post a link to your entry in the comment box here? We all want to read your prose.

Come on, it’ll be seconds and seconds of fun! You gotta try!

Thanks for reading.

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Tags: commentary, internet, marketing, silliness, social media by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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Everybody has a few songs that for them just bring out the happys.

It could be the beat, the melody, the words, the performance or all of that.

I came across one song that I hadn’t heard in a while that is one of those songs for me and joy of joys I found two great live versions: one of the original artist (Tom Jones) and a relative new comer (compared to Tom Jones), that being Robbie Williams.

I’d love to know which songs bring out the happys for for you but for me, It’s Not Unusual. Enjoy

TOM JONES’ VERSION

ROBBIE WILLIAMS’ VERSION

Tags: commentary, silliness by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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I find myself fascinating. Not in an egotistical “but enough about me what do YOU think of me?” way but rather in the way my mind works, has work and what I have remembered from childhood. Those weird pockets of memories that come to the fore every now and again are both powerful and sometimes confusing to me.

The purpose of that preamble is to advise you that today, April 21, 2008 is the 130th Anniversary of the fire pole. The whole history is nicely summarized here.

How this all ties together is that I always wanted a fire pole in my house to be able to get from one floor to another. As a child I thought that was cool and my opinion hasn’t changed. My father would ask me how I would build it and where with great interest but he never got the thing installed.

It was further heightened by the Batman TV show and the Batman movie. To me nothing could be more fun than flipping a secret switch, have a fake wall slide away to reveal a pole. It could lead to the bat cave or the kitchen I really didn’t care but how fun would that be?!

And in the Batman movie, you got to see a lot more of the bat poles in stately Wayne Manor including the switches Batman and Robin switched to change outfits. I still haven’t figured out how they flipped a switch while on the poles AND changed outfits.

But I have owned two homes and I still haven’t installed a pole. And I think I probably won’t. Yet on this anniversary day, it was fun to have that thought slide its way right up to the front of the line in my brain.

Do you come across this odd childhood memories too?

Thanks for reading.

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Tags: commentary, peter o'connell, silliness by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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"For those who understand, no answer is necessary. For those who do not understand, no answer will suffice."

Upon my entrance into fatherhood in October ’05, I understood that life for me would change. Among the many changes would be my tailspin out of the cultural mainstream (to which I’d been relegated to 2nd tier status for sometime prior to my daughter’s birth anyway).

The man (me) who encyclopedic knowledge of trivial facts of the 80’s, 90’s and early "ought’s" (00) had taken him to near mythical like status at cocktail parties and social gatherings (in my dreams) now would be "out of it". I was a father now, and that is the title we are given by our children. It’s "like" a badge of honor.

This leads me to a little You Tubing I did this evening. How I came across Bon Jovi’s video for his 2005 song "Who Says You Can’t Go Home" I can’t remember but I really liked the song as soon as I heard it.

Videos, I thought to myself, they still make music videos? You see, I have neither the time nor inclination to chase down music videos because, well, I am "out of it".

If you can’t recall the song or the video (which, likely makes you a parent too) here’s the video here; I really like the way the producers cut it together.

Now if you know anything about You Tube, you know they’ve practically perfected the"if you liked this, you’ll also like this" selections which are from a similar artist or theme of the video you just watched.

It was from this row of options that I came across a so-called Director’s Cut of the video which I thought was a total spoof, or film student’s version UNTIL about the middle of the video as you’ll see here:

Then while I was recovering from the quasi logic assault of THAT video (when you’re "out of it" your senses feel more assaulted than they used to), another version of the video was offered up as a selection on You Tube.

I have no idea if this was as popular a version as Bon Jovi’s original (maybe on the country charts), featuring a singer, Jennifer Nettles from (what I assume is a country band) Sugarland but Good Lord what a PERFECT (stunningly wonderful) vocal match for Jon Bon Jovi voice….and her presence with Bon Jovi is clearly established. For all I know ("out of it") she may be a huge superstar…she likely should be. One word: wow!

Watch it here. The record company wouldn’t let me embed the clip.

So all these fascinating things are happening around me and I’m catchin up about a year or two late.

But my daughter’s more interesting anyway. And by the end of February I’ll have doubled the fun with the pending arrival of baby O’Connell #2. Just think how "out of it" (and amazingly happy to be so) I’ll be by then.

P.S. My thanks to Mitch Joel and his recent post about his introduction into writing a blog via Windows Live Writer. This was my first post writing with it (not that you would or should notice any difference) but it is a great tool.

Tags: blogs, commentary, media, radio, silliness, tv by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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