dragons make everything better

My plan here is to rave happily about commercials. This fact alone should confuse you. I detest commercials. Not seeing a lot of ads (read, not watching much TV at all) is part of how I keep my sanity. Most advertising doesn't have any respect for the person seeing the ad, as witnessed by the use of phrases like "big sale," "no payments for X," "special," and "best ever," and the depressing scream-at-people-long-enough-and-they'll-buy-your-stuff attitude.

This sort of thing is the only thing that makes me tire watching the Olympics. If it was just sports coverage I'd be sunk, happily settled into my couch. But with all the ad breaks I start to get a feeling of not having nearly enough silence around me. Too much input. But I promised happy raving and haven't gotten there yet so here goes:

There is a beautiful commercial from United Airlines playing during the Olympic coverage. I've had some travel issues with United. Lots of them actually. So an add that makes me feel contented about that company is impressive. It's a stop-animation piece of a little kid dreaming about what his dad is doing while he's gone on a business trip. United has both the commercial and a making-of short movie available on their site. The 'making of' bit is worth all of its 6 or 7 minutes. Jamie Caliri, who directed it, is the kind of person I love working with (not that I get to work with him) - totally in love with what he does. It also turns out he's the same person who did the fabulous closing sequences for "A Series of Unfortunate Events."

There's still too much in the way of life-sucking commercials, but things like this are a big dose of clear air and sunshine.