I’ve just finished reading a book this week scribed by none other than Legendary NBA coach Phil Jackson, entitled, Sacred Hoops: Spiritual Lessons of a Hardwood Warrior.

Needless to say this book, like most, (I’m easily pleased) knocked me for six. It’s not long, and it’s not super detailed in terms of his NBA experiences but it does weave a few simple themes that demonstrate the power of higher and collective consciousness and how he has used these key elements to take both the Bulls and the Lakers to consecutive championships.

Now I will get back to this topic later in the post but first up I have to expel some rage in the direction of a new trend that still seems to be getting worse and worse. To most of you who actually read this thing it will seem very innocuous but as someone who’s directed TV commercials before it’s very apparent. This week I saw for the first time the new Carlton Draught ad. Now Carlton is basically the standard beer served at nearly every pub in this country sans Queensland. They drink XXXX which tastes like cardboard and…and well that’s all I’ve got. Now there is absolutely nothing wrong with Carlton, but at the same time if there is an alternative beer and you have the spare coin, you’re gonna go for that 9 out of 10. What sets Carlton apart from most beers in our country are their commercials; simply put they are quite clever, usually funny or just plain well done. Unfortunately their latest one –

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtCU43MteYY

has just succumbed to the trend of hyper slow motion. But before I get into why this commercial pisses me off I’ll briefly explain why slow motion pisses me off.

IT”S F- ING LAZY!

To me when I first saw the use of these Phantom cameras capturing something at 1000 frames per second I was impressed, the detail, the nuance, the movement the simplicity of it all. Now it seems that every half-baked creative at an ad agency and every lazy spot director at a production company has at least one of these ads on his reel. Not to mention also that we can’t go a month without seeing a new incarnation of variable frame rate,  which funnily enough just looks the f-ing same as the last variable frame rated commercial that was on TV.

Basically it shows a lack of effort and a lack of understanding, it’s a cheap trick that has worn out it’s welcome. There is no skill in sticking a camera in front of some people and making them do stupid shit. Now I do understand that the advertisement I’ve linked above is a piss take of the very thing I’m talking about. They too obviously felt the same way about this over use of slow mo but instead of a taking a real stand and doing something completely opposite – they do the same thing! Once again demonstrating how lazy they are.

“You know we could come up with something completely original, something that signals the death of slow motion commercials… I know why don’t we do a slow motion commercial but we make of us doing a slow motion commercial!” I’m a genius, just like that cool guy from Mad Men.

Man I seriously don’t f –ing get it, I just don’t. You’ve just fallen into the same trap but instead put a different sticker on the same box that’s been doing the rounds for the past 18 months.

Hey here’s an idea why don’t you do a commercial in hyper fast motion, so fast that you don’t even see it! That way we’ll never see it!

Anyway I think I’ve made my point, actually the rant sort of goes against what I want to talk about next. Take yourself back, back to the early 90’s, Soccer was popular but Basketball was the king. Mainly because you had MJ plastered on every billboard in every basketball-playing city in the world, and rightly so the guy was a legend. Although this popularity only lasted roughly 7 – 8 years it’s looked upon with intense fondness by most late Gen Y’s and early X’s. Just get my mates and I around a table and we could rattle off hundreds and hundreds of names, granted most of them were learnt from NBA Jam, but still!

This should go a little way to explaining the phenomena if you weren’t around back then.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0AGiq9j_Ak

Now what got me most about this book is how he described his team as a unit, and I’m not talking about the usual bullshit – there is no “I” in team spiel. I’m talking about a collective consciousness and harmony that he instilled via zen meditation and Native American teachings that garnered him no less than 9 championships. It’s about being in -tune with one another, while he stayed invisible knowing that these men needed not control, but jut a gentle guide.

What interests me is that his philosophy has huge parallels to the human race, this planet and our spiritual evolution. Us like Phil should stay invisible when it comes to this planet, we siphon too much of it’s resources and in return expect it to perform for us at it’s peak level. As a race we don’t work in harmony at all, like his players represented the Bulls and Lakers, we humans represent this planet. And as representatives when it comes to winning championships, we haven’t won any. We are not a cohesive unit, we don’t work together, hell we really have no idea what the guy next to us is all about. Our collective consciousness doesn’t exist hence we have no real connection to each other, and why no harmony.

And that’s why we haven’t moved forward in the past fifteen years, we haven’t matured in any sort of way and spiritually, we are a dead planet. Why? Because everyman thinks he can do it on his own. Bizarrely enough it wasn’t until Phil convinced MJ that he didn’t have to win the games on his own that the Bulls started winning championships. When you give to the other player and offer him your trust, you give him confidence to reach for the stars. When Jordan started including the team and team became one.

Well we have lost confidence in each other and hence in the league that is the universe, the team of Earth is the equivalent of the LA Clippers.

Like usual comment if your cool…wait a minute, comment if like me you’re desperate for a comment.

Until next post.