The individual judging is officially and finally (almost) complete. Which means starting tomorrow, we will begin discussing the work that has risen to the top. I sense a lot of head-nodding is going to happen over the top picks. And probably some good fights over the stuff that's more on the cusp. Should be really interesting. I've always believed it's better to do work that's really great or really sucks. The stuff in the middle is deadly. The work that reaches out to those extremes is the work that gets noticed - for better or worse. Not much too update except that my head hurts and my eyes are bleeding after another 7 hours straight of staring at this screen.

One thing that I thought was painful - i mean, interesting - is that the student competition was to promote "Long's Horseradish." That's a tough one. When you really dig into horseradish, it's kind of nasty. Not one of those things you want to think too much about. But the students did a great job and there's some pretty compelling work in there. Forced me to think back to what my assignment was from the One Show when I was a student at the Creative Circus (word up, Norm). Believe it or not, it was something called "The Internet." Seriously, the assignment was to help a conglomerate of technology companies promote the Internet as a viable medium. Scott Vitrone and I came up with a spread print ad (of course) – The whole thing was white except in the bottom left corner was a bent bottle cap with the earth printed on it. And in the far right corner, a silver bottle cap opener with the words "The Internet" etched into it. The two objects were connected by a tiny line of copy that read, "Crack open a refreshing blend of everything that ever was, is and will be." Or something like that. Quite stunning, really, for a couple of burn-outs living in Atlanta and working at dive bars and coffee shops for minimum wage. I think we got a merit and our first taste of ad awardosis.

FYI- tonight's the night you should send all your good energy into the cosmic consciousness. We'll be tapping in at 9am. Or maybe just a tad later as we have some cocktails planned tonight.