| 
August 8, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
No one wants to talk about this one. It creeps them out. I have an undertaker friend. He can tell you, people are leery of shaking your hands when you just put a suit on a corpse. If you are squeamish about death, stop reading now. If not, have a seat. (Click here to read more)
August 6, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
A while back, in my mother’s backyard in Alabama, I got into a conversation with several elderly Southern women about the difference between blueberries and huckleberries. I found out more than I cared to know about both berries. So did Rudy. (Click here to read more)
August 1, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
I kind of saw this one coming. My investments are worth less. My house is worth less. My car is worth less. Now I am worth less. My life, that is. The value of human life in America is dropping faster than the stock market. Are you surprised? Don’t be. (Click here to read more)
July 30, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
It is the summer of our malcontents. No shortage of them in 2008. Most of my summers fit that category.
In reading newspapers and watching the TV and rooting around the web, it seems that about nine people think America is headed in a good direction. The rest see us sliding down a cheese grater into a bottle of alcohol. (Click here to read more)
July 25, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
A few blogs ago, I wrote about Rudy, our Jack Russell, and a nest of baby birds and a new cat in the neighborhood. The new cat has come out of the sewer and isn’t shy about his intentions. He is a skinny and fearless sewer cat, the worst adversary in the suburbs. (Click here to read more)
July 23, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
By the time you read this, White Lilly Flour, made in downtown Knoxville, Tennessee since 1883, will cease to be manufactured in the South and will instead be made somewhere in the midwest. To understand the consequences of this situation, you must understand biscuits more than business. (Click here to read more)
July 18, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
I have seen a lot since I came screaming into the world back when Ike was liked. Technically, it comes to 451,800 hours (could be more, depending on exactly when you read this). So what do I have to show for it? (Click here to read more)
July 16, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
Some people do not believe in global warming. They say we’re just going through a cycle. The melting ice caps, extreme weather changes and Pentagon changes to accommodate such global changes do not change their thinking. (Click here to read more)
July 11, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
Dee and I were out on a shoot a while back, driving almost 600 miles in three days. We sweated and shot our way through Annapolis, Maryland and watched a freight train of a thunderstorm drop the 103º temperature by 20 degrees in a few minutes. The next day, in Rehobeth Beach, Delaware the sky was so blue you felt like Paul Newman was staring a hole through you. We kept driving and shooting. That’s when it got interesting. (Click here to read more)
July 9, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
Every year, birds build a nest under our deck. The nest is always in the exact same place, under the left corner. The three sky blue, speckled eggs are always visible through the exact same cracks in the wooden floor. The hatching is one of Rudy’s favorite yearly events. (Click here to read more)
July 4, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
I had stopped by, as I often do, to check on her since she was ninety-six years old and had started drinking again after fifty-eight years of sobriety. The small figurine that had stood erect for seventy-eight of those ninety-six years on my grandmother’s mantle now slumped, bent over seemingly in pain or possibly shame. (Click here to read more)
July 2, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
If this is your favorite TV show (that title up there), then stop reading now because what I’m about to say will just torque your sensitivity gland. But if you think this show is as ridiculous as a man willing to saw off a leg to save money on socks, read on. (Click here to read more)
June 27, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
We’re all going to be living on bugs in a few years; you know that, don’t you? Roaches, scorpions, grubs, crickets, worms, crispy, crawly crunchies, they are the answer to the coming food shortage – and that shortage is coming. Read around, you’ll see. (Click here to read more)
June 25, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
I am sitting on the deck surrounded by people I don’t know. We are heading for Cozumel. The sun is aching to escape a bank of pumpkin colored clouds that brush across the western sky and turn the Gulf of Mexico into a peach soup ... (Click here to read more)
June 20, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
Friday, Cozumel, Mexico, a long day in port. Most people go to Senor Frog’s down in town or the ½ Senor Frog’s next to the new docking pier. Hurricane Wilma crushed the place in 2005, including folding the docks into accordions and stripping buildings from the beach, leaving concrete supports and rectangled ruins like rotten teeth in the sand. (Click here to read more)
June 18, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
I didn’t see one rare, world famous blue lizard in Grand Cayman, mainly because I was staring straight down into the bottom of the ocean. I did see what looked like a 4-foot barracuda, grinning a mouthful of sharp teeth up through the distilled-clear water. (Click here to read more)
June 13, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
I heard that verbiage a lot. I actually counted how many times I heard it in the span of 7 hours in Jamaica: 68 times. It didn’t matter. I loved the place. It was, indeed, no problem. (Click here to read more)
June 11, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
To the left, the scribble of sand is so thin a hurricane could scrape it like a waiter wiping crumbs of the white linens of a cruise ship formal dinner. It is one of the Turks and Caicos Islands. By morning, Haiti is off the portside. (Click here to read more)
June 6, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
Fred and I are driving through the South. We flew through it earlier. AirTran to Atlanta, a Hertz stop and we’re on our way. We hit a few new business fishing holes and stopped in Chattanooga, TN. Going to Chattanooga with Fred is like going to ... (Click here to read more)
June 4, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
A 48 year-old man, coming off parole from life in prison, is standing in a boxing ring in Atlanta. He barely even sweats, his rigid muscles pumping, his once golden gloves whirling in quick unison off the head of his opponent, a boxer 18 years his junior. (Click here to read more)
May 30, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
A few comments on a quick article in the New York Times from Saturday; the story went in the general direction of – If you think like everyone else these days, you won’t go far in business. Genius. (Click here to read more)
May 28, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
My wife and I once drove from Fort Worth to Colorado Springs starting at 9 pm, a dumb idea, even for people more stupid than I am. But we did it. We’d driven from college at the University of Alabama and visited my wife’s sister in Fort Worth for a few days. (Click here to read more)
May 23, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
Lightning hit the tall pine in our backyard, blowing out the bark down the side like a fat man ripping a cheap shirt. The big tree slowly died. The squirrels didn’t care. It was nothing but a ladder to them. They started caring yesterday. (Click here to read more)
May 21, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
Maybe contradiction is the religion of the South but irony is its daily bread. Yesterday, several of us sat outside, enjoying the cool sunshine of a sidewalk café beside Richmond’s Main Street in the lowest part of the geographic bowl known as Shockoe Bottom. (Click here to read more)
May 16, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
General Electric is planning to auction off its appliance division. Just read it on MSNBC. Goldman Sachs has already been hired to smack the gavel. Sources say it could fetch between $5 and $8 billion. Why do I care? I care because I have a kitchen filled with GE appliances. (Click here to read more)
May 14, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
I started writing stories because of the pain. When I write, it doesn’t hurt as bad. Truth is, I never claimed to be a writer to begin with. Writers have associations, pedigrees, talent, and several other things I don’t possess. I try to tell a story. (Click here to read more)
May 9, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
May we live in interesting times, indeed.
While pundits debate recession fears, and global warming is treated like Obama addressing his ex-pastor, gas is headed for $7 a gallon. Don’t believe it will get that expensive? Drive and watch. It will happen. (Click here to read more)
May 7, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
I’ve known genteel Southerners with perfect teeth and beautiful skin. I’ve seen them at the country club (while I was doing manual labor) and read about them in books and magazines. I’ve mowed their yards and painted their houses and skirted the perimeter of their culture on occasion, pretending, sometimes yearning, but seldom fitting. (Click here to read more)
May 2, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
My mother is 84 years old, hard of hearing and has three blueberry bushes in her backyard. Each produces a different kind of blueberry. I have no horticultural bent so I am not aware of the species or varieties. (Click here to read more)
April 30, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
RUDY JOURNAL: STARDATE APRIL 2008: Rudy, our Jack Russell, has begun to expand his menu of tricks. A few months ago, we noticed that he had added a new move to his repertoire of ball chasing. He knows words too. (Click here to read more)
April 25, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
Since I have spent about 16 hours a day lately looking for innovation across America (shooting mini documentaries), I thought I would sit down and write a few ideas I have on the complicated subject. (Click here to read more)
April 23, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
In my youth, I worked with a man who operated a truck farm for many years. For those of you unfamiliar with a truck farm, it is basically a vegetable farm where the produce is sold to market. And, of course, it involves a truck, usually a beat-up, run-down, dented pickup. In my youth I sold everything from plums to sugar cane to watermelons from a truck farm. (Click here to read more)
April 19, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
My father died from complications of pneumonia. My great grandfather died in his forties from it. Pneumonia has always seemed foreign to me, like cancer or the plague. It is something people get just before they die. (Click here to read more)
April 18, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
Next time you drive past one of those RV campgrounds, think about this: If you want to park in style, Bella Terra ( http://www.bellaterrarvresort.com ) will accommodate your upscale recreational yearnings. (Click here to read more)
April 16, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
I love the feel of an old school map crinkling in my hands, pressed drum-like against the steering wheel, obscuring my vision as I roll down the interstate, weaving in and out of traffic at 70 mph while traversing the printed route with one finger... (Click here to read more)
April 11, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
You have heard this before. Newspapers are dying, if not dead. No one reads books anymore. The Internet is going to images and words are being left in the digidust. Ironically, the written word’s obit gets rewritten every day. (Click here to read more)
April 9, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
We tend to attach logos to the ends of our accomplishments in branding. I’d like to look at the last 29 years, however, as experiences (plural) rather than experience (singular). There is a big difference. (Click here to read more)
April 4, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
Acorns left from the fall crunched in the black leaves in the dampness under our feet. A bench lured us with its emptiness and the old man and I wandered over to sit wordlessly beside the muddy swirls of the river. The silence was awkward. (Click here to read more)
April 2, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
I’ve often wondered if supposed aliens come here on vacation or is this just a business trip? Maybe you have seen a UFO. Or maybe you have even been abducted and probed or whatever the bug-eyed beings do when they snatch up a human. (Click here to read more)
March 28, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
In case you have grown tired of the endless things available on the web to distract you, I offer you two more: Gizmodo.com and Engadget.com (thank you again, Jeff). Now I can sleep even less because I’m up all night browsing these sites and watching Mythbuster’s Kari Byron snipe a tree in half with a wicked Gatling gun. (Click here to read more)
March 26, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
In 1982, Dreyer’s/Edy’s Ice Cream taster, John Harrison (whose taste buds, by the way, are insured for a million dollars) came up with the idea to put Oreo cookies in vanilla ice cream. The marketing people didn’t like it (probably based on some research, which is all too often the best way to kill a good idea) and decided to go with fresh peach ice cream instead. Cookies and cream went in the round file. (Click here to read more)
March 21, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
I find the texting craze that is so fashionably addressed toward teens to be amusing. I have seen several TV commercials making fun of parents for being clueless on the language of texting. (Click here to read more)
March 19, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
When I was a kid in Montgomery, Alabama, my dad took me to the Montgomery International Speedway on Saturday nights to watch men like Donnie and Bobby Allison race Red Farmer and maybe some shade-tree mechanics from Prattville or ... (Click here to read more)
March 14, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
We have seen the combinations for years. A new movie debuts and in an effort to wedge it firmly between our attention span and our wallet, the marketing people try to toss out two past blockbusters to describe their film in a catchy sound bite blurb. (Click here to read more)
March 12, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
I have always been a sucker for manufacturing processes and I am virtually hypnotized by watching how stuff is made. It seems there are more and more TV programs that cater to my Jones. Maybe it was started by Unwrapped on the Food Network. (Click here to read more)
March 7, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
A scientist recently built the first man-made genome. The little sound you hear is your DNA adjusting to that information. (Click here to read more)
March 5, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
Every night for an hour and a half I attended the university. I learned the best way to tell a joke and how to get rid of my hard Southern accent (or scrape as much of it off my tongue as I could). I saw things a small town kid would never see down on the farm... (Click here to read more)
February 29, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
You get a call on your free Internet phone service. (Click here to read more)
February 27, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
I have a problem with the exact location of an imaginary, biological line that competes with the old geopolitical Mason Dixon Line. (Click here to read more)
February 22, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
Biscuits and cigarettes killed my grandfather (in that order). I lost my first tooth eating a biscuit. I know at least four ways to make biscuits and fifty ways to know when someone has done that job wrong. (Click here to read more)
February 20, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
Are you going to eat those fried toenails? He will. (Click here to read more)
February 15, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
I learned the Southern religion of Dr. Pepper early through the purr of the machine in the corner of one of the barns at my Uncle Carlor’s cane pole business. That machine attracted the entire town at one point or another as Babbie, Alabama... (Click here to read more)
February 13, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
It’s amazing what you can learn if you hang around Jeff. This week, he told me that there are companies who will “appraise” your website domain name and give you an accurate value. These valuations come with little certificates that look a bit like stocks or a diploma. It costs $15 to get that certificate of valuation. (Click here to read more)
February 8, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
Once, when I was young, my father and I were traveling down a road out in the country and came upon a herd of cows. They were all lying down in the field like they were taking a break from cow business. (Click here to read more)
February 6, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
In 2007, my family and I stayed in quite a few hotel rooms across America. But on four trips with Rudy, our well-traveled Jack R, we got the same room at one particular hotel four times – the exact same room. (Click here to read more)
February 4, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
Every year since starting this blog (okay, that’s two years, but I’m counting), I have gone through the entire Super Bowl of commercials, top to bottom and I am going to say it flat out, it was like a laundry list. Some of those spots didn’t need a comment. And most of the ones this year don’t either. So I’m adjusting my game plan. (Click here to read more)
February 1, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
I have said this for 20 years (if you have worked with me, you know it already): Every commercial should have a dog, preferably a talking dog. Bud Light knows this truth of advertising. (Click here to read more)
January 30, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
{Another Story about Glue} Just when you thought America’s infatuation with coffee was exhausted, along comes the next generation of bean purveyors with a twist. (Click here to read more)
January 25, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
In 1998, writer, Stephen King, became a part-time resident of the Florida Gulf Coast. Now he has set a novel there. (Click here to read more)
January 23, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
In Virginia we have potholes on some of our highways deep enough to burst a tire and warp the rim. (Click here to read more)
January 18, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
It hurts to lose a baseball game. It hurts even more to lose your entire team. (Click here to read more)
January 16, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
During the holidays, Dee Briggs had an idea. “I’m going to go to the grocery store and get a turkey and take it to Extra Billy’s (a local barbecue restaurant). They’ll smoke it. You want me to get you one?” (Click here to read more)
January 11, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
I know this is a weird subject and my vehement aversion makes it even weirder. It’s random and strange and some people will read this and send me emails and say, “What? Wicker?” But this is my story and I’m sticking to it. I hate wicker. Seriously hate the stuff. (Click here to read more)
January 9, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
As I type this, I am listening to some cool music from the Music Genome Project. Went to Pandora.com (thanks Jeff) and typed in what I wanted and they loaded me up with that and everything like it. You want personalized radio? This is it. (Click here to read more)
January 4, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
A calf is just a small cow, not much bigger than a good-sized dog, but when it hits you in the chest, running full tilt, it hurts like a kick from a pair of size-13 Tony Lamas administered by a man who knows how. (Click here to read more)
January 2, 2008
by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide
Jeff Dunham and Walter. You've seen them, surely. If not, Google them. YouTube them. Click your remote around Comedy Central and a few other channels.
Jeff is the straight man, hand firmly up Walter's keister, moving the dummy's mouth without moving his own. (Click here to read more)
Click here to read the blogs from 2007
Click here to read the blogs from 2006
Opinions expressed here and in any corresponding comments are the personal opinions of the original authors, not necessarily of Big River and may not have been reviewed in advance by Big River. |
