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Who is Lauren?

TechCrunch discovers Microsoft's Lauren.

Apples and Oranges

Finally a Microsoft spot I can get behind. I am a devoted Mac user since the beginning. I was even interviewed by CNN.com about it for their article on the 25th anniversary of the Macintosh launch. I have an iPod, an iPhone and if I could, I'd have a iBrain. It would certainly have a better UI than the one I was born with. On the other hand, like most of my kind, I am not a fan of Microsoft. Their ad agency, though, ROCKS. Crispin, Porter + Bogusky is responsible for some of the most innovative work in recent history for clients like Burger King, Volkswagen and Geek Squad. Look up "Whopper Freakout" on YouTube and witness some great shit.

By comparison, CP+B's first attempts at rebranding their new tech client were astonishingly unimpressive. Jerry Seinfeld bonding with Bill Gates over buying cheap shoes. Not funny, not appealing and not effective branding of anything other than geeky old men. Then there was the Mojave Experiment. Not sure how involved the agency was in the development of the concept, but they at least handled the commercials. Still yawning at this point. 

It's an interesting assignment. Microsoft competes with Apple, yet they make software only, whereas Apple makes soft and hardware. People who buy Apple products think in terms of the hardware they are choosing — not so much the operating system. What has made Apple so incredibly successful, to a large extent, is the the melding of the two to create and impeccable brand experience. Even their stores are a branded experience. So now Microsoft has employed CP+B to improve the Q rating of their PR-challenged OS, Vista. It's an interesting challenge because to sell the software, one must sell the hardware. The PC experience is not a cohesive brand in the Apple sense. When all is right in the world of personal computing, the operating system is invisible. It is the infrastructure that you can — and should — take for granted, not unlike the plumbing in your house. Having to sell what should be a behind-the-scenes automatic support system, means bringing consciousness to something that should just happen. 

On Friday, my colleague —a confessed Alex Bogusky groupie — sent me a link to the latest Microsoft commercial. Finally, I think they've got it. In spite of myself, I love this spot (partly because Lauren reminds me of girl crush Claire Fisher of Six Feet Under)! C,P+B is finally approaching the product as part of the larger experience, and they do it cleverly. I am wondering if HP chipped in. They get a shout out. If I were going to move to the land of the previously unhip, I would definitely look into those fab looking bright orange laptops.

Blah Blah Blahg

I've been quiet for a while now. Since the last time I posted, I took a trip to the U.S. Virgin Islands. It was unusual circumstances. The accommodations were a gift from my good friends Joe and Paul to myself and 5 of their other friends. I met some wonderful women and had a way much needed albeit brief escape. We stayed on St. John. It is a beautiful island and largely undeveloped. I highly recommend it to anyone seeking a tropical retreat.

It seems a little insane to me that we are already finishing up the first quarter of the year. In a heartbeat it will be summer and a nanosecond later, I'll be getting the kids ready for school. And so life goes, eh? It's oddly comforting right this moment to think that time seems to pass so quickly and without incident. Surely by the Fall, the economy will be turning around. Certainly the emotional aftermath of recent challenges will have faded. Much more will have been processed. My toddler will be more negotiable — well, at least more verbal. I will be living in a larger, lighter and less expensive apartment. Maybe not by May, but definitely by September. Right?

I used to want time to creep by so I could savor every moment, stay young forever suck every bit of honey out of life. Is it me? Am I taking on a national - or even global - malaise? My own personal melancholy is compounded by stories of so many people out of work. So many people drained of their life savings. So many people in foreclosure on their homes. I just don't see many smiling faces these days. As the great Robert Plant once said, "Does anybody remember laughter?" 

One of my favorite tweeters @IntegralHack recently said, "Compassion is the only solution. Not the fuzzy, teary-eyed emotional response, but the limpid recognition of interconnection."

I'll just go with that for now while I ride out the whatever-it-is-we-are-all-experiencing-right-now and wait for it to pass.

Conscious Detachment and Kali Ma

An old and dear friend of mine, Mark Gorman, plays bass with Steve Ross at Maha Yoga for a chant. The cynical part of me was skeptical that anything like this could be done with authenticity in Brentwood. There are more than a few posers in the crowd, and several people who appear to have been hooked up to a silicone drip. It is, after all, L.A. But the vast majority of the 150 or so people seem to genuinely want to be there to connect with each other and a cosmic energy by a collective surrendering to something other than ourselves. The studio is lovely, the musicians explode the joint and I swear the building levitates a few feet off the ground. I have started to feel about these chants, I think, the way some people feel about church. It's a feeling I never seemed to achieve at temple, though I tried. When Mark said "chant", I expected something much more esoteric. Ravi Shankar or a room filled with saffron-robed monks droning in monotone. Maha chants are much more like a Hindu hootenanny, a Rama revival. Stirring, comic and cathartic.

Looking back on my life in the past year, you might think that I invoked the great mother Kali Ma. She is often misunderstood to be the Hindu goddess of death and destruction. She is a scary gal, usually depicted with the whites of her eyes staring confrontationally out of her dark blue face. She holds a sword in one hand and a freshly severed and bloody head in the other. Her impeccable fashion sense is evident in the garland of skulls she's chosen and a skirt made of dismembered arms. Trash and Vaudeville eat your heart out!  While Kali Ma's energy is strong and runs deep, she is not maliciously destructive. She lives to bring death to the ego and its deluded view of reality. She kills attachment to the physical, thus liberating intention to find truth. 

One of my yoga teachers recently used the word "grabby" when describing the feeling of the ego trying to control reality. It's a description that works for me, as I often feel that I am trying to hang on to something that is slipping away. I have had to let go of a lot this year...UH. LOT. And the natural tendency while standing in the wreckage of what used to be one's world is to grab onto what is left and hold on for dear life. Yeah, grabby fits.

I had been out of practice with yoga for several years. The business of bearing children, nurturing a career, building a life, constructing a house and deconstructing a family took me away from the mat. This January I finally found my way back. Before kids, I cut some serious teeth at Larchmont Yoga (now a Yogaworks) in Hollywood. When my daughter was an infant and toddler, I lived in Santa Monica for several years. I practiced regularly at Yogaworks on Montana Ave. I had experienced good yoga and I was spoiled. 

I have lived in the South Bay for 7 years. Beautiful beaches, fab bike path, great public schools, there's a lot to love. Yoga? Not so much. I've tried half a dozen schools in the area and hadn't clicked with any of them. That is, until an old friend moved into the neighborhood. Enter Yogaworks South Bay. It's gorgeous, it's convenenient, it's a perfect fit. The schedule is filled with good classes taught by great teachers. In January I started taking 3-4 classes a week. 

Yoga is a complex philosophy spelled out the in Bhagavad Gita, the primary Hindu scripture. As many as 18 kinds of yoga are defined, only one of which is the physical practice. Each class is a series of poses — asanas — designed to foster strength, flexibility and balance. 

So, I have finally gotten to a point in my yoga practice where I can easily slip into what I call conscious detachment. For someone who is hyperemotionally engaged at all times — no small feat. I often feel like I wish I could take a vacation from myself. Yoga finally does that for me. I have always believed that a healthy relationship requires a balance of intimacy and space. My practice gives me that same balance in my relationship with myself. And chanting has enabled me to return to that state when I am not on my mat. I chant in the car. I chant in the shower. I chant in my head at work when I am fretting about feeling unappreciated and uninspired. I chant when I feel like I am hanging on to feelings for the otherwise perfect man who is emotionally unavailable (yes, my very own Mr. Big). I chant when I worry about money. I chant when I look at the wrinkles between my eyebrows (and it's a helluva lot cheaper than Botox). 

It's time to convince you that no one has fed me Kool-Aid in a tent somewhere in the tropics. By now, my futurist friend Alex in Silicon Valley is shaking his head. He told me New York would revoke my native status if she knew I was chanting in Brentwood. I am sure he is right, but the best spiritual experience she could offer was discovering (at 5am on the way to the Kiev after having been up all night partying) that the cube at Astor Plaza rotates if you push it. Besides, the skull-adorned punks on the Lower East Side don't wear cool skirts made out of dismembered body parts. I'll take my Hindu goddess any day.