Today I was featured on We Are Creative People, a website devoted to showcasing the work that people in the ad industry do in their free time. They posted some of my shirts. Thanks to my buddy for submitting my stuff.

A lot about the Beach Boys is overshadowed by the bubblegum nature of their early surfing and car songs. Once you get past those, you see the beauty and genius in songs like Warmth of the Sun, In My Room, Good Vibrations and of course every song from Pet Sounds. Then once you get past Pet Sounds, you dig around for Smile bootlegs and probably get Smiley Smile/Wild Honey. After that you most likely have no reference until the megahit Kokomo dropped in the mid-80’s. What you missed were some pretty magical moments where the band drifted from becoming a parody of themselves (which they are again today) to experimenting with different musical influences like funk and world music.

But the best thing you would’ve missed was the first solo record from a Beach Boy. Pacific Ocean Blue was released by Dennis Wilson in the mid-70’s and showcased his talent as a writer and singer. Genius ran in the Wilson blood and Pacific Ocean Blue is proof.

Earlier this year, I believe, the BBC aired a one-hour documentary about Dennis that is well worth a watch for any Beach Boy fan. Done in the typical rock bio format, it doesn’t detail a ton of information I hadn’t heard before, but it’s interesting and nice to see some focus on someone other than Brian.

Sidenote: Give Kokomo another chance. Imagine it not over produced and dated. It really IS a wonderful song.

I forgot how good this song is. And I had no idea how good the whole Sticky Fingers record is.

My bro Jeremy Bartel got a new camera recently. Subsequently he’s been shooting a lot. This is a beautiful, and I suspect deeply personal piece called The Sun that he made in the last couple weeks.

I wrote about Best Coast a few months ago. I’m still digging her quite a bit. When I put on her tunes I’m transported to summertime in California. What could be better than that? Anyway, there’s a new video for “When I’m With You.” Like her music and Twitter, it’s not groundbreaking, but it’s fun and sun-soaked.

God, I would love for this to be a real animated series. I was checking out some stuff on Behance today and stumbled onto Michael Myers illustrations of the characters from Lost. See them all here. They are killer. If you’d like to see more of his work, check his portfolio at www.drawsgood.com or follow his tweets @drawsgood, or buy prints of his Lost characters here.

Man, this opener for a Dutch science show makes me miss the days of watching Nickelodeon after school. Do kids still have shows like You Can’t Do That On Television, or Turkey Television, or Mr. Wizard?

After watching the Jay-Z doc on Absolut’s Facebook page, I came across another spot they made last year titled Anthem. In it, they use inspiration from Stefan Sagmeister’s Things I Have Learned So Far In My Life to create giant, three dimensional words out of things like ice, wheat, helium balloons and vodka bottles hanging in a forrest. After you watch the video above, check the “making of” videos here. It’s always great to see advertising that is more art that product pushing.

Yesterday, Absolut Vodka released a 15-minute documentary about Jay-Z on their webpage. It centers around Jay’s concert at Madison Square Garden on September 11 of last year. Listening to him talk about New York and watching shots of the city in black and white brings back my ever haunting desire to be there.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you my brother, Kaleb Motter.

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