| Subject: Resume, Clips |
| From: "Barrett Brown" <barriticus@gmail.com> |
| Date: 5/16/07, 14:36 |
| To: acarpenter@makos.com |
| CC: clientservices@makos.com |
BARRETT BROWN___________________________________________
3506 Manchaca Rd. #221 Austin, TX 78704
512-560-2302 barriticus@aol.com
COPYWRITER/ FEATURE COLUMNIST/ CONTRIBUTING EDITOR/ BOOK AUTHOR
Published Work/ Freelance Media Experience
Sterling and Ross Publishers
Nonfiction book "Flock of Dodos: Behind Modern Creationism, Intelligent Design, and the Easter Bunny", political humor, authored in 2006, released in March 2007.
Avacata
Current, ongoing copywriting in 2007 for Dallas ad agency, researching and creating entertainment/dining/venue blurbs for clients' marketing collateral, including luxury resort real estate firm.
National Lampoon
Contributing writer April 2005 to June 2006
Features included "Pick-Up Lines That Don't Seem to Work," "Craig's Conspiracy Corner," "A Guide to Dealing with Housecats," more.
Weekly columnist for political analysis site from October 2004 to November 2005
Features included - - "JohnKerry.com is Web-Tastic!" "Politicos Should Heed the Perry Incident," "Hot Senate Races," "Hot House Races," "109th Congress - What They Really Wanted for Christmas," "Political New Year's Resolutions," "State of the Union 2005: Dreams and Ironies" "The Long Kiss Goodnight," "The Strange Case of Jeff Gannon," "Libby Indicted, Dems Excited," "The Best Little Decoy in Texas," "Faith of Our Fathers: A Mildly Mean-Spirited Review," "McClellan is No Fleischer," "A Response to Our Catholic Readers," "The Known Unknown," "Dr. Frist Prescribes Himself a Dose of Moderation," "Meet John Roberts," "2008 Preview," Roberts Confirmation Hearings Largely Bloodless," more.
AOL CityGuide
Web content writer from Summer 2000 to December 2003 Researched/ created content coverage of event and entertainment venues. Served as regional correspondent for Dallas, Austin, New Orleans, Houston and Little Rock markets.
Additional magazine work
Ongoing, have contributed feature articles from serious political commentary to humor pieces to children's recreational activity coverage to fine dining overviews for outlets including business-to-business publication Pizza Today, D.C.-based public policy journal Toward Freedom, London-based public policy journal Free Life, humor magazine Jest, parenting publication Dallas Child, men's magazines Oui and Hustler, literary journal Swans, dozens more.
Additional writing projects
Have written shopping/entertainment guides for Dallas Market Center publication Destination Dallas, created marketing copy for Verizon via Dallas ad agency Sullivan-Perkins, produced website copy for design firm NPCreate.com, provided public relations pieces for Texas energy company EBS and Dallas real estate firm Dunhill Partners, more.
Education
1999 - 2003 University of Texas at Austin, College of Communications
Roy's Restaurant Austin
Hawaii's hottest concept-dining export was born on America's own little island chain but draws on the culinary styles of the entire Pacific region. Roy's re-creates a palatial island atmosphere suitable for such subtropical snacking smack dab in the middle of downtown Austin -- enjoy your entrée in the air-conditioned, white-tableclothed splendor of the dining room or rough it out on the patio. Rack of lamb comes dressed up with two tropic-tinged sauces and a Szechuan-peppercorn crust; the Chilean sea bass is steamed with pesto and subjected to other, similarly tasty processes; and about a dozen other dishes incorporate some kind of tuna. You'll also find a full bar serving fruity, rum-based concoctions worth their weight in miniature cocktail umbrellas. The crowd (and there usually is one) is understandably festive; it's hard to be stuffy when the servers won't stop saying such things as "aloha." -- Barrett Brown
Noodle-ism
Many
are the pleasures to be found within the walls of Noodle-ism, not the
least of which are the walls themselves, done up as they are in the
kind of superbly urban sort of avant-garde kitsch that would take a
professor of humanities to adequately categorize. Those whose chief
concern is with the actual menu will be similarly harassed with the
myriad possibilities life has to offer. Consider, for instance, the
dan dan mein a noodle dish topped with peanuts, scallions,
grilled shrimp, and a spicy Sichuan sauce or perhaps the three
cabbage ravioli with mushroom lime butter sauce. Less
utensil-intensive is the shrimp and tofu cake sandwich accompanied by
miso soup. Additionally, the mochi ice cream is the most novel
dessert you're ever likely to encounter, consisting as it does of a
ball of ice cream surrounded by a thick layer of dough. How this
might be accomplished is left to the diner's imagination. --
Barrett Brown
The Grape
Lower Greenville's premiere destination for upscale dining and wine lays claim to that particular Holy Trinity of attributes common to all truly great restaurants: decades of experience, a menu subject to weekly rewrites and the sort of practically perfect front-patio ambiance for which the French so often take credit. But despite such virtues, The Grape provides an unusually straightforward selection, opting for such no-nonsense staples of Euro-hybrid dining as pasta, pork loins, short ribs, fried crusted shrimp and mushroom soup. Not that culinary complexity is abandoned altogether; one's fish entree is likely to be subjected to the sort of treatment that humans tend to receive only at expensive, week-long spa retreats -- which is to say, covered in cantaloupe-black pepper jam and scented with arugula and prosciutto. The dessert selection tends more towards permanence than does the ever-shifting array of entrees, and thus one can usually count on the availability of chocolate banana cream pie and vanilla bean creme brulee. -- Barrett Brown
Jinbeh
It's always exciting when one suspects that the evening's dinner plans might just involve some sort of octopus, squid or anything else once regarded by sailors to be sea monsters. But it's downright thrilling when one discovers that such multi-tentacled aqua-beasts rank among the least unusual items on the menu. Such is the happy case at Jinbeh, the Japanese restaurant where the sea urchin is just itchin' to be eaten and nothing escapes the hibachi grill except the sushi. Going beyond the pleasant predictability of tuna rolls and shrimp tempura, Jinbeh is probably the only establishment in the county that can claim to do a brisk business in raw quail eggs and Japanese pasta, much less green tea ice cream and Korean beer. And since nothing screams "Party!" like halibut sashimi, the Frisco restaurant has become quite a popular venue for the kind of get-togethers that seem to warrant heaping piles of clams and snow crabs. -- Barrett Brown
Fetish
The
Scoop: Even notoriously autocratic shoe nut Imelda Marcos would
be astounded by Fetish's quasi-infinite selection of boots,
sandals, and everything in between. Here you'll find designs
a-plenty care of such stylishly current footwear mavens as Cynthia
Rowley and Isaac Mizrahi. The resident selection covers all
sensibilities and tastes; the most conservative of librarians is just
as likely to go home happy as is the kookiest of color-worshipping
artist types. Also on hand in quantity is a respectable selection of
unsubtle jewelry, fashionable French threads, and housewares to die
for.
The Scene: The staff is helpful but decidedly
non-pushy; a few minutes in the store will reveal that these gals
aren't on commission. Thus the trip to Fetish is free from any
undue tension, and customers revel in their unspoken freedom to roam
the store without fear of acquiring a sudden entourage of
over-anxious salespeople.
Insider Tips: A gift
certificate from Fetish is sure to please any aspiring fashion
goddess, whether girlfriend or great aunt. One little picture of
Benjamin Franklin can make up for a lifetime of stylistic ignorance.
-- Barrett Brown
Though the practice is by no means limited to the U.S., brand licensing is still largely associated with American culture, despite having since caught on with a vengeance in Japan, Western Europe, and elsewhere. This view of branding as a peculiarly American cultural development is reasonable - it was in the U.S. that the practice first originated, after all, and it was the U.S. commercial establishment that gradually built the concept into something of a fine art, and an extraordinarily profitable one at that.
Much of the same can be said about college athletics. Though organized sporting as a function of higher education is neither an American invention nor even a recent one, modern American culture has given the institution a degree of attention and cash not seen anywhere else in the world. And so it's hardly surprising that the practice of licensing, when combined with the public's relatively high interest in college athletics, has proven to be among retail's most reliable options for improving the bottom line, often outperforming even national athletic merchandise in terms of growth. And industry analysts see no reason why these numbers should drop anytime soon:
The International Licensing Industry Merchandisers Association determined in 2005 that between 1998 and 2006, college athletic licensing sector revenues saw an increase of 11.7 percent a rate of increase five times as strong as that of non-sporting entertainment licensing, and even a bit stronger than that of non-collegiate sporting merchandise revenues, which grew by 10.1 percent over the same time period.
An estimated 50,000 U.S. retail establishments now carry licensed collegiate athletic products, with those stores collectively bringing in some $2.8 billion each year from those sales.
Unlike the seasonal drop-off in sales that's generally seen in national sporting merchandise, licensed collegiate products have a tendency to sell year-round, largely due to the buying patterns of the nation's 30 million income-earning college alumni, who tend to purchase based on a static sense of school pride rather than a more ephemeral sense of support for a successful team.
From the standpoint of the individual retailer, carrying licensed collegiate merchandise makes even more strategic sense when one considers the mutually beneficial partnership that now exists between licensing firms and sellers on the one hand and licensing firms and colleges on the other. For instance, though industry heavyweight Collegiate Licensing Company identifies certain product categories as top sellers on a nationwide basis, CLC also takes pains to provide each retailer with an unusually high degree of support with regards to maximizing sales based on regional factors. This assistance comes in the form of demographic and sales trend info, collaboration on specified promotional efforts for particular territories, register-to-win promotions, sales incentive contests for employees, and direct marketing campaigns, among other things, all of which can be of particular benefit to those retailers who may otherwise lack the resources to implement such techniques with equal precision and expertise.
Bearing all that in mind, it's little wonder that retailers of all sizes have gotten into the game.