Category Archives: Commercial

Animals, Becky, Candid Portrait, Commercial, Politics, Shannon

The Most Fun You Can Have with Caustics

On Monday night I aided in the production of the newest batch of Little White Lye Soap. I thought I would share an inside look at the Little White Lye Soap factory floor.


Making Soap
The Mixing Stick (Formerly Ergonomic)

Making Soap
Becky Stirring

Making Soap
A Self Proclaimed Master Stirrer Finishing Up

Making Soap
Preparing to Pour

Making Soap
Pouring

Making Soap
Pouring

Making Soap
Pouring

Making Soap
Pouring

Making Soap
Shannon Preparing to Pour Again

Making Soap
More Pouring

Making Soap
More Pouring

Making Soap
This Appears to be Hard Work (Plus Might be my favorite picture from the night.)

Making Soap
Washing Up

Making Soap
Cleaning Up

Making Soap
Putting Away the Crock

The soap was locked up into a cat-proof room where it will cure for 2 weeks. Then it will be cut up into bars and then packaged. Then the soap will be ready for delivery.

It takes close to 4 hours of stirring to make the soap, so sometimes that can lead to doing things like torturing the cat or as the Bush Administration would call it, Enhanced Cat Interrogation. I’m sure they would also point out that cats are not protected by the Geneva Convention.


Making Soap
Baiting Franklin

Making Soap
Franklin Has Been Caputred

>I don’t want to go into details about what happened to Franklin, but he was unharmed and was only slightly angrier the rest of the evening.

Commercial, Photoshop, Shannon

LWL Products Page

A week back when I was publishing my endorsement of Little White Lye Soap the product pictures on the Little White Lye Soap were less than satisfactory. They have since been replaced and updated with way more acceptable pictures like this one:


Little White Lye Soap

I urge you to follow the link below and check out the new images:

WEBSITE HAS BEEN DELETED


Andree, Baier, Commercial, Derrick, Faust, Formal Portrait, Jay, Jesse, Nader, Russell, Shannon, Willy

Little White Lye Bonus

What you are about to experience is bits of a national advertising campaign that I would suggest that Little White Lye Soap launch immediately. However, I don’t have much pull in that department. So we’ll have to see what happens.

These pictures are of the actual models that I would use, but the background is not the background that I would use, for most of the models because I just took a picture of them the first time that I ran into them. Just imagine that the background is consistent with the quote underneath the characters.


04-19-08
“After a long day of kissing babies and pressing flesh, nothing cleans off the smell of constituent like Little White Lye Soap.”

04-19-08
“Oh my! After a long evening at the theater with Tennessee Williams, nothing cleans off the powerful odor of mendacity like Little White Lye Soap.”

04-19-08
“Nothing relaxes me and makes me ready for sleep after a long day’s work than a hot shower with Little White Lye Soap.”

04-19-08
“After a long morning of schooling chumps, nothing takes the rank of other people’s failures and broken dreams off me like Little White Lye Soap.”

04-19-08
“After a long night of grinding on the honeys in the clubs, nothing rids a dance machine of the stench of barfly like Little White Lye Soap.”

04-19-08
“There is just no way around it, I’m a handsome man and Little White Lye keeps me handsome by making me clean, while being gentle on my sensitive skin.”

04-19-08
My woman likes my skin to be soft to the touch and Little White Lye Soap keeps my skin soft and that makes my woman happy.”

04-19-08
“After a long night of rocking, Little White Lye Soap cleans off the reek of groupie and leaves me smelling fresh in the morning.”

04-19-08
“After a long day at the office explaining to old people that their 401K dropping 25% in value in the last week is just a normal market fluctuation I feel morally dirty. Nothing restores me to moral equilibrium like a long bath with Little White Lye Soap.”

I imagine these running in GQ. I’ll have to wait and see what the boss says.

Animals, Commercial, Macro, Shannon, Writing

Little White Lye Product Endorsement Part 4


Little White Lye Soap
Little White Lye Soap

We have established the economic benefits of switching to Little White Lye Soap. We have established the universal appeal of Little White Lye Soap. We have shown the wide range of products available from Little White Lye Soap. We have displayed the practical uses of a soap that is so powerfully gentle. We have shown that Little White Lye Soap is the behemoth of the soap world, tipping the scales at nearly 6 ounces.

The only thing left to wonder about is what type of people are you getting into business with when you purchase your first bar of LWL.

In the briefest of terms, wonderful people.


2007
Wonderful People

8. Little White Lye Soap provides tremendous customer service. For example, say that you are a shut-in, invalid or terminally lazy. You would like to switch to LWL, but you just can’t make it to the nearest retail outlet. LWL will hand deliver the soap to your door. That is the type of customer service that you just don’t see any longer. Little White Lye Soap isn’t your ordinary company, they actually care about their customers and they show it with their superior products and superior customer service. The soap is Old School. So is the customer service.

9. Little White Lye Soap is an environmentally friendly company. Little White Lye believes in being stewards of our planet, but they do more than just believe, LWL leads by example.

  • LWL has a virtually non-existent carbon footprint.
  • All LWL products and containers are either recyclable or biodegradable.
  • No electricity or fossil fuels are used in the creation of their products.
  • All baskets or crocks that are used in the production of LWL Soap are reused. There is virtually zero waste.
  • Animals are not used to test any LWL products. (Unless you count this guy.)
  • The lard used in LWL comes from free range hogs.
  • Everything from LWL comes from nature and can return to nature in a harmonious manner.


2007
LWL Keeps the World Safe and Beautiful for this Guy

10. Little White Lye Soap is a brilliant name. It is a pun, but it isn’t punny. It is classic merrymaking. Just having a bar of Little White Lye Soap is an instant conversation starter with even your most boring moribund acquaintances. It is both a great description of the product and at the same time a clever play on words. Would you rather lather up with a product that even has a brilliant name. If the name Dial is the best they could manage, how hard do you think they tried when designing the soap?

There you have it. 10 excellent reasons to stop buying soap from The Man and switch over to a superior product. A product that is greater in size. A product that is both powerful and gentle. A product that is good for your economy. A product that is good for your skin. A product that is good for the environment. A product that is just as good to your clothes as it is to your body. A product that is sold by wonderful people. A product that has a brilliant name.

If you need that website one last time, I will oblige you:


Little White Lye Soap

I expect that next time I see you that you will be cleaner and happier person.

Commercial, Music, Shannon

Little White Lye Product Endorsement Part 3


Little White Lye Soap
Little White Lye Soap

We have established the economic benefits of using Little White Lye Soap. We have established that Little White Lye Soap is for men and women. We have established that Little White Lye Soap offers a wide ranging assortment of products and there are more to come. Did somebody say handmade brooms? I’ll never tell.

You now know that this soap is a dream come true. It is a powerhouse and it is gentle. Perhaps you want some evidence of its power.

6. Little White Lye Soap salvages clothing. Not only does LWL get your body immaculately clean, but its powerful gentleness (or gentle powerfulness depending on which way you swing) can remove stains from clothing that you thought were destined to be thrown out, be turned into a dustcloth (ahem oil rag), or depending on how you feel about the poor a Salvation Donation. It only takes a small amount to remove even your toughest stain.

I can be a messy eater. For the most part I can keep most of what I put into my mouth in my mouth until it makes its long descent into my digestive system. What usually escapes can end up in the goatee, but sometimes some sauce or dressing will make the gravity induced fall onto a valued shirt and ruin it forever.

Just such a thing happened to my favorite Modern Day Hero shirt. I thought it was damaged for eternity and I would never be able to rock as hard again.

I’m not a quitter though. I tried numerous of The Man’s name brand laundry detergents, but it was for not. My Modern Day Hero shirt seemed destined to be moved to the undershirt category, next to my Ames Jaycee shirt and my Dang! Root Beer Shirt.


04-26-08
The Cursed Stain

Then I remembered that just a a fingertips worth of LWL had saved my Rocky shirt from a similar fate a few months earlier. So I rubbed a little bit of LWL soap on the foul stain and put the shirt back in the laundry.

When I took the shirt out of the laundry the shirt was back to condition it was when it rolled off the Lone Wolf Gear assembly line.


04-26-08
A Fashion Resurrection

04-26-08
Ready to Rock, Once Again

I’m eternally grateful to LWL for saving this shirt because Modern Day Hero isn’t even together any longer and I don’t think I would ever be able to replace this one of an item shirt.

7. A bar of Little White Lye Soap is mammoth. I’m just a poor wordsmith with a limited vocabulary, so I’m not sure that mammoth does the size of a bar of Little White Lye Soap justice. I tried out a few other words in my brain: behemoth, colossal, elephantine, gargantuan, jumbo, massy, mastodonic, prodigious, titanic, and monstrous. I’m not sure if any of those words even encompass the sheer magnitude of this bar of soap. It is roughly 6 ounces!

You read that right, 6 ounces. I wish I had photographic evidence to show you the difference between a bar of LWL and a bar of Irish Spring. I don’t though because The Man’s soap never makes it into my bathroom.

What I can offer is a chart that illustrates the difference between a bar of LWL and The Man’s line of soaps.

Unilever Soaps

  • Lever 2000 – 4.5 oz
  • Caress – 4.25 oz
  • Dove – 4.25 oz

Proctor & Gamble

  • Ivory – 4.5 oz
  • Zest – 4.0 oz
  • Olay – 4.25 oz

Dial

  • Dial – 4.0 oz
  • Tone – 4.25 oz
  • Coast – 4.5 oz

Colgate-Palmolive

  • Irish Spring – 4.5 oz

The best that The Man can manage is 4.5 oz? If I didn’t know any better, I’d think that The Man wasn’t even trying. The truth is that The Man just doesn’t have any respect for you. He thinks 4.5 ounces of his sub par soap is all that you proletariat swine can handle or deserve.

Don’t get mad at me, I’m just telling you the message that The Man is sending with his 4.5 ounce bar of soap.

Just think of the benefits of getting that much soap in one bar. Say you have a neighbor that falls for The Man’s lies. While you are still on your second bar of LWL soap, they will already be starting their 4th bar of Dial. Is there any competition or is is this complete and utter soap domination? If you are thinking about it, that was a rhetorical question used to illustrate the gap between a phenomenal product and what you have been taught to consider acceptable.

I’m just going to throw this out there, but despite the obvious economic advantages to switching to LWL soap for its girth, there is another practical advantage to switching to a soap with a larger footprint.

Are you familiar with the form of discipline known as soap whipping?

It was all the rage in the military back in the day. A guy in your platoon can’t keep up on marches, can’t finish the obstacle course, steals donuts from the mess hall and has varying other major malfunctions. A good way to get him to walk the straight and narrow is to hold him down with a blanket while everybody in the platoon soap whips him. You put a bar of soap in a towel or your sock and then use it to give out some of the old negative reinforcement.

Now most of us aren’t in the military and science tells us that negative reinforcement doesn’t work all that well compared to positive reinforcement, but there are times when you need to regulate on one of your chums. Perhaps they think it is an acceptable form of entertainment to sit at Old Country Buffet making fun of the fat people going up for their 4th or 5th trip. Perhaps they think it is okay to cancel on Cat on a Hot Tin Roof 37 minutes before the curtain rises. I mean there is always a good reason to soap whip one of your closest buddies.

Imagine what would happen if you struck somebody with a bar of Zest. If you were to do such a foolish thing to even your little sister she would mock you by saying something like this:

“If I wanted a kiss I would have called your mother.”

Sure that would be a little bit strange because she is your sister, but imagine the same situation with 6 oz of fury inflicting the damage. Now that is the type of negative reinforcement you can take to the bank and nobody will be cracking wise about your mama.

Now you should be sold on the economic advantages of LWL, the fact that this soap is for everybody, its gentle powerfulness even keeps your wardrobe looking good and the fact that the soap is Bunyanesque.

Now you are ready to get more information. Just click the link below and visit the website:


Little White Lye Soap

Or perhaps you are ready to get your first batch ordered right now, then I have a second link for you:


Little White Lye Soap

There is a chance that you still aren’t sold. That is okay. I still have 3 excellent reasons why you should rely on Little White Lye for all of your soap needs.

To Be Continued…

Commercial, Flowers, Macro, Shannon, Writing

Little White Lye Product Endorsement Part 2


Little White Lye Soap
Little White Lye Soap

Now that you have a solid understanding of the economic benefits of making your soap of choice Little White Lye Soap, you might be wondering: “Who is soap for?”

3. This is a man’s soap.

Finally, there is a soap for men. For years and years and years men have been forced to wander the soap aisle of their store of choice looking for a soap that made them clean but didn’t leave them smelling like their Aunt Florence. Quite frankly there aren’t many options. The smell of lilacs and lavender shouldn’t come from a man’s shower. When a man is done showering, he should smell like a man. A clean man, but a man nonetheless. He shouldn’t smell like a rose. He shouldn’t smell like a strawberry. He’s a man and he should smell like a man. A clean man.

Let’s face it. The only soap on the market today that is safe for a man to use is Lava. There is no denying it. Lava is a manly soap. However, Lava is to be used when a man is done changing the oil in his car. You can’t take Lava into the shower with you. Lava has pumice in it. That is great for getting transmission fluid off your hands, but you can’t use pumice on your twig and berries. Not if you want to keep them fully functional and your vocal range within its proper manly octave.

Little White Lye Soap steps into this vacuum that has been created by The Man’s estrogen drenched soap monopoly.

Why is LWL a Man’s soap?

It is strong. It is powerful. You can work on your rig all day and LWL has the prowess to get your hands clean, but it is versatile and gentle enough that you can take it into the shower with you and use it on all of your most delicate, but manly parts.

The kicker is that LWL doesn’t contain any perfumes or oils. A man can take a shower and clean himself from head to toe and when he comes out of the shower he can smell good, but not fruity. He can leave the fruity smells to his female friends. It smells good on them.

4. Little White Lye is a woman’s soap. Now I don’t want to come off like I’m an expert on the female body. But I believe I have studied the female form as much as any other layman and there are parts that I have committed to memory. What I can tell you from those studies is that LWL is great for a woman’s sensitive skin.

You see it goes back to the old no perfumes or oils. Those things are bad for your skin. LWL is good for your skin because it doesn’t dry it out.

Are you using enough lotion to soften the skin of the entire population of a small Pacific Island? Then it is time to change your soap to LWL. A soap that doesn’t dry out your skin and leave you dependent on lotion.

5. Little White Lye has a wide variety of products. Although this is a soap based company, LWL offers a variety of complimentary products. They include the following:


Little White Lye Soap
Bars of Soap

Little White Lye Soap
Mini Loofah

Little White Lye Soap Remix
Full Loofah

Little White Lye Soap
Laundry Soap

Little White Lye Soap Remix
12 Loads of Laundry

Little White Lye Soap
30 Loads of Laundry

Little White Lye Soap
50 Loads of Laundry

Little White Lye Soap Remix
Washcloth

That is a pretty impressive array of products and the list is growing. I’m not sure I should be telling you this, but a few weeks back I was hanging around the R&D staff and she let me in on this juicy little tidbit. There is a foaming soap on the horizon as well.

Not that LWL needs to add to its veritable arsenal of cleaning products. I can tell you from experience that the loofah is a cleaning powerhouse. If you pick up that little number, you will come out of your shower fresh as a daisy.


2007
Could be You!

Plus if you have ever compared a nice handmade washcloth to the washcloths turned out by political prisoners in China, (the type they sell in most stores) you know that there is no comparing the quality or the life expectancy. Handmade washcloths are as good as it gets.

Perhaps now you are convinced. Now you know that buying Little White Lye Soap helps your local economy, it is a man’s soap, it is a woman’s soap and you know that you have a wide selection of choices. If this describes you, then you should visit the link below to learn more about this wonderful company:


Little White Lye Soap

There is a chance that you haven’t been convinced yet. That is okay. I still have 5 more excellent reasons you should pick a dozen or so bars of soap from the nearest Little White Lye retail outlet.

To Be Continued…

Black & White, Commercial, History, Politics, Russell, Shannon, Writing

Little White Lye Product Endorsement Part 1


04-19-08
Little White Lye Soap

I am writing here today to endorse the product Little White Lye Soap. It is a great product and I think you should run out and try a bar or two or three.

Perhaps you want a little bit more information. Then you should visit their new website and poke around there. Just follow the link below:


Little White Lye Soap

Perhaps you don’t even need any more information. Perhaps you just want to be put into contact with somebody that can get you some soap. If you are in that category, just click on the link below and e-mail them directly:


Little White Lye Soap

Perhaps you aren’t the type of person that just jumps when I tell you to jump. You are a cynic. You need to be more than told. You need to be sold. You are in luck. I’m going to give you 10 excellent reasons to run out to the nearest local seller and pick up a bushel full of Little White Lye Soap.

Ten Excellent Reasons to Buy Little White Lye Soap

  1. Little White Lye Soap is a local business. The CEO, CFO, CIO, President and Head Saponologist is Shannon Bardole, a native of Ogden and current resident of Ames. I know that there are people that don’t get the “shop local” mentality. They don’t understand the importance of shopping locally. I think that Malcolm X spoke most eloquently about keeping the businesses in your community controlled by members of your community in his famous 1964 speech The Ballet or the Bullet. Allow me to paraphrase Malcolm X:

[A smart economic philosophy] only means that we have to become involved in a program of reeducation to educate our people into the importance of knowing that when you spend your dollar out of the community in which you live, the community in which you spend your money becomes richer and richer; the community out of which you take your money becomes poorer and poorer. And because these [people], who have been mislead, misguided, are breaking their necks to take their money and spend it with The Man, The Man is becoming richer and richer, and you’re becoming poorer and poorer. And then what happens? The community in which you live becomes a slum. It becomes a ghetto. The conditions become run down. And then you have the audacity to — to complain about poor housing in a run-down community. Why you run it down yourself when you take your dollar out.

And you and I are in a double-track, because not only do we lose by taking our money someplace else and spending it, when we try and spend it in our own community we’re trapped because we haven’t had sense enough to set up stores and control the businesses of our community. The man who’s controlling the stores in our community is a man who doesn’t look like we do. He’s a man who doesn’t even live in the community. So you and I, even when we try and spend our money in the block where we live or the area where we live, we’re spending it with a man who, when the sun goes down, takes that basket full of money in another part of the town.

So where is that money going? Who is The Man? The Man is the three major soap companies: Unilever, Proctor & Gamble and Dial. Unilever is based out of Trumbull, Connecticut. When you are buying Lever 2000, Dove or Caress The Man is taking your money back to Connecticut. Proctor & Gamble is based out of Cincinnati, Ohio. When you are spending your hard earned money on Ivory, Zest or Olay The Man is taking that basket of money back to Ohio. Dial is based out of Scottsdale, Arizona. When you are lathering up with Coast, Tone or Dial The Man is taking your money out of your community and taking it back to Arizona. Irish Spring? Are you kidding me? Buying Irish Spring sends your money to New York to the Mega Corporation Colgate-Palmolive and The Man is laughing all the way to the bank.

When you clean yourself up with a bar of Little White Lye Soap the money you spent to buy that clean is staying in Central Iowa where it helps your economy and creates jobs in your community. Now The Man has many tricks and lies. You got to watch The Man. The Man will tell you that buying soap from the Three Headed Soap Monopoly at your local Wal-Mart is creating jobs in your community. It is a lie.

We all know how Wal-Mart employees are poorly compensated and treated. Did you know that just by having a Wal-Mart in your county adversely effects the wages of the other people in the community? Set aside the fact that Wal-Mart has created poor jobs and stymied the creation of good jobs and just think about the fact that having a Wal-Mart in your county lowers the wages of the other people in the county. Wages in the general merchandise sector decline a full percent. Wages for grocery store employees decline 1.5 percent. If your state has 50 Wal-Marts the average wage of retail workers declines 10%.

This begs the question: What is the average wage of an employee at Little White Lye Soap? Depends on how much soap you buy. Know this one thing for sure, the money you spend will be put right back into Central Iowa. Helping our economy. Creating jobs in our area. You can’t say that when you are buying soap from The Man.

2. Little White Lye Soap is a local business that supports local businesses. When Little White Lye Soap looks for other businesses to engage in commerce, they look for other local businesses.

  • The lard in the soap comes from local open range hogs.
  • The photography for the website was done by two local photographers
  • The website is designed by a local company
  • Little White Lye Soap is sold at local stores (to name a few):
    • Wheatsfield; 413 Douglas Ave; Ames, IA
    • RVP 1875; 526 Broad St; Story City, IA
    • Heart of Iowa Marketplace; 221 Fifth St; West Des Moines, IA

Supporting Little White Lye Soap also supports all of those local businesses.

Some of you still might not be convinced. That is okay. I still have 8 solid more reason why you should go to your bathroom and pick up all of the Man’s soap and throw it in the trash and then rush out and buy some Little White Lye Soap.

To be continued…

Brog Frog, Commercial, Derrick, Jen, Music, Photoshop

Selling Out

4 Comments

I’m not what you would call a commercial photographer. However, recently I have gotten some commercial photography gigs.

The first gig was (and is ongoing) to do some of the photography for the website of a local soap company. However, I don’t want to delve too deeply into that because I will go into much greater depth about that when the website makes its World Wide Web Debut.

The second and third gig are kind of similar and somewhat related. Look at the picture below.



UnHingd Publicity Still

Some of my best friends were in a now defunct local band known as UnHingd. The members of this band have pretty much gone their separate ways, but they have stayed musical.

Not pictured is Dennis. He has moved on to become the lead singer of 35 South.

Mike has formed a new band with the old drummer from Obsidian’s Dream and some dude named Adam. His new band is called Inebriated Saints. Mike contacted me about taking some pictures of them during their upcoming show.


Mike Practicing
Mike in the UnHingd Practice Lair

Let me tell you what all the cool kids are going to be doing this Friday night. I can hardly believe I’m about to write this: (Grit your teeth you can get through it.) The cool kids are going to be going to The Venue to watch Inebriated Saints win the Battle of the Bands. The winner gets to open for Firehouse. Yeah, that might be one of those win/lose things. It will also mark my first appearance at a Boone Bar since June of 2006. I think it was the Southside if you are wondering.

No really. It should be a great time and Mike is the self proclaimed “Best Bass Player in Ames”. Who am I to argue with that? I will post some of those pictures in the near future.

Then earlier this week I was contacted by Shawn, the former drummer of UnHingd.


Shawn - Homecoming Concert
Shawn-Homecoming Concert

Shawn booked me to take pictures of his new band Act of Gravity for their website. I’m pretty excited about this opportunity and will certainly post those pictures when they get taken.

You can check out Act of Gravity’s website by following this link:


Act of Gravity – Dead Link

One other small tidbit of news. On Monday I had a check pass through my account that made it official: I’m debt free. Not for very long hopefully, but it feels good to breathe the sweet air of freedom

Perhaps you are wondering what happened to Guitar God Derrick Gorshe.



Outburst of the Soul – Portrait of Guitar God Derrick Gorshe

He is also still active musically. Besides being the sound guy for 35 South and being the store manager of Rieman’s Music, he might also be putting the pit orchestra for one of the Ames community theater groups next productions. Look for updates about that as they become available.