Hello, Sloth Sleuth

A WINNER CREEPS TOWARD GLORY.

First off, thank you. I did not expect either the attention or the enthusiasm that this weird little experiment has garnered. You have all made this a not-inconsiderable crapload of fun.

I had 30 some entries make it onto my short list. Lots of people had surprisingly compelling ideas for web comics. A couple people wanted to start secret societies, which they may as well go ahead and do anyway, as any decent attempt at secrecy should provide ample protection against copyright liability. There were also the absurdist debate club and a whole lot of other rambling and hilarious nonsense which I damn well asked for, didn’t I?

Anyway. The winner.

In the end, one thing amused me ever so slightly more than the rest of the stuff I liked. Give a hearty congrats to:

Timmy Ham

Timmy is an artist who has, coincidentally enough, gone by the name “Sloth” for several years now. He makes one-of-a-kind, custom art shoes at iamsloth.com, check them out, they are better than sleep.

Timmy plans to keep the community-driven/freeware/contest spirit of this enterprise alive, which is cool. His idea for Sloth Punch Club is to create one pair of shoes every month featuring a sloth punching something, and give them away. Each winner gets to be a member of the very exclusive Sloth Punch Club, and also gets to choose what exactly the target of the sloth’s fists will be on the next pair of shoes Timmy gives away. It’s simple and stupid and I love it.

Thanks again to all who entered. If you didn’t win this, you can still win yourself a pair of shoes. Thanks also to all the kind random strangers who weren’t interested in winning the domain but who still reached out to say they enjoyed seeing someone squander a free marketing opportunity so spectacularly. It was a pleasure.

Thanks once again to Elliot Park for the art up at the top. And thanks most of all to Vicki Linn at Clear Channel Outdoor, who had the reckless idea to offer me a platform to experiment with in the first place.

Cheers, everybody.

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July 19, 2013

UPDATE:

Check back first thing Monday morning for the winner announcement!

The contest is closed to further entries.

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July 15, 2013

UPDATE:

Only four more days to submit your pitches! Winner will be announced this friday.

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Advertising a url just to give it away.

June 18, 2013

What is slothpunchclub.com? I don’t know. I’ve got just as many questions as you do. Who’s punching whom? Is it sloth on sloth? Sloth on alpaca? Or are the sloths only spectators, forcing others to punch for their amusement? Is this bareknuckle-anything-goes, or are there rules and refs? What are the requirements for membership in this club? What fighting styles are allowed? Is this even a fighting thing, or are the sloths maybe just really into fruit drinks? Could this whole thing maybe be the first stage in ushering in the blood-dimmed tide of the long-feared sloth apocalypse? All these questions and more are yours to answer. I’ll get to that in a minute.

First, why am I doing this? Here’s a little hyper-condensed backstory. Three weeks ago, a billboard I did for a chicken restaurant blew up online. (You may have seen it). The story took off (thanks, reddit), and I started getting calls. One of those calls was from Clear Channel Outdoor, offering me a month of free digital billboard space. The catch was I only had a week. To concept, layout, call in favors, execute, everything.

The key favor in the previous sentence being, of course, Elliot Park‘s amazing art up there. If this goofy stunt gets any kind of attention, it’s all his fault.

So here we are. Granted, there are probably more effective ways to promote my one-man advertising business, but this sounded like more fun than those. (Last week I did mysteriousurl.com, which was kind of a weird teaser for sloth punch club, for those of you that saw it and were mystified).

So the point of all these being, slothpunchclub.com is your domain to do with as you please. Anything at all. It could be a online graphic novel, a flash game hub, a text-based MUD, a collection of skewed illustrated poems disguised as a children’s picture books, a poorly written blog about second-tier sororities, an elaborate mythos for sloth-based fantasy neckbeards. Those are some free starter ideas. It would even make an excellent base for spreading malicious trojans. Not my business, frankly.

Just send me a brief email with your plans/concept (under 100 words and i’ll be more likely to read it), and my favorite pitch gets the domain. I’ll announce the winner here in a month, unless you’d prefer it kept secret. Just ask. I’m flexible.

Just send me an email with your idea to slothpunchclub@gmail.com.

Only promise me (this is legally non-binding, my lawyers point out) that in the extremely unlikely event  slothpunchclub.com makes you filthy rich, you’ll give a sizable percentage to Baal Dan, a Dallas based charity helping street children in India. Of course, you can also give some money to Baal Dan, right now, pre-fabulous-wealth, which would make me happy. And would make some unimaginably poor children a fair bit more than happy.

 

 

That’s all I got.

Oh, and because lawyers are a thing, even for something as silly as this, here are the official “contest” rules.

Thanks,

Matt Bull

Department of Persuasion