cannes lions 2006: the weather is perfect, the french riviera is stunning, the city is crawling with beautiful people in bugattis.  but the festival itself is one steaming, stinking pile of merde. particularly, the interactive media -- er, "cyber" -- awards. the title of the awards event evokes "snowcrash" and the era of the pentium 486 -- and it's about as up-to-date. this year's winners are a big absurd celebration of television-in-a-browser, the most passive, boring form of online advertising.  of the two grand prix winners, one is a video -- not a campaign that involves some video elements, but just a video. the other is crispin porter's microsite for the volkswagon GTI, which allows you to customize your own GTI (yawn, audi did it better in 1999). once you've customized your car, you can -- are you ready? --  watch it in a video.  uh ... does anyone else here want to interact with their interactive media?

yes, the week has been a nonstop frolic through the rolling hills of what-the-fuck-land. oh well, the booze is free and the food is good.  c'est la vie.