Looks like a pretty swanky billiards and ping pong club is opening up down in South Beach. Under the name of ‘Chalk’, the owners’ last name - clever! - the new space features official tournament tables from Corneileu. I guess it’s a similar take on SPiN with food and drinks and music. PP is 15 bucks and hour with a $50 membership program. Check out the official site here - although there is not much up right now.

The Vice-Mayor of Miami, no less, opens it up today. Hopefully it’s a storming success and I’ll get to play there one day.

Sometimes a headline is all you need. The story is pretty much as it says. This from Business Insider:

“In 1970, the two were playing a game of ping-pong at their chalet in Gstaad. Burton promised her that if she scored 10 points against him, he’d buy her a diamond.

She scored 30. He set off to find the smallest diamonds he could in town. And the pair to the right are what he returned with.

These rings became know as “the ping-pong rings.”

Could that be any cooler?

The Arctic Monkeys are the latest band to insist on taking a table with them on tour. Nice one lads. Full story here in the NY Times.

Check out this link to a video of two robots playing against each other. Apparently they can guess where the ball will bounces within 2.5 cm accuracy. That’s better than me after a few Heinekens. More on the story here.

Back by dope demand.

Time rattles along at a fair old pace. It was this time last year Celebrity Ping Pong and SPiN gathered forces to bring you the very first Advertising Week Open. Last year Ogilvy left victorious with a $500 first place prize.

When everything else is going to shit, please take some comfort in the fact that we are back and our 1st prize money is still $500. No cuts here. No way. We will also have some other great prizes.

Same deal as last year. Agency teams consist of two people. We will play two singles and one doubles. Best of three. You can enter as many teams as you like but we will ask for business cards or some sort of proof that you guys actually work together. The idea being that at the end of a night we have an agency as a winner rather than just an individual (or ringer!).

please RSVP to adweek@spinyc.com

Teams will pay a $20 entrance fee (just expense it dude!) but for that you will get free booze - until we run out of money. Entrance is free to anyone who just wants to watch, drink etc. Play will start at 7pm.

Last year a team came from Chicago. Not for Advertising Week just to play in the tournament.
Can you beat that?

Again that RSVP is adweek@spinyc.com - we probably have room for about 40 teams. It was sold out last year so please get your teams in quick.

Just some great footage of players giving their all.

We know the googlers like to play the pong. It seems that the recent Motorala deal was consumated over a game. Andy Rubin from Google on one side and Sanjay “BLUR” Jha, CEO of Motorola on the other. I like to think it went a little more like this.

Total stalemate in the boardroom. Andy says, ‘Damn you Sanjay I want those patents..I mean, I want your very profitable and technically advanced company and any patents that may or may not come with that.’ Sanjay, ‘Best of 3, first to 11, two serves each’.

A year goes quickly in table tennis time. It must have been this time last year that Team CPP braved the SoHo heat and took home the grand prize at the Puma PT3 2010 tournament. The actual prizes we got were the fabulous puma bikes. Check them out here.

This year Team CPP has morphed into team ADstruc. (ADstruc is a cool start up I advise. We sell outdoor media space through the internet. Simple idea, works very well). Team CPP won a tough final against Staple design - Jeff Staple is featured in the second issue of the magazine. I see Staple design has morphed into Reed Space, Jeff’s magazine. I’m sure they’ll be a tough team to play against this year too.

The tournament is this Thursday July 28th at the Art Directors Club on 29th between 6th and 7th Ave. Can’t wait, I only pray they have AC this time.

Apparently there is a show on TV called Regis and Kelly. I don’t know what that is but it seems popular. Regis and JT played some TT. Is that cool? I don’t know.

I used to really like the Dunlop Max 200g. It was the tennis racket John McEnroe used at Wimbledon. With that crazy serve of his. Also they had a factory on the motorway that I drove past every time I did the trip from London to Manchester during college. And they also did one of the best TV ads. Evar.

And now they do Ping Pong. Good on em. The vintage festival will take place at the Southbank in London Town on July 29/30 where there will live Ping Pong, featuring Wayne Hemingway - remember him from Red or Dead? No, probably not.