Kevin Nealon, who the kids best remember as the stoned old politician on Weeds and the grown-ups know from his stint on SNL in the late 80s and early 90s, is here with a message for you. While there may be nothing you can do about glaciers, bulimic insomnia, or skateboarding in hospitals, you can remember to spay or neuter your pets or adopt some homeless, sad-eyed puppies from an animal shelter. You didn’t listen to Bob Barker‘s parting words on every episode of The Price is Right, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t still time to make a difference.

The campaign, which includes billboards on the top the above spot, is the result of pro-bono work from Chiat-affiliated shop Let There Be Dragons for No-Kill LA. If you can’t make an accurate inference from its name, the organization seeks to prevent the euthanization of homeless animals in the Los Angeles area.

Find out more about Let There Be Dragons, which is being spearheaded by Mr. Lee Clow himself, by visiting their website here. Also, take a moment to admire the agency’s “office,” which looks like Sisqo’s tour bus circa 1999.

A month after losing director of planning Eliza Esquivel to Kraft, TBWA\Chiat\Day New York has brought in her replacement in Ed Castillo, who joins the agency from McCann Worldgroup. During his 18-month stint at McCann, Castillo served as SVP, global strategy director and worked primarily on the American Airlines business. Prior to McCann, Castillo spent over four years as SVP, director of account planning at PHD and co-founded the shop North before that.

Now at Chiat NY, Castillo will oversee planning for all the agency’s accounts including Absolut, Jameson, Vonage, Michelin and Accenture. In a statement, TBWA\Chiat\Day NY chairman/CCO Mark Figliulo seems confident enough in his new hire, saying, “Ed’s appointment is key for an agency that has historically been at the forefront of the planning discipline. With Ed’s unique background and his understanding of business and media analytics, he is the clear choice to lead our disruption and media arts methodology. Our planning function was the envy of the industry once before and I believe with Ed at the helm, it can be again.”

We’ve received confirmation that Martin Agency SVP/group creative director Fabio Costa will be leaving the agency for a gig at TBWA\Chiat\Day LA, though we haven’t been apprised yet of his soon-to-be title. Costa joined Martin 18 months ago and subsequently led creative on efforts for Comcast and Mentos including the “Spider Swiper” app. Prior to Martin Agency, Costa had a yearlong stint as partner/creative director at Ogilvy and worked as a CD for three years at Cutwater before that. During his time at Cutwater, Costa worked on campaigns for Ubisoft’s Assassins Creed among others.

The Martin camp tells us that they’re “sad to see Fabio leaving, but we wish him the best,” adding that he’s taking an opportunity that was “too hard to pass up.” From what we’ve been told, Costa will be joining Chiat LA in August.

My, where did the time go? To help celebrate 40 years of existence (well, 42 apparently if you want to get technical), TBWA enlisted the services of a chap who goes by the nom d’artiste, interestingly enough, of WK, who in turn interpreted the agency’s most notable work over the years on an 8ft x36ft canvas placed in an empty warehouse. The entire effort from WK and his two assistants was captured and edited into the short film you see above. We must say the end result is pretty eye-catching (the film’s not too shabby, either) and according to the “Forty” microsite, it now lives in TBWA’s New York office.

Here are couple of items from the TBWA camp that flew under the radar. Doug Melville (pictured) has joined the agency as chief diversity officer for North America. Prior to signing on with TBWA, Melville, who will be based in the New York office, was running his own company called Red Carpet Runway. During his career, he’s also served as a VP for Magic Johnson Enterprises.

And now, to the left coast. After five years as agency/integrated producer at TBWA\Chiat\Day LA, Jane Krull has packed her bags and headed to Chicago to join up with Leo Burnett as a producer. We’ve been told that Krull has joined the agency’s Team Sprint roster, though we’re still waiting for confirmation on that.

During her half-decade stint at Chiat LA, Krull served as producer on campaigns including PS3 “Universe of Entertainment,” which perhaps marked the agency’s last hurrah for Playstation before Sony decided to move the account to Deutsch LA. While at Chiat, Krull also produced efforts for Pepsi such as Will Arnett‘s odd, amusing “Super Bowl Party” from a few years ago.

Those of you ad folks who’ve been playing in the Twitterverse for the last few years have probably grown familiar with Midwest creative director/writer Jason Fox, or perhaps more so with his Twitter alter ego, @leeclowsbeard. Well, Fox, who has been tweeting out pearls of wisdom under the guise of said TBWA legend’s famous facial hair since 2009, has grown popular enough (25,000+ followers and counting) to merit bitter knockoffs and most significantly, both a book and an app. The title? You guessed it, @leeclowsbeard, which will hit bookshelves on June 12.

To promote the app and book, which you can pre-order here, Mr. Fox offers a slideshow that gives you the history of his Twitter effort. We’ve been told that Lee Clow himself flew Fox out to meet in person before deciding to go ahead and publish the title under the banner of TBWA\Chiat\Day LA’s content innovation studio, Let There Be Dragons.

Let’s flashback to the ’90s and refresh the phrase, “things that make you go hmmm.” Well, we’ve received several tips that Eliza Esquivel, who was promoted just over a year ago to the position of director of planning at TBWA\Chiat\Day New York, has turned in her resignation after spending nearly four years at the agency. We contacted Esquivel directly to find out if she’s indeed leaving, and the rather soft-spoken exec in turn offered us a curt “no comment.”

We will let you draw your own conclusions on that one, and since TBWA still seems to be boycotting officially communicating with us (we think), we’ll have to wait for the newswires or the other pubs to find out where she’s headed to next. Wherever she lands, Esquivel carries quite the resume on the planning side, having worked at the likes of W+K Amsterdam, DDB and JWT New York prior to joining Chiat NY.

On Sunday, Anomaly debuted the above Super Bowl spot for Budweiser, “Eternal Optimism.” In 60 seconds, Budweiser parallels its own history with that of the country of its birth, starting from the end of Prohibition and concluding in the era of pop-up hip-hop concerts aka “present day.” Yes, it’s a bit silly to imagine that Budweiser was the drink of choice for patrons of Studio 54, but it’s always fun to see how advertisers choose to depict (or rewrite) U.S. history. It’s also interesting to note that, as one tipster suggests, Anomaly’s representation of the last century closely resembles TBWA/Chiat/Day’s 2009 Obama inauguration spot for Pepsi.

Before we turn to you, dear readers, for finger pointing/waving, let’s discuss the similarities and differences of these two spots.

Similarities: Flapper girls, the end of WWII, greasers, Studio 54, break dancing, and grunge body-passing.
Differences: Hippies vs. Moon landing, Berlin Wall vs. the “Miracle on Ice,” and Budweiser’s use of the dance party.

Given this evidence, is this case an ad ripoff? Is this a case of coincidence? Or, is this, as they say, “just what happens?”

Last year, the folks at TBWA\Chiat\Day LA used animated, biographically-focused TV spots to preview the 53rd Grammy Awards. Judging by the above spot, the agency seems to be employing “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mantra when it comes to marketing the 54th installment of music’s biggest night.

Though Bon Iver is not performing at the Grammys, the band is nominated for Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best New Artist. Also, the band’s history is one that quickly found its place in folk music lore. Even passive fans know how singer/songwriter Justin Vernon started his project in humility, writing mournful songs from his parents’ cabin during a cold Wisconsin winter. To the ghostly sounds of the band’s track “Holocene,” a snowy scene evolves into a silhouette of Vernon and his guitar.

Could this be the year that Bon Iver becomes a pop sensation, played on Top 40 stations around the country? Well, you have to remember that the Grammys are now finally attempting a stab legitimacy, and Arcade Fire’s Album of the Year victory last year could be a sign of things to come. Bon Iver’s “We are Music” spot is one of four, with the others focusing on pop crooner Adele, middle-aged rockers Foo Fighters, and the worst thing to happen to music in 2011, dub-step phenom Skrillex.

The glut of agency holiday card delivery continues as it always does and just as a quick example of what we’ve received thus far, here are two completely different pieces of work that caught our eye, one from TBWA\Chiat\Day NY and the other from Design Kitchen. The former has released the “Holiday .GIF Giver,” which as you can see above celebrate. The list of .GIF’s that were uploaded, created or just chosen continues to blow up, though we’d be appreciative if someone could just pass us an Advil after peering through this image overload.

On the flipside, we have an interesting effort from Chicago-based, WPP-owned Design Kitchen for the holidays, which is basically a Twitter-based, live-streaming card that lets you watch a “Holi-Cray-Matic” celebration unfold in its conference room after every 40 tweets it gets.

We expect more agency holiday submissions to pour, though we’ll do you the favor of just compiling what sticks out in one post moving forward.