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Open Letter to my Dear Friend Generosa Pratts

Hi Generosa!

Just wanted to drop you a line to say that I received your letter of January 19. You know, the one that began…

Dear Jack Silbert:

As an owner at Westgate Resorts, I'm entitled to reward a friend with a special offer to visit a 5-star Westgate Resort in Orlando, FL and I chose you!

What a lovely surprise to hear from you! And so refreshing to receive an actual letter instead of one of these new-fangled e-mails that the young people are so taken with. I would've written back to you in "snail mail" form but you forgot to put a return address on the envelope. Oh well!

Now, you said something about a 4-day/3-night something-or-other, and that is all very generous of you. (Your mama knew what she was doing when she dubbed you "Generosa"!) But Generosa dear, all that means nothing to me when I have the chance to reconnect with you—my good friend!

The thing is, Generosa, and I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I can't seem to place how we know each other. I have looked in my Fave Five, my list of myspace friends, Friendster friends (you're not one of those Eastern Bloc girls, are you?), Netflix friends, Facebook, Hi5, LinkedIn, Plaxo, that stupid new one with the American Idol-style book writing competition, my college alumni directory, high-school yearbook, junior-high yearbook, local phone book, Google, Wikipedia…I can't find you anywhere, you minx! There is a "Generosa Pratts" listed on peoplefinders.com—a 48-year-old who lives either in Brooklyn, the Bronx, Ridgewood, NY, or Jersey City. Still not ringing a bell, though! You don't, by any chance, work in a paper-bag manufacturing plant?

Well, no matter, we've got the rest of our lives to connect the dots and catch up. There is so much I want to tell you, Generosa! Here I've been sitting home alone watching commercials, just wishing and hoping a friend like you would come along. Someone to bring me soup when I'm feeling icky. Someone to give me a ride when my car is in the shop. Someone to pet-sit my Boston terrier, Oreo. (What a scamp!) Are you my missing link to Kevin Bacon? Can I put you down as a reference? Any single friends you could introduce me to? Will you help me move? Can I borrow a few bucks, just till payday? I would gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today. Here, put this Ziploc bag in your carry-on luggage, and act like everything's cool.

Will you comment on my blog posts?

I know this must be just as overwhelming for you, Generosa, so I'll stop there for now. Keep smilin', keep shinin', and know that you can always count on me, for sure!

Love,
Jack

p.s. Write back soon!

The Message is the Medium

While Jack is at home watching commercials by himself, Steve Lambert is out blocking ads with his friends.

In response to the ubiquitous public advertising in New York City - including illegally posted advertisements - Steve's Anti-Advertising Agency and the Graffiti Research Lab have collaborated on a project to appropriately label the MTA's grating video ads.

You can read about the project here. As you'll see in the short accompanying film, the cover up is much better than the crime.

Welcome to Jack's Blog About Commercials I Didn't Fast-Forward Through

Or maybe the rest of the Stay Free team went camping and didn't invite me? Anyway, tonight I fast-forwarded all the way to the end of a commercial, and then went all the way back. Because at the end was the logo for the University of Phoenix, or as I like to call it,
Banner-Ad U. Surely you have seen more than your fair share of Internet advertising for this college offering "web-based education" and 72 "campuses" in 36 states, Canada, and Puerto Rico. (Sorry, irony fans: There is a campus in Phoenix, Arizona.) But this ad was on television. Which I am luddite enough to consider real advertising.

Perhaps equally troubling, the commercial is set to the insanely catchy New Pornographers' song "The Bleeding Heart Show." If America's favorite Canadian indie-pop supergroup had to sell out, did it have to be to the University of Phoenix? Though who knows, perhaps they all hold degrees from the Vancouver or Calgary branches.

My head is still spinning. The U. of Phoenix is gaining students, and I'm losing my faculties.

I Got Played by Yoplait

I was watching a TV show I'd recorded, fast-forwarding through the commercials, when an ad for Yoplait Light yogurt caught my eye. I rewound to watch at normal speed. As "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini" played in the background, a woman paced in her home and ate yogurt, with the aforementioned garment prominently on a hanger. The message to the female viewer: Start eating Yoplait now and when summer rolls around, you'll have fewer rolls around. The message to the pathetic heterosexual male viewer (that would be me): Hang tight for 30 seconds and you'll see this woman in a bikini. They had me hook, line, and sinker, as the time-lapse months of yogurt-eating reached their inevitable climax. You've tricked me into watching your entire ad, Yoplait, but after this lingering product shot, at least I'll get my sad payoff.

Our protagonist walks past the hanger, and voilà, empty hanger. Cut to our now fully-dressed protagonist getting into her friend's car for a fun-filled day at the beach. Oh, that pesky bikini-top strap—she tucks it back under her shirt. OK, one more product shot, and then I'll finally see the frolicking-on-the-sand conclusion. But no! The commercial was over! Thirty seconds of my life, gone! I felt used. Violated.

But then I thought, well, if she looked great in the bikini, that would be stretching believability too far. Was light yogurt a wonder drug? Or perhaps she was just suffering from poor self-image all along. And if she didn't look good, that's not going to sell much yogurt either. So I was ultimately OK with their directorial decisions.

What I'm trying to say is, I think maybe I'm growing up, just a little bit.

Or else, I'm starting to think like…them.

Break Wind All Over Your Face

This is way more blatant than calling your ice cream Fudge Tracks.  How could this gaffe make it through to production with no one asking, "you do know what break wind is a euphemism for?"  How could anyone miss this one?  Unless it's intentional. Unless it's all designed to create buzz in the highly competitive fleece balaclava market.  Unless essentially calling your product "poot" will generate interest in the 18-35 demo through word of mouth, blog posts... wait, maybe this is all part of their plan?  And now I'm playing right into their hands!  -end of transmission-

Heidi Cody goods + gallery show

Friend of Stay Free! Heidi Cody is part of a group show opening this week in Williamsburg at the Front Room, "Multiples and Editions." You may remember Heidi from the Illegal Art Exhibit, and from our beloved advertising toilet paper. The reception runs 7 pm to 9 pm on Friday, and the show will remain up through February 11.

Which reminds me: Heidi is now selling a poster of American Alphabet - the perfect gift for all of you media literacy teachers out there. You can buy it for $30 + $5 s/h via our website - a $15 savings from the gallery price and worth every penny. Come to think of it, you can also buy "Ads on TP" - via HeidiCody.com.

Amazing reverse graffiti

Sure, we've read about "reverse graffiti" - where folks make signs and artwork by removing dirt from walls and other surfaces outdoors. But the only examples I'd seen barely rise above "wash me" signs on the back of someone's dirty car.

Until, via Streetsblog, I saw this:

WOW. Brazilian street artist Alexandre Orion transformed a soot-covered tunnel on Sao Paulo into a harrowing mural last summer. More here.

iPhone redux

Following up this morning's iPhone dispatch:

Allen Stern puts the first year cost of the iPhone at almost $2,000. That's a lot of money to spend on a paperweight.

Coming soon to the iDump

All hail the arrival of the iPhone! Finally, the convergence of the most popular throwaway mp3 player with the most throwaway portable electronic! This iPhone round up doesn't answer the most important question: does it come prebroken? That would be a timesaver for the go-getters who want the cachet of the iPhone but don't want to have it break down at a critical moment: with 11 months left on your commitment to Cingular.

MLK

Alexandra Ringe has posted an excerpt of a speech from June 17, 1962 given at the Zion Hill Church in Los Angeles. Take six minutes today to remind yourself why you shouldn't care that your mail delivery will have to wait until tommorrow. Thanks, Alexandra.

Listen here.

Bend It Like a Century 21 Agent

The Brit is coming, the Brit is coming: As anyone with a passing interest in popular culture already knows, David Beckham has agreed to a five-year deal worth a rumored $250 million to join the L.A. Galaxy team. It's a huge amount of money for a player clearly past his prime, but this is a wager that Major League Soccer is willing to make. They hope it will be a turning point for the sport in the U.S., and will significantly raise the profile of the MLS. Before that happens, though, and for a much smaller investment, I'd strongly recommend that the league get its hands on a simple URL that has apparently eluded them. (Oh, wait, right—soccer. No hands.) Come on, even the dormant women's league controls its own initials.

Abbott to AIDS Patients: Thank you for not dying

Abbott Laboratories has come up with an ingenius way of screwing AIDS patients. Here's how it works: Abbott sells two AIDS drugs, an older drug called Norvir, and a highly profitable newer med, Kaletra. The older Norvir works only in combination with other protease inhibitors; essentially, it boosts other drugs' effectiveness. Kalectra, however, includes Norvair and therefore works alone.

When Kaletra was the only drug of its kind on the market, it made piles of money for Abbott. But in 2003, Bristol-Myser Squibb introduced a rival drug that patients needed to take with Norvir. The suits at Abbott saw this coming and worried: if Norvir remained on the market, they were going to have competition for their real money-maker.

So what did they do? Naturally, they looked into the various ways to kill off use of Norvair: they could replace the pill form of Norvir with a liquid form that tastes like vomit, jack up the price, or remove it from the market altogether. In an instance of life imitating satire, they even proposed a plan for confronting the nagging nabobs of negativity who complained: they would tell the public that Norvair was no longer available because they had to send it to " 'the developing world (i.e. Africa)' as part of a humanitarian effort" - !

What struck me about this story is that Abbott execs knew they'd get a lot of criticism from patient groups' but figured it would die down in a year or two -- and that's exactly what happened. The company may not have predicted the lawsuits that have followed -- and the public airing of internal memos -- but the incident is still an important reminder of the need for real government oversight of pharmaceutical companies.