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ROFL! @ Joe's Pub

While I generally refrain from plugging my personal comedy schedule here, I am representing Stay Free! in a "best of the web" competition at Joe's Pub in NYC on July 27 at 11:30PM.

ROFL! is a bracket-style competition, where representatives of different blogs pit their favorite video clips or other web ephemera against one another. The winner gets $150 in singles. Which I guess can be used to finance a trip to see the live version of the actual best (by profitability) of the web.

Among the other presenters will be Jason Kottke and representatives from Buzzfeed, Rhizome, Negatendo, 53 O's and Weimar New York.

ROFL! is presented by The Onion and Paper Thin Walls. Tickets are $15 and you can get them here, by calling 212-967-7555 or at the door (425 Lafayette St.)

Land Rover: A Legend in its Marketing

According to Brandweek, Land Rover's new marketing strategy is to show the car as a "hero" by rushing cars to the sites of natural disasters:

When a natural disaster strikes, [Director Scott Duncan] and his crew go on location to capture footage. For example, when floods hit Levasy, Mo., last month, Duncan's crew swooped in like a SWAT team to film the LR3 in action. Turpin said the first spot, breaking next week, would show the LR3 using its hydraulic lift and sealed undercarriage to navigate flooded streets strewn with disabled cars. ...

To ensure that the brand isn't seen as exploiting disaster, Land Rover will offer the use of its vehicles to emergency personnel or, alternatively, make donations to relief organizations.

So Land Rover doesn't want to be seen as exploiting natural disasters and have concluded that throwing money around won't seem explotaitive at all.

Alas, this is the essence of corporate charity: the giving isn't to help, it is for the purpose of saying that you gave, like when Philip Morris well spent over $1,000,000 to brag that it donated $125,000 worth of macaroni and cheese. Remember, its the thought that counts - and that thought is "this will pay off in the end, right?"

(Via Consumerist)

Mary's Dirty Little Monkey

I first thought that this was a great advertisement for soap that involves a monkey as a metaphor for ladyparts. It turns out that it is one of a series of cards about Mary and her monkey from a time when people had a sense of humor about sex.

You can see all of the excellent illustrations at the above link or read the whole poem below the fold.

(Via Silent Porn Star, which has a lot of great vintage risque (often NSFW) stuff. If you search for "wrestle" you'll see a great cartoon.)

1. Mary has a little Monkey, just as cute as it can be,

It was covered with the softest hair that ever you did see.

2. To keep it nice and clean was Mary's greatest hope,

So she washed her little Monkey with the best kind of soap.

3. The boys all like Mary, and like her Monkey too,

And when they play so nice with it, what can Mary do?

4. Once Mary's Monkey got real cold That filled her with alarm

So she bought some woolen pants For to keep her Monkey warm.

5. Mary went in swimming and she took her little pet.

A wave hit in the "Good Old Summer Time"

and she got her monkey wet.

6. Mary now is married and it keeps her on the jump,

And between the man and Mary, her Monkey has to hump.

The Last Straw

I've now seen this in a few places, and I'm wondering if it's a trend: You're standing at the counter of an informal restaurant. There's a container of paper-wrapped straws on the counter. Next to that, there's now a paper cup or some other small depository. And I believe we're supposed to place our used straw wrappers in this holder.

Now, my first thought was, how lazy have we become as a society that we need a special tiny little trashcan for our straw wrappers? Is carrying the wrapper the 3 or 4 feet to the normal garbage can such a huge burden? Is there some eco-issue I wasn't aware of, in which seagulls are choking to death on improperly-disposed-of straw wrappers?

But my second thought was, hmmm, oftentimes when I'm emptying out my pockets at the end of the day, I will discover a straw wrapper. Even if I'm positive that I threw it away, nope, it's still at the bottom my pocket. So, I don't know, maybe this is society evolving just a little bit.

Condom-free TV?

In the latest morality play from the Puritans that run network television, CBS and Fox are refusing to air certain ads for Trojan condoms. Because they won't show advertising for condoms? No, because they won't show ads for condoms that promote fucking. In the words of a Fox memo, “Contraceptive advertising must stress health-related uses rather than the prevention of pregnancy.” So sayeth the network that gave us five seasons of The Simple Life.

CBS deemed the ads "inappropriate... even with only-late-night restrictions," even though the idea of picking up women to have sex seems to be Barney's raison d'etre. Not to mention that either the subtext of Two and a Half Men is that Charlie Sheen is desperately trying to have a baby or CBS needs to reexamine its priorities also.

(Via AdFreak)

How Americans Get to Work

From the Census Bureau:

See also: 98 Percent Of U.S. Commuters Favor Public Transportation For Others

(Via Streetsblog)

PSAs for potheads

We've written a lot about anti-drug ads that make you WANT to take drugs, so I figure I ought to share the good news as well. A couple of new animated spots aimed at discouraging marijuana smoking are damn good. The production is decidedly low-key and badly drawn in a charming, Brad-Neely sort of way.

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid533275934http://www.brightcove.com/channel.jsp?channel=78144477

 

In my favorite of the two, a girl gets bored with her stoner boyfriend and flies off with an alien who doesn't care for pot. In the other, a puppy is saddened by the inability of his pot-smoking human to quit and get a life. Reminds me of Todd Barry's idea for a perfect world: one where pot is legal, but potheads are not.

Hard to believe that these spots came from the Office of National Drug Control Policy, which has produced more than its share of hackneyed, misguided PSAs.

Like all anti-drug spots, these have inspired a fair share of parodies, one of which is funny enough that you'd almost think it's not by a pothead.

(Via Slate)

Carrie on Consumerist

While not working on Stay Free!, Carrie does home improvement. A lot of this means going outside and the outside is not always friendly to her. To minimize the inevitable mosquito assault, she did some research and product testing on mosquito avoidance techniques and products. Her findings are over at Consumerist.

Best commercial for a Presidential candidate ever

Seriously, this is awesome. It's a spot for Mike Gravel, the former U.S. Senator of Alaska, who I'd never heard of until five minutes ago. He gets my vote. This man is an artist.

(Via Adfreak)

Czech Dream

A while back, I posted about the documentary Czech Dream, about a couple of artists who create a marketing campaign for a nonexistant bigbox store in Prague. Anyway, I just noticed that it's playing in New York this week (through Friday) at the IFC. Those of you who aren't in New York can probably find it on your favorite P2P network. (It's on mine....)

Uh, Cartoon Network…You're Supposed to Pay for Advertising.

Did Cartoon Network's marketing team learn nothing from their Aqua Teen Hunger Force Boston bomb scare debacle? The one that resulted in $2 million in fines and the resignation of the network's general manager? (Not to mention that the eventual ATHF movie was a bigger bomb than any device planted in Beantown.)

And now they're resorting to splog. This week, I checked in on the messageboard for the band the db's, where I had once before uncovered corporate comment spam. There was now another very random posting which asked:

Does anyone watch Storm Hawks? It’s on Mondays on CN… does anyone remember if it’s the cute girl Piper who rides the heliscooter or if it’s the big strong guy, Junko? My friends and I all watched the first episode, but no one can agree.

I poked around on the Internet and found the same sentences posted on several other sites. Digging deeper, I found dozens of web pages with this alternate text:

Did anyone catch Storm Hawks on Cartoon Network? I watched it, and I was impressed by the way it looked! The animation was really smooth, but it looked like they used CGI too to make it look more realistic. What did anyone else think?

And who knows which other variations are out there. Listen, Cartoon Network, I know it's hard to grab the kids' attention these days. I know you have to think "outside the box." And I know you probably have a $2 million hole in your marketing budget. But show an ounce of class and try to play by the rules. Or else you're going to spend a lot more time in court, and attorney-at-law Harvey Birdman won't be able to help you.

Nowhere to hide from outdoor advertising

The latest in really, really creepy consumer monitoring comes from the outdoor advertising industry. They are developing cameras that will be placed in billboards so that they can watch people as they read.

The cameras are designed to monitor people as they go by so the advertisers can determine how many people look at an ad and how long they look. The camera will have to be inconpicuous, I guess, but I can't help thinking about those Bugs Bunny cartoons whenever Bugs would end up in a castle, and the portraits would have eyes that followed Bugs around the room.

If the idea is to figure out what will get and keep people's attention, within five years the billboards will be nothing but tits and logos. Which makes me think that Europe got this technology years ago.

George Saunders, American

An Interview with George Saunders
by Jim Hanas

[ Note: We had slated to run this interview in the final issue of the print mag, but since we're not sure whether there's going to be a final issue, I wanted to go ahead and get it out. —CM ]

George Saunders' short stories, with their characteristic absurdity and wit, have always taken aim at the ridiculous in American culture—from amusement parks to cure-all consumer products. Since 9/11, however, his work has taken on an even sharper political edge. His 2005 novella The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil—which started out as a children's book but turned into a parable about genoicide—pursued the logic of power to its ultimate conclusion, while occasional pieces he's written for Slate and The New Yorker have offered modest proposals that similarly dissect the machinations of the “new normal.” What if every single American went to Iraq and helped out with the mundane chores of daily life? What if we could kill all the people who want to kill us without, somehow, making more people want to kill us? What if we all simply refused to fight and went about our business?

Saunders' latest collection—In Persuasion Nation (2006)—contains stories composed both before and after 9/11, many of which stuggle to diagnose what the author takes to be the growing cruelty of American culture. In the title story, advertising spokesthings try to escape from their ritual humiliation. In another, "Brad Carrigan, American," a character on a TV show is distracted from his role by horrific human suffering.

We talked to Saunders about 9/11, the war, TV, Buddhism (of which he is a devotee), and hope. —Jim Hanas

STAY FREE!: It seems like your recent stories, particularly in In Persusation Nation, are more politically charged than your previous work.

SAUNDERS: I think so. Like many people since 9/11, I am tormented by what I see happening in the country, and also by a deeper idea that it could actually be, well, two things. One, that stupidity wins. That stupidity actually does carry the day. And second—and this is maybe a softer lesson—that, as David Byrne said, it's the "same as it ever was."

Our political system is run by dunderheads, by guys living in a different stratosphere than the rest of us. They have minimal contact with actual American life. And they might just win. Maybe I was just naive, but that was kind of shock to me. All of that angst made its way into the stories. Sometimes I wish it hadn't. I don't think that's, aesthetically, the easiest stuff to work with, but I've definitely got a level of outrage and sadness that I haven't had before. It's kind of tough to deal with. I like the Chekhovian model, where you're kind of lovingly regarding human nature—but somehow, in the last five years, I haven't felt that way. I'm trying to. I've got to find a way to disrupt the polarity that I've got in my mind—Us versus Them—and try to work with that anew, because it's a real dead end.

STAY FREE!: Is that why you've branched out into writing essays?

SAUNDERS: That was the idea: If I'm pissed off about this, let's get it out of the way and write about it. It kind of helped, and then it became fun in its own way. A story will sometimes take a year to fully overflow its banks, and those pieces are much simpler and shorter. You can just say, "I don't like penguins," and you can write a 300-word piece about penguins, and then you're done.

STAY FREE!: When you look at American culture today—commercialism, reality TV, the war, all the things that are in your stories—what do you see? What is your diagnosis?

SAUNDERS: I'll give you a couple answers. One, there's a cultural divide between the people at the top and the people underneath. So, in commercials: who's making them? A handful of people. Why are they making them? To persuade us to buy things. There's a group of people who have the power to broadcast and to put this huge machine at their disposal—this very beautiful machine that can make incredible images and sounds—and then there's the rest of the population, which is "done to." I would say that the gap between the doers and the done to is wider than it's ever been. The politicians—the people running the country—are isolated from us. I'm 47 and I've had one contact with a congressperson—[New York congresswoman] Louise Slaughter called me back one time when I wrote her a letter—but that's it. I've called a number of them, and you know that somebody checks off a box and then that's it. That's a huge thing, and I think it's a new thing. I don't think that people have ever felt as powerless or unimportant.
That's one answer. The second, and probably more complicated, answer is that it's always been thus. I've been disabused, in the last few years, of the notion that the purpose of life is to fix shit, that we're in this world to make it better. On a relative level, we have to think that way and we must think that way. But in an absolute way—from the point of view of someone who's now almost 50—you say, well, actually the world has always been trouble and suffering and discontent. It flows a bit. Who's suffering more, who's inflicting what on who—that changes. But, in a funny way, I'm starting to learn to see this all as a beautiful display, and part of that beautiful display is torment and upheaval and oppression and the whole thing. In a fishbowl, the fish food is floating around different places in the bowl and different fish are underneath the little plastic diver, but the stuff is constant inside there.

In Buddhism, there's this idea of the absolute and the relative. So what I said first is relative. The power has shifted up in an incredible way, and the people who the power has shifted away from now may have never in their life known that it was supposed to be otherwise. The whole idea of Steinbeckian America, most people don't even remember that—the idea that in the '30s the whole shit almost fell down because of the inequity. That's the relative.

The absolute is: show me three human beings gathered together where there wasn't oppression and angst and inequity and cruelty.

STAY FREE!: Are there any commercials or TV shows that have been driving you particularly crazy lately?

SAUNDERS: I was in the gym the other day and they had like 12 TVs, all with the sound down. I'm kind of an obsessive reader, so I have to read all the little captions, and there were probably two or three different things—from completely different contexts—but I was noticing how aggressive they are. One was one of these "Making the Band" kind of shows, and it was all about mocking the people who failed. And then another show was like that—"Let's get somebody to make an ass of themselves." I've noticed that there's that strain of aggression, and it's very rarified. It's not like you actually see it in real life, but they create it and amplify it.

On the other hand, I think it's kind of funny, kind of joyful, kind of crazy—so I can look at it both ways. The point of the book really wasn't, "Let's ban advertising," but just to sort of wallow in it a bit and come out a little more aware that these things aren't really neutral.

Maybe another advantage of living a long time is you see the way the tonality of commercials has changed, even in my lifetime. And it's not neutral and it's not random. It's very deliberate in the sense that somebody's deciding to make these commercials and shows more aggressive, more hateful, more agitating. I don't know why. I'm sure it's very complicated.

STAY FREE!: A theme that runs throughout the stories is that the media has become more cruel.

SAUNDERS: I'm sure they know very well what sells and what doesn't sell. The other show, in addition to the "Making the Band" show, was one of these things where they switch wives, and even just watching it on the exercise bike with the subtitles, I was getting agitated. I could feel my heart rate spiking—me getting mad at this stupid New Age mother who can't clean her own house. Obviously, they pick these people to be agitating and they prodded them so they'd be more agitating. It's like a play, but it's a play that isn't designed to do anything except agitate you so you can't stop watching it, and that doesn't seem to be in the long-term interest of the culture.

STAY FREE!: How do you think that feeds into politics?

SAUNDERS: The only thing I really believe is that we got softened up by the stupidity of our media in the days before 9/11. Your thought process and your level of articulation are intimately related. For example, if somebody said you can only use 12 words, you would get stupider. Being able to articulate a thought reinforces your ability to have that thought. In terms of our public discourse, the O.J./Monica thing softened us up so that when 9/11 happened, we didn't have our full resources to deal with it. There's some kind of relation between a culture that's all about stimulation and quick fixes and a pervasive thoughtlessness.

STAY FREE!: How did it happen?

SAUNDERS: I think you can follow the money. Infotainment was kicking the shit out of real news. Of course it would, because Pixy Stix are better than broccoli. I don't think there's anybody planning it or trying to make us easier to lead; we were made easier to lead by ourselves somehow.

STAY FREE!: Does anything give you hope?

SAUNDERS: I've been thinking about hope a lot and I think it's kind of overrated. Hope, in a funny way, is believing that the condition you're in right now is not the one you're going to be in later. When I was young, I hoped I would publish a book. I had a big idea that if I did, life would be totally different. All my neuroses would disappear and I would be truly enjoying life. But when I published the book, I actually got more neurotic. Suddenly I had something to lose. So now I'm thinking: Why do you need hope? You wake up with a certain amount of buoyancy in the day, something you want to do. I want to write to today or I want to wash the car. That seems good enough.

Jim Hanas is a Brooklyn-based writer whose short stories have appeared in McSweeney's, One Story, the Land-Grant College Review, and Fence.

NCAA Says "Don't Promote Our Product"

Apparently not content with the miniscule coverage given to college baseball, the NCAA has decided that it prefers "virtually zero." A reporter for the largest newspaper in Kentucky was thrown out of a University of Louisville game in the College World Series because "it is against NCAA policies" to liveblog the game. It remains to be seen how much liveblogging this actually stops because NCAA policy only prevents him from liveblogging from the event - and the event was broadcast nationally, live. Also, someone in the crowd might own a PDA.

A lot of people are accusing the NCAA of copyright enforcement thuggery but I think that the NCAA is actually just being the ultimate internet purist: bloggers don't belong in the press box; they should be at home in their pajamas.

(Via CSTB)

Proof that history matters

I've become a devoted This American Life listener of late, but I must say that episode 333 show last month was exceptionally good. It starts off with a segment the military's Center for Army Lessons Learned... then segues into an interview with the head of the U.S. Army Military History Institute. I'd be hard-pressed to think of better illustrations of why history matters. Both segments illuminate why the US invasion of Iraq has gone horribly awry, and yet they're entirely nonpartisan (so nonpartisan that they would never use a phrase like "horribly awry"). I think my conservative parents would dig this episode as much as I do (if only they could figure out podcasting).

Say something nice or don't say anything at all. Or Big Pharma will threaten to sue you.

In the previous post, I said that facility with fraud is a requirement for running a pharma trial. Is that a cheap shot? Probably not.

Yesterday, Dr. John Buse testified before Congress that GlaxoSmithKline, the makers of diabetes drug Avandia, pressured him to stop questioning the drug's safety. Company representatives threatened him by saying that his "actions were scurrilous enough to attempt to hold me liable for a loss in market capitalization." In other words, they threatened a multimillion dollar lawsuit because he wouldn't simply swallow the shit Glaxo was shoveling.

Did I mention that the Congressional hearings are being held because Avandia carries an increased risk of heart attack? Avandia paid for a full page non-apology ad in today's Daily News; it wasn't much different from Panexa's. The non-apology was mere pages away from the article about Dr. Buse's testimony.

Pharma Fond of Fraud-Committing Physicians

Sunday's New York Times had a mindbending article about the way drugs are tested in this country. Apparently, doctors who have been disciplined for fraud are finding second careers running clinical trials for drug companies. One such doctor, before being hired directly by drug companies, was cited by the FDA for violating protocol in every study he managed! When a suicidal patient refused to be enrolled in one of his trials, he discharged the patient from his hospital—and the patient committed suicide shortly thereafter. It's as if facility with fraud is a bona fide occupational qualification for running a pharma trial.

Meanwhile, take a wild guess what many of the other doctors hired to run drug trials were disciplined for... if you said "overprescribing," you win!

Gene Carbona, who left Merck on good terms in 2001 as a regional sales manager after 12 years in drug sales, said the only thing the company considered when hiring doctors to give marketing lectures was “the volume or potential volume of prescribing that doctor could do.” ... Mr. Carbona, now executive director of sales for The Medical Letter, which reviews drugs, said that had he known that a doctor had a disciplinary record for excessive prescribing, “I would have been more inclined to use them as a speaker.”

Letterman's Best Joke

Last night I turned on the Late Show with David Letterman* on in the middle of a pleasantly not-annoying interview with Nicole Ritchie. At the end of the interview, Letterman said that his next guest after the commercial break would be Artie Lange. I'm a fan, so I decided to stick around. That is when I was taken hostage by CBS. Here is a timeline of what I watched, waiting for Artie:

     1:00 - Levitra - Good timing. Between Ritchie and Lange, no erection for a week.
     0:15 - Mastercard
     0:15 - OnStar with Kelly Ripa
     0:30 - Surf's Up
     0:15 - Big Brother 8 promo - 8! I didn't even know that was still on here.
     0:30 - Verizon something or other, with a Fantastic 4/Silver Surfer tie in
     0:30 - Terminix - Is that Jack McBrayer playing a cabinet?
     0:30 - Verizon FiOS
     1:30 - Abe Lincoln Movie Reviews - An actual segment.
     0:30 - Ford F-15 Trucks - They claim to have stronger engine bolts. Convincing!
     0:30 - A real estate agency that I've never heard of.**
     0:10 - Late Late Show promo
     0:20 - Pirate Master promo - Seriously? It's like a prank on the cast and audience.
     0:30 - hotels.com
     0:15 - Norelco
     0:15 - Pirates of the Carribean 3 - Sorry, Johnny. I'm going to watch Pirate Master.
     0:20 - CSI promo
     0:30 - Tuberculosis Traveler - A segment brought to you by Black & Decker.
     0:30 - MetLife
     0:30 - Mazda CX-9
     0:30 - Die Hard 4
     0:30 - iPhone
     0:30 - expedia.com
     0:20 - AFI's 100 Greatest Movies promo
     0:05 - Late Show bumper - Did you forget the show?
     0:30 - Iams pet food

That's twelve minutes of ads in between the Nicole Ritchie interview and the Artie Lange interview. Out of those 12 minutes of "programming," 8:30 were commercials, 1:25 were in-house promotion, and 2:05 were Late Show. Of the 2:05 that was actually the Late Show, 35 seconds were really commercials.

I have no idea how anybody could regularly watch this show without an assist from a DVR.

* NB: I would kill someone unimportant at Eddie Brill's request to be booked on Letterman. This may turn out to be a very bad idea.

** I got the time down by rewinding on my DVR and retaping with my camcorder. I was only taping for timestamps and didn't focus well enough to see the name of the agency. Not that you care.

.Com As You Are

I don't know about you, but when I've had enough of the media criticism, the bashing of consumer culture, and the glorification of Brooklyn, I turn to the kinder, gentler Stay Free blog.

Killing trees for ads

In case you've run out of reasons to hate advertising, here's one: billboard advertisers are poisoning and chopping down trees that get in the way of people seeing their ads along highways. The latest rash of tree deaths is in North Carolina, where about 50 trees have been killed in the past seven months.

To make matters worse, a bill proposed to combat the practice sets fines at $2,000, even though replacing 50 trees would cost the state over $607,100—over $12,000 per tree!

Scenic America ("an advocacy group that rivals roadside vegetation as billboards' biggest foes") has prepared a factsheet (pdf) on the practice and how to combat it. Check it out.

Reminds me: it's been a while since I've plugged Howard Gossage's awesome How to Look at Billboards essay...

Kurt Cobain to no longer be portrayed in heaven

The Guardian (registration req.*) reports that Dr. Martens is very, very sorry about a new ad campaign featuring famous dead rockers Kurt Cobain, Joey Ramone, and Sid Vicious and has fired its agency—Saatchi & Saatchi—over it.

Which reminds me: a few years ago, we collected quotes by famous dead people used in ads who are now rolling over in their graves: Malcolm X, Aldous Huxley, John Lennon, et al. Well, I guess we can add Kurt Cobain to the collection—only now I'm too lazy to research a good quote. Can anyone recall some choice critical comments Kurt made about money, advertising, or the corporatocracy? Having never been a Nirvana fan, I can only think of that "Corporate magazines suck" shirt he wore on the cover of Rolling Stone.

(Via Adland)

* See Bug Me Not logins to avoid registration

New York's Rules on Behavior

In the wake of 9/11, the New York subway system instituted a number of security rules—random bag checks, essentially—to the mostly unenforced safety and courtesy rules. Because random bag checks are only going to stop terrorists unwilling to turn around and walk one block to an unmanned entrance, the MTA has a much-maligned If you see something, say something program, deputizing us all. So, how's that working?

Last night, riding the Q train home after a show, I saw an open seat on the train but there was a bag on it. I started with the usual passive-aggressive maneuver—moving towards the seat and staring at the bag's likely owner. She didn't flinch, so I had to go to the more aggressive request that she remove the bag. But it wasn't hers. And the guy who was sitting in the perpendicular row of seats also disclaimed ownership. So I tucked the "bomb?" under the seat and we rode on.

While we're on the subject of unenforced safety rules, I'd like to welcome back the age of public urination in New York. Last week I saw a guy slide behind a beam at the W.4th Street station relieve himself around 6PM, well before he had a chance to get himself drunk enough to make it even halfway acceptable. This past Tuesday, on E.4th St., a guy took a break from cashing in his cans at the Avenue A Key Food and hid between two cars to pee. Well, he "hid" to the extent that "flagrantly exposing himself to the women in the Go Girl nail salon (and me)" counts as "hiding." One more and we've got a trend.