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Why Haven't More People Seen This Video?

San Diego mayor Jerry Sanders made an announcement last week regarding same-sex marriage. If you haven't seen it, I urge you to take 5 minutes right now and watch.

I'm embarrassed that it took me a week to learn about this. The relatively low view counts on the video's several youtube postings perhaps indicate that the story was woefully underreported. ("Jerry Sanders and marriage" yields 67 results on Google News; Talk-Like-a-Pirate Day, also from September 19, yields 90 results.) If you are as moved as I was by Sanders's words, please spread the word. People can change their views. And the struggle for civil rights is never over.

Interview with artist Heidy Cody

Take a look at this interview in NYArts with friend of Stay Free! Heidy Cody about the ubiquity of brand identifiers and the critique implicit in her art. (Wow, if that sentence doesn't sell you on an interesting interview, nothing will!)

Among other things, you can read the origin story for Heidi's art-enabling superpower:

... I also lived in France until I was eight, and my belated introduction to American consumerism was like, Pow! Look at all this candy! Also, my father refused to buy a color TV because he thought it would distort my idea of reality. Word. I didn’t understand, but now I think having a 13” black and white TV for ten years made everything else more colorful to me. There’s a lot of commercial information that I zoom in on that others just don’t see. It’s like I have bionic Pop vision.

Thanks, friend of Stay Free! Jim Hanas!

A promise of quality

Also from the Fulton Mall, the second in what I hope will become a series on my favorite 99¢-stores:

The "or more" formulation is de rigeur in 99¢-store pricing, but this place does it in the form of a promise. It is like the proprietor is saying 59¢? 79¢? We don't sell cheap crap like that! Everything here is guaranteed to be 99¢!

Afraid of the great Beyond?

From the Fulton Mall:

My new favorite thing: this gorilla commercial

As some of you know I'm an ape enthusiast and have been for some time. Seldom does it happen that my love of apes trumps my antipathy toward corporate advertising (or Phil Collins, for that matter). This commercial, however, is one of those times... and the spot is all the more awesome when you realize that it has absolutely NOTHING to do with the sponsor's product. Which is to say that this spot perfectly captures advertising of the YouTube age: the viewer gets a burst of entertainment in exchange for watching a product plug. Unlike advertising of old, that entertainment is provided by the advertisers instead of TV writers or magazine editors. For those who have seen Thank God You're Here, it will be a nice relief to have someone try to entertain you.

(Via Adfreak)

Coke's bogus recycling effort

Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that cola giants Coke and Pepsi are bending over backwards to make it look as if they care about recycling plastic water bottles. Bottled water makers have received a motherload of negative publicity lately, and so they've got to play defense. But while the article mentioned the token efforts Coke and Pepsi have made to reduce their piles in landfills, it fails to note a small message appearing on selected bottles of Dasani that does more to undercut recycling efforts than the company's gestures do to help. That message: NO REFILL. (I've also seen this on a different brand as DO NOT REFILL).

According to Coca-Cola's customer service line, Dasani bottles are "designed for one-time use." In other words, Coke reps wants you to recycle THEIR way, which means buying lots of Coke bottles and throwing them in the recycling bin. What they don't want you to do is to recycle in the only meaningful sense of the term: to reuse the bottle instead of buying a new one. When I asked Coke's rep why I shouldn't refill my bottle, she told me "Coke doesn't recommend that because of the sterilization process."

Ignoring the tautological reasoning, I think what she meant to say is that I'm dirty.

Levi's Gay Friendly Jeans - and financial woes

AdFreak pointed out a Levi's ad campaign that uses the same protagonist in two different versions of a commercial: in one, a good tug of his jeans over his hips yanks an exciting new world through the floor of his office, complete with Fantasy Woman conveniently waiting in a phone booth. The second version — prepare to be shocked — is the same commercial shot-for-shot, but this time it is Fantasy Man who just finished his drug deal. (Seriously. Why else would they be using a pay phone?)

The appropriate response to this is to applaud Levi's for marketing to the gay community. It is progress, however small, when corporate America decides that profits are more important than prejudice. So why do I keep obsessing about the wrong things in the ad, like clear evidence of a budget crisis at Levi's?

One, they use the same protagonist in both ads. Perhaps our fictional man is bisexual, but it gives the impression that either they assumed that there would be zero overlap between the audiences for the ads OR that Levi's could only afford three actors. I think they used the same take of the opening sequence for both commercials. I know that CGI and other production costs are expensive, but Levi's can't be in so much trouble that new commercials have to be made with found footage.

Two, what happens when this man tries to consummate his relationship with Fantasy Man or Fantasy Woman? As soon as the modern-day Tantalus drops his pants, the Good World will disappear and he'll be back in the tattered remains of his office, pants around his ankles, sobbing at the destruction he has wrought.