So, glancing back at some old blog posts, I've noticed that a) I tend to misspell a lot of stuff and b) I tend to use words that don't, technically, make any kind of logical sense in the context in which they're used (see: "an infinitely loop").
I just wanted to quickly post and say that I know that I do this and that I'm sorry. Oh, and also that I'm not really sorry. Oh, and also that if you had read one of my blog posts and been really disgusted by the spelling or syntax, that you should probably look into procuring yourself some kind of life. I know I plan to do so, just as soon as I'm done reading my own blog at 3:30 in the morning.
Happy New Year!
Monday, December 31, 2007
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Merry Christmas!
I love Christmas! And I've had a great one! I opened presents (and got lots of great stuff), I spent a lovely afternoon with my family, I watched both "White Christmas" and "Holiday Inn," I had a great Christmas dinner, and then the family settled in for a lovely yuletide vieweing of "Live Free or Die Hard."
Afterward, most of the family went to bed, and my dad and I watched a few episodes of "The Office" on TBS. During which I saw this commercial about fifty times: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiV0vvFvl1M.
My day was so good that I thought I would take this opportunity to finally finally finally vent all of the vitriol that has been mounting inside me about this commercial since the first time I saw it, about nine months ago! Ahh... I feel relieved already. What a lovely gift to myself.
So, I grew up in Maryland, and I'm used to Mattress Discounter commercials with poor production values. But, right off the bat, this is something different. This is a national advertising campaign. This is a commercial which gets run, presumably, against commercials like the Dominoes thing with the guy with the Oreo beard and that one with all the pickup trucks and that John Mellencamp song. All right, so it's not the AFI 100, but these are presumably ads which are created by professionals who are supposedly schooled in the art of making people want to buy stuff.
It's also different because it's been running for nine months. As near as I can figure, this means one of two things: a) Jose Cuervo has an advertising department which is either too stupid to know that they've got one of the worst commercials on television, or b)this ad campaign actually makes people want to drink Cuervo Black Medallion. Now, I've blogged extensively on the anti-intellectual/condescending/destructive nature of most of what gets sent out on the air waves (especially things which purport to show cool people acting cool), and I'm fully prepared to expect the worst from people, but to think that anybody's opinions are swayed by this ad is just too much for me. Just suggesting that it might makes me want to go take a long nap.
What is so offensive about this ad campaign? What has roused my ire such that I have deemed it a Christmas gift to myself to write this post? What, in short, makes this Jose Cuervo ad the single worst commercial on television? Oh, a few things. Let's make a list, shall we?
1) Right out of the gate, the commercial is structured like a how-to on how to order a Cuervo Black and Cola. Okay, I'll be honest, that kind of rouses my interest. Obviously, there's virtually nothing easier than ordering a drink, especially when the sole ingredients of the drink are listed in the name of the drink. But, apparently order a CBC (as I like to call it) requires more finesse. I'd like to hear more. I mention this only because the slight rise in expectation only deepens the crushing blow to follow.
2) The commercial is shot like a music video. Edit: a bad music video. And with enough bad fades and bad transitions to make me think that it was probably edited on iMovie. To this point, my criticisms are minor and mostly matters of taste, but things are about to go way downhill.
3) STEP ONE: WALKUP TO THE BAR. There are at least two major things wrong with this. First and foremost, "walkup" is not a word. I assume that they mean "walk up" and they've fallen victim to the same misapprehension that sees fourth-graders writing sentences like "I eat ice cream alot." How does something like that get passed a copy editor? Really? And after so long? Nobody thought "There's a major type-o right in the middle of the second title. Maybe we should pull the ad?" So so so lazy. So so so unapologetically stupid. Second big issue: the first step in ordering any drink is walking up to the bar. They may as well say "STEP ONE: DRIVE TO A PLACE THAT SELLS CUERVO BLACK." Whoops... sorry. "STEP ONE: DRIVETO A PLACE THAT SELLS CUERVO BLACK." Why even bother choosing this stupid step-by-step form? Because otherwise this commercial would literally cease to exist.
4) Who do you think is sexier? The dark-eyed guy in the muscle shirt with the five o'clock shadow? Or the dark-eyed guy in the peasant blouse with the five o'clock shadow?
5) STEP TWO: ORDER A CUERVO BLACK AND COLA. Wait a minute. Wait... wait a minute. I don't know how to do that. Right? I mean, that's why I'm hear, right? Okay, so... let's just see here... So, I want to order a CBC. So, following these directions... I just walk up to the bar. I order the CBC. Wait a minute, how do I do that... Let's see... Okay, I just walk up to the bar and I... Great. Now I'm stuck in an infinitely loop. Again.
6) "No no, buddy. With Cola." You idiot. You fucking loser. God, I don't know why I even come to this place. Seriously. You think I'm just some kind of fucking jackoff who just comes to a place and orders a shot of Cuervo Black? Did you even see my five o'clock shadow? This obvious message here is: "Listen up, hip people of the world. Those bartenders, they're gonna try to hold you back. You're going to order the Cuervo Black and Cola, the MOTHER OF ALL HIP, COOL DRINKS, and they're just gonna be like "What? Cuervo Black in a shot glass? Coming right up." You're going to have to be constantly vigilant. Don't expect the world to understand. Sometimes all you can do is shake your head and say, "No no, buddy. Friend. Pal. I believe I said 'with cola.'"
7) Oh, and feel free to have a good laugh with your hip friends when that total homo behind the bar reaches for the shot glass. You can feel free to spit in his face if you feel like it. Anybody who fears the CBC is gonna get trampled by life eventually anyway.
8) STEP 3: SIT BACK, RELAX AND... You know, I almost begrudgingly admire this moment. The obvious message, as is almost always the case with these kinds of commercials is, "Use our products and you can fuck hot chicks." But here, subliminally, the Cuervo people almost actually say that out loud. To my mind, the obvious ending to this sentence, in context, is "Sit back, relax and fuck this blonde girl." And, because the sentence doesn't end on the title card, and because we jump right from the narrator to the girl saying "Enjoy," it feels just about the same as if they came right out and said it. I don't have much more to say on that topic, because if you think that drinking cool drinks means that you get to bed hot chicks, well then... I'd love to hang out where you hang out.
9) It's sort of a throw away, but because the longest continuous narration comes at the end, it seems like the apt place to point out the narrator's voice. He's got that awful, lecherous morning DJ voice, but it's filtered through a phone filter, so it sounds... I don't know... even cooler? I don't mean cool in terms of reality cool. More cool in the terms of VH1's "I Love the 90s" cool. Like, basically, I totally believe that the guy with that voice would hang out with the guy in the muscle shirt.
So, I don't know about you, but I feel a lot better having written this. I mean, I don't have much of resonance to say about it. It's basically just the most vapid, uninspired, illogical, counter-intuitive commercial that I can possibly imagine. It is the apotheosis of the shallowest possible version of coolness captured on film and played (by my count) at least three times in a half hour broadcast. And, in the end, I'm most offended by the idea that that version of cool is going to sell product. I mean, apparently it does, but why? Why does it and why should it and why can it? Those are the questions which immediately come to mind every time I see that stupid dance step title that starts off the whole abysmal mess. And that rush of disgust at humanity is about enough to ensure that, despite being a great lover of tequila, cola and non-conventional drinks all, I will never ever ever ever order a Cuervo Black and Cola.
For more on this, I invite you to check out my MySpace blog on MTV reality television, which explains in far greater detail the ways in which TV is probably unwinding the fabric of society.
Merry Christmas to me!
Afterward, most of the family went to bed, and my dad and I watched a few episodes of "The Office" on TBS. During which I saw this commercial about fifty times: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiV0vvFvl1M.
My day was so good that I thought I would take this opportunity to finally finally finally vent all of the vitriol that has been mounting inside me about this commercial since the first time I saw it, about nine months ago! Ahh... I feel relieved already. What a lovely gift to myself.
So, I grew up in Maryland, and I'm used to Mattress Discounter commercials with poor production values. But, right off the bat, this is something different. This is a national advertising campaign. This is a commercial which gets run, presumably, against commercials like the Dominoes thing with the guy with the Oreo beard and that one with all the pickup trucks and that John Mellencamp song. All right, so it's not the AFI 100, but these are presumably ads which are created by professionals who are supposedly schooled in the art of making people want to buy stuff.
It's also different because it's been running for nine months. As near as I can figure, this means one of two things: a) Jose Cuervo has an advertising department which is either too stupid to know that they've got one of the worst commercials on television, or b)this ad campaign actually makes people want to drink Cuervo Black Medallion. Now, I've blogged extensively on the anti-intellectual/condescending/destructive nature of most of what gets sent out on the air waves (especially things which purport to show cool people acting cool), and I'm fully prepared to expect the worst from people, but to think that anybody's opinions are swayed by this ad is just too much for me. Just suggesting that it might makes me want to go take a long nap.
What is so offensive about this ad campaign? What has roused my ire such that I have deemed it a Christmas gift to myself to write this post? What, in short, makes this Jose Cuervo ad the single worst commercial on television? Oh, a few things. Let's make a list, shall we?
1) Right out of the gate, the commercial is structured like a how-to on how to order a Cuervo Black and Cola. Okay, I'll be honest, that kind of rouses my interest. Obviously, there's virtually nothing easier than ordering a drink, especially when the sole ingredients of the drink are listed in the name of the drink. But, apparently order a CBC (as I like to call it) requires more finesse. I'd like to hear more. I mention this only because the slight rise in expectation only deepens the crushing blow to follow.
2) The commercial is shot like a music video. Edit: a bad music video. And with enough bad fades and bad transitions to make me think that it was probably edited on iMovie. To this point, my criticisms are minor and mostly matters of taste, but things are about to go way downhill.
3) STEP ONE: WALKUP TO THE BAR. There are at least two major things wrong with this. First and foremost, "walkup" is not a word. I assume that they mean "walk up" and they've fallen victim to the same misapprehension that sees fourth-graders writing sentences like "I eat ice cream alot." How does something like that get passed a copy editor? Really? And after so long? Nobody thought "There's a major type-o right in the middle of the second title. Maybe we should pull the ad?" So so so lazy. So so so unapologetically stupid. Second big issue: the first step in ordering any drink is walking up to the bar. They may as well say "STEP ONE: DRIVE TO A PLACE THAT SELLS CUERVO BLACK." Whoops... sorry. "STEP ONE: DRIVETO A PLACE THAT SELLS CUERVO BLACK." Why even bother choosing this stupid step-by-step form? Because otherwise this commercial would literally cease to exist.
4) Who do you think is sexier? The dark-eyed guy in the muscle shirt with the five o'clock shadow? Or the dark-eyed guy in the peasant blouse with the five o'clock shadow?
5) STEP TWO: ORDER A CUERVO BLACK AND COLA. Wait a minute. Wait... wait a minute. I don't know how to do that. Right? I mean, that's why I'm hear, right? Okay, so... let's just see here... So, I want to order a CBC. So, following these directions... I just walk up to the bar. I order the CBC. Wait a minute, how do I do that... Let's see... Okay, I just walk up to the bar and I... Great. Now I'm stuck in an infinitely loop. Again.
6) "No no, buddy. With Cola." You idiot. You fucking loser. God, I don't know why I even come to this place. Seriously. You think I'm just some kind of fucking jackoff who just comes to a place and orders a shot of Cuervo Black? Did you even see my five o'clock shadow? This obvious message here is: "Listen up, hip people of the world. Those bartenders, they're gonna try to hold you back. You're going to order the Cuervo Black and Cola, the MOTHER OF ALL HIP, COOL DRINKS, and they're just gonna be like "What? Cuervo Black in a shot glass? Coming right up." You're going to have to be constantly vigilant. Don't expect the world to understand. Sometimes all you can do is shake your head and say, "No no, buddy. Friend. Pal. I believe I said 'with cola.'"
7) Oh, and feel free to have a good laugh with your hip friends when that total homo behind the bar reaches for the shot glass. You can feel free to spit in his face if you feel like it. Anybody who fears the CBC is gonna get trampled by life eventually anyway.
8) STEP 3: SIT BACK, RELAX AND... You know, I almost begrudgingly admire this moment. The obvious message, as is almost always the case with these kinds of commercials is, "Use our products and you can fuck hot chicks." But here, subliminally, the Cuervo people almost actually say that out loud. To my mind, the obvious ending to this sentence, in context, is "Sit back, relax and fuck this blonde girl." And, because the sentence doesn't end on the title card, and because we jump right from the narrator to the girl saying "Enjoy," it feels just about the same as if they came right out and said it. I don't have much more to say on that topic, because if you think that drinking cool drinks means that you get to bed hot chicks, well then... I'd love to hang out where you hang out.
9) It's sort of a throw away, but because the longest continuous narration comes at the end, it seems like the apt place to point out the narrator's voice. He's got that awful, lecherous morning DJ voice, but it's filtered through a phone filter, so it sounds... I don't know... even cooler? I don't mean cool in terms of reality cool. More cool in the terms of VH1's "I Love the 90s" cool. Like, basically, I totally believe that the guy with that voice would hang out with the guy in the muscle shirt.
So, I don't know about you, but I feel a lot better having written this. I mean, I don't have much of resonance to say about it. It's basically just the most vapid, uninspired, illogical, counter-intuitive commercial that I can possibly imagine. It is the apotheosis of the shallowest possible version of coolness captured on film and played (by my count) at least three times in a half hour broadcast. And, in the end, I'm most offended by the idea that that version of cool is going to sell product. I mean, apparently it does, but why? Why does it and why should it and why can it? Those are the questions which immediately come to mind every time I see that stupid dance step title that starts off the whole abysmal mess. And that rush of disgust at humanity is about enough to ensure that, despite being a great lover of tequila, cola and non-conventional drinks all, I will never ever ever ever order a Cuervo Black and Cola.
For more on this, I invite you to check out my MySpace blog on MTV reality television, which explains in far greater detail the ways in which TV is probably unwinding the fabric of society.
Merry Christmas to me!
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Here's a free tip: if you start drinking at 1:30 in the afternoon, and drink until 6:30 at night, that's probably it for you. You're probably not gonna bounce back for a party later than night. Probably best just to eat an entire pizza and pass out for an hour and then spend the rest of your night wallowing in your pre-sleep hangover. At least, that's what I did.
Monday, December 3, 2007
Friday, November 30, 2007
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
No Country For Old Men
What will follow here will be an unapologetic sermon on the beauty, brilliance and importance (yes, importance) of both the Coen Brothers' movie "No Country for Old Men" and the Cormac McCarthy novel on which it is based. You have been forewarned.
The best political tracts, I think, are the ones that don't immediately register as political. Shanley's "Doubt" is a prime example. Without evoking the names of any presidents or generals or sandy foreign cities, Shanley cuts straight to the center of the American political atmosphere. We're right and they're wrong? Do you really believe that? And what if you don't? And, come to think of it, what if you do? That play speaks more to the American experience in the Iraq War years than any five plays which point out weak correlations between the War in Iraq and, say, the dropping of the A-bomb or, I don't know, the Athenian war with the Corinthians (I have actually read that play).
I've just finished Cormac McCarthy's novel, and, sitting here, I have an image from the Coen Brothers' adaptation burned into my mind. For those who haven't seen the movie, avert your eyes for a sentence or two: it's the ultimate image in the movie. Ed Tom Bell, erstwhile rough-and-tumble Texas sherrif, now retired and listless, haunted by his defeat at the hands of a killer he can neither catch nor name nor picture, sits at his breakfast table and recounts a dream in which his father passes him in the darkness, carrying fire in a horn to camp somewhere ahead. Ed Tom finishes, "And then I wake up." And for a moment, Tommy Lee Jones channels a feeling of pure, innocent confusion and a look of desolate desperation comes to his face, a look which is so potent that it honestly moves something within me to bring it to mind.
Here, Cormac McCarthy, writing in 2005, and the Coen Brothers, directing a movie this year, capture a feeling which is so distinctly American and distinctly of our time that it stirs a powerful feeling of sad recognition in me. Ed Tom Bell is a man who has built his life on the strict adherence to rules, but, when confronted with an entity that doesn't fit into those rules, in fact runs totally counter to his entire world view, his sense of security disappears and he is shaken so badly that he quits his life and runs for cover. Of course, there's no comfort in that either.
Does that feel familiar to anyone else? Does anyone else feel like we are being of disillusionment. We make rules. We set boundaries and guidelines. We establish a view of the way the world is. And does it scare anybody else (and I'm trying to be honest here) to think about what would happen if you suddenly realized that the world was absolutely not the way you thought it was. If your views were totally obsoleted? If your innocence was even slightly pulled away? How confused and disoriented and lost and helpless would you feel?
I think we all have some idea of how we would feel. And in that fact is the brilliance of McCarthy's work and the Coen Brothers' adaptation of it. Our world has become a place of no moral absolutes. Of no perfect rules. It's a cliche to talk about the loss of American innocence, but I think we all feel it. We don't know who to trust. The world has become more complicated than even I (at 23) thought that it could. We've got a war that nobody seems to understand, being orchestrated with no transparency or accountability. We receive a constant flow of information about it. Everywhere. Credible information? Who knows? We are talked at by a thousand different people a day, people with different perspectives and agendas and loyalties. Can we trust the people who are supposedly working in our best interest? Can we trust the people who are supposed to be protecting us? Is there anywhere to understand what is really going on in the world, or has the whole situation become so massively huge and infinitely tangled that no one person could ever hope to see the whole picture, let alone unravel it enough to form a thesis about it, or even to be able to really and adequately explain it in the way that we need -- we NEED -- for it to be explained to us. Will we ever really understand our world?
It sounds fogeyish to write like this. To say that things have gotten out of control. But, I don't think I'm even saying that. I'm just saying, basically and honestly, that I don't understand them. Really. And that... scares me? Frustrates me? Bothers me, at any rate. Bothers a lot of people. I don't think that the world was always like this. I mean, of course it's never been just like this, but I don't think that things were always this confusing, people this untrustworthy, information so ubiquitous, the world so ungraspable.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that you don't get much further from Ed Tom Bell than Alex Barron. He's a retired Texan sherriff and WWII veteran and I'm a 23-year-old theatre intern who's never serious entertained the notion of fighting for his country. And yet, I totally understand how he feels. I feel it myself. And I think -- or at least I wonder if -- other people do, too.
Now tell me that these feelings stirred up in me are not the mark of a work which speaks to the mind of the moment. The political mind. Tell me that the book and the movie that inspired these feelings don't provide more stirring political insight than any cable news special or Iraq War jeremiad. People should read the book, should see these movie, and maybe question something within themselves I think that's about the best way to encourage thought, to foster questions, and to connect with a work of (I groan to finish this idiom) art.
So, to recap. Bravo, Cormac McCarthy. Bravo, Joel and Ethan Coen.
The best political tracts, I think, are the ones that don't immediately register as political. Shanley's "Doubt" is a prime example. Without evoking the names of any presidents or generals or sandy foreign cities, Shanley cuts straight to the center of the American political atmosphere. We're right and they're wrong? Do you really believe that? And what if you don't? And, come to think of it, what if you do? That play speaks more to the American experience in the Iraq War years than any five plays which point out weak correlations between the War in Iraq and, say, the dropping of the A-bomb or, I don't know, the Athenian war with the Corinthians (I have actually read that play).
I've just finished Cormac McCarthy's novel, and, sitting here, I have an image from the Coen Brothers' adaptation burned into my mind. For those who haven't seen the movie, avert your eyes for a sentence or two: it's the ultimate image in the movie. Ed Tom Bell, erstwhile rough-and-tumble Texas sherrif, now retired and listless, haunted by his defeat at the hands of a killer he can neither catch nor name nor picture, sits at his breakfast table and recounts a dream in which his father passes him in the darkness, carrying fire in a horn to camp somewhere ahead. Ed Tom finishes, "And then I wake up." And for a moment, Tommy Lee Jones channels a feeling of pure, innocent confusion and a look of desolate desperation comes to his face, a look which is so potent that it honestly moves something within me to bring it to mind.
Here, Cormac McCarthy, writing in 2005, and the Coen Brothers, directing a movie this year, capture a feeling which is so distinctly American and distinctly of our time that it stirs a powerful feeling of sad recognition in me. Ed Tom Bell is a man who has built his life on the strict adherence to rules, but, when confronted with an entity that doesn't fit into those rules, in fact runs totally counter to his entire world view, his sense of security disappears and he is shaken so badly that he quits his life and runs for cover. Of course, there's no comfort in that either.
Does that feel familiar to anyone else? Does anyone else feel like we are being of disillusionment. We make rules. We set boundaries and guidelines. We establish a view of the way the world is. And does it scare anybody else (and I'm trying to be honest here) to think about what would happen if you suddenly realized that the world was absolutely not the way you thought it was. If your views were totally obsoleted? If your innocence was even slightly pulled away? How confused and disoriented and lost and helpless would you feel?
I think we all have some idea of how we would feel. And in that fact is the brilliance of McCarthy's work and the Coen Brothers' adaptation of it. Our world has become a place of no moral absolutes. Of no perfect rules. It's a cliche to talk about the loss of American innocence, but I think we all feel it. We don't know who to trust. The world has become more complicated than even I (at 23) thought that it could. We've got a war that nobody seems to understand, being orchestrated with no transparency or accountability. We receive a constant flow of information about it. Everywhere. Credible information? Who knows? We are talked at by a thousand different people a day, people with different perspectives and agendas and loyalties. Can we trust the people who are supposedly working in our best interest? Can we trust the people who are supposed to be protecting us? Is there anywhere to understand what is really going on in the world, or has the whole situation become so massively huge and infinitely tangled that no one person could ever hope to see the whole picture, let alone unravel it enough to form a thesis about it, or even to be able to really and adequately explain it in the way that we need -- we NEED -- for it to be explained to us. Will we ever really understand our world?
It sounds fogeyish to write like this. To say that things have gotten out of control. But, I don't think I'm even saying that. I'm just saying, basically and honestly, that I don't understand them. Really. And that... scares me? Frustrates me? Bothers me, at any rate. Bothers a lot of people. I don't think that the world was always like this. I mean, of course it's never been just like this, but I don't think that things were always this confusing, people this untrustworthy, information so ubiquitous, the world so ungraspable.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that you don't get much further from Ed Tom Bell than Alex Barron. He's a retired Texan sherriff and WWII veteran and I'm a 23-year-old theatre intern who's never serious entertained the notion of fighting for his country. And yet, I totally understand how he feels. I feel it myself. And I think -- or at least I wonder if -- other people do, too.
Now tell me that these feelings stirred up in me are not the mark of a work which speaks to the mind of the moment. The political mind. Tell me that the book and the movie that inspired these feelings don't provide more stirring political insight than any cable news special or Iraq War jeremiad. People should read the book, should see these movie, and maybe question something within themselves I think that's about the best way to encourage thought, to foster questions, and to connect with a work of (I groan to finish this idiom) art.
So, to recap. Bravo, Cormac McCarthy. Bravo, Joel and Ethan Coen.
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