Ready to feel even older?

So, which pop song's use in a commercial represents the greatest sell-out of a generation's attitudes?

• Led Zeppelin's "Rock 'n Roll" for Cadillac?
  
• The Clash's "Should I Stay or Should I Go" for Pontiac's G6 "Oprahmobile?"
  
• The entire Who catalog for everything from the Hummer to cholesterol drugs?
  
• Jefferson Airplane's "Volunteers" for E*Trade?

I was going to mention using Devo's "Uncontrollable Urge" in the Mitsubishi commercial, but it's hardly the first time they've leased out their tunes, and besides, more people are hearing their songs now than in their heyday. Still, there's an unpleasant attempt to sell one's irony back to the post-ironic consumer when we're told "When a problem comes along, you must Swiffer..."

And besides, when the Jeffersons recorded "Volunteers," they were recording for RCA Records, owned at the time by General Electric, the country's second biggest defense contractor. No conflict of interest here!

Where the Streets are Paved with Gold

I went to my home town of Schaller, Iowa the first weekend of November. While visiting with the family, I went for a walk to see the uncommon phenomenon of a "bin-buster" harvest. Yes, this unappetizing-looking mess is the sign of a good harvest: so much corn there's room in the silo, so they have to pile it on the town streets. Here they're loading it for shipment as fast as trucks can line up for it. This is happening in towns across the Midwest, thanks to good weather through the spring and summer. Add to this is the fact that higher fuel prices mean it costs more to harvest, and to dry corn down at the farm, thus they leave the corn in the field longer so it dries a little more. That's why we have this scene as late as November 6. So next time someone emails that list to you of how many rat hairs can be found in a hamburger, show them where their corn flakes were before they got into the box.

Semantical French Fries

A true story: As I was walking into the tunnel that connects the Thompson Center to the building across the street, I passed a little food stand selling Middle Eastern specialties. A woman was drilling the counterperson:

"Are you sure your French Fries are homemade?"
"Homemade?"
"Right! Not frozen at any time."

I laughed, but only to myself. We're talking sticks of starch deep-fried in oil. Is not being frozen going to make them healthy for you?

I also considered the girl behing the counter. I've bought hummus from her before; she's Middle Eastern, possibly an immigrant for whom English was a second language. She may have been wondering why this customer would have expected her family to be scrubbing and slicing up potatoes at home in the morning, then lugging them to the Loop to serve for lunch. It could very well be they made the fries fresh in that cafe's kitchen, but that wasn't the question. If they were "home-making" anything, it might have been their stuffed grape leaves. Or rather, they may have developed their recipe at home. Health inspectors take a dim view of making food at home, then selling it these days.

Backstage Here at the Blog

I decided to sign up for posting ads by Google on this site. After all, we all have the dream of just putting up something on the web and letting the click-through fees roll in. Of course it's not nearly as simple as that.
This is also a game we can play, like Mad Libs. With the range of topics I've blathered on about, it should be interesting to see what ads pop up relating to my subjects. For instance, Roger Ebert's "Movie Answer Man" columns in the Sun-Times used to have the same kind of ads on its page. Everytime he ranted against video companies that created "clean" pirate DVDs of popular movies with the "dirty words" and sex removed, or the DVD players that were programmed to skip over sex and language in movies, there at the bottom would be an ad for those same clean movie services. So what will we find to be relevant out of the jumble of words on this page? Let's you and me find out.
I've already got one method for seeing who has been wandering onto this little page. To the right and further down is a little graphic that links to Nedstat, one of those free counter services, but one that does not serve ads. It won't tell me who specifically is looking at this page, just the ISP they're coming in from. And most of the views are me looking to see if my latest post is visible. The fun part is the section that shows what page they linked to this site from: usually's it's a Google or Yahoo search on any number of terms.

Christopher Reeve

Chris Reeve was not really "my" Superman. (Know what I mean? In the way that each generation of British kids defined themselves by who "their" Doctor Who was.) As a tyke, I had reruns of "The Adventures of Superman," the George Reeves series, every afternoon, right after the local Cartoon Carnival (which ran only Warner Bros. and Popeye cartoons. Why mess with perfection). But anyway, George's Superman just came across as someone strong and protective as my Dad. Hey, this was the time of life when every kid's dad is Superman. It helped that George was a fatherly 37 when he took the role.

Chris' "Superman: the Movie" was a great special effects explosion. The tagline "You will believe a man can fly!" was no idle boast. You did not have to suspend disbelief to see Chris in the air, while George was confounded with very uncomfortable stage harnesses, "took off" by obviously jumping on a springboard, and was surrounded by bold matte lines as he soared through the same batch of clouds.

There was a marked difference in the way each played Clark Kent. Chris couldn't quite flesh out Kent beyond the bumbling oaf who made feeble excuses to get away and pull open his shirt. For Chirs, Clark Kent was the mask that Superman wore. George's Kent was a hard-hitting reporter as imagined by Hollywood, who had no qualms about tracking down gangsters, and was the equal to the headstrong Lois Lane, especially the Noel Neill edition. While Lois kept referring to Clark's milquetoast personality, Clark wasn't playing along with her. That said, Chris' Superman had a much lighter touch. Just think back to Margot Kidder's famous line, "You've got me? Who's got you!?," you can just about hear Superman's chuckle in response. This was the real big blue Boy Scout, helping people for its own sake, not too busy to rescue a kitten from a tree.

I can't reference Dean Cain from "Lois and Clark" here. I liked the show quite a bit, as it advanced the idea of "real life" romantic entanglements that super heroes might face if they were, a theme that went over even better in Smallville. And while Dean Cain was immensely likeable and believable as Clark/Superman, I can't remember much about how he approached the role.

Anyhoo, Chris' Superman was the first Hollywood treatment of a comic book hero that gave the hero any kind of personal conflict. When Superman impulsively turned back time to prevent Lois from dying (and once and for all, he didn't do it by just circling the Earth so fast that it spun backward; that was a visual metaphor, okay? [and no matter how Lucas recuts that scene, Han shot first! Just wanted to get that out]), he went against the warnings of the holographic Marlon Brando and, in way, had to face the consequences of that act in "Superman II."

---

No doubt the air will be buzzing again with speculation about a "Superman Curse," what with George unable to find work and killing himself (maybe), then Chris getting paralyzed in a riding accident and now passing on. But let's get real. Bud Collyer, the Superman of radio and the Fleischer cartoon series, lived to be 61 and was a successful quiz show host, then reprised his role of Superman for the 60's Filmation series. Kirk Alyn of the serials did have trouble sustaining a career, so he simply retired to a ranch and was 89 when he passed on. Dean Cain has at least 3 dozen credits after "Lois and Clark," including his "Ripley's" host gig. The only "astonishing coincidence" is the similarity of last names, in the same way that Orson Welles became notorious for his radio adaptation of H.G. Wells.

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And we are again on Unimaginative Editorial Cartoon Memorial Watch! What cliches will the nation's editorial cartoonists use to pay their respects this time? A gag about Superman and St. Peter at the Pearly Gates? Superman with a tear in his eye? Some play on the phrase "Up! Up! and Away!" One thing's for sure: every cartoon will be a generic Superman that looks nothing like Reeve, except for the name "Christopher Reeve" written on his costume. I'll check in on Daryl Cagle's cartoonist roundup on Slate.com and report back! [Update: There may not be that many cartoons to pick from. I couldn't find any cartoons about the late Rodney Dangerfield on the site at all. What a fertile field for cliches that would have been.]

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Finally, the good links. Forget DC Comics; it's too full of promos for upcoming titles and short on history and archival material. Check out the Superman Homepage instead. Woo!

Finally Tethered to the Wireless Umbilical

I finally broke down and got a cell phone this week. It was necessary because I borrowed the wife's phone over the weekend and the antenna nub broke off in my pocket. It was a 4 year old phone so it wouldn't have been worth fixing. Besides, with the new bairn in the house, we decided we both needed to be instantly reachable.

We ended up renewing with AT&T Wireless, even though signal coverage at our house was poor, because (i) we'd be upgrading to GSM phones, so presumably coverage would improve; (ii) with AT&T Wireless merging with Cingular, that should mean a combined network, thus more "towers" in urban areas, and (iii) when I browsed to their site from work, it sniffed out the corporate IP and offered me an employee discount, which, of course, no one at my office knew about.

We wanted a phone with no antenna this time, and decided we also wanted it to adapt to international use, in case we ever go overseas again. We went with a Nokia 3100 as the cheapest phone with those features, and found it had the added bonus of being really teeny, but with a speaker. Talking into it, I immediately learned why so people are seen shouting into their phones while walking down the street: this phone barely come down to my cheekbone, and I have to just assume there's a microphone somewhere. I practiced being less obnoxious by having a normal conversation with my 15 year old niece in the former dead zone at our house. Bless her, she still thinks I'm somewhat cool; partly because where I work in the Loop, there's a Starbucks in every block, but she and her friends have to hang out at a Starbucks booth at Target.
So now that I've become one of things I feared most, I want to publicly make these pledges about my phone use. I can't promise I won't talk on it while driving, but here are the next best things:

• I will never stand in the supermarket meat department describing various packages of the same cuts to my wife, so she can pick one out for me. I've seen many men do that, and find it to be emasculating. If you're man enough to grill meat, you should be able to pick it out.
• I will never attended a baseball game or other televised event and then spend the whole time on the phone to someone watching at home so I can wave like an idiot when I'm on camera. The worst offenders are, of course, Cubs fans who pay $300 to sit in the "premium" box seats behind home plate and only look up when told they're on TV. America, it's time to evolve past this "Look! I�m on TV!" fixation that keeps Jerry Springer in business.
• And I will never act like having a cell phone makes me some kind of a bigwig. Mister, having a cell phone may have made you look like a cutting-edge VIP ten years ago, but now ghetto kids get them before their 13th birthdays. A phone in your pocket does not mean you have a big wiki-wahoo.

I'm so glad to get this off my chest. Now if you'll excuse me, I�ve got five days left on the demo of the "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" game.

The Link That Made Me Come Back:

Been away so long I hardly knew my face...

Various events in our lives have necessitated my absence from this page, as once was documented in my companion blog, "Bringing Ivan Home." Always meant to come back here, though. As a stopgap, here's a fun link we can all enjoy.

Lileks.com is a treasure trove page maintained by a columnist for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, whose office seems to be too close to the paper's morgue. He's scanned and posted tons of oddball print stuff like old comics, ads, postcards, matchbook covers, what have you. Why I'm writing about it today is this:

As a youth in the 1970's, I was a stamp collector (explains a few things, doesn't it?). My hobby involved sending away for First Day Covers; envelopes with a special cancellation signifying the date a new stamp was issued, available on that day only in the First Day of Issue Post Office. To get this cover, you would send that post office a self-addressed envelope and a money order to purchase said stamp. For collectors, though, a blank envelop just didn't have the right pizzazz. Instead, they bought envelopes printed with a fancy engraved design based on the topic of the stamp.

Usually you bought the covers from ArtCraft. You could get nicely engraved envelopes at 2 for 35 cents back in the day. But while the engraving and printing was very nice, sometimes the actual design was, say we say, not quite awe-inspiring. The actual part of the body that was moved was a little further south. Just click on the link above and you'll find out. Though philatelists sometimes complained that the US Post Office was slow to bring contemporary designs to its stamps in the 1960s, we can see that these guys were dadaists when the stamps were stuck to an ArtCraft cover.

And if you're curious, most collectors don't pay any more for "cacheted" first-day covers than they would for plain white envelopes. What counts most is that the stamp is placed nicely and the cancellation is complete and legible. And like many aspiring artists, I took to designing my own covers, which I'll try to remember to get scanned and posted.

More Oscar Observations

Impressing your friends with your Oscar savvy

I did promise this a while back now, didn't I. Alright, here are a few things you can use next time the Oscars roll around:

Documentary Feature and Short Subject awards.

Other observers have picked up on this independently, so it should no longer be a surprise. The documentary awards are almost always given to films about, in this order:

• The Holocaust


• Severely handicapped people overcoming great adversity.


• Very old people.

This year, there was no short film nominated about the Holocaust, so the choice was between "The Red Jacket," about the Afghan war, or "Two Soldiers," adapted from an Arthur Miller story about two American soldiers from WWII. I had picked "The Red Jacket," because its subject looked so very close to the red coat scene in "Schindler's List," but the award went to "Two Soldiers"

For the Technical Awards, especially the Sound Editing, look to films that are already available on home video. Then, which of these is your local stereo store using to show off the speakers on their display home theatres. Of course, "Lord of the Rings" wasn't on home video yet this year, but that's because it wasn't a summer movie. My theory here is that most screenings for Academy members take place in small screening rooms that don't show off the movie's technical credentials to best effect. So those who care to vote on the subject pick one that sounds good at home. Academy members get special "screeners" that for a while were being blamed for film piracy. Looks like the practice won't be stopped after all, so as long as the membershp gets to watch nominated films at home, this theory should still prove viable.

Giving Up Beer for Lent;

Giving Up Beer for Lent; Drnk_McDermott makes a huge sacrifice: A RateBeer Feature

I wrote this about my experiences trying to "do without" like a good Catholic boy, and posted it to the Ratebeer.com website. Enjoy.

Oscar, oscar, oscar pt. 2

So of course Sean Penn is getting some pipe for his clearly unprepared Oscar acceptance speech, which opened with "One thing actors know, besides the fact that there were no WMD's..." But waitaminit! There were no WMD's! And people who suggested there weren't were being called traitors!

Who's turned out to be smarter: George W. Bush or Jeff Spicoli? Both seemed to have had the same high school record.

Ananotherthing... Think of those technical guys holed away in computer labs, basements and workshops, slaving away to devlop some new motion capture system or way to keep a handheld camera from shaking. Finally, your hard work pays off and you're going to the little dinner where the Academy gives out the technical Oscar. And there's Charlize Theron, happy to be handing out the awards. Wouldn't you wish you could pull a Brody and plant a big wet kiss on her, too?

Oscar, Oscar?, Oscar!

Despite my affected cynicism, I'm just a sucker for the Academy Awards. I usually think of myself as being able to reliably pick the minor and technical awards based on previous observations (which I'll summarize below). But had I gotten up the gumption to enter, say, the Outguess Ebert contest, I would never have thought to punch a straight party ballot for "Lord of the Rings." Wanna bet the winners of these contests are all D&D geeks who will watch their DVD prizes on a player balanced atop the 13" TVs in their parents' basements? Sorry, I'm stereotyping, but only because I have too much in common with them anyway.

Every year we have the complaints and jokes about the Oscar broadcast going on too long, and the Academy reacts by cutting the alloted time for recipeints to give their thank-yous. But let's see, they gave out 24 awards this year; if each winner got a whole 'nother minute to talk--and most wouldn't use it all--that would add less than half an hour to the proceedings. That would be time better spent dispensing with that terrible "Oscar Count-Down" that ABC had on at the announced start time of 7 pm, where Joan Rivers wannabes with microphones badgered whatever actor was unfortunate enough to be seated near the aisle. Even Keisha Castle-Hughes seemed mortified at being introduced to her movie-star crush, Johnny Depp.

Another place they could have cut the time was Billy Crystal's song montage. After 13 times, we're all coming up with funnier songs before he does. Add that to the half-hour "count-down," and it was 50 minutes before the first award.

Another dead spot came when they clustered the tributes and the Special Award in the middle. As Mark Evanier blogged, a montage of Bob Hope's hosting clips might leave one wondering whether the guy made any movies, and ending it with a shot of him standing up from his seat in what appeared to be the Kodak theatre looked like it was another cheesy posthumous computer effect done for no reason.

Other things I notice they've done away with in the interest of time:

• The Irving Thalberg Award
• The Jean Herscholt Humanitartian Award
• The accountants who read the official balloting procedure
• The practice of having the voiceover announcer introduce some star who, in turn, introduced the presenters. That was a big time-waster that was nothing but an ego-stroke for the presenters.

And they could stand to go to commercial without the instant replay of the people who just won.

Oh, yeah. My favorite moment was hearing Adrien Brody practicing his pucker before announcing the Best Actress winner.

Gotta go for now. I'll eplain my Oscar picking skills in a later posting.

A Flash at the Bell

So today's the day the place I work at merged with Moore Wallace and changed its stock ticker from DNY to RRD. To commemorate the event, our office was invited to the posh lounge to watch our new CEO ring the opening bell at the new York Stock Exchange, an honor already bestowed to the likes on Martha Stewart, Vince McMahon and Stone Cold Steve Austin, and Mr. Potato Head.

We're gathered around CNBC, waiting for the big moment. The announcer mumbles something about the merger. The CEO steps up to the bell. Two dings... CUT to the opening bell being rung at the NASDAQ.

That was it. Janet Jackson's boob got more airtime than this big event.

And if you click on the stock symbol link, you'll shortly see that most of the online stock market sites have no historical chart information for this "new" company. Oh, yes... the style guide says that on first reference, it's always the "tech-heavy" NASDAQ.

Feeding the Boobage Beast

I realize that I'm just adding to the frenzy by commenting on Janet Jackson at the Super Bowl, but as an allegedly cultural observer, I must! I MUST!!!

I actually did not see the incident in question; I looked away from the screen for that instant or two. What I did see was the amazing ending to one of the best Super Bowls ever (had the Panthers gone for and made the extra-point kicks instead of going for two twice and failing...), so I was not yet aware of the brouhaha, except for the bumblemouthed announcers joking about a streaker who was on camera for only half a second. Anyway, here are more observations, arranged for quick comprehension by the PowerPoint generation:

• I gave up on Super Bowl halftime shows when ZZ Top and the remains of the Blues Brothers joined 100 showgirls who lay on the ground flexing their "Legs" in an "Up with Poontang" number.
  
• Why do halftime shows in the first place? After shoveling in the announcer highlights and extra commercials, they're left with about seven minutes for those five acts to lip-sync about half of their current hit songs. If they want to entertain the stadium crowd, do a full-length halftime show and air it on whatever basic cable service the broadcast network owns. As HDTV comes in, your local station would have up to three extra free channels to do that kind of thing anyway.
  
• CBS expresses its shock and dismay that MTV would put on a show like this. CBS OWNS MTV! That's the "corporate synergy" they keep talking about.
  
• MTV has been around for 23 years now, and apparently some folks are still just finding out about it.
  
• I can't really be sure, but I believe Justin Timberlake has put out a single or two before "Rock Your Body." Yet that's the only song of his I've ever heard played in bars and on commercials. Should anyone be shocked to hear the lyrics "Gonna see you naked by the end of this song" when it's the song they made a big hit?
  
• This year's crop of Super Bowl commercials added the words "erectile dysfunction" to the vocabulary. Shouldn't we be a little more embarassed by the commercial for "Mike Ditka's Hard-On Helper?" But as Richard Roeper pointed out in the referenced Sun-Times article, is Michael Powell going to be calling out the pharmaceutical industry? Don't think so.
  
• Kid Rock wears an American Flag like a poncho. Hello? Anyone else notice?
  
• Interesting that this "Family-friendly" program has an "Official Beer Sponsor of the Super Bowl." And while that sponsor was Miller, it was Budweiser who had more commericials. And what do we get in those commercials? Do they talk about their watery beer? No, we get Animal Stories. So now, when you think of Bud Light, think of horny talking monkeys and crotch-biting dogs. I've already equated Bud Light with flaming horse farts, thank you.
  
• At least Beyonc� did a nice National Anthem, in a nice Sunday dress. Maybe Miss Jackson could get some pointers from her (something must happen to your inhibitions when you're pushing 40). But fill me in again on what the guy in the astronaut suit was for. Either he was posing for an MTV Award stature, or it was George "AWOL" Bush pretending to be a hero again.
  
• I only found out about the boobage incident while surfing my news sites Monday morning. And who showed the uncensored photo of the Mammary of the Minute? The Republican organ "The Drudge Report." Who's watching out for you?
  
• The WGN-TV 9 o'clock news on Monday night devoted five minutes to the continuing story. During the course of the taped segment, they re-played the event three times (but of course they pixilated the moment of boobth). Had it not been for a snowstorm and a man who stuffed his wife in a garbage can, this might have been the lead-off story.
  

Another reason I'm not in retail

At the first of the year, I have to suspect that drugstore pharmacists have the most thankless job around.

January has now become the time that millions of workers and retirees see their prescription drug benefits switched to a new provider or a new cost-cutting plan--cost-cutting for the company providing it, that is. While waiting for my daily meds at the Walgreens counter, I saw people who had to cut their vacations short to switch their prescriptions, and at the counter, they find out they're paying $100 more for a month's supply of something they need to live.

Somehow I got off easy. My meds are pretty common, and I paid the same amount I had the month before. But I'll have to jump through hoops later because the new provider will insist I sign up to get my pills by mail.

For the most part, the customers were angry, but at least they knew the people ringing up the sale weren't responsible for the prices. I bet that at another time or place, a fist or two might have been thrown around.

Consider that just to stand behind a pharmacy counter, you need at least a Pharmacy Technician certificate from the state, and at least one of the staff needs that Pharmacy sheepskin. That's a four-year degree, the receipt of which implies you could have had a shot at med school, or a decent research job at a drug company. Instead, you're doling out pills to people who don't understand why all their meds aren't free. There's usually five customers at the counter, two on hold on the phone, a crabby computer that you're trying to pull someone's benefit coverage up on, and, if you're at Walgreens, two or three cars honking in the drive-though window (that's one reason Walgreens closed all its strip-mall stores in Chicago and opened free-standing buildings across the corner: so they could have a drive-through). If you're at a 24-hour Walgreens, you're probably covering for associates who call in sick on third shift.

And every four or five customers is going to harass you over the fact that their meds cost more than they did last time.

You could always consider becoming a copier machine repairmen. People are always glad to see you, and the employees who sign your invoice aren't the ones who have to write the checks.