Looking at this Village Voice review of Rockstar’s Table Tennis game, one is reminded of Roast Beef and Molly’s conversation about McSweeney’s handling of humor (i.e. with a lab coat and tweezers). I mean, seriously… what’s with all the kvetching about the Whitney Biennial at the beginning? Did the author have a piece on that get cut and just decided to dump it all into another column or something? Remind me if I ever post up a review of an art exhibition on here to tell you all a little bit about Mega Man before I get started…
Archive for May, 2006
Somebody wanna tell me why I can’t seem to get this song out of my head:
There’s nothing particularly ground-breaking or anything about it. But it’s got one of those earworm melodies. Good backing vocals on the chorus too.
Some more randomness:
Jamie Lidell - When I Come Back Around (live, feat. Jimmy Edgar)
Q Lazzarus - Goodbye Horses (plus some background info)
French rap star facing prison… for calling the country a “slut.” He also said, “France is a bitch, don’t forget to fuck her till she’s exhausted/You have to treat her like a slut, man.” and vowed to “piss” on Napoleon and de Gaulle.
Morrissey attacks Oxford lab! What, like Godzilla?
Borat’s Bikini Beach Bash “IS GOOD!!!” (incl. free bonus Best-of-Borat video)
I have been looking for this clip of Sinatra and Jobim for forever. Especially the part after the first verse in Corcovado where Sinatra stops to explain to the viewer that what they are hearing is called “bossanova” and that it’s being played on what’s called “a guitar.” But seriously though. It is a sweet-ass performance. So, thanks robot wisdom and Exquisitely Bored in Nacogdoches for the link (and, of course, all praise be to YouTube =)
I’m posting poetry on my site… *poetry!!* (lyrics, actually… so that makes it even worse, right?). Normally I reserve this kind of thing for MySpace (or more recently, last.fm) but this has got kind of a gaming bent to it, and I’ve posted other game-related stuff here, so in a way… stylistically, thematically; I *had* to do it! Anyway, from “The Cabinet of Kuniyoshi Kaneko” on Momus’ Philosophy of Momus album:
We who paint or photograph to stop your dying in its path
And fix you in the permanence of spring
Can’t stop the prattlers prattling
The rattlesnakes who, rattling, see ugliness in every living thing
In every lovely living thingA looking glass is not a world
A painted girl is not a girl
In games there can be no forbidden things
In life remain considerate, in art the Devil’s advocate
Why deny that Pegasus has wings
In life remain considerate, in art the Devil incarnate
Why deny the siren when it sings?
In games there must be no forbidden things
mp3 clip
Bonus from “Virtual Valerie” on the same album:
I tried to keep my soul alive
Playing Mortal Kombat on the Megadrive
I patched my lust with Nicorette
Went surfing down the Internet
mp3 clip
LOL, Megadrive… Momus expounds on the themes of the first selection in his Michael-Jackson-trial blog entry, The King of Yet-Also (and probably in some others, but that was the one that came to mind).
Trying some Coke Blak (warning: horrible website) right now as I saw it at the Safeway and just couldn’t resist. (Seems I’m not the only one either). So what’s the verdict? Well, I had never really noticed how much the flavor of flat, slightly stale Coke has in common with a cup of extra-sweet coffee before. But they didn’t stop there with Coke Blak. It seems they added a sort of vanilla flavor which somehow gives the whole thing a little Werther’s Original in the nose. (Oh yeah… I poured it into a coffee mug to get a better idea of the aroma.) I’m about halfway through with it now (it came in a small glass bottle, not a full 12 ounces, but closer in size to a Red Bull maybe) and while I’m still kind of intrigued by the overall flavor of it, I’m already pretty sick of the overwhelming sugariness.
In conclusion, I feel that in spite of Coke’s best efforts here, the process of putting coffee in cans is one better left to the Japanese. Boss Black has nothing to fear from this hip, young upstart; it shall remain (as it has since 1992) “The Boss of Them All!”
ps. w/r/t this post’s subject: Note to Chilis’ ad agency, the world is still waiting for a commercial soundtracked by a “Black is Black, I want my Baby Back, Baby Back, Baby Back Ribs” mash-up. Let’s make it happen!
[UPDATE] Coke Blak is the official energy drink “Carbonated Fusion Beverage” of Nextfest
[UPDATE] Drinking another one now (T+1.5 hours-ish). I feel a bit like Homer when he pulls out his “Sprawl-Mart” compliance chip: “I did it! And without any brain damage-amage-amage-amage-amage…”
[UPDATE] 1 AM. Still up. I came across this site in the comments for my “not the only one” link above. If you put in a phrase or a word (any word) it will reveal a list of all the past words and phrases people have used to describe the taste of Coke Blak. “Coca Cola Blak tastes like a prolonged death” and “Coca Cola Blak tastes like that guy who plays House on TV’s House” are among my favorites. There are some other creative ones, but for the most part it is just whatever dirty or offensive word came into people’s heads.
From gapingvoid.com, a mini-rant on the mental gap between branding and marketing:
I dont like branding. I don’t like brand theory.I like markets. I find them much more interesting.
Why? Because branding is all about what people think they do, markets are about what people actually do.A big difference.
And a great point, I think, b/c it really nails the thing that rubs a lot of people the wrong way about advertising, which is its blatant appeal to the emotional lowest common denominator e.g. Beer = Sex!!, KFC = Happy Family!! (or at least, it rubs those of us who have read Within the Context of No Context and maybe Infinite Jest that way =)
To put it another way (and hopefully to clarify that I’m not trying to make some anti-capitalist value judgement here), there’s nothing wrong with the traditional top-down model of selling stuff to “the masses” with sex and celebrity and clever implications. It clearly *works* after all. But the thing is… it’s takes an ass-load of time and effort to *make* it work. David Cross once asked why McDonald’s had to keep running commercials, every single day. Would people “forget about them” if they didn’t see 10 “I’m Lovin it!” ads every 24 hours? Of course not, but what might happen is that the carefully composed and nuanced emotional reaction that McDonald’s had been trying so hard to cultivate in them could slip a little bit, since there was no *real* emotion supporting it, and it is only through endless repetition that the favorable impression is maintaned (well, repetition and a shit load of sodium, but that’s another post) Anyway, this is pretty basic stuff. George Orwell had it figured out years ago. Fuck, even George Bush gets it. =)
So that’s branding or whatever. But as the gapingvoid post implies, it’s not the only way to sell a thing. If you look at the people who are buying/using/whatever your product not just as emotionally-manipulable receptacles, but as sources of useful feedback and even as word-of-mouth salespeople (or who knows what else really), then you can drastically cut advertising costs and dispense with a lot of that identity maintenence crap that McDonalds has to deal with because the market itself will do most of this work for you. There’s only one (potential) problem. You have to start with a product that’s worth talking about in the first place. Damn… I knew there was a catch.
Anybody who looks at my last.fm profile will know that I am listening to this new Muse track, “Supermassive Black Hole” a lot. Why? It’s hard to say. It’s got a unique sound. That’s for sure. As another last.fm user says:
It’s like Scissor Sisters and Marilyn Manson had a secret lovechild, left it in the tender loving care of Har Mar Superstar for, oh, 20 years or so, gave it a copy of “A Brief History of Time” and a new trendy indie haircut and set it free into the big bad world, where it promptly sought out ten year old director Jonathan Caouette and made a video.
As to whether or not that sounds at all appealing to you, well… to each his own (and who is Jonathan Caouette, btw?) Anyway… this song kind of makes me want to do a weird dance. Enjoy:
