Blast from the past

Just for ducks, I’ve watched a couple of the TV movies of the 1980s Perry Mason reboot. I can’t say much about the plots, because when I use the term “watch” it really means “I have it on while I’m doing other stuff”.

However—the hairstyles and the shoulder pads. Holy crap!

Put it on my bill

I confess that I was somewhat disappointed that (as of yesterday afternoon) no one thought to post any #showustheduck offerings from PBS. Specifically, I was looking for this:

I like my culture accessible.

Gratitude Monday: Never forget

As you might imagine I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the centenary of the end of World War I. After all, mass conflicts of the first half of the Twentieth Century are my field, and I see so much of their influence—for good or ill—in our daily lives, even this far on.

And I’ve been thinking about the events of the past week—more mass shootings, catastrophic wildfires, midterm elections, somber commemorations of unbelievable destruction—all framed by the utter lack of leadership in our highest office, which is currently occupied by an ignorant, racist, pathetic buffoon who panders to (and feeds on) the absolute worst in us. And I wondered what I was going to be grateful for today.

But then—Saturday Night Live. Which I only watch via YouTube, in bits and pieces when prompted by Twitter. I knew of the controversy SNL regular Pete Davidson sparked a week ago with his on-air (and apparently approved by everyone in the show’s and network’s chain of command) comments about then-candidate Dan Crenshaw, who lost an eye amid other injuries sustained in an IED attack in Afghanistan six years ago.

Well, Davidson—unlike some in the public eye—manned up and apologized on air this past Saturday. “I’m a dick,” he admitted. And Crenshaw appeared next to him to accept the apology, do a little piss-taking and then—then he laid on a message that really gives me hope.

“But, seriously—there’s a lot of lessons to learn here. Not just that the left and right can still agree on some things but also this: Americans can forgive one another. We can remember what brings us together as a country and still see the good in each other.

“This is Veterans Day weekend, which means that it’s a good time for every American to connect with a veteran. Maybe say, ‘Thanks for your service.’ But I would actually encourage you to say something else. Tell a veteran ‘Never forget.’ When you say ‘never forget’ to a veteran, you are implying that, as an American, you are in it with them, not separated by some imaginary barrier between civilians and veterans, but connected together as grateful fellow Americans who will never forget the sacrifices made by veterans past and present. And never forget those we lost on 9/11; heroes like Pete’s father.

“So I’ll just say: Pete—never forget.”

Crenshaw and Davidson shook hands on that note.

I’m grateful for this display of grace by both of them—the smart-ass New York comedian who was enough of a mensch to apologize and the ex-SEAL Texas Republican congressman-elect who stepped out of his comfort zone to join the show, and for the teaching moment on how to express appreciation for sacrifices that others make—military, civilian, first responder, teacher—in the cause of the common good.

Crenshaw would probably be the first to note that he does not—cannot—speak for all veterans. But the ones I know would concur heartily in bagging the knee-jerk “thank you for your service”. “Never forget” draws us in, and draws us together.

And now is a good time for that.

Crazy enough

This will no doubt come as a surprise to those who know me as basically a sloth with library cards, but I’ve been buying—and using—athletic shoes since my college days. Runners, walkers, cross-trainers, soccer shoes—the whole megillah.

But in all this time, I’ve never owned a pair of Nikes. I’ve bought Brooks, New Balance, Asics, Saucony, Avia and—for the past six years—Mizuno. For some reason I never got Nike, Reebok or Adidas.

However, this changed yesterday, when I walked over to the froofy running store in the People’s Republic’s Faux Urban Center and bought these:

I’ll alternate them with my current pair of Mizunos, which are already apparently showing signs of being walked on a lot (two months old, already wear on the soles).

I bought them because of the #JustDoIt30 commercial featuring Colin Kaepernick.

Kaepernick’s been on Nike’s payroll for years, but never used due to him being a lightning rod for faux-patriotic goober hate drummed up by our Golfer-in-Chief (who, tbh, is still pissed off that the NFL wouldn’t let him buy a team in the 80s, and he lost money on his USFL team, and more money when he lost his lawsuit against the NFL; we all know that his one constancy is his ability to hold a grudge across decades) because he knelt during the playing of the national anthem at football games to protest police murders of African-Americans. When his contract with the Forty-Niners ran out, no NFL team would hire him. A company with less money in its coffers would have cut him altogether; it certainly wouldn’t have built a campaign around him. Nike’s taken a bold step with this one.

I get it that no corporation runs an ad campaign just to do the right thing. Nike is expecting to make a buck out of this—they’re expecting to make fistfuls of bucks out of it. They’re also attracting faux-patriotic goober hate, as manifested by the public shoe-burning videos making the rounds of social media. (Yes, they’re burning shoes they’ve spent hundreds of dollars on, just as they bought Keurigs to smash and Starbucks coffee to pour out in “protest” of corporate actions. They ain’t too bright, this crowd.)

I don’t give a toss about football, so I’ve been at a remove from all the take-a-knee controversy. My opinion is that this is legitimate, powerful protest, although I think the protest would start really taking off if white players started taking a knee, too. When people from the power-holding class start protesting, that’s when change comes about. Some measure of the efficacy of Kaepernick’s protest can be found in the spit-hissing rage of all the goobers, who falsely turned it into disrespect of the flag, which morphed into disrespect of the military. Wesley Clark, former NATO commander, tweeted about it a couple of days ago:

You should look at some of the replies in the thread—they’re stultifying in their stupidity.

So, no brand loyalty, no real connection to the sport, and yet I was deeply moved by this commercial that focuses on people with crazy dreams; so much so that I went into the froofy running store and asked specifically for something in the stability line, and do any Nikes fit the bill? My $130 ain’t going to take the company too far, but I felt I had to do something.

And I’m going to work on getting my dreams crazy enough.

A big commercial racket run by a big eastern syndicate

This is the day devoted to Saint Lucy, a Sicilian martyr during the Diocletian persecutions. The story is that, having become a devout Christian, she refused to marry and compromise her virginity. The spurned suitor denounced her; she was meant to have been sent to a brothel, but miraculously all the king’s oxen and all the king’s men couldn’t move her, so they built a pyre around her to burn her to death.

I find it rather interesting that she wouldn’t stop talking, not even while the fire was burning and not even when a Roman soldier speared her in the throat. Not until she was given the Christian sacrament did she die. And thus shut up.

The name Lucy comes from “lux”, meaning light, and her day is celebrated in Northern countries with young girls waking their families wearing lighted crowns (used to be candles; I’m guessing that Health and Safety doesn’t allow that sort of thing any more, so it’ll be LED jobbers) on this morning.

We in the US have our own Lucy tradition, so let’s have a couple of pieces from that great classic, A Charlie Brown Christmas, both featuring the Vince Guaraldi Trio. First up, “Linus and Lucy”:

And a somewhat more Christmassy song, “Christmas Time Is Here”:

Turkeys trot, not fly

As we head into the last Thanksgiving before the Age of Kleptocracy commences, let us return to a time when Ohio was prosperous thanks to the strength of now-toothless unions, the work of organizations like the soon-to-be-dismantled EPA had extinguished the fires on the Cuyahoga River, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was but a gleam in Ahmet Ertegun’s eye.

In short, let us step into one of the greatest Thanksgiving promotions ever planned by a miniscule AM radio station, an event that will live in our memory for as long as the grass shall grow brown from aquifer pollution by fracking.

And a couple of the salient points:

Happy Thanksgiving, and may God have mercy on us all.

A deep and ebullient spirit

When I stumbled upon the news Monday (on social media) that Gwen Ifill had died, something clutched my heart, and my eyes filled with tears. Although I’ve withdrawn from news programs because the substance and the standards have deteriorated so much, I could still count on PBS NewsHour if I wanted intelligent coverage. And Ifill was a good chunk of that intelligence.

I’d thought it a little odd last week when her co-anchor Judy Woodruff had started one of the broadcasts by saying, “Gwen Ifill is away; we hope to have her back soon.” Usually you hear that someone’s away on assignment, or vacation. This wasn’t that, and so it transpired. Ifill died Monday, age 61, from complications arising from endometrial cancer.

She’d been working almost right up until the end, because she was both a consummate journalistic professional, and because she loved covering politics. My least favorite subject.

Since her death, various configurations of friends and colleagues have gathered on PBS to talk about what a gift Ifill was to their profession and to their lives, how she enriched the existence of everyone around her. Here are some of my key take-aways.

David Brooks, of the New York Times, wrote this appreciation of her. Ifill was a PK, the daughter of a minister. Brooks writes that she, “told me that if she didn’t go to church on Sunday she felt a little flatter for the whole week. A spirit as deep and ebullient as hers needed nourishment and care, and when it came out it came out in her smile, which was totalistic and unrestrained.”

On NewsHour on Monday, one of her former colleagues said, “You could read a book by the light of Gwen’s smile.” He was right, as you can see from this photo that I stuck on my office door:

Since I did that, two of my colleagues have stopped by to thank me—they’d worked at WETA, where Ifill’s programs were produced. They hadn’t worked with her directly, but she’d still touched their lives. I repeated the “read a book” quote, and they both agreed. In each conversation, our throats were tighter than normal.

A couple of nights ago Charlie Rose interviewed Michele Norris, a friend of Ifill’s for more than 30 years. Her throat tightened, too, as she discussed the difficult days and weeks Ifill endured; very few people—colleagues or viewers—even knew she was ill, much less dying. Norris said something that stopped me in my tracks:

“She chose joy,” she said. Even at the end, she chose joy.

I’m sorry I never got to hear her laugh. Everyone says that laugh was something amazing. I’m also sorry I never got to hear her sing. Everyone says her singing was something to behold, as well. Based on her speaking voice and the wattage of that smile, I believe both statements.

And here's something else: the very act of me taping an Internet photo of her to my door gave me a connection with two people I'd only nodded and smiled to in the kitchen or the loo for the past ten months. A human connection of recognizing the gifts of kindness and steadfastness this woman gave to everyone around her.

We are all poorer for the loss of Gwen Ifill.

Class to crass

Sometime last summer I was watching some docu on PBS about how things run at the White House. It was actually interesting, although I can’t recall the title, so I’m unable to actually recommend it to you. But I did one find one sequence fascinating.

That was a clip on some state dinner during the Kennedy administration. Because this handoff is the very definition of seamless teamwork.

I doubt we’ll see anything like it anytime soon, given the presumptive occupants as of the end of January.

No comment necessary

Well, boo: NPR has announced that they’re discontinuing comments on stories published on their website as of 23 August. Instead, if you have a burning need to add your insight to stories, you’ll have to go to Facebook or Twitter, or Snapchat, Instagram or Tumblr.

Partly, it seems, the move is due to the increasingly lowered civility we’ve seen pretty much everywhere, no doubt exacerbated by the current election campaigns. It’s certainly been my observation that even the most seemingly innocuous stories (about, say, ice cream, or gravitational waves, or The Sopranos) get splattered with “Benghazi!”, “TrumpU” or variants on “only a moron with tertiary syphilis would espouse that opinion” within the first three hours of posting.

Then there’s the cost of moderating the comments, which even though out-sourced, has been running much higher than budgeted.

NPR extrapolated some insights from running their comments data: Last month their site logged nearly 33 million unique visitors and almost 500,000 comments. But those comments came from fewer than 20,000 users. In May, June and July, more than half of all comments came from just 2,600 users.

As a regular reader, I could probably name at least 100 of them, because you come to recognize not only the names but also the content and style of the comments. Some people get blocked for repeated abuse, then return under new user names. Other regulars suss them out pretty quickly.

Another interesting statistic is that this small number of commenters preponderantly arrives at the site via the desktop, which skews older (younger users favor mobile), and they appear to be more than 80 percent male, while overall NPR.org users are 52 percent male. (This may account for the number of attempted thread hijackings by men’s rights advocates trolls.)

Moving to social media will no doubt engage those younger users. It will probably also mean that the language will be more colorful, at least on the platforms that favor anonymity in registration. And when I say “more colorful”, I mean more profane, vicious and badly-spelt. That’s the nature of the beast.

One more interesting thing about the announcement: in response to both the announcement of the changing of the guard, and the NPR Ombudsman explanation of the rationale, long-time commenters who have engaged in extended “no, you’re a poopy-head” exchanges over the years, have been bidding each other farewell and Godspeed.

It’s like the last day of school after graduation.

Historic games

There’s certainly a lot of flapdoodle around the games of the XXXI Olympiad officially starting today in Rio.

Between vast swaths of the Russian team being banned for doping, outdoor water sports venues awash in raw sewage and other health and safety hazards, worries that visitors could be victims of fatal crimes before they can pay their bar bills, and, of course, wondering how long it will take for NBC’s coverage to top their last outing in fatuousness and jingoism—well, you know, it’s two weeks of crass melodrama occasionally interrupted by some actual athletic achievement.

And that’s before we start considering the Zika virus.

(The upside is that at least it takes our minds off the elections for a bit.)

But I was reminded recently how much of this quadrennial exercise in nationalism, politics and vainglorious waste of billions of dollars owes to the Berlin Olympics that took place 80 years ago. It’s only really since the 1936 games that every host city has gone absolutely insane trying to showcase a Potemkin Village—building obscenely expensive stadia and other venues for which there is no long-term use, transporting undesirables beyond municipal limits so visitors won’t be annoyed by the non-voting poor, and repeated rounds of self-congratulatory galas attended by politicians and corporate sponsors, while (as The Washington Post reported on Sunday) many of the athletes live in poverty).

Most of this infrastructure capital expense is off the backs of local taxpayers; the froofy stuff like the hospitality suites comes from tax-deductible corporate sponsorship.

All that display of rah-rah pretense started with the Nazis—from the torch relay through the grandiose purpose-built venues to the ceremonial panoply at the opening and closing: all cooked up to showcase German supremacy, both individual and national. 

If you’d like to refresh your memory on that one, I recommend watching Olympia, the iconic Leni Riefenstahl film of the Berlin Games. It’s interesting to compare the business, the style and the technology of international athletics then with now. (Plus, it has better production values than anything NBC-Comcast is going to shove down viewers’ throats.)

You know all about Jesse Owens poking holes in Nazi super-race theories, but there are several other interesting things about the events that Riefenstahl presented.

Diving standards have changed in the intervening 80 years: many of the divers went into the water feet first, and they hardly did more than one somersault or twist before hitting the water. They seemed almost leisurely. Plus—way more splash when they struck than is allowed now.  Today, you’d better barely make a ripple, or you’re outta the pool.

Athletic clothes were considerably lower tech than what you find these days. Runners, vaulters, jumpers, shot-putters and throwers frequently wore what we’d call warm-up gear (sweatshirts and pants) to compete. And the shoes—my dear, the shoes! Everything these men and women accomplished seemed to be in spite of their apparel.

Forty-nine nations competed in that Olympiad—so the parade of athletes went a lot faster than the one in Rio will be. And the athletes marched sharpish, all of them; they didn’t swarm about like weirdly-dressed paramecia equipped with photographic devices. Most of them gave the Nazi salute as they marched past Hitler and Olympic officials. (Or possibly the Olympic salute, which was remarkably similar to the Nazi one; it went out of fashion shortly after the beginning of the Second World War.) The Bulgarians got extra style points for goose-stepping and throwing the salute.

The only nations from the entire continent of Africa were South Africa, part of the British Empire, and Egypt, also under British rule. Asia was represented by India (likewise British), Afghanistan, the Philippines, Japan and China.

The marathon is a story all in itself. Riefenstahl devoted more than ten minutes to that ultimate Olympic event, and the first thing that strikes you is the lack of Africans. We’re so used to seeing Kenyans and Ethiopians dominating distance running—that’s when you learn that the only blacks appearing in 1936 mostly came from the US. And they seem to have concentrated on the sprint events.

But when I watched the film I thought it very odd that a couple of runners from the Japanese team were out front from the beginning. The Argentinian winner from the 1932 Olympics took the lead and held it; but he was trailed pretty closely by the two from Japan and a Brit.

Well, it was an incredibly exciting race. I mean, there is something about the punishment of the long-distance runner that you have to admire. These days, you wouldn’t see Olympic marathoners stopping for water, or walking for stretches, but you can still see these athletes from 80 years ago focused on what their bodies have to give in order to take the next stride, and the next.

The Argentine dropped out at mile 19, and the race belonged to “Son Kitei”, Ernest Harper and “Nan Shoryu”. And that’s how they finished.

In 1936 the winning athletes got laurel crowns, and Son was also given a small oak tree in a pot, which he held in front of his uniform, while the national anthem of Japan was played.

I looked at the names on the board and thought to myself, “Self—‘Son’ just does not sound Japanese to me. What’s up with that?”

And that’s where I discovered the real drama of that race.

Son Kitei and Nan Shoryu were Koreans; real names Sohn Kee-chung and Nam Sung-yong, respectively. Korea had been under Japanese occupation since 1910, and the marathoners were forced to represent their imperial overlords under the required Japanese names.

Son was able to obscure the Japanese flag on the front of his uniform with that little oak tree; Nam had no such protection. But both had to endure listening to the Japanese national anthem, and you can see their shame in the way they hold their heads in the photo. Their extraordinary achievement was subverted to the glorification of their oppressors.

And no one knew, because the Koreans’ translators were Japanese and they refused to translate any of their disclaimers.

(If you want to destroy a culture, first go after the language. Outlaw the indigenous speech, require that your language only be used. Make people take names in your language; destroy native news media; substitute your place names for theirs. The Japanese did that in Korea; the English did it in Ireland.)

The record books now show Sohn and Nam with asterisks next to their names, recognizing their nationality, but I had no clue about it until I watched Riefenstahl’s remarkable film—which covered all sorts of events, including ones the Germans tanked at.

Like Rio’s (and Sochi’s and a lot of others), the Berlin Olympics were awash in shady doings. The Games had been awarded before Hitler became Chancellor, but by 1936 the Nazis had already codified anti-Semitism in their legal structure for a year. There were rumblings in participating countries of boycotts if Jews were kept from competing, but the International Olympics Committee and the head of the US Olympic Committee, Avery Brundage, made deals with the Germans that papered over the policies. (Brundage’s anti-Semitism made him an ideal partner for Hitler et al.) The Nazis took down the anti-Jewish signs in Berlin, said that no Jew had had the athletic ability to compete and everyone pretended that honor was salved.

Brundage did very well out of the games; in fact, you could say that he was one of its successes. He was elected to the IOC shortly afterward and became its president in 1952. No one on the IOC has ever struggled financially.

The Germans didn’t have multimedia, so they couldn’t put on the kind of opening ceremony that so far has culminated in the hours-long extravaganza four years ago in London. You can expect the Brazilians to up the stakes tonight, with no expense spared, just a few kilometers from favelas where thousands live without clean water. That, too, is an Olympic tradition dating back to Berlin.

No doubt the Rio games will have their entertainment value. Records will be broken, triumphs and agonies will be reported, and perhaps even some athletic contests will be decided. It will all be very colorful, the best spectacle that money can buy. Pretty much like the Games of 80 years ago.

Last chance

This email appeared in my queue last week. You may not find it as amusing as I do, but here are the parts that are interesting to me.

I cancelled my sustaining membership payments in December on account of moving out of KQED’s catchment area. I was a supporter of KQED-FM, but I’m sure it went into the whole NPR-PBS pot. In exchange for that recurring payment, I occasionally got email notifications of members-only activities (like a party for Downton Abbey, which you’d have to pay me to attend), but mostly it was other invitations to contribute more than I already was.

Anyhow, it’s interesting to me that it took Marianne six months to realize she was missing my contribution. The regretful suspension of my “benefits” is a nice touch, but they were more features more than benefits in my case. I admire her restraint inasmuch as this was the first and (so she promises) the last reminder, but, no, I am not still enjoying KQED TV and radio shows.

However, the one element that prompted me to save the email and write about it was the Unsubscribe link at the bottom. If Marianne and KQED truly meant it when she said this is my final reminder, I shouldn’t have to unsubscribe from their emails, should I?

Most interesting

Oh, dear—seems The Most Interesting Man in the World has suddenly become…less interesting. At least to his employer.

Dos Equis (owned by Heineken) announced a couple of weeks ago that they were cutting Jonathan Goldsmith, 77, loose and replacing him with someone more in tune with the brand’s customer base.

That means a Millennial, who will, by definition, be hip and trendy.

Goldsmith started his gig with the Mexican beer company in 2007, so he’s had a good run, as these things go. TMIMITW was modeled on Hemingway in appearance and terse, banal dialog, and never seen with a woman who was within 20 years of his age (even his apparent age). Clearly, he was the dream of every male over 40.

They gave TMIMITW a testosterone-fueled send-off in a final commercial, in which he blasts off for a one-way mission to Mars. With a female astronaut about 50 years younger. If ya gotta go, it’s nice to go first class, I guess.

I shudder to think what the casting call for his replacement will be, because imagining the Millennial personification of “staying thirsty” makes me throw up a little in my mouth.

But if he shows up wearing a hipster hat, there will be blood.

Gratitude Monday: Assistive technology

I very often crab about technology—“hot” apps that are more style than substance solving extremely limited first-world problems (e.g., a valet parking app for those times when you can’t be arsed to find a parking space in San Francisco, or maybe Manhattan, but not many other places, and you’re perfectly willing to give complete strangers access to your credit card details and your car); arrogant subscription policies; crappy user experience.

So allow me a little space for a petty bit of personal gratitude: for the past couple of months I’ve had my first access to Netflix, along with a large (by my standards) TV. Even though I don’t think it does a great job of letting you find out what they actually have in their library, I’ve been ridiculously happy to be able to watch full seasons of Foyle’s War, cherry pick some favorite episodes of Quantum Leap and ferret out the occasional actual, you know, film.

The other night, in fact, I wallowed in one of my all-time best-loved rom-coms, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. What delight!

And I could pause it to run to the kitchen and top up my wine, fast-forward over parts I’m not wild about and rewind and re-view those I especially like.

Now, this is technology without a downside: on-demand video. And I say hurrah for it.

La guarda ribera

“Ríu Ríu Chíu” is a Spanish carol in the villancico style popular from the 15^th to the 18^th centuries. This one was first published in 1556, in Venice, and it makes the rounds at Christmas concerts here in the Bay Area. It’s about the Immaculate Conception and the Nativity.

I’ve got it on a number of CDs (because I have about…a lot of Christmas CDs). It’s lively, with an intricate harmonic pattern, and even if you don’t understand ancient Catalan, it’s lovely to listen to. Here are the lyrics, with translation courtesy of Wikipedia:

El lobo rabioso la quiso morder

Mas Dios Poderosa la supo defender

Quíso la hacer que no pudiese pecar

Ní aun original esta virgin no tuviera

The raging wolf sought to bite her, but God Almighty knew to defend her; He chose to make her so that she could not sin; no original sin was found in that virgin

Éste que es nacido es el Gran Moncara

Cristo Patriarca de carne vestido

Ha nos redimido con se hacer chiquito

Aúnque era infinito finite se hiciera

This one that is born is the Great King, Christ the Patriarch, clothed in flesh. He redeemed us when He made himself small, though He was Infinite He would make himself finite.

Yo vi mil Garzones que andavan cantando

Por aquí volando hacienda mil sones

Diciendo a gascones Gloria sea en el Cielo

Y paz en el suelo pues Jesús nasciera.

I saw a thousand boys (angels) go singing, here making a thousand voices while flying, telling the shepherds of glory in the heavens, and peace to the world since Jesus has been born.

The chorus is the sound of a kingfisher scaring away the wolf from Mary (sparing her from Original Sin):

Ríu, ríu, chíu, la guarda ribera

Dio guardó el lobo de nuestra cordera.

The very first time I ever heard “Ríu Ríu Chíu”, it was performed on TV by a group that would not have appeared anywhere near the top of your list of interpreters of Renaissance classics. Nonetheless, they do a bang-up job.

The marrow of history

Y’all know that I’ve been following the story of the discovery, recovery and subsequent enshrinement of the remains of Richard III as the focal point of a tourist attraction in Leceister, England.

Well, a while ago PBS showed a docu on the process that scientists followed to authenticate Richard’s bones, which I found fascinating. I mean—I don’t’ very often actually sit and watch something on TV, but this one had me riveted.

In particular, I was interested in how they found someone who had scoliosis (the condition which evidently gave Richard the hunchback appearance) and essentially tested him to verify whether a sufferer could wear plate armor and fight on horseback.

First of all—how is it that someone refuses treatment for a treatable condition? But whoo-hoo, what an amazing validation of how Richard might have lived.

Watch it. Really.

Padding the facts, ma'am

It’s quite rare that I watch television in real time—usually a case of me channel surfing, finding something I think might be mildly amusing and then sticking with it for about 20 minutes before reaching for the remote. Typically 20 minutes is long enough to go through at least two commercial cycles; three if we’re talking USA or any of the Discovery franchise channels.

And occasionally I actually watch a commercial, usually because I find it so completely bizarre that I go slack jawed. As in the case of the one where two women are scolding consumers for “using period pads for pee”, urging us to buy their product and proposing alternative uses for the “period pads”.

You know the one I’m talking about.

But that’s not why I’m here today. Because today’s about one of that category of commercial that starts out like some kind of PSA or alert, and then rolls into a pitch for products related to bodily products. This one is from a while ago, but I found it so gobsmacking that I backed up the DVR and ran it through again, so I could get pictures.

It starts off with a few tones indicating “Alert” and this screen:

Like they’re fixing to give you some important health-related information. But then this blonde appears, with a banner informing us that, contrary to the previous screen, this ain’t nothing but an ad.

Then the pitch, which I frankly never actually heard, because I was too stunned by the visuals. Fortunately, however, this category of commercial always delivers the message in words and voice-over, because they assume you’re too dumb to read.

(Just like those announcements that “the following program contains material that may be unsuitable for all audiences; Viewer discretion is advised.” They flash the text up on the screen, then have a voice-over. What kind of surprises me is that PBS does that, and I rather thought they’d have a higher estimation of their viewers’ literacy levels. But evidently I’d be wrong.)

Here’s the thing that strikes me about their chosen spokes-bimbo: from the preternaturally wide eyes, she looks a little to me like the product is not, in fact, working fast enough to offer her relief.

Schock and awesome

Well, Aaron Schock (R-Ill.) left his Congressional office yesterday. His bordello-red Congressional office.

To the very end he has been consistent in one regard: being utterly clueless and delusional. As he was passing through the threshold, hoping the door wouldn’t hit him in the butt, he said this of his much-shorter-than-he’d-hoped-for term in office: “I’ve done my best to contribute constructively to the process and to serve the people of my district and my country.”

(You remember Schock, right? Clipped for fiddling his expense reports and spending $40,000 of taxpayer funds to decorate that bordello-red office in the manner of Downton Abbey.)

What I loved most about the report of this event by NPR was their closing sentence:

“In an unrelated coincidence, PBS announced today that the show’s upcoming sixth season will be its last.”

First of all, what would a related coincidence be? Isn’t the whole point of a coincidence that it’s two or more events or circumstances without apparent causal connection?

But why bury the most significant news in the last graf? Because I am over-the-moon happy that the Abbey is hitting the road. I’m really hoping that we can get something actually entertaining to fill the hours and hours that PBS devotes to that dog-in-period-kit, and that people will attempt—to the best of their abilities—to get a life.

As for Schock—I’m hoping that the door actually did hit him on the butt. And I’m wondering who’s going to have to pay to have that God-awful office neutralized.

Romance goes to the dogs

Since Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, and I’m on a bit of a dog roll, here’s something from those clever folks at Subaru. Or at least those clever folks at Subaru’s advertising agency.

It’s got just the right mixture of suburban ennui and wistfulness.

Although I’m thinking that that poodle is way too much car for our golden retriever.

Deutschland über alles

What the hell—let’s kick off the New Year with a cat video. This one from the weather forecast portion of a news broadcast in Germany:

What I love about this is not only the weather guy’s sang froid, but that apparently the station has a resident studio cat.

They are just worlds ahead of us.

And now a word from...

Well, alrighty, then—let’s close out the week with a product advert that reminds me why—occasionally—we should actually pay attention to television commercials:

Yes.