the Change I Wish to See

Vince, the ShamWOW guy?  Yeah, he's back.
  
And this time I'm gonna stop pretending I don't want what he's selling.  Mark my words: I will own a Slap Chop.
  

Hey kids!  Franco Beans here.
 
You've heard of the Snuggie!
 

So you know those new State Farm commercials?  The ones where someone says something clever to describe where her/his life is headed, like...

Dear Purveyors of Evil,

Yes, you, credit-pusher Visa and producers of "Secret Millionaire" on Fox.

You deserve to die.*  In fact, since Santa is real and Great Depression-proof, my Christmas wish is that you be dead.

You may not have noticed, being blinded by the reptilian scales covering your eyes and all, but our economy is on the verge of being in shambles.  The Economist says we're seeing such global housing market declines that we're probably going to have to redefine "homeless."  Like all well-intended descriptive words -- e.g., "special" -- "homeless" loses a little meaning when it can be used to describe pretty much everyone.  There is obviously a problem when the market is such that

So I was gonna post this story today about a dream I had this weekend.*

It involved indoor tennis, socialites, Wayne Gretzky, someone's living room and personal failure.

And while I was a-looking for photos -- much in the same way Elmer Fudd hunts wabbits -- to capture my imagination and in so doing capture yours, I found this:

It's in the way Anderson Cooper says "There we go" (at the :10 mark).

It's as simple, and as loaded, and as rich, and as full, and as
imagined as hearing your dream out loud.

There are a lot of people who malign the Grammys. They come in all
colors, professions, and ages. They'll tell you the awards aren't
punk enough and that they're too young; that they're rigged for
established artists and that they only go to those whose faces are
plastered on supermarket aisle magazines. Some will even tell you
they'd mimic Fiona Apple if they were ever offered one.

I just wished they had seen Amy Winehouse's face. I don't cry often,
but it made me. And I'm not happy often, but it made me.

And I wish I had more ways to describe it. But I don't. Because it
was a look I'm still dreaming about. I'm mad at me for still being in
the dreaming stage. But I'll fix that. Because if it means I get to
have the same look of due surprise and exhilaration, then I'd be
wasting my time here not to.

A picture's worth a thousand words when it's more than just an image.

but when she laughs
you see what she hides
even chameleons let their guards down once or twice
she thinks these urban shadows are where she's meant to be
but there's no disguise that's fooling me

So I'm on my way to the forum...
Actually I guess I'm just on my way home, but "forum" adds a grandiose touch to my life that spring break was totally missing. Anyway, on my way home and I catch this band that I've now seen a few times (I've got video from before, if I can find it, you'll see it). They just set up between Starbucks and the circle and go at it. It's all about the music.

On a cold, wintry night in the District...
One man had the courage to make Jersey proud.

First of all, it can't go without mention that I did indeed struggle over the title. I was so close to "A Man Without a Monkey." So close. And yes: I know what I just said, Ryan.


There have been two great things about Super Bowl commercials over the last two years.

One:

The realization that any average citizen can vanquish obnoxious, insistent-on-outshining-your-light tennis club members with the aid of the crime deterrent feature on your Sprint cell phone.  And, thank goodness, recent tests done by me on the foreheads of overzealous law students prove that 4 out of 5 jackasses feel pain and respond accordingly when pegged point-blank with a phone, regardless of who your carrier is (so cheer up Cingular, Verizon and T-Mobile owners).

Two:

The careerbuilder.com monkeys made me want to search for all sorts of jobs -- even for jobs I knew I was less qualified for than Bush is for a Nobel Peace Prize, even for jobs that if landed would somehow end up costing me more in relocation and stress than anything I could ever hope to see in return, even for jobs that would tarnish my family's good name...  It didn't matter.  Those ads were the best spots since that House Was Built Too Small.  There's just something so fulfilling about seeing past and present co-workers shrunken to fit into monkey suits and reenacting all the brainless, court-jester audition routines they subjected you to for way too long.

What did we get this year?  The Richard Roundtree Special: we got the shaft ladies and gentleman, the shaft.

I don't know when I was first disappointed last night, but I certainly was jarred into consciousness when careerbuilder.com blessed us with a grown man with a paper clamp affixed to his nipple. Then GM dropped an ad where a yellow, human-replacing, car-manufacturing robot leaves the factory and commits suicide, after a 2006 when at least 30,000 people were left reeling from GM layoffs and in a 2007 when more layoffs have been promised. (Oh wait: so the point of that commercial was the irony? Nope, still don't get it.)

I guess the Federline ad was ok.  But there were at least three problems.  First, it was actually Kevin Federline.  Second, if you've read my blog from the beginning, you'll understand why I'm horribly afraid his daydreamed "lyrics" will end up on a commercially successful album in the near future. And third, maybe it's just me, but I'm beginning to worry that all this "K-Fed anti-hype" is spiraling into control.

We've done this to Paris Hilton.  She started out as just a skinny rich girl. Then we unwittingly convinced her she was hot.  Then she was on magazine covers and catwalks.  Then she was in sex tapes.  Then she had her own TV show.  Then she released an album that 75,000 people bought in its first week (which I call the "Joe Dirt" theory: if you drop a pile of sh*t -- "a big ole hunk of butt release," that is -- from the sky, somebody will pick it up).  Then she was in sex tapes, again.  Then she became the joke people told on the way to her parties.  The point is that fame isn't a straight line; it's more like a sphere. And I don't know how we've done it, but we've somehow traveled by way of some twisted circle and made Federline famous for the very thing for which he had originally been infamous.

But right, the point.

I forgot to put a disclaimer at the beginning: I generally detest commercials.  They're usually about stuff I wouldn't buy even if I had the money Paris got for "not knowing" a sex tape had escaped her bedroom.  Or that money GM will save when the robots' union accepts pay cuts and doesn't fight for healthcare...  But it doesn't mean I wouldn't like to be surprised.  Geico does it almost every time.  And careerbuilder.com, with its glorious, glorious, laser-pointer-armed monkeys, had done it for an entire year.  If I don't see any monkeys next February, I'm... I'm... writing another entry ad execs will never see...

But it'll be so fierce. So. Fierce.

The heading says enough. A rant may follow later, but for now the heading's self-sufficient. Truth is, I shouldn't have to make the statement, which is why its simplicity is so compelling. All I'll say for now is that it seems fair to say that what I deny is much more like what I'm afraid I'm running from.

What Olbermann did last night should be history. I say that without exaggeration, but-for-qualifications, or hesitation (as I realize I sound like Jesse Jackson). Anyway... For all of those who insist the revolution won't be televised, this should be the point at which you begin to question where you went wrong in retrospect 10 years from now. It should be a moment that I can tell generations to come I witnessed live. Why live? Because the day after Cheney's first visit in office to the what was then Ronald Reagan Hospital, Bush held a conference in which he said the executive branch interpreted the law. Don't remember? Probably because it didn't make news and hasn't been covered since. But it is kind of odd that that "slip" is exactly what White House policy hinges on: signing statements.

we're stuck in a fate so deep we can hardly breathe
strangled by the schemes of the powers that be
and as the youth make strides to write the same scenes
with haste, we're enslaved by propaganda machines;
in a place where truth is only what you believe
nothing's as it is and everything's as it seems
we try to shut our eyes, blindly follow the lead
of men who rend us free on the end of a leash.

It was fulfilling to hear someone illustrate it as it should be. It's why aijuswanawrite. You need both links: the video, and the transcript. Share them both.

Alright, alright. So I've been kinda hard on DC lately. Make that the last six years. It's not my fault; I grew up in the NYC metro area. I've got high expectations. But Screen on the Green softened my stance a little bit this summer. Though I can't help but announce that on my way to the last screening, a cab driver asked me for directions to the National Mall. For those of you not from DC, the National Mall doesn't have an Old Navy. It's basically a lawn that stretches from the Capitol Building to the Washington Monument. Imagine you're at Bryant Park and a taxi driver asked you where Central Park was... Anyway, I'll celebrate DC just a little today.

May your Schoolhouse Rock forever.

So this was probably my favorite Daily Show clip ever. There's just something so hilarious about people losing it during a skit. Makes even the dumbest minute and a half seem genius. Kinda like whenever Jimmy Fallon and Horatio Sanz were together on SNL. Their skits couldn't have been more moronic but they worked because they always broke character. Anyway, this clip is gold. Gold, I tell you. Gold.

Daily Show goes bananas.