Clash of The Critics

No matter what movie you decide to see, some critics will love it and some will hate it. I saw Clash of the Titans a couple days ago at the supercheap theatre, you know the one, where films not yet on DVD but not in real theatres anymore are playing, where it only costs a dollar to get in and the refreshments aren't outrageously priced and the place is not so clean and maybe some of the theatres are having trouble with their air-conditioning and so maybe there's an ugly scratch in the film that persists throughout the whole duration, but hey, you paid a buck for a movie so what are you complaining about?

I generally rely on Rotten Tomatoes to give a good and widespread assessment of a movie before I go see it or rent it On Demand. I didn't this time. And I'm glad, 'cause at a 33% favorable rating, I might've missed some mindless summer afternoon fun. Definitely not Oscar-caliber, but what do you expect from a movie based on a movie from 1981?

Here's that snob Peter Travers from Rolling Stone:

"The film is a sham, with good actors going for the paycheck and using beards and heavy makeup to hide their shame."

But then here's Colin Covert of the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

"At the moment when Sam Worthington, trapped inside a giant scorpion, sword-hacked his way through the dorsal carapace and poked the upper half of his body through the opening as if it were a sunroof, I fell in love with Clash of the Titans."

Have you ever read a terrible review of your favorite band's new album and wanted to punch the critic in the face? Or saw a nasty write-up of one of your favorite restaurants by some nose-in-the-air food critic? The critics aren't right, they're just being critics. But sadly, they can doom a play, new CD, movie or dining establishment with a hastily slammed-out screed.  

It's fun to ignore the critics one in a while and just go have fun.

How To Fail at New Media - A Case Study in Dinosaur Journalism

UPDATE: The idiots FINALLY just put it up.

Rolling Stone is at this very minute failing in a grand and sad way. While the whole world is talking about the article that could blow the Afghanistan War for Obama, Rolling Stone is too busy applying pressure to Politico to take the article down instead of bothering to put it up on their own website. I suppose Jan Wenner, with his ancient ideas of selling copies of a magazine, thinks he can drag us all back with him to the Stone Age. (Pun not intended, but left there because I'm cheesy that way.) The meat of the article isn't so much that General McChrystal is a renegade, that part is actually entertaining, but that he and his aides expose the fallacy of the counterinsurgency strategy.

Meanwhile, until they make him take it down as well, Mark Halperin of Time magazine has the article right here.

Way to screw it up, RS. You missed out on huge traffic numbers today and Time got them off of YOUR article.

By the time your stupid magazine hits the "newsstands" (how quaint) we all will have read the article somewhere else. Pure and utter fail.

Rolling Stone's political blog has been dormant for a month. UPDATE Their Twitter account failed to mention it until just 11 minutes ago. They say, get this: "Read the full Gen. McChrystal article that everyone is discussing now:" In today's journalism, when you waste an entire morning, you've lost.

And here is an up-to-the-minute screenshot of the RS homepage. Lady f-ing Gaga. 

And on The Seventh Day, You Will Get Your Ass Up and Work

Under the job title of "Federal Emergency Relief Contractors / Special Project in South Florida," I found an intriguing call for "Cooks, Dishwashers, Food service workers, Shower operators (sanitizing showers and refilling supplies), Laundry workers, General maintenance people, Administrative assistants, Machine Operators, Project Managers (this is a higher skilled position), Janitors, Laborer, Grounds Maintenance, Washer, Machine Appliance Mechanic, General Maintenance Worker, Laborer, Driver Courier, Parking and Lot Attendant, Shuttle Bus Driver, Truck driver, Light, Truck driver, Medium, Truck driver, Heavy and Truck driver, Tractor-Trailer."

The best part of the ad was this paragraph:

Workers are expected to do any tasks assigned and work 7 days/week, 12 hour/ day – 40 hours regular time pay and 44 hours overtime pay. They must provide their own transportation to and from the work-site, and will be provided shelter, and all meals. This commitment could be up to 6 weeks or more. Workers will be paid the prevailing wage designated for each area.

So this thing is like bootcamp, or prison, except you get paid. It could also double as a sort of in-patient weight-loss or detox program and stop-smoking clinic, I'd bet.

If I was a Fox Newser, I'd cry out against the socialist nature of this Nazi Work Camp. If I was an MSNBCer, I'd glory in the Peace Corps/New Deal aspect of it all. As an unemployed writer, I see it as a story and two paychecks. Six weeeks of 84-hour weeks and free meals? Maybe a bunch of stories. I'd embed on this one.

I'm gonna apply for Laborer, Grounds Maintenance.

Rolling Stone? The Atlantic?

The Best Decade Ever

The lists are being created with wanton abandon. Give it a rest, already. Rolling Stone wants me to know what songs and albums were "The Best" in the last ten years. Hey, Rolling Stone, fuck you, OK? Every month you create a list, from the 100 Best Guitarists of All Time to the Top Ten Best Eddie Vedder Impersonators. (Scott Stapp, please Stopp.) When Rolling Stone isn't on their knees fellating Bruce Springsteen or praying to John Lennon, they're busy at the List Machine, making lists.

Time magazine has a whole bunch of "Top Tens." Top 10 Heisman Trophy Winners, Top 10 Beauty Pageant Scandals, Top 10 Things You Didn't Know About Hanukkah, even the Top 10 Disney Controversies. Those are real lists at a real news magazine's website. Maybe we should blame "Countdown" with Keith Olbermann. "Which of these top stories will you be talking about tomorrow?" he smugly demands at the beginning of each broadcast, with that stupid animation of a steel ball rolling around a track in a desert landscape. Hey, Keith, when I start looking to you to tell me what I should talk about tomorrow, I will start wearing ridiculous 1930s era gangster suits and pinstriping my hair.

Movies, food trends, notable deaths, vacation destinations, shoes, cars, purses, toys, Xbox games, hairstyles - you name it - we can find a list for it at year's end. A Top Ten list. A Top 100 list. A "Best" list. And it's all based on the musings of a panel of assholes emailing their suggestions to a bored editor, who compiles the submissions into a neat little list and then tells the readers what they should like or what they should've liked. It happens every December, but it's always worse at the end of a decade. I don't mind reading lists, just don't present them as the authority. It's a list of your favorites in a category.

I can't wait for January, when they start doing their Top Ten Predictions for the Year lists.

UPDATE: A commenter says I sound like Andy Rooney. Shit. I blame last night's tequila for making me a temporary curmudgeon today. And the beer. And the wine.

The Ace They'd Been Holding

Never known for balanced political reporting, Rolling Stone magazine, obviously working in close collaboration with the Obama campaign, has just released a cover story on John McCain. It's a scathing (and fact-filled) piece, exposing the "maverick" story for what it is- carefully crafted fiction. We've all suspected his bio to be a bunch of BS, but no one was allowed to question the bogus narrative lest they face charges of being "unpatriotic" as they "dared to besmirch the suffering and heroism of Senator McCain."

Other patriotic people have been saying it for a long time, but their fringe status prevented the story from getting any mainstream play.

I would bet that the publication was holding this story, not willing to be charged with releasing an attack piece and playing favorites, but now that the Hounds of the Right have been loosed to repeat the Ayers story every ten minutes, Obama's people likely said, "Go."

Live by the mud, die by the mud.

Hannity's Impending Heart Attack

So I was listening to Sean Hannity again for a bit of "ride home and get mad" time. It didn't take long to learn his new mantra: "What has Obama ever done? He's never DONE anything! WHAT is a community organizer, anyway? Reverend Wright, William Ayers, flagpin, flip-flop."

A good answer to the question of "What has Obama ever done?" can be found in this recent article in Rolling Stone, detailing the inner workings of the most powerful, drama-free force ever assembled in American politics.

An inside look at Obama and Crew.

Papa Was a Rolling Stone

He was a player. A smooth operator. He was Don Juan and James Bond in one man. He didn't have much sense when it came to furnishing his sex palace. He had other things on his mind. When the ladies came by, which was every night, he'd lube 'em up with Canadian Club. It was a wild time. Your Dad was the first among his buddies to be in a threesome. Then your Mom, one of his many throwaway conquests, got pregnant and your Dad "did the right thing" and married her. Then you were born. Then he REALLY started drinking.

Canadian Club is doing its first advertising in 20 years. They've gone for the Old Spice approach, only without the knowing wink and a nod. They're serious. Real Men, Cool Men, drink Canadian Club.

More details on the campaign at Wine & Spirits Daily.

Scanned from the November 1 issue of Rolling Stone, the last issue of my subscription, according to the giant wrapper on the magazine. This one is so filled with Springsteen sycophantic sucking-up that the only thing I will miss about the magazine are the ads.

Rolling Stone Goes for Tween Girl Audience

Thanks a lot, RS. I needed this thing in my home.













You can't be all things to all people. Don't tween girls have their own magazines? This is some serious Seventeen or Tiger Beat material. Have you found your core audience dwindling, Rolling Stone? I can tell you why!

Smooth as a Baby's...Wait a Minute

Click ad for bigness.
If this is test #43, I'd be curious to see the previous 42 and any subsequent tests. The babies seem not to mind having their butts rubbed on the face of a freshly shaved man, nor does the man appear to mind the baby butts on his face. This is just too weird. All in a day's work for the lab-coated scientists of the Schick Shave Lab.

I'm a disposable razor guy (sorry, Brits, I'm American - we're wasteful) and have found that Schick is in fact the only brand that won't leave me bloodied (thanks for nothing, Gillette). But I've been using the apparently old-school and now outdated "Xtreme 3" (with Triple Blade Closeness™.) Man, and I thought that razor was the end-all. This new one, the Quattro™, is obviously much better, as Quattro means 4, which is 1 more than 3.

(Scanned from yet another gratuitously self-referencing and filled with Hippie Nostalgia™ edition of Rolling Stone [July 2007], celebrating what they considered the Peak of Human History™, the Summer of 1967™, or the Summer of Love™, the same year the magazine was founded. RS even went so far as to create a 9-page list of The 40 Essential Albums™ of 1967. Gimme a break. There were actually that many albums released in '67 worth noting? Highly doubtful.)

Butler Shines

One of the cooler ads I've seen in a while, a 70s styled iron-on transfer in this ad for MINI by Butler, Shine, Stern and Partners (found in Rolling Stone) featuring Hammer & Coop, Butler's tongue-in-cheek 70s styled detective guy and his British-accented MINI.

And who is cooler than Hammer in that tongue-in-cheek retro kinda way? Only the Shat. So the Shat get's the shirt.

Previously in Hammer & Coop

Previously in British Accents

Previously in Shatner

I Got Suckered - and It Was Good

As a practitioner of the Black Arts of Advertising and Marketing, I like to consider myself immune to most tricks of the trade. I like to think my cynicism makes me smarter than the art directors and copywriters out to make me laugh and make me buy. Occasionally, I get blindsided.

So I'm flipping through the pages of my new Rolling Stone (great cover story on Parker and Stone of South Park) and I get to the last few pages where they stick all the ads, and I say to myself, "Ha! Someone seriously screwed up at press time. All these pages got printed upside down." Couple seconds later I realize, still viewing the pages upside down, that every one one of them features a MINI Cooper.

Brilliant execution by Butler, Shine, Stern and Partners on this flip issue, called Really Hot Metal Magazine. Each page (8 in all + the cover) is witty and fun, featuring the Starsky & Hutch fashioned "Hammer" character and his sidekick, Coop, a talking car. The whole Hammer & Coop campaign has been ridiculed by industry wags. David Kiley, writing at Yahoo!, said "The problem for me is that the homage to the 1970s-early '80s TV action shows is too ham-fisted. It tries to be funny, like a weak Saturday Night Live sketch that goes on too long. The British voice inside the MINI is especially unfunny and unengaging. He says "bloke" and "bloody" a lot. But the writing in the serials is awful."

Maybe the webisodes are a little stupid, but nothing is as unfunny as SNL these days, Mr. Kiley. (Lorne Michaels - please retire.) Agreed on the British voice. But I can tell you, the print stuff works. More flip issues are reportedly coming to MAXIM, Stuff, and Blender. I'm guessing MINI is targeting men's magazines with a parody of a 1970s action hero to counter the widely held perception that the Cooper is a chick car.

Suicide Thwarted by Old Spice

This two-page spread fairly jumps off the inside cover of this week's Rolling Stone. This is a 1968 photograph of the actress Faye Dunaway. She is sprawled out on a chair with her hand on a drink, eyes closed, dying fern symbolizing the imminent death of this poor, troubled soul while the Fires of Hell lick at the toes of her prepared for burial bare feet. The line above the strategically cut-off logo reads: "If Your Grandfather Hadn't Worn it, You Wouldnt Exist."

Notifying an already depressed woman that her grandma was a cheap tramp, lured to the bed of a guy just because he wore Old Spice, may not be the best way to cheer her up.

Or maybe I missed the point and this is your grandmother, and she's about to conceive your Mom or your Dad, making you possible someday, and you owe it to the dude who smells like Pinesol mixed with rotting wood, who builds a helluva fire.

As Scamp said, "What would I do if the Old Spice brief landed on my desk? Burst into tears, probably."

Continuing on their "Experience is Everything" theme, the Wieden & Kennedy kids have delivered this perplexing gem for a tired old brand. All colognes and aftershaves have always gone with the "Wear it and get some girly action" angle. W&K takes it to a new level*: Thank Old Spice for your very existence.

Most of this new cologne/bodyspray advertising is aimed at boys who don't even shave yet. I can attest that it is working. Every morning as we ride our bikes, we have to hold our breath as we pass the young swordsmen-in-training waiting for the schoolbus, a toxic cloud of mixed fragrances saturating the air around them. Can W&K make a dent in the Axe and Tag shares of the coveted middle-school masturbating demo? My guess is yes.

*"Takes it to a new level" is not to be considered an endorsement of "pushing the envelope" or any other "Agent of Change" cliche.

Previously in Old Spice