And now, Mr. Crutch

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But first a word from our alternate universe sponsor:



Fuelers and funny cars... SUNDAY!!! I tried to find a nice 1965-era Santa Fe Speedway jingle for you because they were really catchy. No dice on YouTube, though, so here's the next-best of the genre. Often imitated, as the Earl Scheib commercials used to say about their cheap paint jobs, but never duplicated.

Peculiar marketing judgment

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While waiting in line for an Rx at my neighborhood drugstore I found myself studying the early pregnancy test shelf, vaguely musing how new and unreliable that technology was back when I was in fighting form, reproductionwise.

Since then, these devices have evolved beyond merely returning a certain color that correlates positively with pregnancy---I think it was blue in the early '80s---sort of like testing pH with litmus paper. Today the competing vendors use different indicators for pregnancy-positive and -negative results. One test kit uses + and - signs, another uses | and O symbols, and a third uses a pointless and almost illegible LED display that indicates "pregnant" or "not pregnant." Hmm, I thought to myself: consumer choice!

Then I noticed that the CVS house brand test kit illustrated the product on the box as showing a positive (+) result. So I compared it with the three other brands of test kits on the shelves, and discovered that all but one depicted the test wand as displaying a positive pregnancy result. One brand---it has the word "blue" in the trade name, but I can't remember it---showed the display indicators as insets to the main product illustration, but the test wand was simply showing a blank result, as it would when one removes it from its sterile wrapper.

It seems to me that most people who are anxious to get early pregnancy test results---"up to 5 days before period!" as the most serious brand proclaims---are probably looking for a negative result, not a positive one. So it made me wonder what kind of unholy alliance between corporations and the religious right might have cooked up this subtly anxiety-inducing packaging. And then I realized that it was a self-answering question.

A Word From Our Alternate Universe Sponsor

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From the land of pines
Lofty balsams



I actually picked up a 6 of Hamm's at the package store this afternoon because they only had a "five pack" of Schlitz (which Leo Durocher used to call "Slits Beer"). I had no idea they still "brewed" this stuff any more. Will report back as to it's purportedly "crisp, clean cut to the taste." Thank you for your attention to this matter.

And now, Mr. Crutch

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But first, a word from our alternate universe sponsor:



I say "alternate" because Camel studs were only my second choice of smoke back when I was immortal. At heart (and lung) I was a Philip Morris Commanders man. Pall Malls were inferior to both, but acceptable when Commanders weren't available. Luckies, however, were the only cigarette that burned your mouth even before you lit the goddam thing.

Introducing the failPad

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In the previous comments thread, our prolific commenter "Anonymous" glibly predicted that the overhyped new Apple mobile media device would be "stupid." I could faintly imagine innovative possibilities for a highly portable multimedia touchscreen computer, but could not figure out how it could be successfully implemented. Forward-facing camera for videoconferencing and texting? Maybe cool, but cellular nets certainly don't have the bandwidth to support too much of that. Larger touch keyboard with tactile feedback (haptic) technology? Of interest to me, but I really can't see any advantage to a screen that you can't reach at least 3/5 of the way across with your thumbs, because laying the "pad" flat on a table would give the user a lousy viewing angle, and propping the screen up would give the user lousy typing ergonomics.

I felt that all the mockups were wrongheaded --- basically large iPhones with no apparent redeeming social value. Certainly the guy who sent engineers back to the lab a dozen times until they designed a MacBook trackpad with exactly the right texture would have obsessed over the ergonomics of the device, the hand feel, the effortless graspability, I thought.

Nope. Jobs's failPad is, in my opinion, astonishingly banal. The device appears to incorporate zero technical innovation and clumsy ergonomics. It offers no new essential, or even interesting, capabilities whatsoever (unless you think it's important to have a ridiculously high-def 10 in. display that you can hold up to your face with both hands while watching YouTube porns).

Apple didn't introduce a technology innovation today --- it unveiled a new business model for media content owners. I'd imagine that those giant media corporations --- which actually are people just like you and me, granted --- already have a mighty case of blue balls owing to several years of foreplay. These behemoths have gently been urging Apple (like a thousand tiny fingers) to market a stylish new widget that will seduce foolish young consumers into turning their media collections into a never-ending revenue stream for Time-Warner, Disney, General Electric, and all those other friendly folks who rent you content for your life so you don't have to provide your own.

When I read the description of the iPad today I'm sure I felt the same kind of bile rising as Ralphie did when he discovered that the Orphan Annie Secret Decoder Ring message was just a lousy commercial. Early Apple geek reaction to the failPad in blog comments threads has been pretty negative (about 2:1, in fact), which is uniformly unheard of after any new Apple rollout.

I may be wrong, but I'll bet anyone a beer that I'm not. I think the reason this new offering is so lame is that it wasn't really designed by Jobs and Jonathan Ives: it was developed for control-horny media conglomerates.

Pop culture amnesia

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Stephen Worth, an animation producer of note, has been guest-blogging on BoingBoing for a few weeks, and has been unearthing all kinds of vintage animation, film, and sensible ideas about the forgotten richness of American pop culture. This particular post struck a chord with me for two reasons. First, it's a pretty concise summary of the current state of corporate popular culture and its victims who, for example, like "all kinds of music" as long as it's something they can hear played in stress rotation on a Sirius XM channel targeted to their particular consumer demographic. Second, it reminds me how my own tastes as a youth were molded by giant entertainment corporations which gleefully convinced me that, prima facie, the past sucked, so I would be well primed buy their product.

The video embedded in the BoingBoing post is the grand finale from the 1943 musical "Stormy Weather." I'm struck by how different it looks to me now versus how I imagine I would have reacted to it as a late-night TV movie 35 years ago. It would have been unthinkable for twentysomething Baby Boomers to find anything to admire in it. Tap dancing? Shit --- that's what we were forced to sit through every Sunday night while Selig and DoubleE stared at The Ed Sullivan Show with us as collateral damage. The counterculture had no use for tap dancing because purveyors of Revolution like Capitol Records, Warner Brothers, Columbia, and all their groovy subsidiaries convinced us that we were too hip for it. And the funny thing about it: I do believe it was a more innocent time. For awhile, at least, entertainment corporations were content to throw money at freaks and impresarios, stand back, and let them create both innovative music and bales of cash.

So what changed? Why is the product of today's entertainment conglomerates so much more odious than it was 40 or 45 years ago? My guess: the marketing focus group as a social engineering tool --- a tool that, today, is probably less successful at funding the cocaine habits of entertainment tycoons than at trapping the American mind in an endlessly recursive matrix of multimedia cross references, taglines, brand names, and virtual reality.

Tap dancing? It's all about dudes and babes playing jump-jazz percussion using castanets bolted to the soles of their shoes, while bounding across tabletops, grand pianos, and what-have-you. The Nicholas Brothers must have had adductors with the proportionate strength of piranha jaws. So if you have 10 minutes to spare, click through to the YouTube video clip embedded in the BoingBoing post. There are more dancing zoot suiters, foxy babes, and African-American GIs than you can shake a stick at, plus Cab Calloway keeping the tempo and Lena Horne dolling up the joint.

Pandemic

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Forget the swine flu --- that’s a lightweight compared with the one I'm worried about, which is dragging American civilization with it down the muddy gopher hole of irrelevance and ruin. Of course I’m referring to the creeping tacit conspiracy which binds all of us to pretend that it is genuine for us to act like Hollywood actors who are paid to act like a producer’s idea of how everyday people would act if we were always ready with the appropriate cutting observation, or the perfect ironic retort, or the desire to ceaselessly serve up straight lines to the ones who are always ready with the appropriate cutting observation or the perfect ironic retort, while we simultaneously pretend that we have never seen Hollywood actors say these very words on TV night after night for the past 40 years.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Home-made applied research [updated]

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This evening, 1 September, I begin the first part of a two-phase experiment in which I test and compare the longevity of two different kinds of shaving razors. The objectives are to (1) see how long each razor can provide an acceptable shave and (2) determine whether the disposable give-aways that I steal from the gym are of higher quality than the replaceable cartridges I obtain in exchange for cash at the drug store.

First up: a disposable teal-colored Shick Xtreme3 ComfortPlus Xtra-Smooth "flexible" razor with "Vitamin E & Pre-shave Oil". Don't you agree that's quite a name for something what takes whiskers off your face? The performance period of Phase I is estimated to be approximately 2 months.

Update: I forgot to tell you my @#$%*#@^&! hypothesis! I wish to determine whether the promotional giveaways provide superior quality and performance to the blades you have to buy. If that is not the case, then it is difficult for me to figure out why the manufacturer would provide such largess. The object of the giveaway must be to persuade the gym rat to abandon an established brand preference in favor of the sampled brand. My experiment inaugurates a new topical area for this blog: brilliance in marketing. "Ask for yours today!"

New! Lower Price!

Last weekend at the new Schnuck's store on South Neil Street, Champaign, Ill., I could buy 6 oz. containers of Yoplait original formula yogurt for $0.60 each. The dairy case was festooned with merry yellow-and-red labels announcing "NEW! LOWER PRICE!"

This weekend (i.e., today, 22 December) at the pre-existing Schnuck's on North Mattis, Champaign, Ill., I bought containers of Yoplait original formula yogurt for $0.65 each The dairy case was festooned with serious-looking red-on-white labels announcing "NEW! LOWER PRICE!"

Schnuck's, for those who have a need to know, is pronounced "schnooks."