Ellsworth Wareham, who stopped working as a heart surgeon only two years ago, at 95, is often used as an example of someone with more energy than someone half his age. Dr. Wareham attributes his health at least partly to the fact that he has been a vegan for the last 30 or 40 years (he does not remember precisely).
Eating at home, he said, is the best way to ensure that one is eating healthy food. He is certainly not about to let the impending arrival of McDonald’s raise his blood pressure.
“I don’t subscribe to the menu that these dear people put out, but let’s face it, the average eating place serves food that is, let us say, a little bit of a higher quality, but the end result is the same — it’s unhealthy,†he said.
“They can put it right next to the church as far as I am concerned,†Dr. Wareham added. “If they choose to eat that way, I’m not going to stop them. That’s the great American system.â€
I went vegetarian for about 60 days (with a few slips) before Thanksgiving. Many of those days I was Vegan. I have to say I never felt better, had more energy and had blood-work done that amazed and confounded my health care professionals.
I have been off the reservation big time since Turkey day. I hunger to get back on the program and I will after this holiday bullshit is done.
Most people will say, like it’s a badge of honor, “I don’t watch TV much.”
I do watch the TV set a lot…just not programming with commercials. The best thing that ever happened to me was Netflix. The second best thing was when Netflix began to offer streamed video on demand. My DVD player picks up the Wifi up in my office and gives me all I can ever hope to view in my lifetime, most of it in HD yet.
I find myself watching TV shows, network and cable offerings, years at time. For example: When “Deadliest Catch” first came on I was a TIVO owner. So I watched it delayed and missed the commercials for the most part by fast forwarding. Then I got rid of TIVO ($!) and stopped watching.
Well, guess what? “Deadliest Catch” seasons 1-7 is now on Netflix on demand (in HD yet!) and so I am once more immersed (pun intended) in the lives of They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters. (always sort of wondered about that phrase…don’t they go down to the sea, then get in ships?)
I tell you all this to increase my word count. No, really I tell you this to set up this article:
Reliving the Best (and Worst) Ads of 2011
MANY of the best advertisements of 2011 had something in common: celebrities, whether in front of the camera or behind it.
A two-minute commercial from Chrysler, “Born of Fire,†which celebrated both the Chrysler 200 and the city of Detroit, featured Eminem, its hometown rapper.
The actor Adrien Brody, playing a nightclub singer in a commercial for Stella Artois beer.
The ad campaign that revived the vintage jingle, “See the U.S.A. in Your Chevrolet,” featured the “Glee” cast in an elaborate production number.
Unfortunately for Madison Avenue, not to mention put-upon consumers, that was also true for many of the worst advertisements.
Is it really so hard to figure out how to effectively use a star to sell a soap, soup or soft drink? Well, a look at marketer misfires this year would find enough famous faces to fill all the boxes on a revival of “The Hollywood Squares†— and then some.
I never saw “Glee” and this commercial does nothing to convince me I missed anything but I will say this-I was overwhelmed by nostalgia when I heard the old Chevy jingle. Well…not overwhelmed but I liked it a lot.
I did see this spot on TV-even though I could care less about Marshall Bruce Mathers III (Even though my middle name is Marshall I seriously doubt my parents named me after Eminem) because it aired during the Superbowl. It’s a good spot.
By they way-the voice-over was done by this guy:
Kevin Yon, 59, who actually lives in Michigan. Even though I made a good living from doing voice-over work I am always surprised by what the guy who does it looks like. This guy looks like Santa, sounds like Beelzebub.
This is another really good piece of creative advertising for a car. Not sure it sells the car as well as the Chrysler one but it’s entertaining:
Notice that there is NO dialogue.
Here’s a really bad beer commercial from the Superbowl:
Adrien Brody should stick to playing the piano.
Here’s a spot that would never fly on American TV (Shit)-it’s for a French Movie channel and it’s very well done:
Here is a great Ad from…Google? Note once again no dialogue.
But the browser still sucks imho.
This ad uses music, stop motion animations and Willie Nelson:
And here is my personal favorite-one that also ran in the Superbowl.
Having run many more focus groups than I would like to remember this spot proves to me what I always suspected-participants are only interested in the food:
To some, pepper spray is a mild, temporary irritant and its use has been justified as cities and universities have sought to regain control of their streets, parks and campuses.
To the American Civil Liberties Union, its use as a crowd-control device, particularly when those crowds are nonthreatening, is an excessive and unconstitutional use of force and violates the right to peaceably assemble.
This has been sitting on my desktop since just after Thanksgiving. It was saved with the words, “Goddammit” as the file name.
This 84 year old women has more courage than most half or even a quarter her age.
She blogs here and is in general quite a feisty old gal as you can in this video from her appearance on the Keith Olbermann Current TV show
Frank Zappa said it best, a long long time ago in 1966:
Saturday Aggregate:
Seems like in spite of our best efforts the prevent it Christmas will happen. All the out of town packages were mailed out Tuesday, accompanied by the usual dire warning from behind the USPS counter ‘never gonna make it for Christmas’. They ALWAYS say that. I am convinced that they would say it if I was mailing Christmas packages in July. The packages ALWAYS make it.
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Stores are in a quandary. Is today the last Saturday before Christmas? Or is it next weekend, Christmas eve? Money grubbing merchants want to know. Honestly, what would happen if they lost next Saturday to the idea that maybe they could shutter the doors and let the employees go home? Scrooge is alive and well in commerce.
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I am on a one man campaign to make people say “Merry Christmas” instead of “happy holidays.” When wished “happy holidays” I ask what holiday? They smirk and say Christmas. I say, “then say, Merry Christmas.”
I am taking this far too seriously, methinks.
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I did my last Christmas shopping last Tuesday. At the MALL. I hate the MALL. It was a joy. No one was there. You could have fired rockets in the hallways and not hit too many. Santa was absent from his perch in the middle of the MALL. There were no lines at the checkouts. It was a leisurely, almost pleasurable process. I was done in 15 minutes, back in my car in the parking lot wondering where I could get a beer and burger at 10am. Wonderful, most time of the year.
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I become very sentimental of late. It’s that time of year for me and for whatever reason, age most likely, I am more prone to bouts of melancholy. I sort of like it. I like watching “Scrooged” and sobbing quietly when that scene comes on where Bill Murray is being cremated. I like that I get choked up when I hear “The Carol of the Bells” for the 25th time in a day. I enjoy getting misty eyed over writing the Christmas cards. It’s probably ‘… an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato.’
That or my booze intake has increased to the point where everything just sort of seems full of the season. I even smiled at my goofy neighbor. Normally I would give him the finger.
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Is it over the top to cry watching sad deodorant commercials? I thought so.
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The best thing about this holiday season so far? Hands down, the weather. Temps moderate, mostly fairly warm and NO SNOW! An inch of snow on Christmas morning, melted by noon would be OK.
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I want to be an employee of the state lottery system. Specifically the “scratch-off” division, which is really the rip off division. I put lottery tickets in the Long-suffering wife’s Christmas card. $20 worth. She won….a free ticket. Rah.
The lottery truly is a tax on the stupid.
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I am stuck here in the house all day working. The LSW has to finish up all the Christmas shopping and do the grocery order by herself today. I am trying very hard to act as though this is a tremendous burden and I feel bad about the way the schedule worked out. She may have seen through me. My penance is that I have offered to make dinner.
Chili.
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I am off to write my column for the “Weekender”. It will appear the Wednesday before Christmas and then I will not have an article until after the New Year. I should do something heartfelt and nostalgic. But I haven’t had any grog yet today so I probably won’t.
After nearly nine years, about 4,500 American fatalities and $1 trillion, America’s war in Iraq is about to end. Officials marked the finish on Thursday with a modest ceremony at the airport days before the last troops take the southern highway to Kuwait, going out as they came in, to conclude the United States’ most ambitious and bloodiest military campaign since Vietnam.
And this is what we, America have left to carry on.
Amateur soldiers with a rocket launcher mounted on what looks like a Toyota pickup truck.
Rah for our side. This is what we accomplished? This is what all those men and women served for, sacrificed for, died for?
It’s disgusting.
It bears mentioning that the years I spent at WACKY 102 – 1976-1980 – were the peak years for Disco. Certainly WACKY was no stranger to “Saturday Night Fever†and we played lots of songs with a heavy back beat and sizzling hi hats.
I talked Don and Mike, the owners, into fronting me the cash for a huge mobile disco sound system. We had the WACKY mobile unit (a bread truck with an iffy engine, no heat and a cavernous storage area). It was painted purple with the station’s logo and it became the home of the WACKY 102 Rolling Boogie Machine.
As I recall I spent about $10,000 on sound and lights. In 1970’s dollars this bought a huge amount of gear. We had insanely big bass reflex cabinets with two 15†drivers in each. Two JBL medium throw lenses handled midrange and we had two banks of piezo tweeters with six to a side. The rack had three amps, if I recall correctly they were 1000, 500 and 250 watts with a three way crossover to the stack. It was LOUD. We had this stupid heavy all in one turntable console set up. It was robust enough to withstand the kids jumping around but it sure was a beast to move.
Three mirror balls, the largest one was a yard across. Various spotlights, pin spots, a huge follow spot, colored strip lights, black-lights (cool, simple effect-make people look weird and would highlight ladies bras through their clothes-made them glow!) intense strobe lights, a fog machine , a bubble machine and flashpots. When everything was cooking it was pretty awesome.
We worked mostly high school dances. It paid well and the kids loved us. It was HARD, sweaty work, setting all that stuff up. It took three hours from the time we pulled into the school till we hit the first notes of Steve Miller’s “Space Intro†into “Fly Like an Eagleâ€. I used to bring an extra t-shirt because I would sweat through the first one. I hired kids to help me on some set-ups but I preferred to work alone – more money for me!
And it actually was pretty good cash income. $300 per dance, at least two a weekend. I busted my ass. I don’t recall paying back a dime to Don and Mike. Hope they don’t come looking for it.
The high school dances were my favorite. We had tons of giveaway albums courtesy of the record companies. With a little finesse we also scored T-shirts, Frisbees, key chains and concert tickets. The kids just loved us and asked us back over and over again. I ran dance contests and generally played the star DJ. Then I put my sweaty t shirt back on, stuffed the system back into the van and drove home. Usually home by midnight depending on where the dance was. Of course with WACKY’s massive signal we worked all over hell’s half acre. I got to the point where I charged mileage!
The WACKY bread truck was a trip. It only had one seat so passengers rode on the bass speakers and tried to hold on for dear life. The heater motor had stopped working so in the winter I bought a propane catalytic heater. Talk about dangerous! Not only was it likely to catch the whole deal on fire, it specifically said not to use in enclosed spaces, as it robbed the area of oxygen. So many times it was a trade off with being sleepy or cold. There is a god who looks after fools and DJ’s in vans.
The effects were always fun to play with. The bubble machine was a circle of holes on a rotating axle with a fan behind it and a reservoir of bubble soap. The circle turned, dipping it in the bubble soap and the fan pushed out the bubbles. We used dishwasher soap diluted a little and it made loads of bubbles. It would make the floor a little slippery so you had to use it sparingly. We worked some old church hall once, where the wiring was Jurassic. When the sound system was drawing all the power out of the small box the motor on the bubble machine was turning so slowly that it only made huge bubbles, a foot or more across, at the rate of one a minute!
The fog machine was an “extra†that could be added to the show. I think it was a $50 option. It basically was a 50 gallon drum with a heating element in it, and a basket that you could lower dry ice into the hot water. A big fan on the lid was connected to a couple of dryer hoses and in the right temperature range you could fog up a pretty big area with dense, foul smelling fog. Of course getting the dry ice and handling it was an experience. If you forgot gloves it was like the kids tongue stuck on the flagpole in “The Christmas story†but it really hurt your hands!
The flash pots were the simplest but most effective effect. It was just a bread tin with two connections inside. You strung a single strand of copper wire between the two connections and filled the tin up with black powder. When you were ready you just plugged it in, the wire shorted and blew up the powder. It made a brilliant flash of light, a loud explosion and filled the area with acrid smoke. Of course I always used too much black powder. The usual spot for the flash pots was on top of the speaker stack but one time I set them on the floor by mistake. Before I set them off I noticed a kid standing pretty close but I pulled the trigger anyway. He must have been terrified.
You couldn’t get away with half this stuff nowadays. Imagine explaining to a school principal in post 9/11 that the little bottle was black powder, ‘don’t worry it’s just for a small explosion’… right!
A federal agency on Tuesday called for a ban on all cellphone use by drivers — the most far-reaching such recommendation to date — saying its decision was based on a decade of investigations into distraction-related accidents, as well as growing concerns that powerful mobile devices are giving drivers even more reasons to look away from the road.
The problems with getting this done are the overall pervasiveness and seduction of the damn things. Its so easy to get a call, take it and suddenly your a million miles away from behind the wheel of a 3 ton projectile going 70 MPH. I hate seeing other drivers with a phone up to their ear and yet I find myself doing it as well.
Possibly we are going about this the wrong way. Maybe what we need is cars that drive themselves. Ones that fly too.
On thing I always liked about George Lucas’s vision of “Star War” was that unlike most science fiction movies the future in his worlds was used. The robots were dinged up, the spaceships had dents, the uniforms on the troops had rips. It looked…..authentic.
It brought a whole level of realism to the films that others lacked.
Mr. Tapia was “discovered†as a ukulele virtuoso at a time when the instrument was having a resurgence of popularity. He became a ukulele star, twice making the Top 10 on the jazz charts, wowing concertgoers by playing the ukulele behind his head à la Jimi Hendrix, and making three albums — one of which honored his 100th birthday. He was elected to the Ukulele Hall of Fame.
I am thinking of buying a treadmill.
My gym membership is $29 monthly. Two years would buy a decent machine, especially if I can find one at yard sale. I have a space for it in my studio and I think that it would be better than what I am doing now. Why?
Going to the gym annoys me several ways. I have to drive there. Right off the bat I would be saving money on gas. Driving half asleep where the deer roam is always dangerous, often the roads are slippery in winter and other drivers, well, you know.
The gym itself is nice enough. More and more often the exercise machines have “sorry out of order” signs on them but they have loads of treadmills and that is really all I use. It’s a waste (all my fault) that I don’t do more but an hour on the treadmill Mon-Fri is enough. My nutritionist says why not every day. So there’s another reason right there.
But the real issue is the Sirius radio.
I used to work at this gym. Well, if you can call being the front desk guy, 15 hours a week work. I checked in patrons, sold memberships and made coffee. I was replaced in this job by a card reader at the door. Another victim of automation.
Above where the check-in was are a couple of speakers. The gym area proper, with all the weights and Nautilus is on another level. These speakers in question serenade the aerobic area, where most people if not all use their own I pods for musical distraction. So in my opinion they are redundant. And they distract me from reading, which is my distraction of choice.
There is a separate volume control for each area. I know where they are, having worked there. For some time I reduced the speaker volume for the aerobic area. Until…the management (my former employer) left a nasty note, with my name on it, admonishing me for doing so.
I worked for this place for almost a year. Showed up at 4:45am, five days a week. Opened the joint up. Varied the volume as I chose. Now they can’t tell me in person? They have to leave a note, for all to see?
