Consumption Junction: We Are All Beautiful Pigs!

Are you buying what they’re selling?

Unilever, a multi-national corporation with dual parent companies, Unilever NV and Unilever PLC, has been bringing a range of products to consumers worldwide since the 1930’s. Their most recognizable products include a bevy of foods and products such as Country Crock, Bertolli, Wish-bone, Pond’s and Vaseline. They’ve also got their meat hooks in the personal products industry. Sunsilk (hey, ‘whack a blond’ on their website, or a ‘whack a brunette’ pending your disposition) is one of those but the most interesting example of complete and total corporate contradiction comes in the form of their products, Axe and Dove.

Dove has been on the warpath against the ‘beauty industry’ for the past few years. Heralding ‘regular’ women with their clever commercials about how being beautiful isn’t about weighing 110 lbs with fake breasts and collagen lips. NO! They took it to the masses and let the parishioners of YouTube worship at the altar of righteous indignation with their commersh ‘Evolution.’ Soccer Mom’s and armchair feminists rejoiced at the company’s boldness. Recently they released the second piece to ‘Evolution’ called ‘Onslaught.’ It’s a commercial that could be told from the POV of a female Tyler Durden in a bizarro world film adaptation of Fight Club.  It even looks like some Fincher acolyte was trying to harness that quick cut method. The makers of the commercial forgot some important images to include—a boot heel digging into the neck of a consumer sucking at a multi-national tit(s), zombie’s goose-stepping through the beauty aisle’s devouring entrails pushing products blindly into a razor lined cart, and a smiling and suited Group Chief Executive (Patrick Cescau) of Unilever bathing in a pool of blood and stem cells drinking champagne.

Okay so that’s the kind of extreme commercial I’d make. I doubt Unilever’s GCE even drinks champagne; he’s probably a scotch guy for all I know. So what raises my ire about Unilever? They make Dove AND Axe! WTF? It’s like watching one of those Shell or BP spots that talk about alternative energy sources.  When someone like Unilever represents itself through a campaign like Dove’s ‘Onslaught’, while making commercials for Axe that are (though humorously idiotic) blatantly misogynistic the best thing anyone can do is take those commercials and mash them up in defiance then repost it on YouTube.

You are buying what their selling!

We are all pigs, tied to a stick…

Wading through the Static

You too can look ten years younger – in 60 minutes no less! Tha’s righ’, REDUCE wrinkles, REDUCE crow’s feet, REDUCE laugh lines! Your gun turret mounted Toyota Yaris can get something like 40 miles per gallon in the city AND with its 50 caliber machine gun, trips to the drive thru have never been FASTER…As if all the static on the net and snow of television weren’t enough…Condoleezza warns against Armenia Bill, a bill that declares the massacre of 1.5 million Armenians to be genocide…Turkey, of course disputes the claim [like 1.5 million Armenians just dropped dead from the ‘chaos and confusion’ of the collapsing Ottoman Empire during WWI] and the guys in System of A Down must be tugging furiously at their elaborate goatees and cursing Rice for not being more granular. What could you expect from a country named after a bird that drowns in the rain from looking up during a storm?

Just another example of imperialism and the power of the military industrial complex sweeping unsightly ‘dust’ under the atrocity carpet, where ghosts of Darfur await release, 800,000 dead Iraqi civilians from the illegal invasion await justice and Americans prep for the x-mas buying season. This little capitalist piggy laments; It’ll be a tight year dear…might not be able to get Jimmy that new X-Box 360…poor little Sally won’t be getting that iPod Touch…we’ve got this foreclosure that is inevitable and it looks like the guys down in the factory are going to walk off the job again cause all of our parts that were made in China have been recalled…it’s a rough existence to be middle class and brown/black/yellow/mostly white Dear, yes – rough indeed. The new Radiohead will be in my inbox this morning…tha’s nice honey, burn a couple copies for the carpool group….

Consumption Junction: The Cultural Significance of Britney’s Ass

I caught this post on Tech Crunch and in light of the hilarity of the 2007 VMA’s recently I thought it’d be appropriate to expound my opinion on a couple of things (btw, my opinion is awesome). I’ll first address the Arousal Industry’s latest blundervestment: making ringtones available on CD and selling them as ‘Ringle’s.’ If you haven’t followed the rapidly declining sales of the dinosaur-wearing-gucci-industry into the rabbit hole of failure you’ll know that these gentle giants and habitual employment curtailers are scrambling for the next best thing to supplement their bottom line. For that they have thought long and hard while on the toilet, squeezing out a seared ahi and quail egg champagne shit as the collective stone was passed from urethra, chinking on the porcelain, inspiring the latest money maker – The Ringle.

 

To the uninitiated or layperson, basically the ‘Ringle’ will, “contain three songs: one popular track, a remix, an older track from the same artist and a ringtone.” The distro method will be a “CD with a slip-sleeve cover.” If you’re smashing your balls with a meat tenderizer right now (or if you are a female, feel free to smash your nipple or equivalent in a desk drawer) in light of that news, well, you’ve been paying attention to the comings and goings of the music industry. If not, don’t despair. This can still be considered one of those ‘what the fuck’ moments. The first of those will be a single from recently re-celebritized Britney Spears, her song; “Gimme More” is already testing really well in the major markets. Sony and Universal are going to pump titles into the stream this fall and they’ll be available at your favorite wallet raping store. The propensity for continued revenue loss in the face of continued bad decision making isn’t as appalling as the fact they’re going to sell singles by CD. CD??? Or is Britney’s gunt more appealing packaged as a pitch corrected ringtone. I dunno.

 

Okay.

So now that your brain has come to a nice simmer and your eyes are bleeding a bit, drool slowly congealing somewhere on your shirt or blouse, hands limply at your sides, legs prostrate beneath you, a jolt of pop narcotic will bring you back. A shot to the jugular with a syringe full of excitement – a glass pipe filled with potent crystallized entertainment – a tincture of attention drawing, edge of your seat mayhem filled with blinking lights, celebrity and pageantry. For the kingdom of your brain we present the 2007 VMA’s. A nightmare ride into The Palms casino/hotel in Las Vegas for an amalgam of hyper stylized vampiric pop-lust orgy of coordinated chaos – presented by Chevrolet. That’s right. America’s car company. The company that brought you the Tahoe, and the tagline “An American Revolution.” AND John-fucking-Mellancamp leaning his jackboot on the fender of a truck while a montage of ‘life style images’ flood the screen. Look! Some sepia toned portraiture of African Americans that look doggedly low income smiling bravely for the high paid photographer, middle-American white folks ‘eating’ hot dogs, and team sports! Yes. Chevy has now taken it upon themselves to sell us cars by insinuating that this whole “save the world thing” is a punch line for some smog breathing fat cats with pockets full of cash.

 

Those genius marketers at MTV and Chevy teamed up for what they’re marketspeak calling a, “…Superserve Key 12-34 demographic with creative integration and multiplatform innovation campaign.” Essentially, they’ll use the power of their marketing muscle and advertising budget to sponsor something that MTV knows is well worth every penny for hooking new consumers. So they show a series of seemingly Eco-friendly spots. The spots are kinduh irreverent, edgy; MTV’s demo will totally jibe with this posish. (WOW 30MPG on highway! I can hear dolphins singing as baby seals swim in crystal clear water and unicorns shit rainbows).

 

This is part of MTV and Chevy’s “Break the Addiction” campaign, which sadly promotes the benefits of Flex Fuel or E85 and touts their continued development Hydrogen Fuel Cell technology. Want to know about E85? Click here.

 

MTV has always been the bane of my entertainment consumption. They’ve had some good shows and of course they used to play those dinosaurs of the entertainment dietary pyramid, THE MUSIC VIDEO but if the fact they’ve been dictating youth cultures taste in music doesn’t make you vomit your righteous indignation instantly, these commercials will. One example in particular is a scene of a young woman with dyed hair, fairy-winged, and glossy eyed. Hers is a character meant to exemplify some green friendly tree hugging marijuana addict blowing a tune into some plastic bottles strung together while a voice mockingly says something like “You can still save the environment without having to drive an ugly car you little sheep.”

 

And this brings me to Britney Spears ass. It has always been a shining example of slutty suburban chicks everywhere. Her ass is insignificant. Her music represents an industry’s reliance on tone corrected voices. It is robotic. She is ubiquitous. You could interchange her with Rhianna and only by ear you’d never know the difference. The reason she and Rhianna lip synced their shitty songs was because in the fantasy world MTV has made for viewers and the public, they’ve instituted a zero tolerance policy on imperfection. This is smoke and mirrors. It’s no wonder Viacom’s ad agency shares similar tactics as the US government’s agency that handles all of their “Be Army Strong” campaigns, or Chevy’s highly insidious and clever “Break the Addiction” campaign.

 

Britney Spears showed us all that you can sound like a robot, dance like a star in a giant production but if you gain just five pounds you can lose all credibility. She also showed the world our addiction to perfection through her socially imposed imperfections. Break the addiction of what? Oil? Bad performances and MTV? Soon we’ll see teen stars, weighing 90 lbs., chain smoking Marlboro Reds, eating a leaf of ice burg lettuce a day, while a Ringle from Mastodon plays “Holiday in Cambodia” on my sweet new iPhone. Chevy and British Petroleum will be champions of the Green movement and George Bush will go down in history as one of the most thoughtful presidents in history.

 

This isn’t science fiction.

 

This isn’t the future.

 

This is the perpetual “What the Fuck?”

your world is not pure perception

There is beauty in ugliness. Its sometimes hard to find why an image can inspire certain thoughts and feelings. I think this Banksy graphic is telling . There is a place we’ll eventually end up, and there isn’t a castle or golden arches waiting. Can you guess what it is? Neither can I.

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End Of An Era: The North Atantic

Now that it’s official, Cullen Hendrix, drummer for San Diego noise-psych-punk act The North Atlantic is hanging up his sticks as the beat master (though he’ll continue making music and beating any number of things, like that pesky indictment…just kidding). As for singer/guitarist/brother Jason Hendrix and surrogate brother/bass player Jason Richards a much talked about and ballyhooed move to the windy city is in store where they will continue to create amazing songs and perform to a whole new subset of seenster folks who’ll hopefully fill out the crowd in any club and bar they play while in that city. It’s fucking cold there and it’s swallowed a few good friends already. While I wish them luck I’m a bitter and vengeful old man and I hope they grow to hate that city as much as the characters in Upton Sinclair and Ralph Ellison novels.

I remember when I first met Cullen and JH and JR. a mutual friend from Denver who had migrated to the Whales Vagina took me and my then girlfriend to a ‘Vegan’ dinner party, which was luckily for us being only several blocks away. I immediately found kindred spirits in Jason H and Cullen H. Jason and I talked about music like two savants. An instant bond was created. Of course they told me about their band, The North Atlantic, I thought, “Cool, I was in a band in Denver and I’m gonna try and start one out here, maybe we can jump on your coat tails and play some dive bars with you guys.” And it totally worked out for the better. But aside from self-serving band bullshit I truly grew to love those three assholes as friends and I respect them as musicians and activists as well.

My point, I’m sure you’re wondering if there is one. And there is (though it’s nebulous and its relevance and quality debatable). I’m a huge fan of their band but it’s always taken a back seat in my eyes when it comes to what they mean to me as people. Yes I’ve missed a few of their shows but I’ve been at all the ones that count. The release for Wires in the Walls when it sold out the Casbah was notable. Or when they played the Purevolume showcase in Austin to 12 people, those12 people that there at noon in the rain that hadn’t heard them before were instantly in awe of their energy. Cullen made quick to introduce himself and thank them for coming out to watch even if they were there to see Stephen Pedersen’s Criteria or 06 SXSW darlings, Minus the Bear.

Seeing them at Black Box Studio one halloween, dressed like Ron Burgundy in a pale blue suit and red velvet turtleneck and mustache, I swayed in time and shifted my feet to ‘Street Sweepers.’ One can always count on Jason Hendrix for some heady, literati word salad, spit with vitriol. Though I would have to say that Jason Richards is the best dancer in the band by far, which is interesting knowing he has several cubic feet more mass then the brothers Hendrix. Then there was the time Planes Mistaken for Stars (RIP)came and destroyed our livers and ears along with Bear Vs. Shark (one of the only good bands Equal Visions put out in the past 10 years – also RIP). We ran out of ice for the whiskey and Gared and Mikey got the last of the clear cubes, I noticed the tray of brownish cubes in Cullens freezer and popped those in my tumbler of whiskey: suffice to say vegans freeze vegetable stock and I drank a horrible whiskey soup concoction that day.

And of course all the shows at Scolari’s before it went from seedy dive punk bar to interior setting shot for Veronica Mars and a ‘slumming it’ style watering hole for all those fucking yuppies that live in those ugly ass condos across the street on 30^th. When Gabe, drunk and sweaty sang to every lyric from Buried Under Tundra and Charlie played some keyboards to what would become new songs for Wires. Can you believe I proposed to my wife in Scolaris while the band played ‘Submariner?’ How cool is that? It smelled like puke and she said yes to the eventual bombast and crash of the “Lotus Eaters.” I’ve loved loving them and I’ll hate to miss them as I’ve known them. You know we can’t all be lost boys chasing Wendy Darling forever. Being that they have always been more than just a band to me their music will always be more than something I passively listen to as well.

They’ll be at Black Box Studio this Friday, make sure you drive right past Turf Club and its requisite buffoonery and head right behind the 7/11 for the party of the summer!

Thanks for the memories.

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