"These people", of course, being the ones who keep taking some of our favorite songs from the 1960's and 1970's and using them to sell products. I'm not saying that there is anything terribly sacrosanct about these songs, as some might believe; I just think that someone who knows all the words should be called in to consult now and again.
It's always a little off-putting, I think, to use music that we thought of as sort of defining of our generation and our times to sell a product, but I'm generally put off by advertising anyway. This is much more interesting. Don't these people even listen to the lyrics? Or do they just remember the titles or the hook lines? Consider Fly Like an Eagle (Steve Miller) being used to hype the US postal service. Superficially it sounds like a good enough idea - hey, eagle = US bird, fly + fast service! But do you remember the actual lyrics?
Feed the babies who don't have enough to eat
Shoe the children with no shoes on their feet
House the people living in the street....
Is this really what any US Government office wants us to think about?
How about using the Violent Femmes "Blister in ther Sun" to sell Wendy's hamburgers? I like Wendy's, personally, but is:
When I'm out walking I strut my stuff, yeah
I'm so strung out, I'm high as a kite...
.....staining my sheets....etc
really the sort of thing they want people associating with their food? And speaking of fast food hamburgers, just because cheese melts doesn't make Modern English's classic "I Melt with You" an appropriate ad choice. Cheese melts, yeah, but...what in the hell does this have to do with cheese:
Moving forward using all my breath, making love to you was never second best
I saw the world thrashing all around your face, never really knowing it was always
mesh and lace
So many examples...Circuit City, praising the glories of casual sex (The Cars, "Just What I Needed"); Chevrolet, apparently deciding that the days of strong and well built trucks are a thing of the past and pointing this up using Bob Seger's "Like a Rock"; what an interesting choice for Fidelity Mutual! (Bowie, ..."well, well, well, would you carry a razor in case, just in case of depression..." - Young American); does Hewlett Packard really want "Teenage Wastelnd" as their theme?; does anybody really want to be associated with "Horse With No Name" or the dreadful "Baby I'm -a Want You"?
More? Sure, we can go on and on: X Box using a song about the glories of LSD (Jefferson Airplane, White Rabbit); Saab deciding that their perfect corporate image is a "deaf, dumb and blind kid" who plays pinball...huh? (The Who, Pinball Wizard.) Yeah, we can go on and on.
So is there some reason why no one writes their own jingles any more? Are we supposed to be so captivated by simply recognizing the song that we, the buyer, instantly identify with the product? Sorry, but just knowing that Robert Plant and Jimmy Page and raking in the ol' royalties doesn't make me turn to my husband and say, "gee, honey, let's buy a Cadillac! Those are our people!"
I propose we compromise and hire Barry Manilow. His music may bore me to tears and his hair annoy me, but at least he can write a nice jingle - State Farm, Stridex and Band-Aids all use Manilow jingles, and if I had any more laptop battery left, I'm sure there are many more - he spent a long time in the "jingle jungle."
If the ad folks can't do that, though, maybe they could just hire someone to Google the lyrics before committing to using a particular song. Please. We're tearing our hair out up here on the Hill.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Sunday, July 20, 2008
hugs!
(Wow, Katrina, I didn't even know you were back from your business meeting! How was it?)
Anyway, we've got to talk about this hugging thing.
"When I was growing up in Kentucky (and I have yet to hear this phrase anywhere else), we'd talk about "hugging someone's neck" or "giving someone a big hug around the neck." Out My Back Door
I remember my grandmother singing "I love you, a bushel and a peck. A bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck" and that is everything that I know about neck hugging. I barely know about the other kind, it seems.
See, I was raised on the outskirts of Philadelphia and spent more than half my life (which is a long story for another time) at my grandparents' house deep in the heart of the old money Main Line. People over the age of three or four did not hug; it simply Was Not Done. Men shook hands - if it were a particularly emotional moment, one might grasp the other's elbow with his free hand - and women briefly touched cheeks whilst making little "mmmwa" sounds. Older female adults were permitted to kiss children, an operation universally loathed by the kissee, but unless so accosted children shook hands with adults of either gender, and did so quite solemnly. Female children might be permitted a shy smile, but that was all, regardless of the degree of gushing on the part of the adult.
But the world is bigger than it used to be, and we now routinely marry outside of our accustomed ...what shall we call it?....genre, maybe. I married into a family of Huggers, a large family of Huggers. People I barely knew would greet me and then clutch me as though I'd been lost at sea for weeks, completely oblivious to my awkward embraces and uncertain pat-pat-pats. Even children - big boys, my size but barely teenagers - would scoop me into mammoth hugs, and the women would not only hug but often actually kiss, leaving lipstick marks. By the end of the evening, I would feel as though I'd survived a peculiarly affectionate mosh pit.
I grew to accept this overdose of physicality as a family trait, and braced myself for it at every meeting. And I do mean every meeting - even if you'd had lunch together the day before, hugs were still in order, both at the greeting and at the parting.
After we'd moved north and I was reconnecting with some friends here, I discovered that these previously orderly people had metamorphosed into Huggers and favored long, close clasps with much patting. I also realized that the family hugs I'd learned about had been mercifully short, while these folks hugged for a long damn time, whole paragraphs being exchanged while still in the embrace.
And how do you signal that you wish to be released from a hug? I tried stopping the pat-patting, hoping that would signal the end of the hug, but no dice. I tried sort of pulling my head back, and had that signal misinterpreted into a kiss-me signal and got kissed as well as hugged. I finally just learned to stand still and eventually the hug would be over. Don't misunderstand, these are all people whom I love dearly; I just wasn't brought up to expect all this hugging business.
I'm trying to get over my anti-hugging training, because I realize that hugging should be a lovely happy thing. I just can't get out of my mind, though, the image of my hugging-raised husband embracing my Aunt Mimi, a big man with his long arms wrapped completely around a slight elderly woman who was standing straight as a stick, arms at her side, looking completely bewildered.
It's telling that on my friend's page, the little people hug, but when I tried to copy it over to here, well:
they just stand there awkwardly.
*sigh*
Anyway, we've got to talk about this hugging thing.
"When I was growing up in Kentucky (and I have yet to hear this phrase anywhere else), we'd talk about "hugging someone's neck" or "giving someone a big hug around the neck." Out My Back Door
I remember my grandmother singing "I love you, a bushel and a peck. A bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck" and that is everything that I know about neck hugging. I barely know about the other kind, it seems.
See, I was raised on the outskirts of Philadelphia and spent more than half my life (which is a long story for another time) at my grandparents' house deep in the heart of the old money Main Line. People over the age of three or four did not hug; it simply Was Not Done. Men shook hands - if it were a particularly emotional moment, one might grasp the other's elbow with his free hand - and women briefly touched cheeks whilst making little "mmmwa" sounds. Older female adults were permitted to kiss children, an operation universally loathed by the kissee, but unless so accosted children shook hands with adults of either gender, and did so quite solemnly. Female children might be permitted a shy smile, but that was all, regardless of the degree of gushing on the part of the adult.
But the world is bigger than it used to be, and we now routinely marry outside of our accustomed ...what shall we call it?....genre, maybe. I married into a family of Huggers, a large family of Huggers. People I barely knew would greet me and then clutch me as though I'd been lost at sea for weeks, completely oblivious to my awkward embraces and uncertain pat-pat-pats. Even children - big boys, my size but barely teenagers - would scoop me into mammoth hugs, and the women would not only hug but often actually kiss, leaving lipstick marks. By the end of the evening, I would feel as though I'd survived a peculiarly affectionate mosh pit.
I grew to accept this overdose of physicality as a family trait, and braced myself for it at every meeting. And I do mean every meeting - even if you'd had lunch together the day before, hugs were still in order, both at the greeting and at the parting.
After we'd moved north and I was reconnecting with some friends here, I discovered that these previously orderly people had metamorphosed into Huggers and favored long, close clasps with much patting. I also realized that the family hugs I'd learned about had been mercifully short, while these folks hugged for a long damn time, whole paragraphs being exchanged while still in the embrace.
And how do you signal that you wish to be released from a hug? I tried stopping the pat-patting, hoping that would signal the end of the hug, but no dice. I tried sort of pulling my head back, and had that signal misinterpreted into a kiss-me signal and got kissed as well as hugged. I finally just learned to stand still and eventually the hug would be over. Don't misunderstand, these are all people whom I love dearly; I just wasn't brought up to expect all this hugging business.
I'm trying to get over my anti-hugging training, because I realize that hugging should be a lovely happy thing. I just can't get out of my mind, though, the image of my hugging-raised husband embracing my Aunt Mimi, a big man with his long arms wrapped completely around a slight elderly woman who was standing straight as a stick, arms at her side, looking completely bewildered.
It's telling that on my friend's page, the little people hug, but when I tried to copy it over to here, well:
they just stand there awkwardly.*sigh*
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Today's lesson, children...
Nah, it's nothing deep and meaningful. Too hot for that.
Today's lesson concerns the phrase "hair of the dog", as when one has a hangover and a well-meaning friend suggests that one take another drink (usually a Bloody Mary, a beverage, in my opinion, much better with the vodka served frozen and separately) in order to cure the condition. At the time, one generally doesn't question the usage, but later one may think, "What dog?"
The answer is the Aesclepian dog. You know, the dog that is often shown lying at the feet of Aesclepius. He (the dog...well, Aesclepius too, but that's another story) was supposedly magickal, and if one took a hair from his coat and brewed it into a potion, it would cure illnesses. After a while (by this point, about 300 B.C.E.), there were often dogs kept in aesclepieions - think clinics or hospitals - and rumor had it that if the dogs would lick a person's wound, the wound would heal.
OK, so Wikipedia doesn't agree with me, citing something about rabies and Shakespeare, but I'm sticking by my original answer.
The other lesson for our interested student has to do with shared cultural heritage, or why we should spend time with people of our own age- and other generalized brackets. The other day it was remarked that roses that looked very sick, one even thought dead, had healed right up when watered. I jokingly remarked "just call me The Seventh Son."
*cricket cricket*
"You know, 'Heal the sick! Raise the dead! Make the little women go out of...." a heh..ehe.
*blink*
Never mind.
That's all for today, kids.
Be well.
Today's lesson concerns the phrase "hair of the dog", as when one has a hangover and a well-meaning friend suggests that one take another drink (usually a Bloody Mary, a beverage, in my opinion, much better with the vodka served frozen and separately) in order to cure the condition. At the time, one generally doesn't question the usage, but later one may think, "What dog?"
The answer is the Aesclepian dog. You know, the dog that is often shown lying at the feet of Aesclepius. He (the dog...well, Aesclepius too, but that's another story) was supposedly magickal, and if one took a hair from his coat and brewed it into a potion, it would cure illnesses. After a while (by this point, about 300 B.C.E.), there were often dogs kept in aesclepieions - think clinics or hospitals - and rumor had it that if the dogs would lick a person's wound, the wound would heal.
OK, so Wikipedia doesn't agree with me, citing something about rabies and Shakespeare, but I'm sticking by my original answer.
The other lesson for our interested student has to do with shared cultural heritage, or why we should spend time with people of our own age- and other generalized brackets. The other day it was remarked that roses that looked very sick, one even thought dead, had healed right up when watered. I jokingly remarked "just call me The Seventh Son."
*cricket cricket*
"You know, 'Heal the sick! Raise the dead! Make the little women go out of...." a heh..ehe.
*blink*
Never mind.
That's all for today, kids.
Be well.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Well, the weather's still nice...
Woke up at 6:30 - realized we were planning to get up and go to the Y to swim, but apparently overslept - and saw the sun streaming in through the windows, felt noticeably good physically and mentally, sat up and stretched, humming a few bars of "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning."
Then I interacted with my loving family.
And now I'm back in bed and I don't care if it is still beautiful outside.
Lord, what fools these mortals be!
(And make no mistake, I include myself in that, perhaps most of all.)
Then I interacted with my loving family.
And now I'm back in bed and I don't care if it is still beautiful outside.
Lord, what fools these mortals be!
(And make no mistake, I include myself in that, perhaps most of all.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)