Ration Reality

(Cincinnati) Chemist/inventor Fredric J. Baur passed away last month at the age of 89. As a food storage/quality control expert for the Proctor and Gamble corporation, Baur designed the tubular packaging for Pringles, the bizarre, potato-like snack food product. Baur filed to patent the design in 1966. Apparently, Baur was pretty proud of his creation, because he requested that his family bury a portion of his ashes in a Pringles can. I guess that once you pop, you really can’t stop.

Fred Baur at ‘06 World Cup Finals Read the rest of this entry »

Vice President Dick Cheney has once again lived up to his first name. It happened Sunday at the National Press Club on Monday, Jun 2, where Cheney was congratulating the winners of the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prizes for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency. When responding to a reporter’s inquiry about his family tree, Cheney noted that he had relatives named “Cheney” in both his father’s and mother’s families. To drive his pointless point home, Cheney made an attempt at “humor” (something a guy like Cheney shouldn’t be trying to do, anyway) which thoroughly pissed-many of the residents of a key state in the ‘08 Presidential race. The exact quote: “So I had Cheneys on both sides of the family and we don’t even live in West Virginia!” Quickly, Cheney jovially qualified his statement, saying “You can say these things when you’re not running for re-election.” Really? Thanks for clearing that up, asshole. Read the rest of this entry »

Up to this point, we’ve illustrated ads produced with the intention to sell products. However, there are some television spots that are just out to make people aware (and, possibly, still sell sell products, but not in such an obvious manner. They’re called Public Service Announcements (PSAs) and here are a few of the more bizarre ones.

* G.I. Joe on Petting Strange Dogs

The National Child Safety Council created several animated PSAs to run at the end of episodes of the G.I. Joe cartoon series back in the 80s. This one cautions youngsters of the dangers of petting animals you don’t know. Admittedly, this is a fairly innocuous subject for badass military functionaries like G.I. Joe to bring up. Perhaps Mutt really wanted to say “you should never pet a strange dog because it’s loaded down with enough C-4 to blow your fuckin’ ass back to Beirut, numbnuts!”, but standards and practices thought it was a little harsh. Anyway, knowing is half the battle.

* Heavy Metal with a Social Conscience Read the rest of this entry »

Giving a New Meaning to the Term “Bombtrack”

In recent years, a new subculture has begun to use the medium of punk rock to share its views with like-minded music fans and the world at large. Anarchists? Well, if you paid any attention to punk rock over the last 25 years or so, you’d know that anarchists are already making ideological punk music. Luddites? Well, there is a sizeable acoustic punk scene, but they still use modern means of recording, distribution and conveyance to shows. Washed up, trashy, talentless twenty-something rehab urchins with astoundingly poor judgement? No, but good guess!

The subculture in question is (drumroll, please): “progressive Muslims” Read the rest of this entry »

Rock’n'Roll Movies That Don’t Suck!

* Hard Core Logo (1996) This poignant Canadian adaptation of Michael Turner’s novel follows a legendary (fictitious) Vancouver band on a reunion tour that involves, among other things: faking a benefit concert for someone who’s not dead, the schizophrenic bassists involuntary mid-tour lithium holiday and, uh, I think Joey Ramone is in there, too somewhere.

* Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey: Filmmaker/academic Sam Nunn combines his two loves in life (metal music and anthropology) in this documentary which views the evolution of heavy music from a cultural standpoint, featuring deluded groupies, appalling album art and Nordic black metal fans who might possibly be taking themselves a bit too seriously.

*Pink Floyd’s The Wall (1982) Yeah, sure; The Wall is more overwrought than any other film listed here. Is it melodramatic? Ohhh, yes! Pretentious? You bet your sweet ass! Still, in what other film could you see a scene like this: Read the rest of this entry »

Beck once sang about having a “Devil’s Haircut in (his) Mind”. Well, a dozen years later, I can finally understand what he meant, for I, too, have a devilish haircut on my mind. The only problem is that it’s on my head, as well.

After a couple of minor financial bombs went off in my face, I set out to find ways to downscale my lifestyle. One of the first things I did in accordance was to go to a cheaper barber. I was excited at the prospect of saving $5 over my regular barber.

After years of going through this ritual, I have a pretty good idea of what works for me and how to communicate it to the guy with the shears. “I’d like a number 5 on the sides and back, and 1/2 inch trim on top”, I said. Read the rest of this entry »

Retro-tainment: Media You Might Have Missed - Vol 2: Clone High

Can you imagine if we were somehow able to extract DNA remnants of all the great figures in history. And then, from those specimens, we would create genetic duplicates of these great and infamous men and women in history. Then imagine when those clones enter their awkward teenage years: the angst, the uncertainty and emerging sexuality playing against their famous personalities. Bill Lawrence (creator of Scrubs and Spin City did, only he (Along with co-creators Phil Lord and Christopher Miller) decided to make it a cartoon and play it for laughs.

Clone High imagines a world where Abe Lincoln is a neurotic sociopath with an unspoken crush on Cleopatra and JFK is the popular football team captain with 2 gay foster parents. It is a place where Winston Churchill can be a thugged-out B-boy and Ghandi can be an indulgent, sex-obsessed hedonist. Read the rest of this entry »

Cannibalism has been viewed, in Modern civilized society, through a surreal lens. From the Donner Party, to The Buoy’s upbeat cannibal anthem “Timothy”, to Ray Liotta being fed a piece of his own cerebrum by Anthony Hopkins, people feel that the very act of consuming human flesh is outlandish, regardless of how it’s done. One man, however, was determined to make the execution of his cannibalistic attempt as outrageous and unsettling as the act itself. His name: Armin Meiwes. Read the rest of this entry »

Ever wonder how we tend to have very strong perceptions about certain high-profile personalities? They’re usually very specific, but very concise personal impressions. What comes to mind when you think of Paris Hilton? Will Smith? Barack Obama? David Bowie? Chances are that if you have a strong identification–positive or otherwise–with any of these people, it’s a good chance part of your perception has been influenced by a marketing technique called personal branding. This is a process by which a public figure (or that figure’s handlers) manage him or her persona in the same way a corporation would manage its product (brand). Therefore, if one were to wish to be seen as a “leader”, “innovator”, “leading man” or “bad girl”, there is a PR firm willing to help you create and maintain that idea.

While nurturing brand identity has been a part of marketing products for centuries, it is a relatively new development in terms of marketing a person. It is taking on a new dimension among the candidates in the US Presidential elections. To go one further, many non-celebrities are using personal branding techniques to help advance their careers and personal lives.

Now, we have people being commodified through branding. Since turnabout is fair play, I thought it would be enlightening to take established product brands and speculate what kind of traits and behaviors they’d have, were they people.

Dr. Pepper: Has a practice out in the suburbs and lives in a gated community. He gets behind the wheel of a Lexus most days, but sometimes drives a Land Rover Discovery on days when he’s feeling “rugged”. He just got accepted into the county’s most exclusive country club. In the throes of a mid-life crisis, Pepper’s trophy wife isn’t cutting it anymore, so he’s diddling his PA. He’s not holding out hope for a Smiths reunion tour.

Mr Pibb: Helped landscape Pepper’s McMansion when the development first opened. He lives in a double-wide out by the rail yard. Read the rest of this entry »

Every day on my way to work, I stop at the end of my street and see a big penis. I’m not talking about my drunk neighbor Otto–it’s way too early for him to be out. Nor am I talking about my own, but thanks, anyway. No, the phallus I’m talking about is more than 30 stories tall and made of Sardinian white granite and glass. The Chamber of Commerce calls it Wachovia Center. City residents call it many things: The Giant Tampon in the Sky, The Cockovia Tower, The Phallus Palace, Stone Ween. If he were alive today, Freud would write volumes about it. Read the rest of this entry »