An Unlikely Place For Art

I normally hate TV commercials. Except stuff like Sportcenter commercials. Otherwise, the stuff people claim is "cute," "amusing," or "artistic" just doesn't seem any of those things to me.

One commercial has totally gripped me recently, however. I'm almost ashamed to admit that I love the Levi's Go Forth commercial featuring a recording of Walt Whitman reading his poem, Pioneers! O Pioneers!.

The imagery isn't much. It certainly doesn't inspire me to buy Levi's. And it melts into a rapid-fire series of shots of vapid Ck-esque nudity. I think there's even an obigatory shot of homosexuality (see? Levi's is H-I-P hip. How insulting to the gay community).

But somehow, likely because the images move too quickly, and certainly because his voice is absolutely mesmerizing, Whitman's words overpower the visual input. All I can hear is him, appealing to his audience with an aged sense of urgency. And the residue of the video - the vauge impression that perhaps the Pioneers are the youth, carving something out of the wilderness of their lives. Damn, it just kicks me in the face.

I'd be angry with a commercial for moving me emotionally, if it weren't really Walt Whitman doing so. All the same, kudos to the whizzes at Wieden & Kennedy Portland for framing ol' Walt so beautifully.

Sucks To Be This Guy

Thanks to Bill McG for filling in on the news searching while I got lost in the whirlpool hell of work in the past few weeks. Otherwise, I may have missed the most recent ninja story.

Now, serioulsy, how long is it going to take you people to realize I am speaking truth? Ninjas are everywhere. And in this economy, they're out of work. In such rough times, they get a little rusty. While out exercizing their aweseome set of lethal and stealthy skills, mistakes get made, and a few of them end up impaled on fences:





When will the secret mega-conglomorates of evil abandon their tiny lazer-shooting robots and save those who are most in need? They're out of work! Technology cannot replace the perfection of the most effective henchman armies in history (except in the 80's, where whole mobs of our ninja friends were decimated in oh so many crappy films). Take the ninjas back, evil empires! Save your stealthy friends before it's too late!

For Realz

I've never used this excuse before. I don't believe in it. But I swear it's true. I've actually not been posting because I've been busy with work.

I'm still trying to figure out how that one happened, too.

Be back next week, God willing.