Not much time for posting today, because I’ve been too busy napping all day (true story!) But I just came across this Calvin Klein campaign from the nineties. Obviously the advertisers were going for lewd and creepy, with the basement paneling and the disguised-sounding voice behind the camera and everything, but I wonder whether these ads had as much of an impact when viewed one at a time.
Anyway, maybe you’ve seen them before. There’s over a million youtube views and 2200 comments, most of which could be summed up as “Ewwwww.” Although, since it’s Youtube comments I’m talking about, they tend more towards “Ewwwwww yure fucking stupid I hate you your a dumb fag.” But you get the idea.
[via Boys Keep Swinging]
Sixty-two years ago today something happened in Roswell. What, nobody knows for sure, but when you’ve got conspiracy theorists on one side and the military on the other it’s not so easy to believe anybody.
For some reason, Roswell keeps coming up lately. Just the other day I posted about John Doe, the X frontman who played a dad on the WB teen drama about pretty teenaged aliens. (I watched that show, pretty much religiously, for all three of its poorly-written seasons, mainly because I had a big crush on Jason Behr’s ears.) Also, on Sunday I found myself telling someone–again–about the criminally underrated beauty of Sheryl Crow’s second album. That CD kicks off with the Roswell-mentioning Maybe Angels, and was one of a handful of alien-themed modern rock songs to come out in the wake of the incident’s 50th anniversary and the success of The X-Files.
Filed under: music, tv | Tags: damn morning people, gothic archies, lemony snicket, Stephin Merritt
Stephin Merritt and one reeeeally hyper morning person, on Good Day Atlanta, 2006. He performs “Smile, No One Cares How You Feel.”
At this point there’s like a 90% chance I’ll be live-blogging Tuesday’s Eurovision semi-final. And also Thursday’s, but not the finals on Saturday because I’m making that my birthday party. Everybody’s coming over at two in the afternoon and we’re going to eat and drink our way through Europe while we watch it. (I have vague hopes of making it to the RISD Apparel Show that night, too, but whether we get there remains to be seen. Ouzo Connect People, as my boyfriend’s t-shirt says, but it may not make theose people okay to drive to a fashion show.
Here’s my ten favorites, graded in the Eurovision style. None of them really stand out as being especially the best (like Kalomoira’s did last year) which means the race might be a closer call when everyone’s on the same stage.
Moldova’s Nelly Ciobanu is a favorite among people I’ve talked to. 12 points.
Turkey’s Hadise, who’ll be doing the song Dum Tek Tek, gets 10 points from the Mixtapes For Hookers jury:
Benny and Bjorn have a new song!
Well, it’s a jingle, actually, to promote the the Hotel Rival in Stockholm, which Benny owns. It’s a jingle that’s over three minutes long, which I think might make it officially a song and not a jingle. Also there’s all kinds of romantic things going on in the song, like . It’s sung entirely by the hotel staff. My favorite bit’s towards the end: “So maybe now tonight/ As we walked in I noticed that the bar in this hotel just seems so right/ The perfect place for candid talk and all discretion/ Time has come for my confession!”
I mean, written out it probably doesn’t look like much, but watch the video and tell me you’re not going to spend at least a small part of today looking for cheap flights to Sweden*:
(*There is no such thing, sadly.)
Bea Arthur died today at the age of 86. She had been fighting cancer and passed away at her home.
She’s best-known these days for her Emmy-winning role as Dorothy Zbornak, the younger half of television’s most stomach-churning parent-child relationship. But I actually prefer watching her on Maude, the Norman Lear sitcom that ran from 1972 to 1978. Maude, played by Arthur, was a no-nonsense liberal that supported abortion, racial equality, and tolerance, even though she usually came across as noisy and over-opinionated. (Maude was a spin-off of All In The Family, but was a lot less annoying to watch.) My favorite episode is the one where she hosts a children’s birthday party, but there’s many, many good episodes. It used to be on TV Land and according to Wikipedia isn’t anymore; also, though it ran for six seasons, only the first is around on DVD.
People are really into this Susan Boyle thing, huh? She has over a million Facebook fans, including half the people I know, ranging from my raging party friends to my fourteen-year old cousin. People like her. (I first heard about her on the feminist blogs, oddly, though even the gay porn ones are really into her.)
Anyway. It’s nice and all. What’s also nice, speaking of inspirational things we can pick up from reality television, is Linda Andrews, who last month won Denmark’s X Factor. In addition to having a very nice voice–which she does–she’s a) thirty-five and b) curvy. Imagine that ever happening in the US. Behold, as Linda sings Natasha Bedingfield’s stupidly likable Unwritten:
(X Factor is basically an Idol show, but it’s sort of complicated because people have mentors and individuals compete against groups. Or something. All I know is the groups were all very, very bad and the bald judge is kind of foxy.)
I like to sometimes watch Idol shows from other countries, because I like to watch people sing and because people everywhere else are so much less inclined to sing stupid Bryan Adams songs than Americans are. After the jump, other highlights from the season:
Some feminists are all up in arms about the new campaign for the Wilkinson Sword, which uses a moderately snappy jingle to get ladies to shave their pubes:
Last night was the series finale of Life On Mars, the only TV show I’ve cared about at all since the beginning of Veronica Mars. If you never saw it you were missing out and I suggest you run over to abc.com to catch the past few episodes while they’re still up.
I missed a couple towards the end, with the Chicago trip and all, so I only just watched the episode Coffee Tea Or Annie? It’s amazing. A dead flight attendant that looks just like Annie, the lady-cop played by Gretchen Mol; swingers; fake moustaches; Gina Gershon, campy as ever, and the guy from Perfect Strangers that wasn’t Balki. This may be one of my favorite hours of television ever, right beside the silent Gentlemen episode of Buffy and the cautionary raving episode of Touched By An Angel.
Some screencaps of dreamy Jason O’Mara, with and without fake moustache, after the jump. For those who don’t know, he plays a cop who wakes up one day to find that all of a sudden it’s 1973. I have a ridiculous hosewifey crush on this character (and, actually, on 1973.) The costumes, music, and facial hair are all extraordinary, and Michael Imperioli and Harvey Keitel are excellent at making you care about their drunk, violent, women-hating characters. Gretchen Mol is also fantastic as Annie, the semi-liberated lady-cop. I hope that whoever wrote this show goes on to something else soon.
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Things I never thought I’d see but did see today:
1. A Magnetic Fields song in a Puma ad.
I’m not sure how I feel about the female vocalist singing the line about the pretty boy in his underwear, but really, this ad is pretty cool, even if I can’t really wrap my head around the concept of light-injected footwear.
[via Wooster Collective]
