There is a television commercial in regular rotation these days that bugs me. (That is usually the case, but let me vent a bit about the latest example). A woman is talking into her cell phone while standing in front of a wall of paintings. Some of the paintings are kitschy, some are rather surrealist so far as we can tell at our quick glance. NONE of them is abstract. Woman says, "I just love abstract art. I don't understand it, but I love it." Huh? Can someone explain this to me? I neither love this scene nor understand it. Are we supposed to regard the art behind her as her collection, which she has amassed because of this love? Or is she at a museum, and the title she gives this art is due to the curators? Were the set designers for this shot too lazy to find anything at all abstract? Or is the mismatch between words and background somehow the point of the scene? I am agog. The above image, BTW, is abstract a...
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The bettors' line usually fluctuates in the days prior to the Super Bowl, as money comes into the market first from one side then from the other. The line serves as a "price," and responds to the forces of supply and demand. The fluctuation didn't happen this year. The line was 3 pts, with the New England Patriots favored, from the start and it stayed that way right up to kick off. What lesson if any can be derived from that: I don't know. First story: ads. Scarlett Johansson in "Ghost in the Shell," an upcoming movie I had never heard of. Wild footage in the ad, though. Japanese anime thing? See images above. Later, good Buick ad. "If that's a Buick, then my kid is Cam Newton." Near the end of the first half there's a clever ad about how the "half time bathroom break is coming," so it is good to have FEBREZE around. Yuck yuck. Also, T-Mobile has a couple (more?) of spoofs of the FIFTY SHADES movie franchise. Lat...
I know that some of my readers don't really understand that the Superbowl has come and gone for another year until they read what I have to say on the subject. So this one's for you. The Broncos/Panthers matchup was widely anticipated. Neither of the two teams comes from a really huge consumer marker (no New York, Chicago, or southern California team was involved) but the comparisons were intriguing. A great offense, Carolina's, would be going head to head with a great defense, Denver's. Things went Denver's way, almost from the start, more consistently than anyone had expected. Another big item: the standout commercial in the first half was a Marilyn Monroe take on the Snickers bar series, "you're not you when you're hungry." The stand-out for the second half involved a herd of running hot dogs, and the tagline "Meet the Ketchups." The evolution of the game One much watched player: Michael Oher, the inspiration for the huma...
I'm getting pretty tired of these ads telling people to keep checking their credit score, aren't you, dear reader? Credit score hyper-consciousness seems unhealthy both economically and psychologically. It all sounds a bit like a message from a certain brand of 1950s sci-fi movie. "Keep watching the skies!" The idea that humans should keep watching the skies (for UFOs and such) was code for the real-world anxiety that Americans had to keep watching the skies for Russian bombers or, as time rolled on and the anxieties became updated, for Russian missiles. If you keep watching the skies, you may know when to "duck and cover," which will be really useful. Or ... not. And continued checking of an online service to stay up on your credit score? ... not all that useful for most people with most lifestyles most of the time.