Natalie Wood tv commercial c. 1981

Are you a bright man?

via "Breaking copy: a better blog about copywriting"


Apparently some people still visit here sometimes. As you may have noticed, I rarely post here nowadays. Generally if I have anything to post I do that at Dead Horse.

Cinzano ads from the 80s

Pay attention to the stewardess in the last ad; fans of the 2nd Star Trek TV show ought to recognize her, without needing to read my mind or nothin'.

Consumer culture as a balm against reality, now in Hebrew

According to Noam at the Promised Land blog , the tagline of this Cellcom ad is “What do we all want? Some fun, that’s all”.

as Anya Achtenberg wrote in the comments there:

I wanted to find a shred of hope in this absurd commercial — the possibility of a communal game, Palestinians and Israeli Jews. Absurd. What is on the other side of the wall is meant to be hidden. Some sort of animals the IDF must keep in line. Playful at the moment. But still animals to be hidden, disappeared, kept behind a wall. A wall? A concrete monstrosity.

via Helena Cobban, who notes one commenter's view that the ad

"was most likely conceived and designed by high-ups in the advertising company-- and that they would have designed it to appeal to the broadest possible zeitgeist in (Jewish) Israeli society".

In other words, it wasn't calculated to shock Israelis, the presumption being most are OK with the wall. She also has a piece at the Boston Review on the decline of the Israeli peace movement, which she also discusses in her blog, in which she argues that in the past 10-15 years a lot of moderate to dovish Israelis have simply left Israel. She doesn't explicitly spell out the demographic consequence, nor does she see it as a principal cause(it was left out of the BR piece by the editors), but the meaning is clear.


Cobban:

How far has the peace movement fallen? One benchmark for comparison is the war that Sharon and former Prime Minister Menachem Begin launched against the PLO in Lebanon in 1982. In September of that year, Lebanese Falangists, operating (as Ari Folman’s brilliant film Waltz with Bashir reminds us) with extensive support from the Israeli military, undertook a two-day massacre in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis—as much as 20 percent of the population at the time—took to the streets in outrage, forcing the government to establish the Kahan Commission, which recommended serious sanctions for Sharon.
By contrast, pollsters found that 94 percent of Jewish Israelis supported the recent war in Gaza. Veteran peace activist Daphna Golan, who teaches human rights law at Hebrew University, recalled the anguish and isolation she felt during the Gaza war, especially in the face of widespread pro-war activism among Hebrew University students. Golan said university authorities did not respond to her complaints about posters she described as “extremely racist” hung at the entrance of the Givat Ram campus.

N.B. For some reason I had difficulty accessing the BR article directly through the linked URL, as it seemed their server was rejecting the hyperlink. So I had to go to their homepage, where the article, "Peace Out" is currently listed, although you can probably use their in-site search window if need be. Anyway it's worth reading, and if you have difficulty like I did the URL is here:

http://www.bostonreview.net/BR34.4/cobban.php

http://www.bostonreview.net/

cross-posted at Dead Horse.

brainteasers: Klondike Bar©

Because I'm always trying to improve my happy brain. (I don't know why these guys didn't win the Klondike Bar© video contest.)

banned by the bbc

Possibly you've heard about how the BBC refused to air an ad by a UK-based relief agency asking for help for people in Gaza. (Ordinarily you might call them refugees, except they're blockaded as well being bombed, so they have no place to go.) The BBC discusses it briefly, here. Video link above courtesy Wampum, via Jay Taber.

cross-posted at Dead Horse.

Happy birthday Bibendum

according to our wiki friends, Michelin commissioned artist Marius Rossillon to create Bibendum in 1898, so he turns 110 this year. Here are some older iterations. I've been told by some I resemble the Michelin man, but the less said about that the better, at least for this Wednesday evening.

Election 1960-- more from the internet archive

The original link is here.

Rachael Ray hates you for your freedom

She also feels you are insufficiently perky. Have you heard about this? I hate to admit I find it amusing, just as I find it amusing that some people want to have a boycott because they caved to the crazies. Who cares about wars and secret prisons and the pump and dump of the mortgage market? Let's boycott Dunkin' Donuts! (Actually I'm already boycotting Dunkin' Donuts, but just because I'm too damn fat.)

remember this?

"greetings from Kabul"(and an Iraqdoc update)

photo courtesy irwfp.org

No, I'm not in Kabul, but presumably our friend Mr. Karzai is. I've included the above image because I'm using it in a short film I'm working on, which I mean to post on youtube in a few days, mainly to refresh and maybe improve my fallow and primitive video editing skills.(I removed the caption for a wee bit of suspense.)


I'm not soliciting funds for the Iraqdoc project right now, because if you sent me money presently I'd use it to pay for niceties like food and dsl. Fortunately I've got rent and electricity covered, so I'd say others have it far more dire than I do, and I expect to actually make some money in the 3-dimensional world in December.

Anyway: at present I plan to go to Syria in March 2008, for 6 to 10 days, to cover the Iraqi diaspora. Then if I can raise funds when I come back I would go back in May for 2-3 weeks, going to Jordan and Lebanon, or to Iraq if it appears funds and conditions allow it. Or maybe in the opposite order, as far as the 1st three countries go: to Lebanon and Jordan in March, then to Syria and maybe Iraq in May.

I've come to the conclusion that one of the things I need to do in order to realize these projects is to post some short films on the internet, so that I can demonstrate my editing skills, video and audio mixing, plus my ability to weave together a coherent and compelling narrative.

Gnooze?

1971 Matador ad

automotivechronicles.com