Something got lost in translation...

...when they made this Teletubby zentai.

For the purposes of comparison:

Best. Name. Ever.

Detective Michelle Paxson is a newish recurring character in the third season of the mediocre spy show Burn Notice. 

What rocks my world is that the name of the actor who plays her is Moon Goodblood.

It's like an aggressively feminist name for menstruation.  What a name.

Moon Goodblood.

Someone give this woman a starring role in a movie. I want to see that on a poster in a really large font.

Mattel superverts "Barbie Girl"

Logically speaking 'supervert' would be the opposite of 'subvert', and Mattel is a master at it.

Do you remember the song "Barbie Girl" by Aqua?

Do you remember how Mattel tried very hard to sue for copyright infringement (and failed because the song is a parody and so "fair use").

And yet today, over ten years later, I saw a TV advertisement for a barbie doll with hair you can style that used the distinctive hook from the song.

And that's not all, look at this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u-bWHFDf6M

I guess money always wins in the end?

See also:
Barbie Girl embraced by Mattel
Years Later, Mattel Embraces ‘Barbie Girl’

He Said What?

"Was the sex tape a seminal moment, in changing your life...." (ET Reporter to Paris Hilton)

Insurance ad rant...

The dulcet spokesperson intones... "You might be surprised to learn that most people who change to State insurance save money..." Most insurance companies run advertising along the same lines. People who swap to their coverage save money, no matter which company they change from or to.

This really is not surprising.

Presumably all insurance companies have subtle differences so that each of them offer the best deal for certain types of people seeking certain kinds of coverage. And most people who change insurance companies will tend to choose the cheapest deal they are aware of that meets their needs.

Ergo most people changing from any company to any other company will save money--especially during a recession when they may also be reducing coverage.

So no, I am not surprised.

Just how stupid do the boffins at State et al think we are?

The price of beauty

I was falling a sleep when I heard a late-night TV advertisement for Latisse, a drug to lengthen and darken eyelashes. At first I thought I must have misheard. Does this seem like a good idea to you.

Latisse, unlike many beauty drugs, does seem to work but:

* Nobody knows its mechanism of action (as stated here)
* Its known side effects are that it can cause eye swelling, and brown coloration of eyelids that is (probably) reversable and brown color change or the iris of the eye which is not reversible.

No, don't get me wrong, I think people with various disorders and complaint causing hair loss could benefit. Yes, Latisse is FDA approved but this does not mean it 100% safe, it means that it can help with a disease or disorder. The Latisse site says: "LATISSE™ is an FDA-approved prescription treatment for hypotrichosis used to grow eyelashes, making them longer, thicker and darker. Hypotrichosis is another name for having inadequate or not enough eyelashes."

But the advertisement I saw was clearly aimed at encouraging purely cosmetic use by people with normal but not enormous, eyelashes--not people with a disorder effecting their eyelash appearance. Unless anyone is suggesting Brooke Shields had hypotrichosis and beauty maven Anastasia is an expert in diagnosing this condition? Who would risk an unknown drug with weird side effects when the same effect can be produced with mascara? And is it responsible to run an expensive ad campaign encouraging them to take a prescription medication instead?

The FDA clearly has in mind that this drug be used to compensate for deficits in eyebrow appearance caused by a medical condition. Anastasia seems to have something rather less humanitarian in mind when she urges women: "If you're not happy with the lashes you were born with — and let's face it, many of us aren't — LATISSE™ is a great option that delivers real results."

The message is: want more, get more, imitate celebrities, follow the prescription advice celebrity beauticians, give us your money, take drugs you don't understand, hope you don't get sick. Only beauty is important. I am not at all surprise to see this is brought to us by Allergan, makers of Botox, wrinkle-filling injections and fake boobs. All of which have reconstructive surgey uses, but I doubt that is where the "real" money is made.

Ax Men

I like the shows on the History channel about crab fishermen, the ice road trucker series was not quite as good, the one about loggers is another notch down but still worth watching. There was an Ax Men marathon today, getting ready for the new series. As reality shows these ones have a higher reality to show ratio than most. The testosterone overload is all part of the fun of getting some kind of feel for who these people are and what they do. It is like the flip side of that pageant Mom show.

But History channel could you please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please refrain from playing the ad for the show where the guy goes on about how a chainsaw is like a woman 5 times in one day. 1) I am already watching a marathon session of the show and so ads seem rather a waste of time and 2) by using that staged clip repeatedly rather than any others you appear to endorse it as a network rather than just observe it as a journalist. (And 3) if I see that clip one more time I will be a live demonstration of how a woman can be a lot like a chainsaw.)

[OT] Tsunamis: Not Just Metaphor--Not a Just Metaphor

Connecting the Quiksilver brand to the Microsoft brand = dumb
Having anything to do with he phrase "economic tsunami" = horrible



Words may just be words, but you do not surf a Tsunami. An image of a surfing goods CEO surfing a tsunami is not just profoundly ignorant of surfing, it is profoundly insensitive, smug, affluent-centric and just plain naff. It may have been 4 whole years, but over 200,000 deaths should still raise the word "tsunami" above the level of glib soundbites. What next, "economic 9/11", "economic holocaust"?

[picture excerpted from an award winning picture by Arko Datta shown here]