“It was a story about America. And the fact that people were drawn into the song as a result of symbols that I chose to use, was the reason I chose to use those symbols in the first place.”
~Don McLean
Watch THIS
It’s a little campy, I understand… but just think about it.
And the TEXT VERSION
“I find very few people are scary… once they’ve been poked in the eye.”
~Dr. Temperance Brennan, Bones (1×19)
From Timon of Athens by Shakespeare:
Painter: “Y’are a dog.”
Apemantus: “Thy mother’s of my generation. What’s she, if I be a dog?”
Even Shakespeare was all about the ‘Your mom’ jokes.
Buy it, use it, break it, fix it,
Crash it, change it, melt – upgrade it,
Charge it, point it, zoom it, press it,
Snap it, work it, quick – erase it,
Write it, cut it, paste it, save it,
Load it, check it, quick – rewrite it,
Plug it, play it, burn it, rip it,
Drag and drop it, zip – unzip it,
Lock it, fill it, call it, find it,
View it, code it, jam – unlock it,
Surf it, scroll it, pause it, click it,
Cross it, crack it, twitch – update it,
Name it, read it, tune it, print it,
Scan it, send it, fax – rename it,
Touch it, bring it, pay it, watch it,
Turn it, leave it, stop – format it.
Barry just got hit with the ball on his way to second… even other major league baseball players don’t like him.
I am still hoping for him to hit 756 and on his way around the bases break his ankle so he can’t reach home so doesn’t actually get credit for it… That my friends would make me happy.
Just a thought. Good night.
Is it really wrong to not want equal rights? The gay community is fighting for it and I don’t think it is what we need. Look at the civil rights movement for black people. It has only made every black person more of a stereotype than a person. If a good deed is done for a black person, the ‘do gooder’ is heralded as a hero for doing something nice for a minority. If a black person ever does anything bad against anyone, it is shrugged off because ‘that’s what black people do’. Our country deals with every single person who is not white, religious, straight and every other characteristic of the ‘true American’ the same way – they fuck with us until we stop caring and then they go one to the next victim.
Let my neighbors go on hating me… let the government go on despising me… let my co-workers go on not accepting me. I’ve made it this far and on and on I will go.
In closing I leave with these few thoughts:
~ Fuck you NAACP
~ Fuck you who whine about pointless shit but do nothing to fix it
~ Fuck you who only fight because it makes you look like a better person
~ Fuck you who can’t just let people be.
Ta!
~C
DALLAS, Texas (AP) — Over the weekend, 7-Eleven Inc. turned a dozen stores into Kwik-E-Marts, the fictional convenience stores of “The Simpsons” fame, in the latest example of marketers making life imitate art.
A Dallas, Texas, 7-Eleven has temporarily become a Kwik-E-Mart as a tie-in to “The Simpsons Movie.”
Those stores and most of the 6,000-plus other 7-Elevens in North America will sell items that until now existed only on television: Buzz Cola, KrustyO’s cereal and Squishees, the slushy drink knockoff of Slurpees.
It’s all part of a campaign to hype the July 27 opening of “The Simpsons Movie,” the big-screen debut for the long-running television cartoon, which loves to lampoon 7-Eleven as a store that sells all kinds of unhealthy snacks and is run by a man with a thick Indian accent.
For 20th Century Fox Film Corp. and Homer’s creators at Gracie Films, the stunt is a cheap way to call attention to their movie, since 7-Eleven is bearing all the costs, which executives of the retail chain put at somewhere in the single millions.
At 7-Eleven, they’re hoping it shows the ubiquitous chain has a trait seen in few corporations — the ability to laugh at themselves. 
See a Seattle 7-Eleven decked out in Kwik-E-Mart finery »
“We thought if you really want to do something different, the idea of actually changing stores into Kwik-E-Marts was over the top but a natural,” said Bobbi Merkel, an executive for 7-Eleven’s advertising agency, FreshWorks, a unit of Omnicom Group Inc. “It shows they get the joke.”
The monthlong promotion has been rumored a long time — it’s hard to keep a secret known by so many suppliers and franchisees — but 7-Eleven managed to keep the locations of the stores quiet until early Sunday morning. That’s when the exteriors of 11 U.S. stores and one in Canada were flocked in industrial foam and given new signs to replicate the animated look of Kwik-E-Marts.
The U.S. locations where a 7-Eleven store was transformed into a “Simpsons” Kwik-E-Mart are New York City; Chicago, Illinois; Dallas, Texas; Denver, Colorado; Burbank, California; Los Angeles, California; Henderson, Nevada; Orlando, Florida; Mountain View, California; Seattle, Washington; and Bladensburg, Maryland.
The idea grew out of conversations between Fox and 7-Eleven’s advertising agency.
“We wanted to make sure the movie stands out as a true cultural event this summer,” said Lisa Licht, a marketing vice president at Fox. “It has to stand out from other summer movies and TV shows.”
The Fox/7-Eleven deal is an example of a practice called reverse product placement. Instead of just putting products prominently in a movie or TV show, fake goods move from the screen to reality.
In some cases, 7-Eleven has contracted with manufacturers of similar products to make their Kwik-E-Mart counterparts. Malt-O-Meal, the Northfield, Minnesota, cereal maker, will conjure up a recipe for KrustyO’s, for example. In others, existing products will simply be renamed. One flavor of 7-Eleven’s own Slurpee will be sold as “WooHoo! Blue Vanilla” Squishee for the month.
Other recent examples of reverse product placement include Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans, which spun out of the Harry Potter books and movies, and Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. restaurants, which opened after the movie “Forrest Gump.” 7-Eleven has done other movie-themed promotions, including one this spring for the latest Spiderman installment.
After Fox pitched a 7-Eleven tie-in last year, representatives from the studio, the stores and Gracie Films — including Simpsons creator Matt Groening and executive producer James L. Brooks, met in Los Angeles to kick around ideas. Brooks added one — holding a contest to let one fan be drawn into a future episode of the TV show.
7-Eleven executives loved the idea. They had surveys showing a strong overlap between their customers and fans of the show — both tend to be young and male. It sounded like cash registers ringing.
“They’ve been looking at Squishees and KrustyO’s and Buzz Cola for years and have never been able to put their hands on it,” said Merkel, the advertising executive.
But they won’t find Duff beer, the brand chugged by Homer Simpson. The movie will be rated PG-13, and selling a Simpson-themed beer “didn’t seem to fit,” said Rita Bargerhuff, a 7-Eleven marketing executive. “That was a tough call, but we want to make sure it’s considered good, responsible fun.”
Bargerhuff predicted extra sales to Simpsons fans will more than offset the cost of the promotion and create new customers for the chain. She also said the chain is prepared for crowds and will have extra security and clerks at the Kwik-E-Marts.
The promotion, however, is not risk-free. The proprietor of Kwik-E-Mart is a man named Apu who speaks in a heavy Indian accent. He is based on a manager Groening encountered while shopping at a 7-Eleven in Los Angeles nearly 20 years ago and plays to stereotypes about convenience-store operators and Asian immigrants.
Many of 7-Eleven’s franchisees are Indian, company officials say, although they say they don’t track exact numbers. Bargerhuff said they were “overwhelmingly positive” after hearing of the Kwik-E-Mart idea, but “it was not a 100 percent endorsement.”
“There was definitely a concern of offending people,” she said. “But they seemed to understand that ‘The Simpsons’ makes fun of everybody. The vast majority saw this as a great opportunity.”
That’s the case for Kumar Assandas, a 28-year-old franchisee whose parents immigrated from India. His store in suburban Las Vegas is one of the temporary Kwik-E-Marts.
“I know it’s a stereotype, but it doesn’t bother me. Everybody knows it’s a joke,” Assandas said. “I’m a big ‘Simpsons’ fan myself, and maybe subconsciously it even inspired me to become a 7-Eleven owner.”
“I’d hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.”
~Hunter S. Thompson
I try to not pay too much attention to commercial advertising however sometimes you just can’t escape it. However…have you realized how much of advertising is auto related? During my hour of TV a night…the amount of car commercials I saw during The Daily Show/Colbert Report hour was unreal. The last set of commercials were: Toyota, Progressive Auto Insurance, Chevy, Vehix (apparently the only company that has the JD Power and Associates ratings…although I’d think you could get them directly from JD Power…but whatever) and the Shell gasoline.
Yet one more reason that America is on the VERY quick slide downwards…
Listening to Prince is worse than nails down a chalkboard…why is he back?
