NYC as a Stand-In for DC (or, Is AT&T Even TRYING Anymore?)

There's a full-page ad AT&T Wireless ad in Sunday's Washington Post (page A7) -- the tag line says "D.C., we've got you covered. We've added 112 new cell cites in the D.C./Baltimore metro area over the past two years and it shows."

So AT&T, what you're saying is that you had two years to think about this ad, and yet you couldn't come up with a better photo for the DC market than a clearly-identifiable midtown-Manhattan street scene?

How do we know it's NYC and not DC? After a careful, pixel-by-pixel forensic image analysis:

1. You can see a 7th Avenue street sign in the background.

2. There's a great big fucking iconic New York City yellow cab in the midground, complete with rooftop advertising hump and the meter rate on the door panel.

Okay, fine, DC has some yellow taxis. And maybe that's just a cab company logo, not a rate panel. But here's the clincher...

3. DC does not have NYC-style streetside newsstands.

Q.E.D.

Now, I don't care about the whole "pandering to the D.C. inferiority complex"-thing -- I live in the Virginia suburbs, what do I know? But New York images are so pervasive (thanks to the efforts of New Yorkers trying to convince the world that it revolves around NYC), trying to pass them off as generic cityscapes is just stupid. Not to mention lazy.

Now, who can tell us the cross-street in the photo?

Scabs and The Family Sack

Two items from today's Washington Post:

* A newspaper ad from Safeway -- "Now accepting applications for temporary employees in preparation for a possible labor dispute":

Legal workers only. That's a relief.

Note that I have no knowledge of this particular labor dispute, so I make no judgments as to the nature of greedy, soulless corporations vs. greedy, corrupt unions -- I just hadn't seen an ad for strikebreakers/temporary workers before.

Also, note that I am not considering applying at this juncture, as I am currently consulting right now. For realz.

* An ad insert for the Frito-Lay Family Sack:

I can't be the only person to think that "family sack" invokes a completely meaning. (And I'm not.) Nards.

Tags: family sack

Blogging My Way to Shamrockfest

I'd slept on getting tickets to this year's Shamrockfest, which is this Saturday. I had a line on some passes, though that fell through (procrastination on my part). So I was preparing to buy them online, either by going to the site and eating the Ticketbastard fees, or by trolling through DC Craigslist (neither of which I was looking forward to).

Then I got an e-mail. It was from the local PR agency that's doing publicity for the 'fest, offering media credentials to various DC bloggers and media types to cover the event.

At first, I was annoyed --when you do PR outreach e-mails, you're not supposed to blast out uncustomized boilerplate (especially if you're trying to reach bloggers, who are a notoriously touchy bunch), and you're especially not supposed to forget to use BCC (though it was somewhat gratifying to see my name on a list that included the City Desk, DCist, MetBlogs, and a bunch of individual blogs with a far greater readership than my own).

Presumably, someone had done a Technorati or other blog search and saw my Shamrockfest blog entry from last year (though I note that I know of several other DC bloggers who also blogged it last year but didn't make the cut, at least in this e-mail).

Anyway, I admit it -- I'm a cheap date. It's not a SXSW junket or anything, but I was going to go and most likely do a recap entry, anyway, so what the heck. You got me -- call this a full disclosure. Media creds, here I come.

Now, I'm probably not going to try to finagle backstage access to interview talent -- it's not my beat (kids today with their crazy music). I haven't yet seen anyone blogging about going on a media pass (or maybe I'm the only person gauche enough to mention it), but if you're a blogger interested in getting media creds of your own, you'll probably want to check out this entry: Shamrockfest -- Calling All Bloggers.

Maybe there is something to this blogging thing, after all.

Unfortunately, the weather for Saturday is looking a little dodgy -- cold, dreary, and at the very least, moist.

What's more, most of the authentic Irish-from-Ireland crowd are probably going to be occupied with the rugby triple-header (including the England vs. Ireland match -- always a crowd-pleaser).

But then, what do the real Irish know about St. Patrick's Day in America, anyway?

Tags: shamrockfest

Your Hair-Covered, Meat-Powered Mansuit

I found this soap marked "Discontinued -- 50% off" at the supermarket today. It's Dial for Men, which is evidently a very manly soap -- so much so that it states: "Your hair-covered, meat-powered mansuit will be clean, smooth, and fresh all day."

Manly micro-scrubbers consist of ground glass and broken dreams.

Naturally, I had to buy it.

I vaguely recall they used the same stupid line in a TV ad campaign. People: It's soap -- rendered animal fat, lye, and perfume.

If they want to do a truly manly soap, they should probably just sell sodium hydroxide for application directly to the skin.

Tags: dial for men, mansuit

Super Bowl XLII: Great Game, Lousy Commercials

At the Super Bowl viewing party I was at, pro-underdog and anti-Boston sentiment was in full effect. Outside of a smattering of Patriot fans (and not counting those with a strictly financial stake in the matter), most of us were pulling for the Giants.

It was probably the best game I can recall in recent memory -- looking at previous Super Bowls, I see that New England has had more than its fair share of 3-point margin games, though they've usually been on the other side of things.

As to the commercials (for which MySpace was the official online partner, though AOL's page is still good) -- the best were okay -- mostly for fizzy, sweetened, or alcoholic drinks -- the worst were horrible, and the rest were bleh:

* Sales Leads Are for Closers! They could be peddling the Glengarry leads for all I know, but those horrible, horrible animated Sales Genie "100 free sales leads" commercials inexplicably employed unfunny, edge-of-racist ethnic stereotypes for no apparent reason.

And the fact that there were two of them gave me a horrifying flashback to the worst of the dotcom bubble 1.0's burn rate excesses.

* For Your Next Supercar Purchase: The Godfather parody ad for the Audi R8 was okay (though they might as well have gone the whole way and done a shot-for-shot remake) -- but it was for a US$100,000+ supercar. Yes, yes: Halo effect and all that. But come on.

* Women Loved Temple of Doom, Right? Careerbuilder chose poorly with the gruesome images of the heart jumping out, Alien-like, from the woman's chest. I felt like shouting, "Indy, cover your heart!"

* Guilty Pleasures: With shame, I have to say that I liked the Tide talking stain (the nonsense syllables put it over the edge for me), and people (I'm not saying I was one of them) did laugh at the commercial for the Adam Sandler movie. Though it's still not enough to make me want to go see an Adam Sandler movie.

* Last Words: Overheard outside a Harris Teeter after the game: "There's no difference between a foreigner and someone who just doesn't watch football."

Tags: super bowl XLII

You, With the Blog: You Are Irrelevant. Also, Mahalo Multiprofiles and More

Surefire way to get buckets of virtual ink -- tell bloggers that they aren't worth the bother, just like Target did, following that silly little dust-up about the ad photo with the broad's crotch in the bulls-eye. (Oh, noes! The center of a splayed human figure is the naval/crotchal area! Why didn't someone tell us this before?! )

Of course, this is not to say that Target isn't being stupid and shortsighted here in its broad-brushed dismissal (almost typed "dismal," heh) of blogs. They are, and I sense a upcoming press release with a new social engagement strategy. But I always get amused at the self-interested, self-important, navel-gazing, breast-beating of the PR-o-sphere when someone does not chug the entire tub of social media kool aid. (Note: Other than a quick peek at TechMeme, I am just making assumptions based on past behaviors. Actual breast-beating content may vary.)

Can we fast-forward to social media as a mature technology already, so people can focus on doing stuff, instead of hearing people talk about it?

Actually, most people are already focusing on doing stuff, even if it's just adding annoying blinky sparkly things to their MySpace pages, so I wonder just who it is that the influencers are influencing.

Mahalo Social Multiprofiles: Possibly Un-useless?

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Spiritually related to my previous post seeking a social profile status aggregator (at Greggie's suggestion, I'm trying TwitterSync, which addresses two of the bigger parts of the problem -- Facebook and Twitter), Jason Calacanis posts today about multiprofiles in Mahalo Social, which tries to aggregate the viewing and management of your many and evermultiplying social profiles and pages using proven Web 2.0 HTML 3.x technology: Frames.

Now, there are already profile mashup services out there -- I have a profile on Profilactic that pulls from my blog RSS, Flickr, and a few other sources. But this is a technology I can really understand. None of this mashed-up, APIed, Open this or that. Just... Frames. It's simple enough that it may actually work (barring any frame-breakout stuff, but what I've seen seems to work) -- I will have to give it a try.

(Also, I see that the blog's comments, which require an e-mail validation, appear to publish a placeholder comment ["An e-mail has been sent to confirm your e-mail address. Click on the link within the e-mail to activate your comment!"] to the comment thread, instead of just relying on a confirmation message. That's actually pretty clever, as a very visible way to get people to realize that they need to do one more thing -- it was a problem I saw in the AIM Social Media Blog, which was also powered by Blogsmith, but didn't have that feature at that time. Edit: Hrm, it may be an artifact created by wiseacre or idiot commenters -- I can't tell. It would still be a useful prompt if you require e-mail validation.)

Another Bloggy Bit

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Brief blog bit in passing -- I cruise by the About.com DC page as part of my local links, mostly out of habit. I can't remember the last time I heard anyone talk about them, but their continued existence speaks to... continued existence.

Anyway, the DC page seems to be bloggier than it was before. I'm not sure if it's a recently updated design or something that's been around for a while that I never noticed. I didn't see any notes of it in the sparse comments or forum posts, so I will ping the maintainer, just to see if I am losing what remains of my mind.

Enough of all that Cal

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Anyway, now, I should go deposit my final severance check (which is probably the most fruitful thing I will do all day), buy a vernier caliper, and get a cup of coffee. Then, bowling, which means I will miss Social Matchbox, though bowling in this league is another form of networking (no shit).

Tags: target, about.com, crotchal area, pr-o-sphere, mahalo, multiprofiles, blogsmith, comment moderation, profile aggregation

I Have Boring Teeth and Gums

At least, that's what my dentist and dental hygienist both said at my checkup today.

Other notes from in and around the dentist's chair:

* Things Are Looking Up: Some thoughtful pharmaceutical reps had apparently positioned an ad for antibiotics on the ceiling:

The ad is for minocycline, which is also used in treating anthrax, cholera, bubonic plague, gonhorrea, and syphillis. So it took them a while to get to periodontal infection.

The drug ad is addition to the normal, placid scenic vistas (mountain lakes and such), though I prefer watching in the laminated reflection as the hygienist works.

* Speaking of Vistas: The office features shiny new Dell laptops in each of the work spaces, replacing the desktop machines that they'd previously used to chart notes and enter charges and such in their dental practice management software.

Apparently, the system had hosed itself yesterday and they were just getting it back up -- they couldn't schedule new appointments and were also going to have to re-enter a lot of data.

The operating system? Vista.

Not knowing the intricacies of their system, I will just point out the obvious scapegoat.

* Your Groove, I Do Deeply Dig: Since they were a little stacked up, I had to wait longer than normal, so I got to hear more of WASH FM than I usually do. Groove Is in the Heart was playing when I was in the waiting room, and while I was in the chair, there was Sweet Caroline (oh oh oh).

* Swish and Spit, or Suction? Lastly, when it comes to rinsing, I still prefer the "swish and spit" setup, with the swirly bowl drain next to the chair, instead of the suction tube that everyone uses today. I guess I'm a traditionalist, but it was a cleaner rinse, and you didn't have a suction tube sticking to your tongue or threatening to suck your breath out.

Tags: minocycline, dentist

Nuke the Whopper Freakouts -- It's the Only Way to Be Sure

Consider this an early New Year's Resolution -- after extensive thought and through analysis, I have come to the conclusion that every "actual customer" who was upset by the purported discontinuation of the Whopper sandwich needs to be beaten thoroughly about the head and neck. And I'm volunteering.

Furthermore, anyone who was stupid and/or fame-seeking enough to actually sign the release to appear in the Burger King Whopper Freakout commercial needs to be stopped. By any means necessary.

Stop the Whopper Freakout.

Sure, we all have our tastes and preferences, but if a fast-food chain hamburger means that much to you, you need to be put down with extreme prejudice.

While this may be a master stroke in quasi-viral marketing, I can't watch, or even listen to the commercial, lest I get overwhelmed with rage and disgust.

On a side note, I see that the fake manager of the store is Regan Burns, formerly the host of the game show Oblivious ("The game show you don't even know you're on!"). Guess he doesn't mind getting typecast in hidden camera shows.

I actually kind of liked Oblivious, not least of all because their gimmick allowed them to pay out what was probably the smallest cash prizes out of any game show, ever.

Looking at Mr. Burns' IMDB entry, I see he was also involved in Fox News' alleged news-comedy show, The 1/2 Hour News Hour, so he must be used to projects that aren't funny and inspire loathing. Though I understand that an acting gig is an acting gig.

Tags: whopper freakout, burger king, regan burns, oblivious