On The Internet, It’s Always The Depression

Advertising ebbs and flows. It’s a rough science, little understood by even its practitioners. And how about us? The folks it’s aimed at?

I know you, dear reader. You think that you’re immune to advertising. All intelligent people think advertising is aimed at other, less discerning people. I used to think that. But advertising is a fire hose. That information is coming out of it under a lot of pressure. Now some people drink from that hose, some people bathe in that hose, and some people wash their clothes in that hose, and some stand clear, bemused, but they get caught in the overspray whether they like it or not. I’ll use myself as exhibit A.

I wasn’t joshing a couple of days ago when I told you I don’t watch television. I know you were suspicious of my claim, as you think I’m sorta normal and normal people watch television. Normal people say they don’t watch television – just those PBS shows. And the History Channel. Oh yes, the Oscars. And figure skating if it’s on. Of course you have to watch the news to stay informed, but that’s not watching television, of course, really; oh, and Desperate Housewives because I know it’s all nonsense but how will I know what people are wearing if …

You get the picture. But I’m that rarest of things, it’s true: I don’t watch and I don’t care I don’t watch, so I don’t lecture. People should enjoy themselves. But I get a perspective you don’t, that generally only kidnap victims… scratch that – they’re tied up, but I imagine they watch all day; I dunno- let’s say I get the perspective that millenarian cultists or Seventh Day Adventists or something get.

Anyhow, I know that “Will and Grace” exists. How can that be? Somebody told me somewhere. Now he/she might be the best or the worst advertiser in the history of the world, it depends on your perspective. Either they’re the best in the world because they’ve managed to alert people as far removed from the scene as me that “Will and Grace” exists, or they’re the worst, because busying yourself notifying persons like me that “Will and Grace” is on the TV I’m not watching is kind of a waste of time. I think. I imagine no matter what we think, the advertiser is drawing a fat six figures due to the fire hose method of getting your message out.

Look at the picture I offered. Back when people fought like tigers if two of them simultaneously found a smokable cigar butt in the street, advertising was a riot. Every available surface was covered with it. Barn roofs, sandwich boards and everything in between. And there was so much of it because it was cheap to get it out there- anybody would do anything to make a buck; and the need was there because everybody had to fight tooth and nail for economic survival. After a while, when economic conditions got less ferocious, advertising got more sophisticated and started going for certain segments of the population to maximize return, and people could be just as easily peeved by being assaulted by advertising as enticed to respond kindly.

That wall up there is the internet right now. It won’t last. You go to the average blog, and there’s a riot going on. There are 35 little ads for every durn thing, and little virtual tschotchke stands, and after you’ve surfed past the vast panorama of cajoling, and the tiny portion of stolen opinions, there’s generally a real depression touch: out and out begging. They call it a tip jar, but a tin cup is more like it. It’s 1931 on the internet, and we’re all Bill Murray waking up to the sounds of “I’ve Got You Babe” one more time.

I’ve seen the vestigal remains of hundreds of depression era “bright ideas” designed to make a couple of bucks. I drive past christmas tree farms gone to seed. Chicken coops rotting on their punky sills, producing only spider’s eggs now. I can still see the ghostly remnants of whisky ads clinging tenaciously to battered brick walls. Kudzu, anyone? When the leaves fall, I can spy a “Red Coach Grille” billboard falling to pieces out in the woods near a highway, disintegrating like a cadaver, its painted raiments falling in tatters and its offer of hospitality in a place that hasn’t existed in thirty-five years ringing hollow. It calls to me, but not in the way they first envisioned. No matter; that ad-man cashed his last check long ago. The billboard was pointed at a different highway anyway; the one I’m on is newer than the sign.

There are mighty places on the internet where many congregate. Their wake alone would swamp such as my little rowboat.

If they charged $15.00 a year to read them, they’d all be mowing my lawn.

Good Morning, America, How Are You?

Riding on the City of New Orleans,
Illinois Central Monday morning rail
Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders,
Three conductors and twenty-five sacks of mail.

All along the southbound odyssey
The train pulls out at Kankakee
Rolls along past houses, farms and fields.
Passin’ trains that have no names,
Freight yards full of old black men
And the graveyards of the rusted automobiles.

Good morning America how are you?
Don’t you know me I’m your native son,
I’m the train they call The City of New Orleans,
I’ll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done.

Dealin’ card games with the old men in the club car.
Penny a point ain’t no one keepin’ score.
Pass the paper bag that holds the bottle
Feel the wheels rumblin’ ‘neath the floor.
And the sons of pullman porters
And the sons of engineers
Ride their father’s magic carpets made of steel.
Mothers with their babes asleep,
Are rockin’ to the gentle beat
And the rhythm of the rails is all they feel.
Nighttime on The City of New Orleans,
Changing cars in Memphis, Tennessee.
Half way home, we’ll be there by morning
Through the Mississippi darkness Rolling down to the sea.

And all the towns and people seem To fade into a bad dream
And the steel rails still ain’t heard the news.
The conductor sings his song again,
The passengers will please refrain
This train’s got the disappearing railroad blues.

Good night, America, how are you?
Don’t you know me I’m your native son,
I’m the train they call The City of New Orleans,
I’ll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done.

lyrics: The City of New Orleans by Steve Goodman ©1970, 1971 EMI U Catalogue, Inc and Turnpike Tom Music (ASCAP)

Deoohaorr

We went walking in Newport Rhode Island yesterday. It rained pretty good for the greater part of it, and it’s a testament to the charm of the place and our hunger to leave our premises that we spent all afternoon there.

Grandma had kidnapped the larger one, so we had to amuse only the three year old. That’s simpler, but more energetic. He wants to see things. Almost anything. But there’s a crisp definition of where you must not go to see interesting things: inside. So we saw many things throught the lens of intermittent rain.

Newport is an old city, and mostly made of wood, so I like it greatly. It has that nobility of utility too; people still live and work in what look like museums elsewhere. And the museums look like houses.

There was a magnificent life-size statue of George Washington on a five foot pedestal in front of the old library, a magnificent Palladian temple. There are two truly enormous trees standing athwart the spot, and they make a fantastic sort of bower for George to stand in, and the library behind. George made my little boy nervous.

He ran to the sidewalk, hid behind the enormous bole of one of the trees, and peered at George like he was some sort of wraith. He’s seen George many times of course, in different settings, but this iteration had him spooked.

It’s harder to make the big brother laugh now than the little one. Bad jokes require a punchline to get a rise out of him. You can’t just mugg at him anymore. But the little one’s still easy.

Let this serve as a declaration and confession to the citizens of and the visitors to Newport: I was the guy seen repeatedly sneaking up ninja-style on a statue of George Washington in broad daylight, reaching out a trembling forefinger to touch the toe of George’s bronze boot, and running away willy-nilly in a vaguely serpentine fashion while a very intimate crowd of small children and pretty women laughed at me.

Then that boy looked across the street, and I was yesterday’s newspapers. Like an oasis in the desert, a little shop that had dozens of miniature houses on display in the window appeared.

I’ve walked big dogs that have got a notion to get in motion all of a sudden, and they’ve got nothing on a three year old that wants to get across the street in a hurry. The dog doesn’t know how to turn his arm inside out to break your wrist and escape; the dog just puts all of his pounds to pulling. A three year old is a wily adversary.

Anyhow, we escaped calamity and made it across the street, and that boy looked in that window for ten minutes by the clock. He was like an astronomer discovering worlds. It was gloriously closed, to spare us the spectre of him traveling the length and breadth of it like Godzilla, and if they send me a bill for removing all the noseprints from the glass, including the larger ones up high, I will pay it gladly in exchange for the pleasure we had watching our son pick out his favorite one, the one with the little version of our own front entryway, and say in his little voice: “Deooharr!”

Why settle for one syllable, when you can make a whole sentence out of it?

How The Other 1% Lives

A Jehovah’s Witness came to my house yesterday. Two, actually; a man and his wife. They don’t remember, but they walked up my driveway over ten years ago when I was building my house. It took me a long time to get rid of them last time, as I had no door to close, just a hole where it would be placed when it arrived. And if you’ve ever attended Catholic school, you know that you are forever incapable of brusqueness towards much of anybody. Kinda funny, when you think about it; nuns taught me to be so unfailingly polite that I stand there listening to a spiel about another religion. Well, not listening exactly; waiting.

Anyway, I knew exactly how to get rid of them this time. They asked me a question about something or other topical, and I mentioned to them that I have no television. They gave one another knowing looks and fled. When Jehovah’s Witnesses think you’re an odd waste of time, you’ve accomplished something heroic, as I see it.

I know, you don’t see it that way. You figure I’m normal and I lied. But it’s the truth. I’ve seen about twenty five hours of television in the last calendar year.

Did you flee when you read that? There’s only two explanations if you stuck around:

1. You’re one of these “Kill Your Television” types, always lecturing how the “them” sucks your minds out through the tube and yokes you to their hellish vision of mindless consumerism shackled to the death machine of the government. You spray-paint slogans on highway abutments to signal your displeasure and alarm the populace, who disappoint you by becoming alarmed only by the prevalence of graffiti, but keep watching Survivor and buying elaborate station wagons. If you’re one of these types, I guarantee you you watch a lot more television than I do. Your hatred of television is the hatred of the “stop me before I kill again” variety. We’re all supposed to stop because you can’t. Me? I just don’t watch.
2. You want to look at the weirdo that doesn’t watch television and try to pick up subtle clues about what sort of blunt trauma I suffered and maybe learn what sorts of activities to avoid, that I favor, that will safeguard you from missing figure skating or lively talk shows or effeminate furniture re-arrangers or whatever.

Well, I’m unable to help either subset, because I don’t watch television because I really don’t care what’s on it. That’s it. There’s no deeper meaning here, and I’m not giving a lecture about it. I don’t like guacamole, either, as it has those mushy green things in it, what do you call them? See? If I watched Nigella Lawson I’d know those were avocados. [Insert obvious joke about Nigella’s melons here.]

At any rate, we can’t even do it if we want, more or less. When we moved here, there was no cable TV. I don’t know much about broadcasting television, but the one direction no one broadcasts much is towards me, or Portugal and ships at sea, which is the next thing you’ll hit after me. I got used to snow on TV year round, and when cable came through here I’d long since lost interest and it passed us by.

I wanted to watch the Patriots game last night. Here’s what I had to do:
1.Find out if it was being broadcast here. It isn’t always, anymore, what with all the pay TV people that broadcast things now. It was on broadcast TV, but the numbers don’t signify on my TV. I’d have to look for a Fox station up around the dog whistle end of the spectrum. And I had to find the listing on the internet, my beloved internet, and the TV page on my service provider’s site was terrifying to navigate. You guys watch all that? Must keep you busy.
2. Now for the French Underground radio operator portion of the exercise: Disconnect the 15 dollar bent stalks and doughnut antenna from the FM tuner. Take the cable from the wall plug and attach it to the rabbit ears. Put the whole mess atop the armoire the screen’s in, near the window or you get nothing. The cable I disconnect is there to allow us to have the signal from the DVD player go to a second screen in the house. The house is wired for cable. You can go yell in the other end, hanging on the pole near the street, if you want to talk to me.
3. Say two Hail Marys, in case there’s a god. Hail Marys are good for football games even if there isn’t.
4. Ah, channel 120 out of Providence, Rhode Island. Well, it’s in color, that’s good. We have to rely on the commentators to tell us who caught the ball, as we can’t always make it out in the snow. The snow is not in Foxboro, it’s just in our set, by the way. When it snows a little in Foxboro, there’s a blizzard in our set. It stinks to rely on the broken down steroid case and newsanchor also-ran on the broadcast, as they have no idea they could still be talking to people in my situation, and instead of saying anything of use to me, they just keep ejaculating things like: “Look at that!” Did you see that!” and: “Watch this!”

The Patriots disassembled the Washington Redskins into their component parts and stomped on the pieces, and I was sanguine. According to the advertising I was subjected to, no one has a car, an erection, or cable tv, and they’ve got just the things I need to remedy those deficiencies.

I’m all set on all counts, thanks; I’ve got two of the three, and the other I can do without.