A Bridgestone advertisement, chronicling a dog’s attempt to end his own life after witnessing his bitch’s infidelity, leads to an Ectomite brainstorming session, not regarding the sale of rubber radials, but intead selling the act itself:
I can see it now, The scene opens on a suburban housewife in a black and white kitchen, frantically chopping away at ( and missing) a tomato. The baritone male voice over begins over the scene. “Every day tasks are such a bother. Why not just kill yourself?” The woman turns to the camera, smiles, and then turns the knife quickly on herself.
A Thai ad from all the way back in 2005 — ancient by internet standards — for Bridgestone tires. Giving too much away might ruin it for those who have not seen it but I will say this, he deserved better than her. That poodle was a slut.
A promotional piece for Samsung’s new NV24 HD camera. The clip, featuring a safari, yawning lions, “Banana Boat Song”, and some questionable computer animation, teeters precariously on the edge of absurd and insipid just before losing its balance and plummeting into the abyss when the half eaten corpse of an antelope rises briefly from the dead to sing a verse and, perhaps, jiggle its entrails.
This is the logo for the Diabol Industrial Chemical Company of Paris, France. The logo, in use by 1931, may seem familiar to you. This may be because it bears a striking resemblance to certain masked vigilante. Rich Johnston, in his column for Comic Book Resources, lays out this daisy-chain of relationships:
Bob Kane worked at Max Fleischer Studios from 1934. Max’s brother, Dave Fleischer, was a director at the studio and had previously worked at the French film studio, Pathe.
Obviously, no mention of this logo has been mentioned in the official history of Batman’s creation. In his 1989 autobiography Kane presented the following recollection of how the character was designed, with the help of Bill Finger:
One day I called Bill and said, ‘I have a new character called the Bat-Man and I’ve made some crude, elementary sketches I’d like you to look at’. He came over and I showed him the drawings. At the time, I only had a small domino mask, like the one Robin later wore, on Batman’s face. Bill said, ‘Why not make him look more like a bat and put a hood on him, and take the eyeballs out and just put slits for eyes to make him look more mysterious?’ At this point, the Bat-Man wore a red union suit; the wings, trunks, and mask were black. I thought that red and black would be a good combination. Bill said that the costume was too bright: ‘Color it dark gray to make it look more ominous’. The cape looked like two stiff bat wings attached to his arms. As Bill and I talked, we realized that these wings would get cumbersome when Bat-Man was in action, and changed them into a cape, scalloped to look like bat wings when he was fighting or swinging down on a rope. Also, he didn’t have any gloves on, and we added them so that he wouldn’t leave fingerprints.
So there you have it. Does this game of Six Degrees of Bob Kane ring true, or is this a crazed conspiracy theory? Did the Dark Knight actually start out as a corporate shill? We may never know. However, it is interesting to note that Batsy’s first appearance in Detective Comics #27 is entitled “The Case of the Chemical Syndicate”.
“Fear will pierce your flesh…until every nerve in your body…EXPLODES!!”
Giant leeches, no doubt created by some sort of accident involving radiation, feast upon human beings, draining them of their bodily fluids; only to bring them back to life as their slaves.
Trailers like this contain something that I find distinctly lacking in previews for more modern schlock: excitement! Wouldn’t the next Saw or Hostel seem more interesting if it was advertised with a bit more rabid, spittle-flecked enthusiasm? Perhaps what the filmmakers of today need is a lesson in the use of the exclamation mark.
An ad for French toy store Gepeto Village. The visual itself is really very nice, however I am inclined to agree with some of the comments found in the link in that it seems to contradict the message, which is that they wish to keep these toys out of the hands and, in turn, minds of children. If anything, perhaps they should have gone with different text.
As this ad from 1944 so astutely points out, there was a halcyon era when a man whose domestic servant wife presented him with a less than satisfactory meal, could lay into her with his ring hand with zeal of a bare-knuckle prize fighter at a Clown Punching club. Those days are gone, however, and the young people with their absurd, namby-pamby, “feminist” ideas have cast a bad light on what is now known as “domestic abuse” but was once more commonly known as “constructive corporal criticism” (CCC).
Indeed, in the absence of physical punishment husbands are left with few ways to voice their displeasure with the culinary talents of their private cooks wives. As Heinz is well aware, boredom expressed through yawning — or, perhaps, terrible halitosis; the illustration leaves room for either — is, at the current juncture, one of the few, fool-proof means to impress upon these women that their dishes are not up to par. Never mind the fact that one would assume that these women wouldn’t have to be reminded of the fact that their husbands did them a favor by marrying them in the first place, providing them with money and a home, allowing them to birth and rear their children, thereby saving them from a sad, empty life as a common prostitute or a frigid, spinster librarian.
So it’s a good fucking thing for them that the happy Heinz Chef is there to save their asses with his delicious soups, for how else would these “sensitive souls” be able to deal with ignominy of a man struck dumb with ennui at dinnertime. It’s almost too painful to imagine.
Same deal as last time, gentlemen: you find me in the heaving crowd, I’ll do you up an Octobee, on the house. (clue: my hair is mintyblonde, and I will be dressed as a biplane-hijacking escapee from Mad Max’s personal bellydancing troupe)
This is Bong-Ra’s first US tour, and he’s augmented by a lineup of excellence including Pneumatic Detach, and Enduser, craftsman of one of my and Qais’ all-time favorite albums, Bollywood Breaks.
Ectofriend DJ Intoner, who put the show together, will be spinning between sets.
In case you, my treasured readership, are not yet familiar with Bong-Ra, allow me to advance the notion that he is fucking insane:
As for the rest of the cast, just click your dainty pointers below to be bathed in the relevant phat beats.
With Parliament defending their recent vote allowing for the creation of human-animal hybrid embryos for scientific study, the future takes one step closer to the noisome, unsettling din we all eagerly anticipate. It won’t be long before that kind of strange bio-tech has wriggled its way into (semi) polite society the same way all far-out tech has trickled down into common usage.
First thing in the morning you’ll slap your wall-screen to life so that the beast-women of the world can preach the gospel of a new, better, psuedo-you. All followed by an advertising parade for genetic remapping agents so gratuitous and glossy in its hustle it would make the advertising execs of today weep. If you’re lucky maybe some seizure-inducing cartoons right after.
Has an elderly member of your family recently gone from berating kids for standing on their lawn to berating unicorns instead? When you visit do they brandish their cane and swear to defend their special, magic combs to the death? If so, remember:
“For prompt control of the agitated, belligerent senile…THORAZINE”
I enjoyed Chuck Palahniuk’s first four novels immensely, especially Survivor which remains his high point thus far. However, his books since Choke have been, shall we say, awful. His last novel was so bad that I didn’t even bother to finish it even though I was past the one hundred page mark which is the point of no return for me, after which I force myself to finish the book no matter how painful it may be.
All of that said, I am cautiously optimistic — or impossibly dense, take your pick — about his next novel, entitled Snuff, about an aging porn actress named Cassie Wright, who is attempting to break the record for the world’s largest gangbang but winds up dying in the process (didn’t see that one coming did you, what with the book’s title and all). This is regardless of the fact that the review from Publisher’s Weekly, which is on the Amazon product page, unenthusiastically proclaims:
There are sharp moments when Palahniuk compassionately and candidly examines the flesh-on-film industry, but mostly this reads like a cross between the Spice Channel and Days of Our Lives.
Doubleday is betting that you won’t care or don’t read Publisher’s Weekly or Amazon before you reflexively hit the Pre-Order button and to help advertise it have given Cassie Wright her own myspace page, complete with this kitschy trailer for one of her films, The Wizard of Ass with the promise of two more coming soon. No doubt I will be picking it up, if only for the probability of repetitive, descriptive lists of sexual acts and porn etiquette.
No nudity but still may be unsafe for your workplace. Time to get a job that allows you to view Ectomo without fear of reprisal!
Teeth is being released in the UK on June 20th and in preparation it is being advertised with the use of, among other things, a website explaining the condition known as vagina dentata, complete with a short educational film about the malady that affects one in twelve million women worldwide.
Krazmo attempts to dispel any attempt to discern an over-arching narrative for Don’t Cry sweet potatoes:
I don’t think the theme of the label really has much to do with the type of produce inside. As evidence, I cite the following gallery full of such lovely, obsolete art.
Comment by Krazmo — May 1, 2008 @ 12:55 pm
However, based on the image above it would seem that not all produce imagery is without cohesive thematic intentions. Less can be said for the likes of, say, Gay Johnny Texas Vegetables.
This ad campaign for Fit Light Yogurt, currently running in Brazil, features famously erotic scenes depicted with a woman who is overweight; in this case the dream scene from American Beauty. Others include the interrogation scene from Basic Instinct and the iconic image of Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch. The tag-line at the bottom reads: “Forget about it. Men’s preference will never change. Fit Light Yogurt.” It certainly lacks some degree of subtlety, doesn’t it?
In sheer defiance of the World Wide Web Consortium's will, Ectomo was designed using a non-web-standard font. Luckily, it is included in the excellent font pack released by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, which can be freely downloaded in Mac and PC formats here. Ectomo should still look fine without it, though.
