Why Have A Cult When You Can Have An Army?

"Weird Al" Yankovic released his first album when I was five years old. Thirty years later, after waxing and waning in popularity, the parodist has been steadily building bridges to the next generation of media-consumers via the internet, while still carrying over his legions of fans from the cassette-and-vinyl era.

And part of the new advertising landscape is the use of motion media to advertise forthcoming albums--we now get album trailers regularly, but this... this is even less than that. In preparation for his next major album release, Yankovic recently posted a "teaser" video online, presumably the first in a series. In 11 seconds it does the job: we get a glimpse of a pseudo-serious propaganda film parody, raising Yankovic into the role of a so-stern-he's-comical dictator with a degree of crazy-eye that would make Nicolas Cage jealous. When the title of the album hits the viewer at the last second, the preceding imagery has set the mood so perfectly that it's hard not to laugh aloud.

The Only Television Ad You'll Ever Need

This has to be a record of some sort. The above 12-second ad for Discount Tire Company is one of my earliest childhood memories of television--and I'm pretty sure I saw it, broadcast on the air, up to a couple of years ago. Because it works. You have the "old lady," the tire, the violent and cathartic act of shattering a window, and the company name immortalized in shards of glass. Sure, it's a lawsuit waiting to happen. It jokingly encourages ill-advised behavior. And it tangentially suggests you might be really unhappy with their product--but I'm pretty sure nobody has ever focused on that. I mean, this ad is minimalist GENIUS. There are exactly 4 shots, all of about equal length. There's one actor, one prop, and one setting. The lady's throwing form is perfection. The camera angle puts you right there with her, makes you an accomplice. And there's not much more you need to say. When it aired originally, you probably either knew where the place was or could grab the phone book. Nowadays, you Google it. They make a simple claim to a customer satisfaction guarantee, the viewer gets to thrill to the sight of a plate glass window getting broken, and you end on the company name. 12 seconds. They fit this ad in-between everything. And hey, Discount Tire Co. is still around today, so they must have done something right.

Movies

Bit of a belated posting, but better late than never. On the topic of motion pictures, we mentioned the advent of the GoPro camera, and the unique perspectives it allows us to experience. To wit, here is a video of a GoPro camera that accidentally came detached from a skydiver's helmet, falling 12,500 feet to the earth and surviving, and even more miraculously being found and retrieved by its owner. The kicker, for me, is how perfectly it comes to rest so as to capture the descending skydivers:

Pulp Music

I'm posting the opening credits to Quentin Tarantion's Pulp Fiction for two reasons. First, because it very clearly demonstrates how a film can take a pre-existing piece of music (or two pieces, in this case) and culturally reassign them so that forever after, we relate that music to the visual experience. And second, because it always impressed me how perfectly the simple placement of these two songs sets the tone for the entire movie, in particular for our two leads--John Travolta and Samuel Jackson. These are two dangerous-sounding songs that are threatening in their own unique ways. And even the simple fact that during one continuous opening credit sequence we have a cut between two very different songs sets up the expectation that the film we're about to see will have a non-traditional format, i.e. edited in a non-linear fashion, shuffling back-and-forth through points in time.

Photographic Bonanza

1. Train derailment at Montparnasse, France, 1895. One of my favorite photographs--the stark, black train engine against the pale building, the sense of sheer mass, the crazy angles and particularly the strong diagonal formed by the fallen engine... adding to that the rarity of the event itself, it makes for one amazing image.

 

2. Behind the scenes of Sesame Street. This photo is remarkable for several reasons. It shows a rarely-seen angle of the production, almost intrusively revealing the method by which the characters are brought to life. Second, it's a fantastic portrait of two masters of their craft, Jim Henson and Frank Oz (I tried to find out who the third puppeteer was, but had no luck). And third... those clothes, man. The image screams 1970's. The composition of the photo itself is great--the empty, shadowed space on the right gives a solid sense of the location (large television studio), and the poses of everyone in the photo (Muppets included) are dynamic and so perfectly presented that if they weren't looking down and away from the lens watching their performance in a monitor, you would think the moment had been entirely staged.

 

3. Caesar Romero as the Joker, in a publicity shot from the 1960's Batman television show. I don't remember where I first came across this, but it has to be one of my all-time favorites. The clever frame gag, the expressions on both subjects' faces, and the blacked-out background making Romero appear as nothing less than a painting on velvet, all combine here to create a playfully indelible image.

4. Nick Cave. As usual, it seems to be bloody impossible to track down the original photographer's name on these things... Google can only go so far. But anyway--a brilliant portrait of one of my favorite artists. Those familiar with his music, especially from the era when this photograph was taken (if I had to wager, I'd say late 80's or very early 90's) would recognize the appropriateness of that sullen, slightly inhuman, hunched-looking shadow on the wall. It's symbolic of the tortured, degenerate persona that came across in his music and in his prose: Cave's book And The Ass Saw The Angel chronicles a malady-stricken young man whose twin brother's life is ended before it begins.

5. And then... there is this one, which I found online randomly several years ago. Just a snapshot someone took. Just a snapshot, except... the woman on the left is musical genius Fiona Apple, who I've been fortunate to see in concert, once, and for whom I would probably become a stuttering, grinning idiot if I ever met her face-to-face. The more significant aspect for me, however, is the gentleman. That is Jonathan Ames, the writer. Back in 2001, during my first go-round of college, I had him for my creative writing professor in Bloomington. At that age I was disgustingly cocky, and did not take full advantage of the class or the great connection I could have made with this professional writer. Apparently, a few years later he formed an intimate friendship with Fiona, to the extent that she later wrote an entire song about him and put it on her last album. So the only real reason this photograph is posted here today is because I can't get over that fact that, as the old game goes, I'm two degrees from Fiona Apple--and maybe if I'd been a wiser youth, I'd have a friend named Jonathan who could have introduced me...

Cartoons: Showing You Your Age One Joke At A Time

Here is an example of a cartoon image that requires extensive familiarity with the popular culture of a specific time period. The viewer needs to know:

(1) What a club scene with dueling DJ's looks like...

(2) What the 1980's incarnation of the Transformers looked like--not that Michael Bay shit...

(3) That there are two competing Transformer factions, i.e. Autobots and Decepticons, as well as which characters are associated with each faction...

(4) Even more specifically, that the two primary characters in the image--the largest figures--have an alternative form that is sound-related in nature, so they were not just randomly chosen for this cartoon but carry an inherent relationship to the context...

(5) That the smaller robots in the image "belong" to the two primary characters, including knowledge about which of the small robots are associated with which larger robot...

(6) That the smaller robot in the lower righthand corner is performing a dance pose made famous by John Travolta in the 1990's film Pulp Fiction--and even though that pose almost certainly existed earlier, the target audience for this cartoon were children in the 80's and, thus, the proper age in the 90's to have seen the film and understand the joke reference... and lastly...

(7) What a vinyl record looks like, because those ain't CD's they're spinning. This really does narrow down the target audience, because those who spent their childhood in the 90's were more likely to have had their first musical experience in the form of CD or, possibly, cassette tape...

...whereas there is a reasonably good chance anyone from my generation wore out a genuine vinyl copy of Alvin & The Chipmunks by the age of 7, not to mention the soundtrack to Star Wars.

Infographics: The Last Flowchart You'll Ever Need

 

Well, "last" may be exaggerating things. Also, unless you're hungry for some jail time, this chart should only be employed in RPGs, MMORPGs, and other places where the emphasis is on game and not real life.

Still, one has to appreciate the elegance of this streamlined worldview. When your immediate reality tilts upon an axis of loot (defined, herein, as anything you didn't start the game with, excluding diseases and certain unpleasant curses and enchantments) a flowchart like the one above makes clear that the value of another's life can truly be measured in gold.

This visualized chain of reasoning, set down for all by Dave "Fargo" Kosak* has survived the rise and fall of empires--the sort that have a monthly subscription fee, anyway.


*Whoever he is, I've never met him... which seems lucky, given his advice.

Visual Stereotypes: Papyrus

As my professor began his PowerPoint lecture on Visual Stereotypes I couldn't help but notice his font choice on the title slide. It was composed in that most famous, perilously overused, wheatgerm-esque font, Papyrus. Which, after a short trip to Wikipedia, I now know was conceived of in 1982 and has plagued the design community to greater and lesser degrees ever since.

What is it about that font? There is the vague suggestion that the letters are meant to transcend their rigid, digital existence and evoke the mealy, organic process of dipping a brush into ink. It must have been a revelation at the moment of its arrival on the scene, but by the end of the 1990's its ubiquitous usage by amateur designers and, let's face it, a few professional design hacks, had rendered it a cliche in the same gaudy bin as Comic Sans, Brush Script, Mistral and Trajan.

If you want to look sage and mystic--while also coming off as utterly lazy and unoriginal--select Papyrus for the cover of your next New Age publication or self-published fantasy novel. You can almost hear the wind in the grass just looking at it...

Personally, I'd like to see a top-tier Fortune 500 company's next annual report set entirely in this font. The stereotype might just be strong enough to put a crack in their horrid mask of corporate efficiency. Maybe.

Bloomer & Barthes

According to the site: Elvis Presley posing with the wild turkey he just shot.

From the folks who brought you Jesus-On-Toast (or, at least, applying the same elements of cognitive theory) there is now an Instagram page dedicated to the cryptic forms that our minds may discern in the average Cheeto cheese puff.

In other news, a prime example of condensed code was employed to illustrate a recent article about NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden over at BoingBoing.net. The image (below) merges the iconic red-white-and-blue colored Barack Obama "HOPE" campaign image with the face of a man who has come to represent a direct opposition to the president's policies on widespread surveillance of the populace. In this way the designer has attempted to transfer the "HOPE" quality from President Obama (who disappointed many of his supporters with his failure to maintain a transparent White House) onto Mr. Snowden, whose actions--while divisive--are seen by some as heroic and instrumental in paving the way forward to more open discussion and criticism of surveillance practices.

Ethos

For those who boarded the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) back in 2008, the release of "Guardians Of The Galaxy" this August 1st represents a studio cashing in on six years of carefully cultivated credibility. In the two trailers released for the film thus far, Marvel attempts to sell an objectively insane-looking concept by admitting, up front, that the viewer is in for something ridiculous--and they bank upon an already friendly audience trusting in the studio's past success at turning the absurd (see: Thor) into something clever, enjoyable, and well-designed for a mainstream audience. Persuading anyone to buy into the MCU by offering this film right out of the starting gate would have been nearly impossible, but by gradually proving themselves through one creative leap to the next, Marvel is now able to confidently persuade moviegoers to take a chance on their most eclectic property to date.