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Monday, April 23, 2007

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal can be funny!





'Nuff said.


...okay, maybe not quite enough. I had no idea Lex Luthor played Risk. He'll get two extra armies for that, unless the JLA can break through from Siam!

Heheheheheheheh.

Hg

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Where's the Beef?

So, here's something that's been bugging me for a while. For the past month or so, Wendy's restaurant has been running ads on TV in which a Violent Femmes tune features prominently. By prominently, I mean the song is played loudly, as foreground music, and is meant to be heard, presumably for a hipster nostalgia effect, targeting the 30-somethings who grew up on that music. The first ad I saw with this song involved some semi-dorky guy making friends at the office by picking up food at Wendy's and dropping it off at his co-workers' desks. Nice guy, buying his way into people's hearts with baked potatoes, chili, and Frosters.

So, what's the song, exactly? Well, it is, exactly, "Blister In The Sun". Yeah, awesome song, with a distinctive guitar riff at the beginning (which is exactly the part that Wendy's uses in their commercial). So, here's what's bugging me: what marketing genius thought it was a good idea to use a song about, uh, autoeroticism for a company that makes hamburgers?

Incidentally, a Wikipedia article on this song includes the statement that, "According to lead singer Gordon Gano, this song is not about masturbation as popularly thought." It goes on (no pun intended) to provide an explanation for the "big hands" line in the song, as proof that the song isn't about that. However, nothing is mentioned about the more telling lines in the second stanza:

body and beats I stain my sheets I don't even know why
my girlfriend she's at the end she is starting to cry

If I'm feeling feisty, I may just add my own opinion to the Wiki article. But only if I'm feeling feisty.


In any case, it looks like Wendy's can now say that they found the beef. (Did they really think about this? Really? Or were they just caught up in the hook?)

Hg

Thursday, April 05, 2007

Lemonade Review

Well, I got a nice review of Lemonade from Paul McManus, over on the Thousand Faces Forum. I find Paul's reviews and critiques particularly interesting, because he really tries to gain insight into the writer's intent, and into the themes of the story, instead of just providing a fan-boy style, "Oooh! I really liked it when...." kind of response. Except, he does those too, which keeps the review from seeming too stuffy. Reviews from an inciteful, intelligent fan-boy -- how cool is that?

Thanks right back at ya, Paul!

Hg

Sunday, April 01, 2007

Big news!

Wow. A month and a half, huh? That's how long it's been since my last post? Shows how out of touch I've been with this thing, I had totally forgotten about BOXZOR until I looked at my blog today before posting! I had it my head that my last post was about toxic apple cider, and its effects on the human body (namely mine). (Hmmmm, technically that means that I let the blog slide even longer than it actually did, right? Since I didn't remember the Feb. 13 post, that means that I honestly believed that I hadn't posted since Jan. 30, 33% longer than actual fact.)

Well, enough of the obligatorily banal "golly-gee-has-it-been-that-long" spiel. Here's the big news:


PUBLICATION! ME! That's right, I've been published! By a real web-zine! (Simultaneously in print, too!) I'm even gonna get paid! Yeah! Me!



Check out Lemonade in Issue #0 of A Thousand Faces. Then, come back here, and leave me a comment.

BTW - You can buy your own genuine paper copy of A Thousand Faces with my story in it here. I know nobody reading this will, but you can't say I didn't try.

ABTW - Kudos to Frank Byrns for having the gumption to actually do something like this, and do it well, instead just thinking about it.

Hg