Fri, August 27, 2004

(Ha! Get it?)

I spend a lot of time driving around in Los Angeles, and you have two choices: concentrate on traffic and avoid accidents, or look around at all the pretty billboards. I choose the latter. Unless there are hot girls to look at.

I was looking at the billboard for Alien vs. Predator the other day, and it seemed odd to me that while the Predator is looking straight at us, the Alien is in profile. Is he about to attack the Predator? Shouldn't the Predator be looking? Heads up, dude! Then I realized, as impressive and eerie as the Giger-based Alien design is, it's pretty much only effective in profile. See? You never really see it looking right at the camera in the movies. At least not in Alien or Aliens. At least not the very few scenes I actually remember from those films.

The other one that gets under my skin is the billboard for Joey (also seen as a bus ad, which is generally wider). There are basically four or five elements in this picture: Joey (good), a beach, a palm tree, a convertible, and a surfboard. The point is that Joey lives in LA now. Well aren't the beach and the palm tree enough to communicate that? I mean the convertible is a nice touch, I'll go with that. It's got a certain Cali hipster flair to it. But a surfboard? Joey Tribbiani does not surf. He would never surf. This is what's wrong with marketing departments. They're full of idiots who have no idea what is really going on. (I'm reminded of the brilliant Bob Odenkirk, pitching sitcoms to network executives. Them: "We love it, but how do we sell it?" Him: "Don't you have a marketing department for that?!") NBC is building an entire show around this character Joey Tribbiani, a character that we've all had ten years to get to know, and they don't even know enough about him to realize that he doesn't surf? It's their show! The beach and the surf and the palm tree and the convertible: we get it. He's in LA now. He doesn't need to be driving around with a surfboard he'll never use. (Watch him surf in the pilot episode; boy will I ever feel dumb.) Thankfully, in the narrower version of this ad, the surfboard is cropped out. (Besides, only a dumb marketing department would say, "I know this show is based on a popular character from one of our longest-running best-rated series that just finished a decade-long run. I know his character was the funniest and most interesting for the entire last two years, while everyone else was marrying off and kidding up. But the real selling point of this show is that he's moving!" Don't play up the LA angle, idiots. Play up the Joey!)

Another billboard I saw last week on Overland (and elsewhere since) is for Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends on the Cartoon Network. It airs tonight at 7:00 Eastern (and again at 10:30, that's 7:30 for you west-coast DirecTV households). I checked it out last week and it was pretty cute. It's a kid's show, no question, but plenty of those are good. The character Bloo (he's a little blue guy) is awesome, and I like the main little boy, Mac, also. The opening music is excellent, really unparalleled in recent memory. (Speaking of cartoon music, did you know that the theme to Duck Dodgers is by Tom Jones and the Flaming Lips? You can believe I'm TiVo'ing the next episode of that!) It's a little irresponsible as far as kids' vocabularies go, because the imaginary friends in the show aren't actually imaginary. Everyone can see them and talk to them; they're like pets. Still, great concept (thanks again, Craig McCracken), really nice look, fun show. Check it out tonight!

I also noticed a sign on the back of a bus saying "the street is not your ashtray" and attempting to curb (ha) the practice of smokers who toss their spent cigarette butts out of their car windows. This is one of the most infuriating asshole things that people in LA (or smokers in general) do, so I am totally behind this campaign. Of course, nobody will pay any attention to it. Advertising never works in those rare cases when you actually want it to. Still, it infuriates me the sense of entitlement: it's not enough that they're polluting our air, but when they're done with that, they've got to chuck that butt in the street like, "It's not my problem." That's why your car has an ashtray, you despicable shit! The whole process of holding the cigarette out the window all the time is just an admission that it's disgusting. ("I don't want it near me, I'm holding it out here!") So, why not just quit? Instead of inflicting your horrible habit on others, just stop it. The thing that kills me is these same people would probably be really offended if you threw a styrofoam cup out of your window. But the cigarette butt feels like nothing to them. Oh, that doesn't count as littering. Savages.

Finally, two bus ads did exactly their job for the upcoming film Team America: World Police. The first one did the part where it establishes the product in my consciousness. Zipping by it I was like, "Hey, animated Thunderbirds take-off. Good idea. Certainly better than a live action Frakes-helmed Thunderbirds movie. I wonder if it's ironic (which would be funny) or serious (which would probably be just for kids)." Then I saw it again today, and I had a chance to read the "From the creators of South Park" part. Well that answers that question. (Then I just wondered if it was CGI or actual marionettes, and the trailer answered that.) Looks like fun. Alec Baldwin as Alec Baldwin should be a riot. Also, "Freedom hangs by a thread" is an awesome tagline.

(And, by the way, speaking of movies for kids, isn't it time we stopped insulting them? Because, Baby Geniuses 2? Really?)