First and foremost, I am not the target demographic for this commercial. I care about fitness, I try to eat right and work out regularly, but I have no interest in “getting crazy” with an “eleven-minute body-shredding routine.” They also seem to really emphasize that this equipment will make you “bigger, harder, stronger,” which really just sounds like it’s overcompensating for something, right? Also, I don’t think you should EVER look like this guy to the right while working out. That just seems unhealthy. He looks like Bane in Batman: The Animated Series just before his veins get overfilled with toxin and he explodes!

Here’s my biggest problem, though. The tagline “Gotta Door? You Gotta Gym.” I don’t think these guys know what the word “gotta” means. Yes, it sounds aggressive and tough, which seems to be what they were going for, but “gotta” is a replacement term for “got to” or “have to,” as in “I have got to get to the hospital before my heart busts through my freakishly large muscular neck.” They’re using it in place of “got a” which – aside from being typographically identical to “gotta” minus one letter – is used in statements like “who’s got a credit card so I can buy this worthless crap?” You can say “Christ, the cops are here. We gotta make a run for it,” but you can’t say “My sister gotta abortion yesterday,” and not just because “abortion” starts with a vowel so you’d want it to be “gottan” (although “abortion” could be a verb… but then “gotta abortion” would imply that she had a deep desire to perform abortions, which is again unsettling).

For that matter, the tagline seems to imply that “you” is taking the place of “you’ve” or “you have.” What they’re trying to say is “If you’ve got a door, then you’ve got a gym.” but by using “gotta” they’re making the words that follow into active verbs, so what it actually says is “Have to door (as in actively construct and/or use doors)? You have to gym (as in play while keeping physically active, like at a gymnasium).” That’s the most sense I can make out of the line, and even that’s pretty much nonsense. I know you’re marketing your wall-based workout equipment to mixed martial arts fans who watch Comedy Central after midnight, but somebody somewhere still has to care about proper usage of grammar in the English language, right?

This is probably why I got beat up in high school…

For last year’s San Diego Comic-Con, Campbell produced a twelve-month wall calendar with racy interpretations of fairie tale femmes. They were mostly innocuously cheesecake, but nearly a year later are gaining attention. Nobody seems to mind the cheeky renditions of Little Miss Muffet and Red Riding Hood, but the following eight are clearly inspired by Walt Disney animated films, and people get pretty hot under the collar when you sexualize icons from youth culture:

Honestly, Tinkerbell looks okay. Her feet look like they’re in pain, but the representation of her and Hook seen here is pretty much in keeping with what we’ve seen from the House of Mouse. Similarly, Malificent from Sleeping Beauty sports an entirely different type of robe than in the Disney picture, but the headdress and mirror on the wall clearly tie her to the motion picture. Besides, that’s probably the kind of robe they’d draw her in now, given the opportunity. Snow White isn’t too far over the line, just a little sexed-up with the needless bows on her stockings and a good deal more skin than I remember. Sleeping Beauty, on the other hand… whaaaaaaat? She is clearly completely nude, save for the tiara on her head. Did she happen to be naked when she was playing with that spinning wheel or did her clothes just dissolve over her many years of sleep? At least that matter distracts from the curious apparent size/shape differences between each of her hands, feet and breasts. Cinderella and Belle from Beauty and the Beast seem to each be wearing shiny lingerie. It’s a wonder that the Little Mermaid can wear so much eye makeup without it running in the water (I guess that’s just a fish thing) though I do applaud Campbell’s restraint in not having beads of water dripping down her implausible curves.

Let’s not even talk about Alice. That one’s just creepy.

Linkin Park (the band) (your younger brother probably loved their song “One Step Over” nearly a decade ago) have decided to make a massively multiplayer online iPhone video game. In the process, they are attempting to capitalize on the recent wave of retro-nostalgia (Mega Man 9 & 10, New Super Mario Bros Wii, the chiptune craze, MacGruber) by making the game… ahem… “8-bit.”

It’s so… I can’t… ugh, just watch the trailer:

There are so many things to be upset about here., I’ll allow my friend Joe Larson to do get us started:

1. Where’s the 8-bits? I don’t see anything even remotely 8-bit. Oh? Those chunky pixelated 32-bit era pixels? Fail. That map, no 8 bit. Those weapons, no 8-bit. YOUR CHARACTER, no 8-bit. Your room, no 8-bit. Besides…
2. If this is supposed to be nostalga vs modern then first of all my money is on modern. It’s just better.
3. Oh, they’ve taken a remixed Linkin Park into blippy tracks? Oh, well that might be 8-bit. But it’s still based on pretentious quasi-teen mock angst. Lard, my ears throb just listening to it.
4. I love how they show you the idiot taking a shot at a guy and having the laser pass harmlessly through them, pause, realize it’s a friendly before moving on. Yeah, way to showcase your bad game design there.

It MIGHT be less of a betrayal to its very name if you will eventually change everything into chunky pixels, and it looks like that MIGHT be the case looking at the trailer, though they’re still distinctly 32-bit (like the SNES) sprites and character avatars and weapons are never at any time in the game anything less than hi-def.

Near as I can tell they’re making this game for one person, the Linkin Park fan. That being the case I really hope they plant a subversive piece of code in the game where if you play it for more than 20 hours it detonates your iPhone killing the user and ridding the world of the pretentious middle-class white kids who were probably going to go on a killing spree at some point anyways.

Man, I hate this thing.

Joe, a game developer of his own right (the excellent and much-buzzed ASCIIp0rtal was his doing), makes some excellent points, but there’s just so much more to hate about this project. Just off the top of my head:

1. Do people still care about Linkin Park anymore? Does name recognition like that sell a game? My teenage sister and I refuse any setlist in Rock Band 2 that includes the Linkin Park track or the Paramore track.
2. Unlock an exclusive song? That HAS to have been done before. I can’t cite the example off the top of my liquified-upon-submission-to-nonsense-game-trailer mind, but I refuse to believe there’s never been an exclusive song unlocked in-game before (I know that 50 Cent game last year had a whole bunch of “unreleased” tracks in it… “unreleased” in that they were too shitty for the album… even a 50 Cent album). Besides, that song’s going to be on YouTube and any blogs that still give a crap about Linkin Park the day after somebody competent buys/steals the game.
3. The developer – Artificial Life, inc. – also did the iPhone ports of the Adult Swim games, which in my experience have been mostly shitty, so at least nobody’s besmirching their good name with this nonsense.
4. My favorite t-shirt and hoodie are now soaked with vomit. Thanks a fucking lot, Linkin Park. Why did I have that banana for breakfast? Yuck…

Lauded as one of America’s greatest filmmakers and praised as being one of the few with a visual style all his own (him and Wes Anderson. Really, who else is there? Can you tell a Ron Howard film from a Bryan Singer from a Spike Lee just by looking at them?), the man has made a very successful career out of being just the right degree of quirky, existential, and darkly humorous. But major Hollywood films are not made by one man alone, so it makes sense that Tarantino would surround himself with similarly twisted yet fantastic help, right?

Meet Geraldine Brezca, Tarantino’s clapper angel.

Brezca has been on Tarantino’s team since his third (marvelous) film, Jackie Brown. As you certainly already know, the typical clapper will announce the scene and take, typically in the International Radio Operator Alphabet. Geraldine doesn’t play that way, opting instead for words relatable to the scene, cast and crew, making the whole experience just that much warmer. Most clappers would refer to the scene as “Fower Alpha Kilo,” but to Geraldine it is “Four Akira Kurosawa.” “Fife Niner Hotel” becomes “Fifty-Nine Hitler.” “Alpha Six Six Foxtrot,” the scene in Inglourious Basterds in which a black frenchman attempts to burn down a building full of Nazis is redubbed “Au revoir, Sixty-Six Fuckers!”

Does remind me of this marvelous scene from Archer, though:

What a fantastic job Geraldine has. Sit around watching movies get made and come up with crude, vaguely nonsensical codes to announce before each take? How does one get started in this growing industry and where can I sign up?

It was over this past weekend that one of my favorite lesbians showed me the music video (Why does it matter that she’s a lesbian? Shut up, that’s why). I’ll readily admit that I don’t “get” Lady Gaga. I certainly appreciate her presence in the otherwise painfully redundant pop atmosphere, but I just don’t find her interesting enough as an artist to be enthusiastic about her work. Rumor is MTV has banned this video (which is apparently not true) and it’s become a viral hit. I’m not ready to say whether it’s good or bad, but I can tell you it’s definitely captivating and entertaining.

The first two minutes were filled with me asking “what’s… why is she… what are they… but if she’s… huh?” but it was right around the leather-clad prison girl fight at 2:20 that I stopped asking questions and learned to just roll with Gaga’s punches. There just is no explaining an overwhelming majority of this cacophony.

Gaga also claims to be lampooning commercial America with her use of Diet Coke cans for hair curlers and Wonder Bread and Miracle Whip in poisoned sandwiches, but that doesn’t explain why the prison uses Dr Dre’s Beats branded laptop. Her tour is sponsored by Virgin Mobile and she has that new partnership with Polaroid, so that explains those two brands, at least.

I will say this in favor of the video: it is refreshing to see a major music video so gleefully disregard the entirety of the songs lyrics. Sure, there are telephones, but they’re seemingly out of nowhere, and maybe they’re killing Tyrese because he won’t stop calling Beyonce, but does it matter? No. The entire production revels in its cheese and camp, which I find delightful.

But seriously, that is waaaaay too much poison.

chuleta says no one is going to play joanna fucking newsom on her turntable and she will cancel the goddamn book club meeting if she has to

I was alerted earlier this week to the existence of Hipster Puppies. All are adorably dead-on in their portrayal of… well… my demographic, but the one at right seemed particularly lovable. It reminded me of one of my favorite lyrics during college, from Ninja High School’s “Shake It Off” (as heard in this terrible quality YouTube bootleg):

And who put on Devendra Banhart anyway? I thought someone here was interested in partying, we can’t do that now.

Aww, aren’t they adorable?

Also, while digging through my camera, I found this gem of an ad shot on a train during the holidays:

This was the first week of December. I know it had been almost six months, but still, guys, TOO SOON! Also, utterly tasteless.

God, I love Doc.

In case you’ve forgotten Daft Punk’s greater theory of Harder/Better/Faster/Stronger, please refer to the following flowchart:

Flowchart stolen from GraphJam.com, wedding scene from Daft Punk's Electroma.

Coming Soon: Wolfman Valentine's Day? Sounds like another Tracy Jordan holiday classic! Bring the kids!

There's no joke for this. Clearly someone at the store was either inattentive or very passive aggressively upset with their work. Whichever, nobody thought to correct them.

I found this one elsewhere on the internet, but wooooow... Not sure why anyone would agree to being nicknamed "da Crabs Assassin" but doesn't being "da Condom Father" seem contradictory?

On the other hand, at least there’s type out there that’s not effing retarded at all:

These Diesel ads have been all over the New York subways over the past month or two. Despite my last piece of Diesel attire being a watch I wore in college, I find little to no shame in actually really liking them.

Political ads, though… now that’s the stuff. The 21st century has allowed local campaigns to turn viral, and punk kids with bootlegged copies of Final Cut into political consultants. I was watching the morning news this weekend when I saw maybe the greatest political ad I’ve seen in my life:

The quick-cut shots of pigs in tight quarters, the graphic of a sheep felling from a pedestal with chain lightning, the music straight from the Lord of the Rings‘ Mount Doom, the sterile office space mixed with the narrators gruff voice that implies Carly Fiorina works in 24‘s Counter Terrorism Unit, the pregnant pauses when quoting Tom Campbell, and the wolf… oh goodness, that wolf. The ad is simply dumbfounding in its revelry of ridiculousness, and making it a YouTube exclusive and counting on the viral promotion of blogs and tweets saves millions in TV advertising. This is the hype machine on the 21st century.

The auteur behind this spot, Fred Davis III, is an authentic Hollywood man and has been called “an internet genius” by New York magazine. This is the third time in recent memory one of his political attack ads has been in the news. In case you missed them, here are his anti-Blagojevich “Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow” and anti-Obama “Celebrity” spots:

“I am so proud to announce my new partnership with Polaroid as the creative director and inventor of specialty projects”, said Lady Gaga. “The Haus of Gaga has been developing prototypes in the vein of fashion/technology/photography innovation–blending the iconic history of Polaroid and instant film with the digital era–and we are excited to collaborate on these ventures with the Polaroid brand. Lifestyle, music, art, fashion: I am so excited to extend myself behind the scenes as a designer, and to as my father puts it–finally, have a real job.”

This is the sort of crazy news that comes out of the Consumer Electronics Show. Oh yeah, that and Toyota’s new concept car marketed at… um… chip musicians?

Via their press release:

ED² designers looked to capture the vivid, high-energy appeal of what has come to be called the 8-bit generation. Popularized in the early 80′s, 8-bit microprocessor technology dominated the budding home video game industry. Today, 8-bit is considered a specific retro-style that is embraced by such things as 8-bit genre music and 8-bit inspired art.

On the not-insulting side, they also state that the concept is more fuel-efficient and a lower price point than Toyota’s own Prius, which means I actually kind of want this car. I know, I’m scared too…

Lady Gaga business card photo via Best Week Ever.