LITTLE RED DEATH PAD

Anyone who’s seen In The Cut and lives up here in North Manhattan must surely get a chortle out of the lame scene with the serial killer and Meg Ryan held captive at his lighthouse lair where he keeps the body parts. Truth is this beloved landmark (and children’s book subject) sits right below the George Washington Bridge with a security guard for a companion who’s concerned more with Homeland Security and terrorist evildoers than your regular run-of-the-mill misogynistic psycho mutilators. A couple times a year they open it up to the public but this time of year it’s just damn lovely there near the water’s edge, and in particularly on an unseasonably warm day like this one was.

TRUTH IN ADVERTISING III

Finlandia vodka wants you to know there’s one thing you should be thinking about as you slog your weary way in and out of the New York Metro subway system, and that is you and you and you should be consuming their product. In fact, they’re so determined to get this point across to you that they’ve covered virtually every wall in entire 14th Street station with the same exact advertisment ad infinitum to hammer that point into your head, whether you want it there or not. Forget the fact this is the laziest goddamn campaign they could come up with, what’s more important that you know they’re your vodka, your pal, and even if you don’t know it yet, chances are pretty good that the next time you find yourself at a bar, you just might—for some strange reason—find yourself suddenly hankering for tumbler full of that new citrus stuff for the simple reason people are good at taking suggestions when there’s nothing else available.

TRUTH IN ADVERTISING II

Let’s see, alcohol has been around now for what, 12,0000 or so years, and yet the marketing geniuses at Anheuser-Busch feel compelled once again to come up with yet another stupid way to put yet another moronic spin on what pretty much everyone knows enough booze will do to just about anyone given the right circumstances—turn them into a murderous psychopath. The bastardization of Robert Lewis Stevenson’s examination of man’s dual nature is so blatant there’s not even a hint of irony anymore as to the point that’s being made. But people who go for swill like this have fallen for even less disturbing metaphors; they just take whatever evil shit is handed to them and gobble it up in the spirit of participating in next cool thing—never mind encouraging destructive impulses. No irony lost however on the fact that this advert sits directly atop the Bleecker Street Bar where people have been “letting themselves out” with dubious (and probably horrific) results for years now.

It’s still amazing that with all the vilification every single illegal narcotic, opiate and stimulant has endured, the most egregiously damaging substance you can consume is available just about everywhere and pushed down people’s throats in the most vile and contemptuous means one can imagine. It just boggles the mind that in a world where the magnificent amount of damage alcohol contributes to on a societal scale is essentially disregarded with the sheer amount of advertising momentum generated to propel this problem even further, this in an age where even more addiction is necessary to cope with the expanding incomprehensible nature of modern human existence.

TRUTH IN ADVERTISING

Who can really argue with advertising? Corporations have reached pretty much honed their evil shit to such a scientific razor point with decades of societal observations and psychological profiling. If you really want to know what people are thinking all you have to do is see what’s being slapped up for the public to look at whether they want to or not.

Case in point: Judging from this fine piece of trash from Svedka vodka, the ideal fantasy woman isn’t even human at all, but some vaguely feminine, fucked-up bald robot with huge tits, nonexistent waist and hips and a large, somewhat flat ass stacked on top of legs that are almost as long as its entire body, complete with built-in heels in it’s feet. The horribly sad conclusion one must glean from this monstrosity is that some pathetically large percentage of the male population has finally got the composite, the prototype, what men secretly want, and that if they could build this thing you can bet your sweet ass those that could afford it would be sitting in their penthouses sipping Svedka on the rocks after a hard day of managing hedge funds, while their bald-headed androborg sex toy struts around on black tile whispering sweet mechanical nothings while presumably attaching it’s custom fit, state-of-the-art silicon vagina to make for a perfect evening perfect.

It’s beautiful.