Entries Tagged 'Pop Culture' ↓

Pepsi sure ran whole hog with their “Choice of a New Generation” campaign, back in the ’80s. But nothing demonstrates the level at which they were feeling themselves more than this award-winning, 1985 commercial, “Archaeology,” directed by ad great Joe Pytka.

Take a gander at it: Nearly 25 years later, the payoff is still one of the best disses ever in corporate marketing. (Plus, the shuttle, departing overhead, is pure visual magic, the cherry on top, the ping! in the overture.) It would be some sweet writing if I could end this paragraph’s first sentence by saying, “…and a blow from which Coca-Cola never recovered.” In truth, Coke still kicks Pepsi’s behind up and down the street.

Greg Pittelli, with his son, Anakin, sports a No. 77 Darth Vader football jersey (Star Wars was released in 1977) as he reveres the grave of his mentor. His snap is the third place entry in Chronicle Books’ Obsessed with Star Wars competition, promoting their recent eponymous book.

Third place?

I’m not a big rare record collector, as a) I’m not a d.j. or a producer, b) a lot of music is on CD or p2p networks, and c) I bought most of what I really love when it originally came out. (Well, O.K.: I didn’t purchase World’s Famous Supreme Team’s “Hey D.J.” 12″ (the track’s glorious video, here), a Jean-Michel Basquiat “test pressing sleeve” version of Rammellzee vs. K-Rob’s “Beat Bop,” or perfection itself—Endgames’ “Ecstasy” instrumental—but hey, I can’t be everywhere at once.)

However, I did once gleefully fork over significant cash to an unseen Brit for a beautifully preserved, 12″ copy of the Russell Brothers’ 1983 electro-funk masterpiece, “The Party Scene,” above. The reverb-laden, synth-spazzed track’s first minute-and-a-half have always sounded, to my ears, like something big, dangerous, and powerful being turned on, then warming up; like, say, the Large Hadron Collider if it was being run by Parliament-Funkadelic.

If you know what I mean, or loved this disc during your Back In the Days days, this chilly YouTube link will, paradoxically, warm your cockles. The rest of y’all, take your chances. Play loud, as always.

You’d be forgiven for thinking, before yesterday, that Bettie Page, the black-haired, 1950s pinup girl with an unflappable commitment to the camera, above, wasn’t even a real person, but, like Uncle Sam, merely a symbol.

Indeed, her face and figure are so much a part of the last century’s random visual database—like images of the moon landing, the Spirit of St. Louis, or Elvis—you might even conclude that, if she was real, then she had to have been many different women—a composite like that other Betty, Crocker—all playing to a simple fantasy of middle American sexual vitality that has long disappeared under dust, but that got “our boys” through the Second World War, Korea, and the suffocating stuffiness of whitebread life in the mid-20th century.

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The new Star Trek trailer, above, is finally out…and it’s kinda bananas.

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In this clip from a 1966 Batman episode, “Dizzonner the Penguin,” the tuxedoed terror begins his election petition by promising “no mudslinging in this campaign”….only to immediately start tossing wet dirt at his opponent!

Sound familiar? No wonder this old, wrinkled white guy is doing horribly in the polls against…heh heh, the Caped Crusader.

[via BoingBoing]

Why do Americans not vote?

In her new documentary, Holler Back: [Not] Voting in an American Town, director Lulu Fries’dat examines voter apathy through the eyes of Allentown, PA residents, ones both active and inactive in the electoral process.

Lulu Fries’dat is the guest on my WBAI-NY / 99.5 FM radio show, NONFICTION, this afternoon, Friday, October 24, 2 pm ET.

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In a new Funny or Die short, director Ron Howard briefly steps away from his Panaflex, shaves his beard, clips his nose hair, covers his bald pate, re-inhabits the classic roles of “Opie Taylor” (The Andy Griffith Show) and, above left, “Richie Cunningham,” (Happy Days), then, enlisting the help of famed actors Andy Griffith and, above right, Henry Winkler as Happy Days’ “The Fonz,” goes back in time somewhat, encouraging people to vote for Barack Obama. Now, all we need are the cast of The Wire to do the same thing.

What you see, above—an Italian 4-fogli, or four-sheet, for the 1973 film, Coffy—is, for its subject, size, and graphical power, to me, the single most desirable ephemeral object in all of Black film, and possibly connected to any movie.

Why?

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At the recent DragonCon ’08, a rare photo of an authentic Cookie Monster-slaying warrior with the remains of her prey.

Note the distinguishing touches: Her blue, Cookie fur boots, providing necessary stealth and warmth, and her matching lipstick, providing additional camouflage.

[via Boing Boing]