One more thing…
Monday January 10th 2005, 2:53 pm
I’d love to know who the jackass was who started saying Orange County was “the OC.” Maybe I’m missing something, seeing how I haven’t lived there since I was eighteen, but I never heard anyone attach the definite article in front of those initials until that show with the same name stumbled into the world.
Some people called it OC, but it was usually in relation to Los Angeles: “Hey, we’re here in LA; let’s go down to OC.” Even then, it doesn’t do much good ’cause Orange County is not the homogenous white bread paradise that tv makes it out to be. Maybe it’s because I didn’t grow up in Newport or Corona or South County or Villa Park, but I think Orange County, and I think of going to high school in Santa Ana, taking the bus with old Latino men who wore cowboy boots and hats and clutched tightly wrapped plastic bags. I don’t know why the bags stick with me so much; probably because it seemed so incongruous with the button shirts, white Stetsons and the gentle swagger of someone who’s probably worn boots since he could walk. What the hell was someone dressed in such a dignified manner doing with a plastic bag from K-Mart?
I think of that when I think of Orange County. I think of rockabilly punks in Fullerton. I think of Little Saigon. I think of learning how to cuss in three or four languages, eating food made by grandmothers from four different continents; I remember strip malls and endless lawns and cul-de-sacs for bike-riding and cookouts at Huntington Beach and the adult bookstores on Harbor on the way to Disneyland. I think of places like Irvine that gave me the willies because of their sameness; everything seemed the same: the architecture, the color scheme, the landscaping, the people, the stores. It also seemed dead, though two of my cousins grew up in Irvine, and they rock, so it’s probably my own stupid bias. Newport was where I went for the dentist and the orthodontist and allergy shots and the dermatologist (though, now that I think about it, how could that be any more bourgeois, unless I was getting a nose job at the same time).
The OC is a state of mind, just like LA is. Los Angeles is a real place, and so is Orange County. Both are more complex and convoluted and alive than the stereotype could ever be, and to think otherwise is a mistake. Neither place is perfect, but they’re real, and that matters for something.
And that’s how we do things in the OC, bitch.
Beer: The Universal Currency
Monday January 10th 2005, 1:29 pm
One of the highlights of Christmas with my folks was my brother showing us the web site for Utenos beer, one of the many fine brews we had on our trip to Lithuania a few years ago (I dug vyturys Baltijos myself, but the UT was good). Well, not the website, as much as the commercials.
Beer commercials are works of art. They present an alternate reality where skinny, ugly men crack open cans of weak, watery American brew, and suddenly all the competitors from this year’s Miss Sweden contest appear and whisk our heroes to a tropical paradise with entertainment by some loud hair band, lots of fireworks and a hot tub filled with some kind of aphrodesiac/hallucenogenic substance that makes the girls fall for the guys. I wish that Salvador Dali had worked at an ad agency, just to see what kinds of warped stuff he would make.
Anyway, Utenos is now owned by Carlsberg, so that means the little brewery from eastern Lithuania has a big-ass marketing budget. It also means that, in order to compete with the other fine breweries (vyturys, Kalnapilis, Gubernija, Ragutis), its ads would have to have an extra dimension other than Boobies. Utenos found that dimension, and it is awesome: making one’s choice of beer a patriotic statement, and put it to a maddeningly catchy song.
Just go and watch, and don’t blame me if you find yourself humming “Reik?jo berniukams” or doing the Utenos finger dance.
Click Early, Click Often!
Monday January 10th 2005, 11:32 am
Last summer, I worked on a search engine ad campaign. It was fun once I got the hang of the system, though it was also a bit scary: I was playing with real money, and in larger amounts than I’m used to seeing. While it was tempting to take the client’s money and go on a Hookers ‘n’ Blow Binge in Vegas, my ethical restraint kept me on the straight and narrow (that, and I wasn’t allowed near anyone’s credit cards).
It’s just buying ad time on radio or tv. The search engine says, “We think this keyword you want will get one hundred clicks a day, so, if you want to be on top, you need to pay us five cents a click.” You set up your ads, you bid on your keywords, and you only pay as you go. You have control over the copy, the position, all of it. Granted, Google’s tracking system gave me the screaming heebie-jeebies, but what the hell.
Why am I telling you this? Because Ken Lay, Kenny-Boy Lay, Ken “Enron” Lay, Ken “Jammed Grandma Millie right up her ass for fuckin 250 dollars a megawatt hour” Lay (Yes, I know Ken didn’t say that, but, hey, you’re responsible for your troops, dude) has a website where he offers The Truth About Enron. And he’s bought out his name as a keyword for around ten cents a click.
Click away for The Truth, and, hey, if you feel the need to click a few hundred times, well, you’re just searching for Truth, right?
Resolutions for 2005
Sunday January 02nd 2005, 9:08 pm
1) Produce twelve short stories, three per quarter.
2) Get at least two of ‘em published.
3) Make myself so invaluable at work that they shower me with coupons for sushi and scented handkerchiefs.
4) Be sexy.
5) Figure out how to inflict Irritable Bowel Syndrome on the jackholes who keep trying to lay down comment spam on this site.
6) Get my leg back up to snuff so I can start putting on some serious miles on the bike.
7) Avoid unmoderated, troll-laden weblogs that do nothing but make me angry at the trolls, the hosts and everyone involved.
8) Grow the best goddamn tomatoes around.
9) Keep better contact with the world.
10) Be even sexier.
Other people’s resolutions.
