Monthly Archives: November 2010

Pointless Nostalgia Video, Videocracy

Internet Gauntlet Thrown: “You’re Gonna Win!”

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When I love something, it’s usually due to a combination of factors, but I can always pinpoint one element and say, “This exemplifies why this is awesome.” Like how “Clowntime Is Over” might be the best song ever, but whenever I listen to it, I lose myself in how perfect the bassline is. Or like how The Jerk is an indisputable crowning achievement of 20th century comedy, as represented by the duet between Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters where she suddenly without warning breaks into a trumpet solo.

In this vein, there was an ad for Comedy Central that ran in the early/mid-1990s that was so intensely dark, non-sequitir-y, and perfect that it is the gold standard by which I judge such promos. And I do judge promos. Constantly. I’m judging even as I type this.

This commercial was shot in black and white. A prisoner is being led to the electric chair. Tight shots on his panicked face. Beads of sweat break out on his forehead. A priest gives him halfhearted last rites. He shoots a hopeful glance at the phone on the wall, hoping for a pardon. Nothing. He is strapped in. The helmet is put on his head. The clock ticks closer and closer to midnight. Any second now, he will pay for his crimes.

gonnawin.pngAnd all of a sudden, an acoustic bass is heard. The prisoner looks off to his left. The camera cuts to a corner of the room, where a jazz trio is performing; a vocalist, a drummer, and a bassist. The singer is a pompadoured hipster-crooner in sunglasses, singing right at the prisoner with exaggerated hand gestures the following lyrics:

You’re gonna win!
You’re gonna go!
You’re head of the pack,
You’re king of the show!
You’re on the move
Straight to the top
You’re way out in front
You’ll never stop!
You’re gonna win!
You’re gonna WIIIIIIIIIN!

Halfway through the song, the prisoner is smiling and tapping his feet. Yeah, everything’s gonna be okay! And it ended with the tagline THINK POSITIVE: COMEDY CENTRAL.

Everything about this ad was great, but the one detail that really got me was the trio’s drummer. He had this insane wide-eyed grin, almost Cheshire Cat-like, looking straight at the camera. It was monstrously funny. I used to draw little recreations of the trio in my high school notebooks. That’s how much I loved them.

This ad popped up in my head recently, so I decided to troll through the internet and look for it. Surely someone had captured its majesty in YouTube form so the entire world could enjoy it and make racist comments about it (since all YouTube videos, regardless of content, attract racist comments).

Well guess what, Internet? You have failed. Failed miserably. Because there is no video representation of this ad ANYWHERE on your series of tubes. For shame.

Sure, you can find later permutations of the ad, like one where a guy comes home to find his wife boning the plumber, and another where a guy takes a dive in a runaway elevator. Not good enough, internet. The death row ad was the ne plus ultra. You need to supply the original and you need to do it posthaste.

I have literally dozens of VHS tapes from this period with episodes of MST3K. It’s very possible one (or more) of them has this ad on it. But you know what? I’m putting the onus on you, Rest of the Internet. Haven’t I done enough to immortalize the commercials of yesteryear? “Yes,” says everybody.

So get on the stick, you guys. I want this thing on my desk after Thanksgiving or heads are gonna roll.

Baseball

Jeter and the Yankees: Who Completes Whom?

jeter.pngDerek Jeter is a free agent the way your car is in Delaware while driving down I-95. It is a necessary but temporary state of affairs and will not last long. No sane person thinks Jeter will be anything but a Yankee when all is said and done. Everyone accepts that the Yankees will overpay to keep in the Bronx, and I have no problem with that. Hell, it ain’t my money. Give him a billion dollars a year for all I care.

However, the technical possibility that Jeter could play for another team, like any mention of Jeter period, is enough to set off sports scribes, like a gritty whistle only they can hear. Just witness the harrumphing when some folks dared suggest his Gold Glove award might not be justifiable. Professional moron Craig Carton got his panties in a knot and protested angrily that Jeter had made only 6 errors in 2010, blissfully unaware of just how useless the error stat is to assess a player’s fielding ability.

Most of the ink spilled has been along the lines of what Peter Gammons tweeted last week: “The Yankees need Jeter’s brand. Jeter needs the Yankee brand”. He repeated this nearly verbatim when appearing on Mike Francesa’s show last week. I heard Jared Max, the sports update guy on WCBS News Radio (the Yankees’ flagship station), talk about how the Yankees would benefit from, among other things, having Jeter get his 3000th hit in pinstripes.

Would they? Is this really a partnership of equals? I would say not, and I think the early returns would indicate this as well.

Jeter definitely needs the Yankees, but the Yankees do not need him–and this has nothing to do with his worth as a player. It has to do with legacy. Jeter has one to protect, and the Yankees don’t. Or rather, their legacy can not be dented by anything Jeter related. Sign him for a 100 years or trade him to the Yakult Swallows–either way, the Yankees will remain the Yankees.

When I hear people insist otherwise–that the Yankees need Jeter as much as he needs them–it reminds me of a line from The Simpsons, when Krusty tried to pawn off his long-lost daughter’s violin: “It isn’t worth much money, but the sentimental value is through the roof!”
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Parental Guidance

One More Year

hat.jpgLast year, I wrote an appreciation for The Baby on her third birthday. Here it is a year later, and she’s turning four, which I can barely fathom. She talks better than me now. She’s learning her letters and numbers at lightning speed. I’m looking into kindergartens (to enroll her in, not just peeping through the window). She has become extremely opinionated about her daily wardrobe. Truth be told, she’s not The Baby any more. She’s a little girl.

I can barely say that, or even write it, because it seems so insane to me. The amount of time that’s passed in her life already is unfathomable to me, as difficult to wrap my head around as the concept of infinity (which I had to do when she asked me ‘What comes after space?’ and I tried to explain to her that space goes on forever). And I realize that so many of the cute things she said and did when she was little are dangerously close to being lost in my memory (because I need that brain-space to remember crappy 30-year-old commercials).

So I’m furiously trying to compile all these items so they won’t be forgotten (in a Word doc, because computer programs never become obsolete!). Like how when she was newborn, she wouldn’t cry, but make a ‘mew’ sound, almost like a kitten. How when was only a few months old, she used to light up when she heard the Feist tune used in an incessant series of iPod ads. How she had a set of play keys and would toddle around the house trying to “unlock” all the doorknobs she could barely reach.

spacecadet.jpgAs I compiled these things, going in chronological order as much as I can, what I keep coming back to is how gloriously silly she is, and how that allows me to be silly in a way that would be impossible without her. Like how she’s watched Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure so many times now that I recite scenes from it with her, verbatim (at her insistence). Or how she does the herky-jerky dance from Mr. Show (don’t worry, I just let her watch the dancing part). Or how she wants to be a “spaceman,” and asks mommy to make her a spacesuit out of tinfoil. (Stunning results seen here.) Or how, when she’s taking a bath, she loves to see me slide past the open bathroom door in my socks, often backward. (I’m talented.)

With each passing day, as she discovers something new, I feel like I’m discovering it right along with her. It helps that she has an affinity for things I like, such as The Adventures of Pete and Pete (she does a spot-on impression of Artie, Strongest Man in the World). But it’s so easy to be jaded and cynical about everything in this world, and having her in my life reminds me that there are wonderful things in it.

When she was first born, and I’d see her lying in her bassinet sleeping, I’d approach it slowly and listen for her breathing. It seemed impossible to me that something so unbelievably tiny and fragile could be alive. I thought a strong wind could hurt her. As time goes on, you realize that kids are much tougher than they appear. I’m astounded at how quickly her bumps and bruises disappear; you can literally see her heal over the course of a day.

Even so, when your child is hurt, it pains you like nothing you’ve felt before. Earlier this year, The Baby came home from school in an odd mood. She’s very often cranky, but this was something different entirely. She seemed depressed. I kept asking her what was wrong, but she said “nothing,” in this sad, distant voice that told me it definitely wasn’t nothing.

I did lots of things to cheer her up, putting on her favorite shows, taking her out for pizza, then getting her ice cream. She’d be happy for short bursts, then I could see a switch go off, as if she remembered “oh wait, I’m still sad,” and she would settle into a funk again.

Finally, as we walked back home, I got the story out of her. Some boy she was friends with at day care said he wasn’t going to play with her anymore. He would play with some other girl. She was heartbroken, and it broke my heart, too. It was her first taste of rejection more serious than me not giving her a cookie, and I realized this was the just the first of many heartbreaks that awaited her. I thought about being a little kid and how awful it feels to be excluded, usually for reasons you’re never told or can’t understand, and I felt the weight of all that sadness on me.

We were walking home on an overpass above the Long Island Expressway. She likes to watch the cars zip back and forth beneath her, especially at night, and the Manhattan skyline glisten through the exhaust haze in the distance. She stared in that direction, but really didn’t take any of it in.

“You feel sad?” I asked

“Yeah,” she said.

“You know what I do when I feel sad? I think about things that make me happy. You know what makes me happy? You.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, sometimes I’ll get sad or mad during the day when I’m away from you, and I’ll think of something silly you did or said and it makes me happy. Maybe you can think of somebody who makes you happy and that will make you feel better.”

She thought for a while, hand on chin, and named a classmate, not the one who’d just rejected her. “She makes me funny!” she said, which I interpreted to mean, She makes me laugh, and added, “I like to make people funny!”

“It’s nice to make people laugh,” I said, “because when people laugh, they’re happy.”

“Yeah…” she said, with a little laugh herself. We went home and watched Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure for the 8 billionth time. She laughed as hard as she always does for the Breakfast Machine scene, and when Pee-Wee yells IS THERE SOMETHING YOU CAN SHARE WITH THE REST OF US, AMAZING LARRY?!

She could not stay awake long enough to see her other favorite part, Pee-Wee overdubbed in his movie cameo (“Paging Mr. Herman…”), and fell asleep curled up next to me. I carried her to bed, laid her down, and kissed her good-night.

Watching her sleep, I thought about how tiny she once was and how I used to think her every breath was a miracle. And I thought about how fragile she once was, and still is, and how there isn’t a single thing I wouldn’t do to spare her one second of pain. Though I’m sure I could do anything for her, I haven’t been called on to do anything Herculean yet. Usually it just takes a 98-pound man-child wrapping scotch tape around his face.