It’s complicated.

Blame it on advertising. Blame it on the industry. It really doesn’t matter who or what you point to. The evidence is everywhere: the vast majority of Americans have a fantasy relationship with food.

What we eat is an extremely intimate, personal relationship with ourselves. It is precisely how we maintain the partnership between the soul that we are, and the body we live in.

It took half a century for me to grasp the fact that the stability of my mind, vitality, and longevity all depend heavily on what I eat.

It’s the same for you. Although our diets vary vastly, that statement still holds true.

However, like most people, I always thought of my diet, only in the narrow terms of “dieting.” Rather than the food we routinely eat, let alone its nutritional value.

Our weight and overall health is, more often than not, a direct reflection of our high expectations and extremely low standards of the food we eat.

Without realizing it, the manufactured food we crave, even desire, is carefully designed to reach our “bliss spot.”

Tuesday New Releases in Music

Though hip-hop star Wiz Khalifa and rockers Hinder hope to prove otherwise, this week’s expected sales leader, Ke$ha, controls her own fate with sophomore album Warrior. Despite an excited fan-base, the question remains: does anyone really care? Last week Rihanna’s album Unapologetic went to #1 as expected, but massive week-to-week sales drops by veterans Aerosmith, Green Day and Soundgarden proved more interesting.

Whether these sales woes reflect greater shifts in how people consume music, or merely showcase the “Holiday Album” effect on post-Thanksgiving sales, one truth endures for so-called legends: either bring your best, or stick to the reunion circuit. Heading into 2013, no such thing as a “guaranteed” hit exists.

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Blur – Parklife: Special Edition (Virgin Records)

Dream Boat – Eclipsing (Cloud Recordings)

El Perro Del Mar – Pale Fire (The Control Group)

Swedish artist Sarah Assbring’s melancholic lo-fi indie pop shines on her fifth LP Pale Fire, particularly on the fluid groove of “Walk On By,” her strongest single yet. From Blurt Magazine:“All ten tracks evoke surreal circumstance, given a delivery that’s atmospheric, amorphous and hypnotic.”

Flogging Molly – Live at the Greek Theater (Side One Dummy) – 3 LPs + DVD

Gary Clark Jr – Blak & Blu (Warner Bros.) – Vinyl

Hinder – Welcome to the Freakshow (Republic Records)

Jacob Morris – Moths (Cloud Recordings)

Ke$ha – Warrior (RCA)

Rolling Stone says we owe Ke$ha a debt, as she’s given us so many cancerous earworms. Otherwise how would we ever fill our heads with anything remotely catchy? With Warrior, she sets herself up for what befell Lady Gaga, who dared take pop too seriously. Drowned in Sound puts it more nicely: “Warrior is never dull, always fun, and frequently a thrillingly unpredictable ride.” Check out “Die Young” if this sounds like your cup of tea.

Memory Tapes – Grace / Confusion (Carpark Records)

Mogwai – A Wrenched Virile Lore (Sub Pop)

Olly Murs – Right Place, Right Time (Columbia)

Paloma Faith – Fall to Grace (Epic)

It took six months for this sophomore effort from English singer-songwriter Paloma Faith to get a US release. Fall to Grace combines elements of pop, soul and R&B, solidly showcased by lead single “Picking Up the Pieces,” (see video above) which puts her squarely in the realm of “the next Adele” competitors.

Raime – Quarter Turns over a Living Line (Blackest Ever Black)

Shackleton – Music for the Quiet Hour / The Drawbar Organ (Woe to Skeptic Heart)

Scott Walker – Bish Bosch (4AD Records)

Sigha – Living With Ghosts (Hotflush)

The Bergamot – Static Flowers (Both Records)

This South Bend, Indiana, duo blends the folk-tinged pop smarts of Elliott Smith with hints of “mainstream Americana,” crafting the harmonious sounds of Static Flowers, the band’s debut. They also won “Best Unsigned American Band” in a competition sponsored by Bud Light, for what that’s worth. Standouts include “Smoke & Fire” and “Amy.”

Wiz Khalifa – O.N.I.F.C. (Atlantic)

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Last week nearly 50 holiday-themed albums jockeyed for position among the Billboard album chart’s 200 individual entries. And since we haven’t highlighted any of the festive albums this season, there’s no better time to get into the Christmas spirit. These twenty albums offer all the jingle you’ll need for any end-of-year celebration.

PJ Lifestyle plans to continue expanding in many directions after the election — hopefully along with the rest of the economy! Over the coming months we’ll be seeking out new voices to complement our usual team of humorists and cultural critics. (Keep an eye out for future openings for new writers and bloggers.) Today we’re looking for freelance writers with experience and skills to review products.

Gadget Gurus and Tech Thinkers.

With the holiday season approaching we’re looking for people who can highlight the must-have gadgets and gifts: laptops, phones, tablets, stereos, cameras, TVs, and all manner of electronics. Can you compare and contrast different products? Rank which is the best to worst TV, phone, or tablet? Also seeking software and video games reviewers.

We’re also interested in people who can look at the tech industry in the broader perspective, arguing not just if you should buy the new Apple or Google product, but whether either company’s new move is good or bad, and what the future holds as the two contend with Amazon.

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Please email your resume, introductory letter, and urls of writing samples to PJ Lifestyle’s managing editor David Swindle: DaveSwindlePJM@gmail.com

Click here for more writing positions open at PJ Lifestyle

Advertorial

“Keep The Change” is a catchy little Country Rock tune penned by Rayburn, a band hailing from Little Rock, Ark. Recorded at Ocean Way studios in Nashville, Tenn. by Grammy award-winning engineer, Ben Fowler (Lynyrd Skynyrd, Rascal Flatts, Hank Williams Jr.), “Keep The Change” is an up-tempo number that perfectly captures the current mood in a moment of our country’s history where change is on everyone’s mind.

This tune punches and tickles at the same time, using upbeat rhythms that drive the song forward while lyrically exploring some very pointed views on the powers that be. With a thought-provoking lyrical take on a certain well-known political slogan, the song contains no objectionable language.

“Keep The Change” gets straight to the point, making use of upbeat rhythms and a catchy hook to drive home its message. The song is available for download for free here. It is also available for download on iTunes.

Keep The Change Lyrics

You got your fingers in everybody’s pocket, and you won’t take responsibility,

You’re dangerous spending all that money, taking away our children’s destiny,

You call your own shots breaking every law, burning down what our fathers built,

You’re a rock star savior to the masses,

A wolf in sheep’s clothing got the world in dark sunglasses,

Your power and your glory paid for by lies and deceit,

Sit high on your throne, it won’t last long, tell me how’s that view staring down at me,

Keep the change – your change is too strange,

Keep the change – your change is deranged,

You don’t get it, division means derision of everything that we hold dear,

We’ve got the answer – answer to your cancer, gonna make it disappear,

The words from your mouth are slick and too proud,

Moving forward ain’t a merry go round – round and round,

Keep the change – your change is too strange,

I said keep the change – your change is deranged,

Take from who’s got and give to who’s not, And take a little more,

we’ll all be poor – poor for sure,

Keep the change – your change is too strange,

I said keep the change – your change is deranged,

Keep the change…keep the change.

*****

The messages contained in this article are the viewpoints of its sponsors and may or may not be the opinion of PJ Media, LLC.

PJ Lifestyle plans to continue expanding in many directions after the election — hopefully along with the rest of the economy! Over the coming months we’ll be seeking out new voices to complement our usual team of humorists and cultural critics. (Keep an eye out for future openings for new writers and bloggers.) Today we’re looking for freelance writers with experience and skills to review products.

These are some of the areas we’re looking to fill:

Gadget Gurus and Tech Thinkers.

With the holiday season approaching we’re looking for people who can highlight the must-have gadgets and gifts: laptops, phones, tablets, stereos, cameras, TVs, and all manner of electronics. Can you compare and contrast different products? Rank which is the best to worst TV, phone, or tablet? Also seeking software and video games reviewers.

We’re also interested in people who can look at the tech industry in the broader perspective, arguing not just if you should buy the new Apple or Google product, but whether either company’s new move is good or bad, and what the future holds as the two contend with Amazon.

Food and Cooking Experts

We’d like reviews of appliances and kitchen products, especially top 10 lists. We’d also be interested in How-To recipe articles explaining which products one needs to go about preparing various dishes. Those capable of supplying their own photographs or custom-made images for reviews are especially appreciated.

We’re interested in both the healthy, organic diet advocates and also the junk food apologists. Experts in Tobacco, Alcohol, and Wine also should apply.

Men’s and Women’s Fashion Experts

From high fashion to the casual and practical, what do we need to know to look and feel good no matter the occasion? And who offers the best deal?

What are the top 5 trends in fashion this season?

Also interested in experts in jewelry, purses, watches, and other fashion accessories.

Health and Hygiene and Make-Up Specialists

Best razors? Best deals this week on make-up? Are there new vitamins and supplements we should consider?

Outdoor Enthusiasts

We’re interested in reviews of sporting equipment, fitness gear, garden and lawncare supplies, and home improvement tools. Also: survival gear, hunting, self defense, and gun experts.

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Please email your resume, introductory letter, and urls of writing samples to PJ Lifestyle’s managing editor David Swindle: DaveSwindlePJM@gmail.com

As Americans become more politically polarized will we choose to patronize or avoid a store, brand, product, or restaurant based on that corporation’s political activity?

For example, if you are an active Democrat would you avoid Walmart if you knew that their corporate contributions lean towards Republicans?

You could go to Target instead, but their contributions also help fill the GOP coffers.

If this information leaves you feeling in a blue state and you want to shop that way, then head on over to COSTCO where Democrats receive 99% of all contributions.

How about if you are planning a trip to Disneyland and discovered that so far in the 2012 election cycle Disney has made $575,000 in political contributions with $411,000 or 77%  going to Democrats.  Would you change your travel plans?

Is it important for you to know whether the company you are supporting is an R or D before you hand them your hard earned after-tax dollars?

If so, Open Secrets, a unit of the Center for Responsive Politics, makes it easy for consumers to discover just how much corporations are donating to a party and/or candidates.

Besides donations, does the relationship between a company and the President of the United States affect consumer behavior?

A few years back when shopping for a new car, I refused to even consider a GM model because in no way was I was going to support “Government Motors” any more than my tax dollars already had.

It turns out I was not alone in this thinking. Recently the New York Times revealed that in the first quarter of 2012, in a survey of 30,000 Americans shopping for new vehicles, 32 percent said they would not consider a GM car because of the 2009 U.S. Government bail out.

Last week, when I linked to the video from McDonald’s Canadian division that explained why food almost always looks better — and typically bigger — in a photograph than in person, YouTube suggested the above video, titled “The Photoshop Effect” as a recommended choice at the end of the McDonald’s clip. It’s from 2008, but it’s still a relevant topic, especially considering how much more powerful Photoshop has gotten in the years since, including its new CS6 edition.

But arguments as to “is it fair” that supermodels and A-list Hollywood actresses have teams of skilled Photoshoppers making their already well-toned bodies and well-defined facial features look even better seems to be a rather specious argument. Celebrities want to look their best when they’ve got a new film to hawk, Sports Illustrated wants their swimsuit edition to jump off grocery counter checkout lines, etc. Does it promote a false ideal for women, as the young woman in the above video asks? Well no more than the physical fitness of models and actresses, who have hours blocked out of their day to spend at the gym with expensive personal trainers.

Funny though that no one complains that when Bruce Willis jumps off a 100-story skyscraper or fist-fights his way through a thousand heavily-armed terrorists, what we’re really seeing is a stuntman and plenty of CGI. But even if they did, in a way, that complaint, and the ones heard in the above video are somewhat akin to the arguments floated when massive amounts of overdubbing first took off in popular music in the mid-1960s. The early Beatles, at their best, were a tight little rock group, as can be heard on their first album. I believe all of those backing tracks were cut live, and only minimal overdubbing was done to patch up their vocals. But the time of the Sgt. Pepper-era, the Beatles were bringing in session musicians skilled in unusual instruments, whole orchestras, hiring outside arrangers, and their producer George Martin was developing new recording effects and increasingly complex strategies to push the equipment inside EMI’s Abbey Road studios to the very limit of 1966 and ’67-era recording technology. That the Beatles were a cash cow for EMI made it all possible.

20 years later, during the height of the MTV-era, Paul McCartney would release a stripped down, relatively low budget video shot in the London subway tubes to accompany his song “Press” and justify it during interviews by complaining about so many up and coming groups who would simply hiring the trappings of success — expensive cars, flashy clothes, dancing girls, and exotic locales for a day or two worth of video shooting, to make themselves look more successful and wealthier than they really were.

To which, as often is the case, the proper response is…”So?” (Though occasionally, too much Photoshopping can produce rather humorous results when compared to the real thing. But again, so what?)

(Photoshopped into the PJ Lifestyle blog from Ed Driscoll.com.)

On June 27, 1972, Atari Inc. was incorporated in the state of California. That makes today the 40th birthday of the company that pioneered coin-op gaming, and six years later Atari would unleash the Video Computer System, later renamed the 2600.

The console gaming industry was for all intents and purposes born with the Video Computer System, and home entertainment would never be the same. The console with the one-button joystick and the game cartridge changed everything and introduced some great interactive entertainment along the way. Here are my Top 10 Atari 2600 Games.

10. Realsports Football. Atari’s first football game was horrible. It was barely football at all. But with Realsports Football, Atari tried and mostly succeeded in creating a decent football sim. You only had a Pop Warner size team, but the players looked pretty good and you could do most of the things you could do in the real sports world: Breakaway runs, first downs, passes, interceptions, punts and so forth. The AI was pretty stupid, and before long every player had figured out how to blow it off the field 99-0. But Realsports Football and the other Realsports games foreshadowed the massive Madden, MLB, NBA and FIFA simulation franchises that dominate today.

9. Missile Command. Defend Cities. ‘Nuff said.

8. Star Raiders. This game required a pad separate from the joystick to control all the various functions of your space ship. It was way ahead of its time for its complexity and replayability.

I took this photo this morning while out walking Maura:

Last month a pastor in New York City objected to the same billboard in his neighborhood and managed to get it removed:

This offended the eye of pastor Freddy Wyatt, whose Gallery Church operates out of a loft across the street. “I was angered and brokenhearted,” sayeth Wyatt in the New York Post. “This ad takes something that’s pure and precious and just strips it of its value.” Pure?! Ever tried Vitaminwater, Reverend? It’s unholy water. Kidding, of course. He means the nearly naked model. Wyatt appealed to a higher authority, by which I mean he tweeted at the advertiser, asking that the billboard be cast out of the neighborhood. And lo, on April 3—Good Friday, no less—his wishes came to pass. “This is a respectable, honorable, and classy decision on the part of Vitaminwater,” Wyatt says. “Here’s four tweets from a random pastor, and without even a conversation, they took it down.” The advertiser beheld the publicity stemming from its decision, and saw that it was good. Say amen, somebody!

A powerful video launched by a group called Catholics Called 2 Witness has launched, in the name of freedom, an all out assault on the social policies put forth by President Obama.

When a non-Catholic, churchgoing friend sent me this video the message said: You don’t have to be Catholic to appreciate this ad, peaking my interest.

As a person of faith here is my interpretation of the “ad” and its underlying message.

The use of fire — a biblical symbol of God’s awesome power – is a demonstration by the Almighty of His intent to destroy or conversely to show His approval of man’s behavior.

In this video God’s people, i.e. the Catholic Church (but really all believers), must triumph over the anti-biblical social policies of the Obama administration (that are ultimately more important to fix than our nation’s economic problems in the eyes of God). But this important victory will only occur if HIS people rise up and vote Obama out of office. Otherwise our nation will be consumed by the fires of hell.

The video with over 1.3 million views is starting to go viral which means its strong message and imaging will be up for much political, social and religious interpretation.

As usual, I expect the comments of PJ Media readers to be among the most insightful.

I was on the Brian Wilson show discussing my PJ Lifestyle posts on the negative portrayal of men in the media.

You can listen here.

It’s the season premiere of Mad Men! I’m in my Brooks Brothers suit with a rye whiskey, an unlit Lucky, a dead man’s Purple Heart in my pocket — took some poking around the vintage stores for that one, let me tell you. After Mad Men caught on everyone wanted one, I guess. My wife is wearing a sharp form-fitting dress, and she’s wearing Peggy-style season-1 bangs, and as soon as the show starts we’ll turn off the lamp — the one where the lamp base is a ceramic cat with a long neck — and settle in for the first show in a year and a half.

That’s how you’re supposed to do it, right? Cosplay for web designers? Dress-up fun for adults who want to act like, well, adult adults. Perhaps. Not for me. Please. It’s like watching Twin Peaks with a bunch of people carrying logs or dressed in FBI black, telling each other they’d like a damn fine piece of pie. (Or “Eip fo eceip inef nmad a,” if you’re short and walking funny.) That sounded like hell, too.

When a show becomes an object of cultish adoration, and the fans assemble to worship together, there’s always that moment when it’s just . . . not as good as you expected. Or hoped. Or remembered. Something’s off; they’re straining to connect with the things they once did with ease. You realize you’re just there for the clichés: a Don Draper Line of Insight (TM), a Roger Sterling moment of nonchalant dissipation. Peggy being the Smartest Bestest Person in the Business, as well as an obtuse and humorless drip. Hey, maybe Sal will come back from the bushes. Maybe Betty will do something so unexpected she turns into an interesting character.

Maybe it’ll even be about advertising again. All right, be back in two hours.

LATER

Nothing happened. Nothing usually does; that’s life. This isn’t a complaint. The soap-opera elements of the show — divorce! infidelity! pregnancy! — aren’t the reasons people watch it. People watch it to see Roger Sterling breeze into the room and announce that the lobby is full of Negroes. Also the clothes.

I was just reading over at the Daily Mail about a Rebok ad in Germany that was removed due to it’s offensive nature:

A controversial Reebok ad has been removed from display following widespread complaints.

The poster, which ran at a gym affiliated with the brand in Germany, was intended to motivate, with the slogan: ‘Cheat on your girlfriend, not on your workout.’

Instead, however, it was met with a consumer backlash, and the sportswear firm pulled the ad and acknowledged that it was ‘offensive’.

So, Rebok pulls their ad and apologizes for being offensive to women but men are punched, beaten, abused, have coffee thrown on them and portrayed as stammering morons in the media and that’s okay with consumers or even funny? Jim Macnamara, author of Media and Male Identity: The Making and Remaking of Men did a PHD Dissertation looking at men and the media and found the following:

The study involved collection of all editorial content referring to or portraying men from 650 newspaper editions (450 broadsheets and 200 tabloids), 130 magazines, 125 TV news bulletins, 147 TV current affairs programs, 125 talk show episodes, and 108 TV lifestyle program episodes from 20 of the highest circulation and rating newspapers, magazines and TV programs over a six-month period. Media articles were examined using in-depth quantitative and qualitative content analysis methodology.

The research found that, by volume, 69 per cent of mass media reporting and commentary on men was unfavourable compared with just 12 per cent favourable and 19 per cent neutral or balanced. Men were predominately reported or portrayed in mass media as villains, aggressors, perverts and philanderers, with more than 75 per cent of all mass media representations of men and male identities showing men in one of these four ways. More than 80 per cent of media mentions of men, in total, were negative, compared with 18.4 per cent of mentions which showed men in a positive role.

The overwhelmingly negative reporting and portrayals of men in mass media news, current affairs, talk shows and lifestyle media was mainly in relation to violence and aggression. Violent crime, including murder, assault, armed robberies and attacks such as bashings, accounted for almost 40 per cent of all media reporting of male violence and aggression, followed by sexual abuse (20.5 per cent), general crime (18.6 per cent) and domestic violence (7.3 per cent).

Some people think the negative portrayal is “no big deal.” But it is a big deal. This portrayal of men is dangerous to society as it causes people to stereotype men and see them as dangerous perverts. Men are reacting to this stereotype by going on strike, avoiding interactions with women and children; they no longer work with kids, volunteer as often or get married as readily for fear of a legal or cultural backlash. Many are “going Galt.” These are not positive developments for society. So, yes, negative portrayals of men are a big deal.

Update: You can listen to my interview on the topic of negative portrayals of men in the media with radio host Brian Wilson here.

I was watching the show House Hunters last night on HGTV and noticed that, even with such a neutral show, in the space of ten minutes I saw two commercials that were abusive to men. In one commercial, a woman was angry at a man at work and dumped a cup of coffee on him. In another, a man was in the grocery store aisle anxiously trying to decide whether his wife (or girlfriend) wanted the sweetener Stevia or real sugar. He was terrified that if he bought her sugar, she would be angry as she was off sugar that week, but he was also afraid that she would get mad if he bought her artificial sugar as she would think he thought she was fat.

Another commercial showed a woman powerfully riding around on a lawn mower. I wish I could just peacefully watch a show without the constant message that says men are wimps, perverts, idiots, or must live in constant fear of women and the simultaneous message that women are powerful. They climb big rocks while their boyfriend looks at them with admiration. Have you seen that Citi commercial?   These commercials may seem cute to some but they are destructive when they treat men as accessories to women rather than as human beings. Why not treat both sexes as worthy of some dignity?

Do you have a least favorite of these “males are idiots, predators, or wimps” commercials? If so, drop it in the comments as I am working on a section for my upcoming book on why men are on strike in the U.S. and could use some tips.

Update: Listen to my discussion with radio host Brian Wilson on negative images of men in the media here.

With The Lorax, the entertainment industry and the federal government have joined forces to produce a candy-colored dollop of castor-oil. This woeful would-be message movie is about as jaw-dropping as a notable previous Potomac/Pacific joint effort — the pro-Stalin film Mission to Moscow ordered up by Franklin Roosevelt in 1943.

Dr. Seuss’ Lorax is a furry orange forest gnome who carries an overt anti-industry, anti-capitalist, pro-environmentalism theme, and in an effort to look as though they practice what they preach the backers of the film have lined up deals with supposedly green and eco-friendly outfits such as the detergent maker Seventh Generation, which is hawking a Lorax-branded bottle made of recycled paper. (Question: did anyone bother to measure the relative carbon emissions of making a plastic bottle versus making one out of paper, or is the overall feeling of groovy virtue all that matters?)

Another notable Lorax partner is the Environmental Protection Agency, which you might think (or fear) would have bigger things on its mind than promoting a big-screen cartoon, but the combination of Hollywood glamour (Zac Efron and Taylor Swift are in the cast) and the opportunity to push early propaganda on little minds proved irresistible to the EPA, which is using the Lorax brand to hype those supposedly energy-efficient appliances that never quite seem to deliver on their promises. (Click image at left to read.)

Unsurprisingly, given the rigid earnestness behind it, The Lorax isn’t much fun to watch. Every time you think it’s starting to get a little heavy-handed, it gets heavier still. The Lorax (voiced by Danny DeVito) features in both ascension and resurrection scenes, there is a hymn to greed called “How Bad Can I Be?” that would have embarrassed Bernie Madoff, and the bad guy, O’Hare (Rob Riggle), who wears a severely geometric ‘do suggesting the epic hairstyling errors of Moe Howard, Ringo Starr and Rooney Mara, is a loathsome little creep who has made a fortune selling bottled air.

The art department never got the memo from the Heavy Themes folks, though, and they created a delightfully Seussian candy-colored playland that hardly says “hellhole.” The skies are azure and the streets are clean, giving the lie to the opening song about how smoggy and rubbishy everything is.

More likely to repel little Jake and Emma is the forest critter and alleged hero the Lorax. Imagine the crankiness of your average Scotsman with the mustache of David Crosby.

The Lorax famously “speaks for the trees” but sounds much like a creepy Earth Science teacher who can’t stop talking about that time he met Joan Baez at a No Nukes rally. Briefly I considered reporting the little freak to the police, after he sneaks into bed with the adolescent Once-ler (Ed Helms), an initially well-meaning kid out to make a buck who falls prey to his worst instincts and cuts down all the trees to harvest a substance used in making a must-have clothing item called a “thneed.”

The Lorax (who is only the fourth most prominent character, not that I wanted more of him) fails to convince the Once-ler to be gentle on the land and the woodland creatures who live there. But he’s such a huffy little troll that it’s difficult to picture anyone taking advice from him, even before he slips himself between the sheets with a little boy. Nor is DeVito’s the voice of wisdom; the man sounds like a cabdriver in a 1940s movie, or maybe Ratso Rizzo’s less successful brother, not a sage.

If you’ve got a film buff or a friend with an interest in graphic design on your Christmas list, Saul Bass: A Life in Film & Design, is a giant, heavily illustrated 428-page coffee table book with an enormous “wow” factor – and not coincidentally, a fair amount of heft at seven pounds, with dimensions of 11.7 x 10.6 x 1.7 inches. It was designed by Saul Bass’s daughter Jennifer, and written by design historian Pat Kirkham, who knew Bass personally, with an introduction from longtime Bass admirer Martin Scorsese. It’s published by Laurence King Publishers.

Saul Bass (1920 to 1996) began his career designing the film poster for 1954’s Carmen Jones, and the title sequence the following year for The Man with the Golden Arm, both produced by Otto Preminger. He would go on to design groundbreaking title sequences for Hitchcock’s Vertigo, North By Northwest and Psycho, Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus,  John Frankheimer’s Seconds and Grand Prix.  Along with all of his film work, Bass eventually became a respected corporate graphic designer for such businesses as AT&T, The Bell System, United Airlines, Dixie Cups, Minolta, Lawry’s Foods, Warner Brothers, and Quaker Oats. For many years, his film career and corporate design work overlapped, until his career as a title designer appeared to slow in pace in the 1980s, only to see it revive with such high profile Martin Scorsese films as Goodfellas (which marked the beginning of a career resurgence for Scorsese as well), Cape Fear, The Age of Innocence, and the last title sequence designed by Bass, Casino.

The Title Design of Saul Bass from Ian Albinson on Vimeo.

There are two audiences for this book (with plenty of overlap of course). The first are film lovers and film historians who have thoroughly enjoyed Bass’s title sequences and his contributions to films such as Psycho, including storyboarding shot for shot its legendary shower sequence, which this new book discusses at length. The second are students of graphic design. Much of the work that Bass created would be rendered infinitely with today’s technology such as Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and Adobe After Effects. And yet, Bass created his iconic still images and what we now refer to as “motion graphics” decades before such computer technology existed. As with the soundscapes that George Martin created for the Beatles 20 years before digital synthesizers and samplers, these pioneering analog efforts led the way and helped to shape the digital technology we enjoy today.

Bass is perhaps best remembered for elevating the movie title sequence into art, but fortunately, Saul Bass: A Life in Film & Design doesn’t overlook his work as a corporate designer. While Bass was an extremely talented and endlessly creative corporate designer, because of the simple modernist elements he typically worked with, what began as art with Bass was quickly boiled down into formula by other, lesser designers. The result was a corporate sameness by the early 1970s, which was brilliantly – if entirely unintentionally – summed up in the best-known moment of the design and typography-related documentary, Helvetica:

In that sense, as a corporate designer, Bass’s influence was similar to that of Mies van der Rohe. While Mies an extremely talented and inventive architect, too many lesser architects (cough — Philip Johnson — cough — Gordon Bunshaft) who following his lead saw only the plate glass and black I-beams and could never imitate Mies’ sense of proportion and willingness not to be bound to the rules of Miesianism.

Which is a useful lesson for anyone considering a similar career in corporate design work. But then, despite going off to the great artists’ garret in the sky 15 years ago, there are all sorts of lessons still to be learned from Saul Bass.

Webster’s New World dictionary defines Rube Goldberg as

A comically involved, complicated invention, laboriously contrived to perform a simple operation.

Dictionary.com has two definitions:

1. Having a fantastically complicated, improvised appearance: a Rube Goldberg arrangement of flasks and test tubes.

2. Deviously complex and impractical: a Rube Goldberg scheme for reducing taxes.

Rube Goldberg, though, is not just a term for a silly invention that performs the simplest task by the most complicated path, Rube Goldberg (1883-1970) was an actual person, one of the 20th century’s more popular cartoonists. It’s not well known but two great cartoonists, Goldberg and Betty Boop creator and animation pioneer Max Fleischer both spent part of their careers working in Detroit making films for the Jam Handy Organization. The Handy studios made instructional and promotional films, many of them for General Motors, primarily Chevrolet. The promotional films were distributed free of charge to theater operators, who were glad to get free content.

Continue reading the complete post here.

When he’s not busy doing custom machine embroidery at Autothreads Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth and contributes to The Truth About Cars and Left Lane News

As Americans read daily about the stagnant U.S. economy, they not only have to worry about their family’s savings and retirement plans — which are vanishing right before their eyes — they have to worry about new types of con artists and scammers exploiting their worries.

Whether it’s scams that exploit seniors, identity theft schemes, phony IRS agents or other scams, the world-wide web has proven itself to be a perfect tool during the economic downturn for con artists looking to exploit a vulnerable mark.

News coverage of these frauds may cause a sense of hyper-vigilance and even a desire to limit online activity to familiar places and sites generally to minimize risk.  However, that’s not necessarily the way to avoid exploitation in the digital world.

Unfortunately, one of the most insidious opportunities of all time to deceive individuals is one being put forward by digital heavyweight Google.  In this case it appears to be part of the company’s business model, challenging the well-accepted notion that name brand products and services are likely to be more trustworthy and safe.

From tracking and collecting your favorite restaurants, movies, and even your dating status, Google’s business model appears to rely on collecting and collating personal information about online users in a way that even the best private investigators can’t.  Their algorithms are so sophisticated that they can determine not only how many individuals access the internet in a given home, they even can capture their birthdates, gender etc., all so they can determine how to market products and services.  They do this whether you knowingly give permission or not.

If this seems useful, just imagine that the info marketed to you by Google may not be the same as that which is seen by your son or daughter when they log on.

Officials as far afield as Texas and the European Commission have initiated investigations into Google’s actions that exploit online users.  In Washington, both the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission are reviewing Google’s practices.  Nevertheless, the complaints don’t stop there.  From alleged misuse and manipulation of search results to censorship of content and purported intellectual property rights abuses, Google’s practices are beginning to attract attention in the public arena.

Virgil Exner Sr has been treated somewhat unfairly by history. Yes, some of the designs that he rendered himself or that he oversaw as head of Chrysler styling make the nickname “Virgil Excess” seem appropriate. His best work, though, influenced other designers and had a purity of line and a design cohesion that his contemporary designers at GM and Ford rarely matched. Though Exner had been in charge of Chrysler styling for a while, it was the 1957 “Forward Look” Chrysler, Dodge, Plymouth and DeSoto cars that were the first production cars to bear his full personal stamp. Based heavily on the Flite Sweep concepts of 1955, the ’57 Mopars created a firestorm within the auto industry, and put Chrysler at the head of the Detroit pack styling wise, briefly taking the lead from GM.

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When he’s not busy doing custom machine embroidery at Autothreads Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth and contributes to The Truth About Cars and Left Lane News

Photo: Ed Morales

The promotional tie-up between the Fiat brand in America and entertainer Jennifer Lopez was supposed to be the foundation for the launch of the Fiat 500 on this side of the Atlantic. Instead its become a gaffe filled comedy of errors. The first step in the automaker’s use of the singer/dancer as a celebrity endorser, said to be the brainchild of Chrysler head Olivier François, was to star the 500 in the music video for Lopez’ recent release Papi. That might not have been a bad idea had François not also decided on using a 30 second trailer from the video as the first national US commercial for the car. The result made no sense and was panned by Pete DeLorenzo as the worst car commercial of the past decade, forcing François to insist that it really wasn’t a commercial, just a music video trailer. This was followed up by an actual commercial featuring J-Lo, known for her self-professed “Jenny on the block” persona, apparently driving in her old NYC neighborhood. I say apparently because first it was revealed that much of the principal photography with Ms. Lopez was not shot on location in New York. Then it came to light that those scenes that were actually shot in New York used a body double for Lopez. It turns out that really wasn’t Jenny driving a Fiat 500 on the block. Now it turns out that the Fiat 500 used in shooting the New York scenes broke down in the middle of the scene, needing repairs to complete the shoot.

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When he’s not busy doing custom machine embroidery at Autothreads Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth and contributes to The Truth About Cars and Left Lane News

Dr. Tedd Roberts generally approves of commerce and enterprise.  He is however disturbed by the ever-earlier opening trend on Black Friday:

The frank truth is that lack of sleep produces many of the same mental effects as being drunk or high, and Black Friday will be staffed by employees operating on too little sleep.  The busiest retail day of the year is also the day when clerks and shoppers both are at the greatest risk of making serious judgmental errors at potentially high costs.

The factors that could lead to serious lapses in judgment include:

1. Sudden shift from working during the day to working during normal sleep hours.
2. Long work hours
3. Difficulty in sleeping during the day

Many stores are opening at very early hours on the Friday after Thanksgiving.  Shops which normally open at 8, 9 or 10 AM will open at Midnight, 3 or 4 AM.  The employees will have to report to work 5-8 hrs early than normal, in fact, they will start work during the times of the day when they are usually asleep and all bodily functions are at a minimum.  It is as if they had suddenly traveled from the U.S. to Europe, with all of the symptoms of jet lag, without the elapsed time.

After quoting some studies, he asserts that:

When sleep deprived, it is difficult to form and use short term memory – such as ringing sales and making change.  It is also difficult to make critical decisions, such as identifying shoplifters or when to allow exceptions to sale terms.

Essentially, people who are sleep deprived show many of the same impairments of a person with a legally impaired blood alcohol level even though they do not show the same physical effects [Citek at al., Journal of Forensic Science, September 2011, volume 56, number 5, pages 1170-1179].  While factories, shops and offices that normally operate evening and night shifts have employees who are accustomed to working in the dark hours of the morning, most retail employees (and shoppers) are not.  Thus, not only are your employees working impaired, your customers are shopping and driving while impaired.  The increase in traffic incidents and police responses on Black Friday is commonly attributed to the size of the crowds, however, the increasing trend of early opening and sleep-deprived public has to be be compounding the problem.

While I don’t think he has any chance at all of being heard, not in a year when retailers are being simultaneously squeezed between the recession and competition from online stores, perhaps I should note that having retailers stumbling around and not quite able to engage the customer as they should, besides having sleep-deprived customers finding themselves back home with two hideous sweaters and a pint of Castor oil and wondering how this happened, will only push people to shopping on line more.  Sometimes, perhaps the response to unfavorable results shouldn’t be to do more of what brought those results about.

Since the early days of the industry, car companies have used a variety of animals as mascots and hood ornaments as well as in their logos and promotional materials. Long before Ford called a sporty car “Mustang”, Sir Lyons renamed his company Jaguar. Lyons used a cat, perhaps an idea taken from Edsel Ford, who put a dog, a leaping greyhound, on his Lincolns. Delage used greyhounds as well, but some of their hood ornaments were elephants. More famously, Ettore Bugatti fitted each of his Royales with an elephant hood ornament sculpted by his brother Rembrandt. I recently saw these and many other animal ornaments and mascots at the Classic Car Club of America’s museum on the grounds of the Gilmore Car Museum. Animals don’t just show up in the car world as classy hood ornaments, though. Auto dealers, part stores and car washes are known for renting giant inflatable gorillas, lizards, and even fish, to attract attention to their businesses. So it shouldn’t be that surprising to find an American flag painted life size elephant in front of a Honda dealer in suburban Detroit. Still one wonders just what an elephant has to do with selling Hondas.

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When he’s not busy doing custom machine embroidery, Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth and contributes to The Truth About Cars and Left Lane News

Local car dealers have the best commercials. Rhett & Link, a couple of comedians, musicians and filmmakers, agree. They currently produce a reality tv show with them traveling around the country, visiting small towns and then developing and producing funny commercials for local businesses using local talent.

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When he’s not busy doing custom machine embroidery, Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth and contributes to The Truth About Cars and Left Lane News

Chevrolet has been criticized for repeatedly resorting to nostalgia and patriotism to sell its cars to Americans. Even its current “Chevy Runs Deep” tagline carries with it an implicit reference to the company’s long history and role in American culture. It’s not a new phenomenon. In the 1970s, as the domestic auto industry tried to compete with the first wave of Japanese cars sold in America, jingle composer Ed Labunski and Campbell-Ewald ad writer Jim Hartzell wrote “Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie and Chevrolet”, which provided the soundtrack to what Car and Driver called one of the two best car commercials of all time. It was a landmark advertisement that is considered to have changed not just advertising but also branding in general. Chevy even reprised the concept this past summer with a spot called “Love Affair”, that reflected changes in baseball, America and the Chevy lineup.

It seems to me that while a lot of the criticism of Chevrolet and GM advertising is valid, when you’re a company that’s 100 years old you can’t run away from your history. After all, in the minds of consumers that history, good or bad, is a part of Chevy’s brand. So Chevy can’t exactly avoid its history as America’s car brand, a position it held for much of the 20th century. As the Chevrolet centennial approaches even critics of Chevy’s nostalgically themed advertising have to allow the company a little space to celebrate its anniversary.

William C. “Billy” Durant and Louis Chevrolet founded the Chevrolet Motor Co. on November 3, 1911. With Chevy’s actual centennial only two weeks away, the other night Chevrolet introduced the commercial that will be the company’s public face running through it’s 100th birthday celebration. In the spirit of Labunski and Hartzell, Chevy launched the ad during the first night of the 2011 World Series.

The commercial is called “Then and Now” and the ad, created by Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, part of the Omnicom Group, is very clever film making. It’s one of those cases of synergy, where the visual concept of the ad meshes beautifully with the messages.

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When he’s not busy doing custom machine embroidery, Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth and contributes to The Truth About Cars and Left Lane News