Say it ain't so: Darrin Stephens, actor?

Speaking of disappointment with the latest movie retread (see Herbie post below), Bewitched fails to fall into AdFreak's must-see category because the industry we love so much figures to have a less-than-prominent role. A perusal of today's (generally mediocre) reviews of the film tells us Will Ferrell plays an actor trying to get a job as Darrin Stephens for the TV series. Well, score one for marginal originality, but that setup is likely to cut out a key part of the original series: specifically the shenanigans at advertising agency McMann & Tate. Paying scant attention earlier, we were sort of looking forward to Ferrell as the put-upon ad exec working for the ever toadying Larry Tate, not to mention lots of dated humor about heavy drinking. We can only hope actor Steve Carrell, whoever he is, can pull of an Uncle Arthur half as campy as Paul Lynde's. (Incidentally, extensive research done for this post turns up the fact that he actor who played Tate, David White, got a sendoff worthy of his alter-ego's, well, ego.

—Posted by Trevor Jensen

Published on June 24, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

A penny saved is a penny earned

From Flomation, Ala. comes a guy who perfectly illustrates the whole selling point of Coinstar, which makes those machines in banks and grocery stores that count coins. Gas station owner Edmond Knowles saved up more than a million pennies over 38 years, and Wednesday cashed them in for over $13,000, setting a new Coinstar record. He plans to add the proceeds to his retirement fund. I hope no one in the bank was in line for the Coinstar machine and got stuck behind Ed, as processing all of those pennies took over seven hours. The total bounty, stored in 55-gallon drums, weighed more than 4 tons.

—Posted by Celeste Ward

Published on June 24, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (3)

In Herbie movie, new Beetle is unplugged

Just when I thought every prop in every movie was the result of a product placement deal, I was greeted this week with this shocker: that the Herbie in Herbie: Fully Loaded is still a classic 1967 Beetle instead of the current, modernized version that so many of us covet. (Well, I, for one, also still desire the mid-70s Super Beetle, olive green, black interior, convertible, that I most assuredly did not get for my 16th birthday.) Think of what a boost a new model Herbie could’ve given to Volkswagen sales! But it was not to be, apparently. Maybe you’re thinking that the movie’s producers kept to the old, original model used in early Herbie movies for reasons to do with artistic integrity, but I doubt that’s the case. Not from a Disney movie in which the plot revolves around the main character, played by Lindsay Lohan, going into car-racing instead of taking a job at Disney offspring ESPN.

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

Published on June 24, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (4)

Sir Richard Branson beknights weird bike

Gym rats rejoice. If Richard Branson, Yahoo! and a small business in Arizona have their way, the monotony of gym workouts could be history. Sir Richard, who had a painful reality TV show that we must try to forget, selected Phoenix resident Craig Ridenhour from 8,000 entries as winner of Yahoo!’s “Think Big” contest, which offered small businesses the chance to submit their business plans for the chance to win 8 million search ad impressions and 2 million banner impressions. Sir Richard, who has tried to carve out a niche as the active man’s billionaire, chose Ridenhour’s StairCycle as winner. Basically a StairMaster that can act as a bike, it allows the exerciser to get a good cardio workout while actually getting somewhere.

—Posted by Brian Morrissey

Published on June 24, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (3)
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Della Femina having a fit over fireworks

Jerry Della Femina is bickering again with the city of East Hampton. The town has cancelled its July 4 fireworks show over concerns that it might harm federally protected piping plovers nests on the beach, and Jerry is pissed. “I’m nuts over this,” he tells Page Six. “This is hurting the little people who come to the beach with their families to see the show. The man who canceled the fireworks is village administrator Larry Cantwell. He’s screwing everybody. He’s such a small guy. He’s the highest-paid public official in East Hampton, but he hardly works. Call him and ask him about why he’s doing this, but he’ll probably be out playing golf.” Della Femina’s Hamptons newspaper, The Independent, has offered to put up $10,000 if any fines are levied on the village because of the fireworks.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Published on June 24, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (8)

No dogs were hurt while filming this ad

Warning: Do not leave your toy-sized pooch in a shopping bag on the roof of a Ford Focus. Thankfully, the ad-standards people in Australia are not requiring such a disclaimer on this new Focus ad (tagline: “Ford Focus. Smooth”) or pulling the ad entirely, despite concerns. They agreed that viewers are not complete idiots and would see the ad depicting a simple mistake. “On a very, very serious note, we had to approach the RSPCA, the Department of Primary Industries and the Advertising Standards Bureau. On the legal side of it, we take it very, very seriously,” a Ford rep says. In the end, they took very, very serious precautions to protect the tiny talent. “The dog was on the roof, but we actually stuck the bag to the roof so there was no chance of the dog coming off, and the dog also had its own tether in case it tried to jump out of the bag,” the rep says. “And there were a couple of shots there where we did have a stuffed dog.” Whew!

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Published on June 24, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

When bad contests happen to good people

For someone named DJ Slick, this guy’s a buffoon. Slick, the night host (until recently) on Hot 102 in Lexington, Ky., allegedly held a contest in which he promised “100 grand” to the 10th caller. Norreasha Gill waited on hold for hours and eventually won. She was ecstatic. And she expected $100,000. What she got was a Nestlé’s 100 Grand candy bar. She’s now suing, having already made the mistake of promising her children “a minivan, a shopping spree, a savings account and a home with a back yard.” (When the station manager explained the situation and offered her $5,000, she said she “wanted $95,000 more.” Burn!) DJ Slick has reportedly left the station, and we expect he may sheepishly handle weddings from now on. I’m pretty sickened by the whole affair. Hell, even my college radio show, unburdened by professional requirements, had the decency to offer real prizes—or fake prizes so unappealing that no one went for them. But this? To quote Gill herself, “you just can’t do that to people.”

—Posted by David Kiefaber

Published on June 23, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (7)
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Lohan dumped from ‘Herbie’ posters

Page Six today happily reveals that Disney had to update its Herbie: Fully Loaded posters following Lindsay Lohan’s radical shift in appearance in recent months. “Updating” them meant getting rid of Lindsay, at least in one new poster. Says Page Six’s source: “Disney needed to do something because it made them look silly—having a poster for the movie of a big, busty redheaded Lindsay when she’s now a blond twig. So they hastily sent out new posters—one is just of the car, and another is of the car with a tiny, tiny Lindsay and cast members off to the side.”

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Published on June 23, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Free neutering, courtesy of NYC2012!

Taking its crusade to the streets, NYC2012 armed runners in yesterday’s JPMorgan Chase Corporate Challenge with handheld flags bearing the organization’s logo. Maybe the committee’s judgement had been clouded by a post-West Side Stadium frenzy to save Gotham’s Olympic bid. Or maybe the thought of thousands of New Yorkers running past Central Park while holding those cute little flags trumped safety concerns. Whatever the reason, in hindsight, let’s say that giving wooden sticks to athletes who would soon be pumping their arms furiously in close quarters was not the best move. At least one runner, who asked that I no longer mention his relation to me on this blog, enjoyed a swift wooden stick to the testicle. Thanks, Dan Doctoroff!

—Posted by Deanna Zammit

Published on June 23, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

A new-product intro, McSweeney’s style

McSweeney’s has a fun short story up that imagines the birth, short life and quick death of a fictional product called “It Better Be Gum.” “Courageous Blast: The Legacy of America’s Most Radical Gum,” by Jack Pendarvis, told from the point of view of various characters involved in the gum’s creation, follows the trajectory of a product that’s clearly just awful (“After you spit it out, there was still, like, this greasy feeling and this weird bitter taste. And when I went number two it burned!”) and yet inspires cultlike devotion (“The first It Better Be Gum commercial ... was kind of a bummer because everybody in the whole world was going to know about our secret thing. But when that monkey came out and started dancing his ass off, that was the funniest damn monkey I ever saw.”) The best part might be the marketing director’s justification for the stomach-rotting substance: “Try to place yourself in what was really a gum vacuum at that time and imagine It Better Be Gum bursting forth like some sort of courageous blast of dynamite. That’s courage. To create something out of nothing. Which is what we do every day in this business.”

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Image: Ed Owens/KRT/Newscom

Published on June 23, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Australians suddenly notice nudity on TV

As U.S. lawmakers threaten cable TV and satellite radio with tougher regulations, Australia is just getting around to being offended by what’s on free TV. Specifically, “the Big Brother program [has] prompted ... a review of how much nudity can be shown on free television,” according to Reuters. The new season of Big Brother is evidently a raunch-fest. “What we basically have is pornography and full-frontal nudity on television at a time when children are watching. These people have an aspiration to be porn stars,” says Trish Draper, a member of Parliament. Big Brother housemate Michelle (shown here), a co-conspirator in an explicit hot-tub incident, doesn’t exactly dispute that. “If you put 15 sexually active people in the house who obviously enjoy sex and are young, it is going to happen,” she said. One the one hand, it’s hard to expect higher standards from a country built from a British prison colony. Then again, the whole incident puts our own indecency wars in perspective. Clearly we’re being way too uptight about our own watered-down programming.

—Posted by David Kiefaber

Photo: Network TEN

Published on June 23, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (2)
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Memo to NBC: Free Triumph!

Nothing spoils the fun like passing along a funny link to a friend and finding out it’s been taken down. Like the other day, when I passed along a link from iFilm.com of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog interviewing Michael Jackson supporters outside the trial of the King of Poop (whoops, typo!). On Monday, when I first saw it on iFilm, I was treated to 10 minutes of hilarity all for the price of watching a short Microsoft ad leading into the clip. By Tuesday, when I got around to passing it on, the clip had been taken down, and replaced with this message: “iFilm has complied with a request by NBC that we do not show this clip.” While not exactly surprising—you can practically hear the lawyers threatening each other in the background—it also seems short-sighted on NBC’s part to not actively court further distribution of its content, particularly when the network is in the ratings dumpster. (Not to single out NBC necessarily—all of the big media companies do the same thing under the same circumstances.) You can see a severely edited version of Triumph’s interviews at NBC.com (click here and look for the “Triumph” link on the right), but it just ain’t the same.

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

Published on June 23, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Do we really need more Backstreet Boys?

As the Backstreet Boys prepare to release a new album, I can’t help but wonder what society did to deserve it. The album, Never Gone, is augmented by a tour and an avalanche of press. News sites have been featuring them often (the hell with what our president is doing), and the music media is awash with updates. They’ve chosen a Spinal Tap-esque strategy, starting with smaller club dates, much like every other band recovering from complete self-destruction. By self destruction, I mean the usual: “substance abuse ... infighting, management changes,” and the waning popularity of boy bands in general. (“Boy bands became as uncool as New Kids on the Block,” says AOL News, forgetting that NKOTB were themselves a boy band.) Evidently, Oprah is the one who got BSB back together. For an episode of her show that focused on A.J. McLean’s problems, “she coaxed the remaining Backstreet Boys to surprise him on air. After the emotional reunion, the group holed up in a hotel room and started talking about a comeback.” You’ll pay for this, Oprah.

—Posted by David Kiefaber

Photo: PR Newswire Photo Service/Newscom

Published on June 23, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (3)
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For sale: ‘Jesus loves you’ sandals

Just in time for beach season, we came across these great sandals, which have treads that leave the words “Jesus loves you” in the sand. They’re called “Shoes of the Fisherman” (apparently the “shoes of the fisherman” are passed down from one pope to the next). The tagline is: “The sandals that leave the greatest impression.” This Web site claims that the maker of the sandals, one Dr. Kathleen Farrell, was once abducted by a stranger but was saved after repeating the 23rd Psalm over and over, out loud. “After my horrible experience, I thought about ways to spread the Good News,” Farrell is quoted as saying. “Then the idea came to me to cut out letters from an inner tube and glue them backwards to the bottom of sandals. When I walked from wet grass onto a wooden deck and the sandals left the words ‘Jesus loves you’ all over, it was awesome. I knew God was directing a wonderful new way to proclaim His Love.” Oh, the sandals go for about $20. (Thanks to Boing Boing for the link.)

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Published on June 22, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

What would the Earl of Sandwich think?

Britain’s own Sarah Ferguson now has a sandwich bearing her title at New York’s Stage Deli. On Monday she unveiled the “Duchess of York,” a grilled chicken breast topped with melted cheese and wasabi horseradish mayonnaise, for people who prefer toe-curling discomfort to mere spice. In what some might call the weakest sales pitch in history, she pleaded with onlookers not to finish it. “You can have a bit of this sandwich as I have ... just don’t eat the whole thing,” she said. Rest assured that if she were American royalty, she would have put bacon on that sucker and tossed it in the deep fryer. She wasn’t paid for the endorsement, but she is a spokeswoman for French’s GourMayo, whose mayonnaise graces the sandwich. She is also, of course, a spokeswoman for Weight Watchers, which explains her plea to dieters but not her decision to put her name on this monstrosity in the first place.

—Posted by David Kiefaber

Photo: John Carriglio/PR Newswire Photo Service/Newscom

Published on June 22, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1)
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Maurice Saatchi takes the Tories to task

We find it rich that Tory grandee Maurice Saatchi now laments the outcome of the recent general election in Great Britain, regretting his failure to overturn “the fiction of the focus groups” in politics. (Isn’t this the same guy who, after helping to elect Maggie Thatcher as prime minister in 1979, introduced such American-style focus groups into U.K. politics as a way to keep her in power?) The former chairman of the U.K.’s Conservative party is now going public with criticisms of his peers in comments written for the U.K. Center for Policy Studies and in an interview with BBC’s Radio 4. This spring, Labor leader Tony Blair retained his party’s power, and Lord Saatchi accuses the Tories of running a “Basil Fawlty election.” For a politician who received his place in the House of Lords largely by virtue of his marketing counsel to Thatcher and other Conservatives, it’s hard not to be cynical about his current admonition that politics must have a “noble purpose.”

—Posted by Noreen O’Leary

Photo: Zuma/Newscom

Published on June 22, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1)
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It’s still gotta be da shoes

Mid-1980s. Junior high school in Mokena, Ill. Kid (not me) walks out of the locker room wearing the original $100-plus red-and-black-and-white Air Jordans. A brief pause—has time stopped? Then a sudden giant sucking sound, as any vestiges of non-materialistic attitudes are vacuumed, Exorcist-like, from our little 11-year-old brains. Few of us would ever end up with a pair of Air Jordans, but there wasn’t a single one of us who didn’t want them. From that day a couple decades ago, it’s a fairly straight shot to this year’s Wimbledon, where Nike has given Maria Sharapova 10 pairs of absurd, gold-encrusted tennis shoes (like the one shown here), worth $600 a pair. These shoes are ridiculous. Even Sharapova seems a bit baffled by their existence. “They shine unbelievably,” she said this week. “Hopefully, that will distract my opponents a little bit.” If Air Jordans ushered in the age of modern consumer culture, the Sharapova fashion show might be the perfect expression of it. And it’s not just shoes. The Russian teenager is also set to debut a “sort of cloak with gold details and a gold zipper” and a “summer dress with orange details on it.” If she doesn’t win this tournament, won’t she end up looking a bit foolish?

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Image: Nike/PR Newswire Photo Service/Newscom

Published on June 22, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1)

First the fruit buzz, now the candy high

As a kid, I remember riding my bike to the candy store with my best friend, armed with a pocketful of change, to buy Jolly Ranchers, Tootsie Rolls and bubble gum. It seems that simple pleasure has been tainted, now that marijuana-flavored lollipops are being sold at convenience stores across the country. The pot-flavored pops, with names like Purple Haze and Rasta (the image shown here is from the Mary Jane Candy Co.), are getting some folks angry. “It’s nothing but dope candy, and that’s nothing we need to be training our children to do,” said Georgia state senator Vincent Fort. Rick Watkins, marketing director for Chronic Candy, counters: “There are more than 70 million people in the United States who smoke marijuana. We’re catering to the audience of people who are in that smoking culture.” Although the candy is legal because it’s made with hemp oil, thereby providing only the taste and not the high, Chronic Candy uses the tagline, “Every lick is like taking a hit.” Sounds like false advertising to me.

—Posted by Lisa van der Pool

Published on June 22, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ready for the return of ‘Rescue Me’

Monday night was the spiffy-neato preview of Rescue Me’s second season, and I, by some miracle, was on hand for the fun. The first two episodes from season two were screened in Chelsea to an enthusiastic crowd of mostly 19-year-old women and 50-year-old men. After the thanking of faceless executives by FX’s new president (whoever he is) and the show’s producer/writer/star, Denis Leary, we got under way. I’d heard of the show but had avoided it, fearing it would be as depressing as Third Watch. As it turns out, Rescue Me is like Third Watch, but with better writing. The show centers on the personal and professional lives of the FDNY’s Ladder 62. Leary’s character, a stubborn, angsty drunk of Irish heritage, is nothing new, but the refreshing humor (like the “fag/ultra-fag/mega-fag” argument with his cousin) saves it, as does Leary’s convincing performance. Really, all the characters are familiar archetypes, but FX allows them franker dialogue (the word blowjob was especially popular—or is that two words?) and less pressure to be P.C. about things like faith, substance abuse and 9/11. The latter issue is particularly prominent, for better or worse—at one point, in a delightfully cathartic tantrum, Leary flips out on people selling 9/11 cookies at Ground Zero. I spent all of 15 seconds at the afterparty at 40/40, but by the time I get the song they were playing out of my head, the second season of Rescue Me will have officially begun. And I, for one, will be watching.

—Posted by David Kiefaber

Photo: Craig Blankenhorn/FX

Published on June 22, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)
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One celebrity endorser you don’t want

We can’t say Saddam Hussein’s penchant for Doritos and Cheetos will do much for either brand’s sales, but boy, what a dose of humanity it is proving for the dictator. The Butcher of Baghdad, enemy of America, murderer of millions, loves his Doritos and eats his Raisin Bran for breakfast. (We can see the Us Weekly feature now: “Despots—they’re just like us!”) The details about his processed-food proclivities, as told to GQ by the GIs guarding him, make the former Iraqi leader, recently photographed in his tighty-whities, even more pathetic. The guy now has control over so little in his life that Froot Loops constitute a major offense. Here he is, washing his clothes in the sink, dispensing fatherly if questionable advice on dating to GIs and eating American junk food. Nearly 60 years after the end of World War II, a movie that tried to show Hitler as less than a monster turned my stomach. Give Saddam a bag of chips, and he seems just a little bit more like a regular guy. I’m not sure that’s a role any chip maker would want.

—Posted by Deanna Zammit

Published on June 21, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (4)

Planning (or not) for a summer vacation

With summer having officially started (happy solstice!), Americans’ thoughts naturally turn to summer vacation. But thinking is as much as many folks will do about it. In an ABC News/Washington Post survey fielded earlier this month and released this week, just 53 percent of adults said they’ll take a summer vacation (the link goes to a PDF file). Men were more likely than women to say they’ll do so (58 percent vs. 48 percent). The total is dragged down a bit by old folks, whose lives of leisure leave them feeling less in need of a summer break. Sixty-six percent of adults under 30 plan to take a vacation, vs. 46 percent of those over 65. People with household incomes of $100,000-plus are more likely to be planning a vacation than those making less than $35,000 (68 percent vs. 40 percent). Nonetheless, fewer than half of those who don’t expect to vacation this summer said cost is the primary factor in that decision (41 percent). Maybe they just want to stay home and read AdFreak.

—Posted by Mark Dolliver

Photo: PR Newswire Photo Service/Newscom

Published on June 21, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Corgan adds to wave of ’90s nostalgia

We’re barely halfway through the aughts, and ’90s nostalgia is already running amok, particularly in the music industry. Never mind VH1’s I Love the 90s (which debuted last year, but still). To wit: Alanis Morissette is inexplicably hyping the 10th anniversary of Jagged Little Pill with an acoustic version and a tour (“And isn’t it ironic/How you’re 31 and reliving the past”). The Pixies are in the midst of a comeback (again, last year’s news, but still). The Spice Girls may be reuniting for Live 8. And now Billy Corgan, touting his first solo album, has taken out a full-page ad in today’s Chicago Tribune, saying he wants to put the Smashing Pumpkins back together. Put it all together, and it can only mean one thing: CBS’s Rock Star, the upcoming show that will try find a new lead singer for INXS (who hit their peak in the late ’80s, but let’s cut them some slack), is going to be huge.

—Posted by Aaron Baar

Published on June 21, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Taking spammers up on their offers

Having received enough spam e-mails promising products to “Enhance H.E.R. Seexx m00d” and “M@ke ur g1rl_f1end WANT U,” John Hargrave decided to actually order some aphrodisiacs and test them. (“I am the perfect test subject,” he writes, “since I have never once aroused sexual desire in any female.”) Writing on the comedy Web site Zug, Hargrave says that while “Athena Pheromone 10X” might have worked for ancient pagan goddesses, it had no noticeable effect on his living modern wife or on strangers in the subway. He also tried two colognes, “Scent of Eros” and “The Edge,” one of which prompted his wife to declare that he smelled like “a New Delhi airport.” Next he actually sought out an aphrodisiac called PT-141 on the Web, but he didn’t have a sexual dysfunction that was bad enough to merit the clinical trial, and his attempted bribes for samples were rejected. Finally he tried the old standard aphrodisiac, Spanish Fly, but just as in a cheesy movie about bumbling would-be lovers, he forgot which food he had treated with it, and he may have ingested it himself while trying to dose his wife. Who knew spam was so much fun?

—Posted by Gregory Solman

Published on June 21, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (4)

Just in time, the return of Teddy Ruxpin

If you were a child of the ’80s, you probably remember the original Teddy Ruxpin ad. If you don’t, let me break it down: Kid stands in front of his class for show and tell, holding aloft his Teddy Ruxpin doll. Kid tells classmates how Teddy tells him stories and takes him on adventures to the world of Grundo. Classmates look at kid as if he’s slapped on an acid-laced Cracker Jack tattoo. But wait. Teddy comes to life, leaving the classmates in their own Worlds of Wonder, while the smug rich kid, who always has every toy before everyone else, smirks knowingly. You can probably tell by that last sentence that our house did not have a Teddy Ruxpin. But we’re not bitter. Not anymore, anyway, thanks to Back Pack Toys, which is bringing Teddy to 2,000 Target stores in September. And what timing. With his first-time playmates hitting their mid 20s, Teddy’s arrived just in time to appeal to them as first-time parents. (If 25 seems too young to be a mom, you probably live in New York, L.A. or one of those other blue-state cities that encourage self-obsession. It’s the average age of first-time moms in the U.S., according to the CDC. Arkansas moms are the youngest, popping ’em out at age 22 on average.) And why not? The Cabbage Patch Kids, Care Bears, My Little Pony and even Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are enjoying newfound popularity, as is Strawberry Shortcake. Let’s see if we can say the same about the polarizing Bratz dolls in 10 years.

—Posted by Deanna Zammit

Published on June 21, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (6)

MBNA thanks New York for chopper rescue

Yes, these kinds of ads have become routine after almost any rescue. And yes, you could see them as somewhat exploitative. But we have no doubt that MBNA’s full-page ad in today’s New York Daily News (and possibly elsewhere—we haven’t checked) is heartfelt in its thanks to the city of New York for fishing six MBNA executives out of the East River following last Friday’s helicopter crash. The ad, written as a letter to Mayor Bloomberg, thanks the NYPD, FDNY, EMTs, Bellevue Hospital doctors and nurses, the National Guard, the staff at the 34th St. Helipad, ambulance crews, the tour boat Half Moon and “numerous good samaritans.” “Once again we saw New York City at its finest,” it reads in part. “We love New York.”

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Published on June 21, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1)