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Stovepipe Hat

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Today’s post comes from perennial sophomore Bubby Spamden.

Lincoln_hat

Hey Mr. C.,

For my history class I had to go see the movie “Lincoln”, and I thought it was kinda good for what it was – a lot of old people in heavy clothes walking around in the dark, talking.

Anyway, my teacher, Mr. Boozenporn, said I should remember it because it’s the history of our country and it belongs to everybody.

Besides, he said, Daniel Day-Lewis is going to get an Oscar because he was the best Lincoln ever – even more Lincoln-y than Lincoln himself. I thought that was a weird thing to say, but how do you measure Lincoln-ness? With Lincoln Logs?

One thing I noticed from old pictures in our history books at school – Lincoln looked kinda stupid in that tall stovepipe hat, and Daniel Day-Lewis looked stupid in it too. So maybe that’s all the proof you need to know they are the same guy. Too bad, though, that Lincoln got stuck with that dumb hat as his “brand”. I’m guessing he owned other nice things that would have made classier trademarks for him, but if history even takes the time to remember you I guess you have to just accept what you get.

I wonder if the Stovepipe Hat is ever going to make a comeback. Lots of fashion trends do, but that one might not make it. It’s hard to get a large hat like that into a small space, like in a car. But I thought it was cool that Lincoln kept some letters and speeches in there, and maybe that’s where Daniel Day-Lewis tucked his script. I know he’s a great actor, but that’s kind of a cheat if he was able to do that.

Maybe the Stovepipe Hat would come back if there was a way to stick your smartphone in there. Or better yet, have your smartphone project its images and videos and stuff on to the hat itself. Cool! If I could walk down the halls of Wendell Wilkie High School streaming the movie “Lincoln” on the rounded barrel of my stovepipe hat, I’d wear one!

But then everybody else would stream THEIR favorite movies on THEIR hats, and people would get caught up in the action and they’d wind up bumping into each other and falling down the stairs, probably.

Lawsuit! Oh, well. It was a good idea while it lasted.

Anyway, one thing the Lincoln movie taught me is that it doesn’t matter how boring you are – Steven Spielberg could probably make a pretty good film about your life, and Daniel Day Lewis could definitely play you – even if you’re a woman or a little kid. But every day when you get dressed, you should ask yourself – Would these clothes look good on the big screen? That’s why I think I need to up my game in the wardrobe department. Based on where I am right now, any movie made about me is going to come out looking like Napoleon Dynamite. I’ve got too many t-shirts!

Your pal,
Bubby

What advice would you give the actor playing you in the movie about your life?

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Artful Dodgers

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Advertising represents a bid by well-financed entities to capture our attention and direct or change our behavior. Yet the baboons on our trail sound like they are exceptionally committed to avoiding this influence. From Verily Sherrilee’s use of the mute button to Ben’s channel changing, to That Guy In The Hat’s aggressive and possibly un-American refusal to own a TV, one could almost say living a low-ad lifestyle is a point of pride.

Spend your billions, Captains of Industry. We are unswayed!

What’s more, we are oblivious to your desires!

A research and consulting organization called YouGov looked at advertising avoidance, particularly as it applies to political ads. But they also looked at how assiduously their sample viewers skipped around other kinds of advertisements too.

The chart they published could have been drawn by Clyde, who appears to be having a personal feud with the Geico gecko.

Chart from YouGov
Chart from YouGov

One can see that the insurance reptile’s ads were ignored with a level of enthusiasm that must make people in the gecko animation industry think perhaps it is time to go about polishing up the resume.

Human attention is a prized commodity in our digitally interconnected world, and each person has a finite amount of it to trade on the open market. Right now, other people (producers, talk show hosts, movie stars, disc jockeys, bloggers) get paid to do or say things we will read, watch or listen to so intently that we might accidentally stick around for the things some lizard (pitchman or politician) has to say. What a disappointment to learn how expert we have become at ignoring the message.

Will it ever come to a point where large companies simply pay us directly to consume their ads? Would you give the Geico gecko your eyes, ears and brain for thirty seconds if he gave you a quarter to do it?

Fifty cents if you could pass a multiple choice test about it?

A dollar if you could force a friend (probably not for long) to watch it?

New models will be developed. How much is your attention worth?

The Baboon Congress

Ad (foolishness) Infinitum

98 Comments

Today’s guest post comes from Clyde.

I have been watching a lot more television lately, some of the bowl games and a few shows on HGTV and the Food channel. Most evenings my wife has been visiting my art room/office where the bigger TV is to watch some holiday specials, such as on Hallmark channel. She watches the shows, when she is awake, and I notice the ads.

4.1.1

I have some observations:

  • We are expected to choose an insurance company on the basis of how stupid, irritating, and over-repeated are their commercials.
  • As usual children are smarter than adults.
  • Perky women with big eyes and red-dyed semi-messy hair are the gold standard in advertising spokespersons.
  • We are fat, have too much stuff, and spend money we don’t have.
  • Women can boss, nag, or control men, but men cannot do any of those things to women. One of a few examples: the Walgreens ad where the woman crushes her husband’s sugared donuts to bits. It’s good that she did because that donut must have been very stale. This is not a pro-male or anti-female rant. I just notice the pattern.
  • Apparently men deserve this because men in ads are so often childish and driven by their appetite for greasy food, beer, and big-screen TV’s.
  • Speaking of beer, people in beer commercials are the antipodes of everyone sitting in beer taverns drinking beer. Are those people watching those ads as they drink? Do they think about that contrast? Should I go tell them?
  • All the ads for tablets, readers, and cell phones disappeared after Christmas.
  • Many women apparently take a picture of themselves in their underwear before they lose a bunch of weight.
  • Does Marie Osmond make a good model for health and beauty with her botoxed lips and over-lifted face?
  • Attention Food Channel – cooking is neither a race nor a competition!
  • The louder the spokesperson shouts in a commercial the more dubious are the claims.

What messages to you get from Television ads?

Uncategorized

Dark Spot

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Electricity is great. I’m officially spoiled!

Thanks to electricity we can stay up late and read after dark and go out to eat when we really should be in bed after a long day of exhausting manual labor.

I admit I’m hooked on this frantic, juiced existence.

But there had to be something more pure and truthful about an age when customers pushed open the store doors by hand and signs didn’t light up. For one thing, pre-electricity shopkeepers were spared the worry that a simple burned out connection would fundamentally change their message.

Or you can have it done MEDIUM well.
Or you can have it done MEDIUM well.

Maybe the old days were better.

A neon sign represents an everlasting commitment. Once you emblazon your name across the night sky, you have to be sure it remains fully and coherently lit. Otherwise a dignified title like Trail Baboon could become something perplexing, like ail boo .

When has a sign seemed inadvertently funny?

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Sleep Deprived

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The verdict is in on the question “what happens when you lock six men in a pretend space capsule with a bunch of cameras and sensors and tell them to make believe they’re flying to Mars.”

mars_crew

It appears they become lazy, and cranky, and they can’t sleep.

In other words, it’s the very same result you get if you choose to stay on Earth and simply get old.

In just about any environment, getting people to exercise is a challenge. The intangible piece in this case is the willing suspension of disbelief. They chose scientists to take this mock journey, but scientists are practical and ultimately they know the truth. Why exercise for two hours a day? After all, it’s not like we’ll really have to be on Mars, or that we couldn’t get out of this box if necessary!

A better crew would have been made up of unemployed actors who could really get into their roles.

Believe it or not, we already dealt with this topic – in what was only the second Trail Baboon post on June 4th, 2010.

In that post, I suggested the “Six Men in a Tub”, who were being paid $100,000 each to embark on a scientific version of a 17 month reality show taping, needed a proper theme song. One was offered, modeled after the anthem for the TV show “The Brady Bunch.” But it turns out those tailor-made lyrics were still wrong.

The study results suggest this is a more accurate version:

Here’s the story of six sleepless fellas
Who got lazy while pretending they could fly.
They skipped workouts and moved less than they were told to.
They didn’t even try.

It’s not easy to snooze in a trailer.
Though they’re paying you to stay there like a lump.
It’s depressing when you know you’re stationary.
You feel like such a chump.

When it started there were cameras and reporters.
Asking how long would the daring mission take?
And the guys were acting so dedicated,
But inside they understood it all was fake.

The whole thing’s fake. The whole thing’s fake.
This is all the lousy acting I can take!
The whole thing’s fake. Not much at stake.
I’m embarrassed which is why I’m wide awake.

Name a role you could inhabit, non-stop, for 17 months.

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Shake Your Tail Feathers

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Today’s guest post comes from Wally, proprietor of Wally’s Intimida – home of the Sherpa Sport Utility Vehicle.

Today is a great day to buy a new Sherpa – the largest, most impressive vehicle on the road today! Great big cars are STILL hot, in spite of what some gloomy fun-killers say about the gas guzzler being an automotive dinosaur.

Because dinosaurs are still hot too!

Recent research shows that Oviraptors, a flightless, two-legged variety of dinosaur, had all the right equipment on board to flaunt a set of spectacular tail feathers solely for the purpose of attracting a mate. Scientists lament that the fossil record doesn’t do a good job of preserving these feathers, so we will probably never know exactly what kind of sinuous tail-shaking took place on the prehistoric dance floor.

But isn’t it encouraging to know that dinosaurs weren’t all about snarling and stomping and biting the heads off of smaller animals?

Sherpa-Peacock

In tribute, Intimida introduces the Sherpa Oviraptor edition, a mammoth SUV with a set of mechanical tail feathers that can do the very same thing the dinosaurs did – put on a flashy display to draw attention to the fact that YOU are driving a car that is absolutely ASTOUNDING!

Today’s automobiles have lost the feeling of excitement that made car owners of the 50’s and 60’s hunger for bigger and more elaborate tail fins. The Sherpa Oviraptor edition brings us back to those days of provocative, sensual display.

And a special bonus – from behind the wheel of your Sherpa, you can also deploy your feathers like a drag chute to help slow you down on a steep incline or if you simply forget that you’re expected to stop at the red lights like everybody else – as Sherpa owners are wont to do.

Come on down to Wally’s today! I’m ready and waiting to get you into a Sherpa Oviraptor with a drop-dead display that matches your eyes.

It’s a mighty big, mighty beautiful car!

What’s the most showy car you’ve ever owned? Or driven?

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Fanciful Rights!

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Today’s post comes from Congressman Loomis Beechly, representing Minnesota’s 9th District – all the water surface area in the state.

Beechly Ice shark copy

Greetings, Constituents!

I’m proud to say that this past week I was sworn in once again as a Member of the House of Representatives, along with all 435 other members.

The fact that they did not actually acknowledge me at the ceremony or list me in any of the official documents does nothing to detract from the awesome responsibility I feel as your Congressman! I know that we are in an uphill battle. I’m sure it comes as no secret to you that there are people who believe the 9th district of Minnesota is entirely made up.

Likewise, there are those who say a single congressional district composed of nothing but water surface area in a state with over 12,000 lakes and at least four major rivers is a logistical and practical impossibility. Such skeptics also claim such a jurisdiction would have virtually no full time residents.

Yes, there are voices who insist that you, I and our district are purely fanciful. This is an outrage! I’m not upset that they say we are imaginary, but I’m incensed that they believe this somehow makes us irrelevant!

And now there are similar critical voices suggesting that former Minneapolis City Council Member and current developer Steve Minn has violated standards of public behavior simply by using people that he made up in his head to attack another developer’s projects!

What are we to make of this? Are Fanciful Americans to be denied a voice, as well as their very existence?

Some of Minn’s accusers smirk at the news that his three Fancifuls (Howard Wilbur, Suzanne Sharp and Louis C. Brown) actually talked with each other through online community message boards. Why is that wrong? Are F.A.’s not permitted to collaborate? Denying the right of assembly is always one of the first acts of a tyrant!

And don’t patronize Fancifuls by lumping us together with noisy minority groups asserting their rights. There is no evidence anywhere to prove The Fanciful are a minority! We could very easily outnumber Tangible Americans – all it would take is an accurate census of the national imagination. I believe if we could correctly count the number of made-up people who reside solely on school playgrounds and in day care facilities on a normal January morning, that number would completely overwhelm the Tangible population.

We have many positive qualities. Fanciful Americans are forthright. The good ones are a great asset to our communities (Superman, Dora the Explorer). When F.A.’s are bad, they are unambiguously evil (Hannibal Lecter, Wicked Witch of the West). We prize clarity!

So don’t marginalize Fancifuls, and if you condone discrimination against us, don’t think you will be immune to the effects. Some of the most reputable Tangibles, upon closer investigation, turn out to be totally made up people (Bernie Madoff, John Edwards, Bo Beckman) who do not even realize how completely fake they are!

I, for one, am proud to be exactly who you think I am! Because without you, I am, literally, nothing.

Your Congressman,
Loomis Beechly

Who are your favorite Fanciful Americans?

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Talking Animals

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Why do we have the Internet?
So we can know that somewhere there is a goat who takes its language cues from chickens.

But surely there is more to this than a simple story about an impressionistic young ungulate being raised by an exotic, feathered family – learning to scratch, peck, cluck, and lay an egg like his brothers and sisters. After all, it’s not all about the environment where you grow. Goats are around people all the time and yet they don’t mimic us.

At least not when they know we can hear them.

But communication does occur, with or without words.

Still, it might be nice to have an extended conversation in English.

If you could get an interview with only one animal, which one would you choose?

Poems

Deadline Pressure

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Seeing with considerable satisfaction the way a ticking clock got the deadbeats in the US Congress to finally pass a piece of (imperfect) legislation, I commissioned Schuyler Tyler Wyler, America’s Rhyming Poet Laureate, to write a few lines about the value of time limits.

And of course I told him I needed to have something in hand no later than 20 minutes after the challenge was issued. If he couldn’t deliver, he should just forget it, I said, knowing full well that STW never passes up a commission.

His secret? He becomes a lot less picky as the time grows short.

Many lines will man diminish,
casting shadows o’er his heart.
Like a line emblazoned “finish”
set too far from one marked “start.”

Lengthy lines can form for tickets
Timberlines sit near the tree
Don’t cross lines set up by pickets.
Don’t cross lines prefaced by “fe”.

One line always worth preserving
though he’ll never, ever ask you,
every guy thinks he’s deserving.
it’s the one that follows “mascu”.

An exciting line is “chorus”.
An archaic one is “clothes”.
Lines called “border” can be porous.
Lines with water can get froze.

There are many lines that plague us:
Lines for greeting at a wedding.
And the kind they make in Vegas.
Not for marriage, but for betting.

Tucked behind a velvet curtain
sultry lines designed for “chat”.
In a hospital for certain
please avoid a line that’s “flat”.

One line makes all writers tremble
just one line gets in their head.
Makes their noggins disassemble.
That’s a line that’s clearly “dead”.

For a deadline makes them humble.
Whether genius or a jerk.
It’s the deadline makes them crumble.
Sets them free to do their work.

When have you been assisted by an inflexible deadline?

The Baboon Congress

Happy Birthday, Roger Miller

88 Comments

Today’s guest post comes from tim

roger millers birthday is today. he’s not around to enjoy it anymore but he left something behind for us to enjoy in his absence.

roger miller was a blip on the screen in the 60’s when his hits , dang me, do wacka doo, king of the road and you can’t roller skate in a buffalo herd were topping the charts. i enjoyed them and thought they were good songs. i gave them more credit than the equivalent guitarzan by ray stevens which sort of appealed to the same demographic.

king of the road upon inspection is a tune that offers a view of another mans shoes that is not really given enough credit for how different it was from everything else out there and if you actually went into the thoughts behind dang me and do wacka doo they show that there was a serious thought behind the semi babble top 40 pop effort of the times.

my first marriage gave me many unique memories two wonderful kids and one mother in law that insisted on knowing exactly what gift to buy for christmas and birthdays before she went out to shopping . i told her album collections were the way to go. dylan, the stones the beatles, roger miller and she chose roger miller. i already had too many dylan albums and most of the beatles so if it comes down to the stones or roger miller , roger miller won.

each album was 8 dollars and 50 was the budget so 6 was the number of roger miller albums I received . I had no idea you could get so much music form 6 albums. in addition to king of the road, do whacka do and dang me there were tunes like husbands and wives and other heartfelt balads he was incredible at writing that never made the radio and….there was an album called big river which was roger millers broadway musical i had no knowledge of at all at that point. it turned out to be a turning point for me and roger.

he spent three years writing big river. unlike all his other efforts he put time and energy into the production and it showed. he even played pap on broadway when john goodman had to leave the broadway production to take the role of dan conner on the tv series roseanne. if you haven’t heard the album recording of the musical do it. it is the best musical ever.

that fistful of roger miller albums caused a backwards biography of roger miller that informed me that while he was a kindred spirit he had a troubled history with many problems starting when his dad died during the depression in the dustbowl era of oklahoma and he and his two brothers were each shipped off to live with a different uncle.

shep wolley was another relative who taught roger to play violin and introduced him to the nashville end of showbusiness where roger got his start writing tunes for ray price and someone else on the grand ol opry and then befriended chet atkins and johnny cash and became part of the nashville scene. along the way he burned through life with ex-wives drug problems bouts with depression and kind of a death wish outlook on his career.

he was given one of those tv show in the 60’s. remember them all, the nat king cole show, ed sullivan, dean martin, red skelton, jimmy dean, judy garland, johnny cash, well they cut rogers out after the first 13 weeks, showing up for work was not a good job description for roger who did best shooting from the hip and writing songs when inspired.

while i am fortunate enough to be able to claim no depression, drugs and relationships had taken their toll and offered their challenges.

sometimes you are attracted to a guy and then find out the creative juices that he oozed were not a celebration of life but a pressure relief valve. if its in there its just gotta come out. when it does how you deal with it determines where it goes from there.

there are lots of roger miller clips out there on you tube. its like looking into steve goodman or john prine or a bag of lays potato chips once you get started its hard to stop. you guys are all fine but i may need to do some serious accessing.

name a creative artist who you would consider a kindred spirit.