Day: October 13, 2003

[Ed. note: Watch the advertisement at the AT&T reachout website]

AT& T Wireless’ latest cute ad: you’re watching a couple in silent turmoil. They watch other couples in happiness, while they’re gloomy and doom-stricken. Is the relationship over? Is the despair temporary? The woman is sitting by, absently at her meeting, when she sees her mate appear out of nowhere. He’s holding cue cards – “I’m sorry.” It turns out he’s not actually at her meeting; he’s sending a text message to her. “Me too,” she sends by text messaging on her little Nokia cell phone. Without words being said out loud, their relationship is on its way to being repaired, the fight resolved, so the viewer hopes.

Notably (to me anyway), the couple is a bi-racial – an Asian female and a white male. Both yuppies, if I interpret correctly from the suits they were wearing. Hmm. Television is coming a long way to reflecting reality, I guess. Or is it just looking for new ways (particularly of the eye-catching variety) to make us use text messaging? Either way, it was something interesting to watch.

Yanks v. Red Sox continues…

[Okay, I’ve tried to post this twice so far. Each time I’ve done it, I’ve tweaked it (especially since I can’t remember what I typed the previous time. Here’s another attempt and hopefully it’ll stick this time. Hmm. Server problems? And I thought it was just my connection to the Internet striking against me again].

Friday, 10/10/03 – frustration with NBC. I’m thinking that it’s a real shame that NBC pulled the 3rd episode of the 2nd season of “Boomtown.” Well, no one ever said that critically acclaimed shows will last; the ratings are always a network’s real goal. And, it looks like my track record with watching cancelled or soon-to-be-cancelled shows continues. I’m still mad at myself (in the trivial sense, I know) for erasing the 2nd episode from the previous week. That was such a great episode.

Commercials – Has anyone noticed Toyota’s Christopher Columbus, Action Figure? Those ads are so low-budget looking. For those who don’t know, basically the protagonist is a Ken doll dressed in a Christopher Columbus costume. He’s carrying a Toyota flag (although in one spot, he’s carrying a Spain flag). He’s speaking in a sort-of-NYC-outer-borough accent, cajoling a kid to tell his parents to go buy a Toyota for the holiday (“Badda-boom”). In another spot, Chris is jabbing his flag on a guy’s thigh while telling him to go buy a Toyota. In a third ad, Chris is telling this lady to go buy a Toyota; it ends with the lady trying to not burst into laughter. The ads are so campy and hilarious. Got to love that Christopher Columbus, Action Figure.

I don’t love the latest McDonald’s “I’m lovin’ it” promotion, with Justin Timberlake singing “I’m lovin’ it,” with a rapper I have yet to identify. Besides being grammatically incorrect, I just haven’t found the ads very persuasive. So the singers love Mickey D’s. That’s nice; but it doesn’t mean I’ll love it or you’ll love it or that we’ll all love it. The lyrics are pushing the Mickey D’s lifestyle: the rapper says he can’t cook, so he fills his stomach with McDonald’s. Um, okay. Can’t we just stick with the food at a bargain type of ads? Or something witty, like the weird breakfast treat thing (“Weird, but yummy”) or tempting (like those Chicken Breast Strips?). Oh, well.

Stay tuned.

Stairmaster in your future?

[I’ve recreated this article from memory. I hope it matches what I wrote.]

My mom gave me this pedometer (see picture at right) that she got from the 99 cent store. She couldn’t figure out how it works, so that’s how I got it. I wore it watching the Yankees-Red Sox game 3 (pretty violent) and Kill Bill Vol. 1 (very violent), and racked up 6800 steps, or 3 and a quarter miles. People say you should walk 10,000 steps a day. Let’s see how I do during the week. [Today, I walked under 600 steps as I didn’t leave my apartment, so I have a lot of catching up to do!]

NYU suffered a second student suicide this year. The unidentified student walked off the side of the 10th floor indoor balcony of Bobst Library, the same way as last month. Supposedly there are psychological design features to discourage jumping, such as spike patterns in the floor and cross-shaped cross-sections in the railing. Up until now it seemed to have worked, because no one had ever dared to jump from there before now. When I went there, the preferred method was walking out of dorm room windows.

How is it that the world knows that a coach was cut on the nose, but students die so anonymously?