jingles.

it's reasonable to assume that when i was ten i was more susceptible to advertising than i am today. a catchy jingle, some near epileptic-fit-inducing images or some genius boobs might send me running to mother with a refrain of "want" and "need." these days, an ad for taco bell's new cheesy, beefy melt almost induces vomiting. i think the difference, though, is more than just the slow erosion of my naïveté: advertisements were actually better back then. they were much less conceptual, and often trimmed down (especially ads aimed at children) to nothing but other people having a great time and yelling "awesome" while using whatever absurdist contraption they were trying to peddle. these days, you have to be the fucking duke of irony to understand any ad for car insurance. it requires at least a bachelor's degree in pop culture to "get" the commercials for what i think is some sort of keyboarded wireless device. see? i don't even know what the fucking product is! will we ever revert to this time of simplicity? is the nature of advertising cyclical or only downward-spiraling?

here is one of my favorite childhood commercials. it succeeded in doing something that not a ton of advertisements are capable of: it made me desire a product that truly, truly sucked.



you can actually witness the slow but sure gaying up of this ad over the course of a couple of years:



note: these videos are meant for entertainment purposes only. in know way are they intended to help "prove" a "point." i have a job, you know, and i don't really have all day to find fucking video links that show the gradual faggening of my entire television experience. professional bloggers do. also, they like to use fancy words like "caveat" and "ostensible" and "laconic" and "quaff" and "queaf" and they can eat poop like streetflies and sprain their face. but i digress.

he's got style for a gentile.

bigness

i’m taking in the black bigness
of the sky from a manhattan roof.

stars are breaking through it,
more than i imagined i’d see in the city.

i remember reading of some galactic
car crash, milky ways and andromedas.

millions of particles collide:
my fingers, her hair.

how many windows do you think
are in this city? she says.

unknowable, i say, still looking
up. something moves or doesn’t.

millions of particles collide:
the wind, my arms.

this isn’t how i imagined living
on an island would be, i say.

you want chinese? she says,
looking over the edge

where two rails meet at a corner,
her face lit with the street below.

millions of particles collide:
my mouth, her neck.

i wrap myself around her
like the black around the stars.

yes, i say, i’m hungry. i peer
over the rails and take in the neon.

the chinese place downstairs
is called good advice. we go there.