The Old Spice Man

Man / Bag of Sand - Frightened Rabbit (mp3)
My Old Man - Stephen Kellogg (mp3)

I love the Old Spice Man.

No. Seriously. I love him love him love him.

This goes way beyond what is culturally acceptable, or what we deem as “OK.” This goes beyond my appreciation for good marketing and advertising. It is a statement of my admiration of what might well be considered the most amazing ad campaign of at least the last several years and quite possibly since the Pleistocene Era.

If you’ve seen the ads, then yes, you have the genesis of what I believe to be awesomeness.

If you’ve seen the ads Pre-OldSpiceMan, then you clearly appreciate that this mentality was already maturing and growing before OldSpiceMan was born, and awesomeness existed before he set foot on the pseudo-Earth that is AdvertisingLand.

OK, stop. Seriously, you need to go check out these ads, because if you haven’t, you’ve somehow missed out on one of the greatest cultural powers of the decade. If you haven’t, you’ve chosen to be that person who doesn’t know who Clara Peller is. You’ve chosen to lack knowledge about the MicroMachines guy, or the Taco Bell dog, or the Time to Make the Donuts Guy, or the Fruit of the Loom gang.

But then the good folks at Wieden & Kennedy (the ad agency behind Old Spice Man) one-upped themselves by making their Facebook page more fun than a day at DisneyWorld (well, at least it’s more fun in a dollar for dollar kind of way).

The allowed all fans of their Old Spice Facebook page to ask Old Spice Man questions, and then Old Spice Man would answer them in a brief video response. What the notion lacked in genuine originality, it more than made up for it in simple hilarity. It even bled into Twitter and responding to celebrities from Ashton Kutcher to Ellen DeGeneres.

And then there’s the four-in-a-row exchange he has with Alyssa Milano. By the third one, not only has coffee gone up Alyssa’s nose, but his work with a feather sent water up my own. Even after days and months of worshipping these ads, I find myself still able to laugh hard enough to end up wheezing.

I’m all about being media-conscientious. All of us, as consumers and citizens, should be guarded and cynical about the power of propaganda. In some sense, I’m in the very profession due to my great respect and fear of that power. But this campaign transcends traditional levels of genius and manipulation and goes into an altogether different viral stratosphere.

I don’t know how long Isaiah Mustafa’s joy ride will last, but I rarely hop on a great roller coaster wondering when it will end. I wait until it’s over and feel that slight twinge of sadness and only hope I can get back on another roller coaster as soon as possible. Rarely can 30 million-plus people hop onto a single roller coaster and have this much fun together.

Dare to enter the rabbit hole of pointless distraction that is the Old Spice YouTube channel, where his myriad of standing-still-in-the-bathroom responses have entertained millions. Or just go enjoy the old reliable standards of his more traditional commercials.

I only ask that you look upon Mustafa’s works, ye mighty, and despair.

Ode on a Grecian Fonzarelli

Love Is Not a Fight - Warren Barfield (mp3)
La La Love You - Pixies (mp3)

My iPod died yesterday.

It was a clinical death, technically speaking. Time of death: 12:04 p.m. I was walking back to our house after a walk-through the dormitory, and I had scrolled to hear the theme song to "Rescue Me," otherwise known as "C'mon C'mon" by the Von Bondies, and when I pushed play, the thing just went paralytic on me.

I didn't even notice right away. Pushed play, kept walking, and realized several seconds later that no sound was flowing from my glorious machine, up through those heavenly small cords, and directly into my eardrums. Once I did notice, I tinkered, still not yet panicked. iPods can, on occasion, glitch out for a second. They'll freeze, or they'll lose themselves in a song, or whatever. So I tried the scroll wheel, and I tried all those little stupid standard things people do with small machines at moments like this.

When none of that worked, I did the Menu/Select double-tap -- a dance any long-time iPod Classic (or any other scroll wheel version) owner knows all too well. And when I did this, at first the Apple logo came up, and then, after that, an image I'd never before seen: The Red Circle X.

Upon seeing The Red Circle X, several expletives emerged from my vocal chords and out into the atmosphere around me, because I knew my iPod was summarily FUBAR.

Trying to maintain composure, I rushed back into the house as if I were carrying my own child back in from having discovered him or her drowning in a backyard swimming pool. The iPod was cradled lovingly in the palm of my hand, and my bottom lip trembled at the thought that My Precious might have died in so unceremonious a fashion. "No no no no don't do this to me," or something to that effect.

I gently laid it next to my mouse and began Googling with urgency. Images of Superman flying around the earth to reverse its rotation to save Lois Lane from suffocating in that miniaturized landslide inside that toy car flew through my brain. "iPod red circle x" I typed, and began the line-after-line clicking to find any and all possible solutions. I could rebuild it. Make it stronger, faster...

The main Apple site advised a series of actions, mostly centered around the "reset," or the Menu/Select act. The reset is to the iPod what defibrilators are to a human heart. I crashed the paddles once, twice, five times. Each time that damned Red Circle X popped up. I began trying more serious measures, all with the same nothingness in return. Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor, not a miracle worker!

Stuck in a serious stage of denial, I began to blame the Von Bondies and their stupid awful terrible song. Why the hell did I want to listen to that song? I've got almost 7,000 songs on my iPod for God's sake! Why why why that one?!?! Something as simple as a poor choice of musical preference could prove catastrophic.

I brought God into the mix. Totally serious here. I hardly ever pray, because my particular off-brand of Christian faith isn't particularly obsessed with the traditional prayer routine. But the thought of losing my iPod for any stretch of time was too much to bear. I had dorm duty last night, Jesus! Don't leave me in there alone without my iPod!

Why are you smiling? Why do you think I'm joking? Am I a clown to you? You people don't understand.

That iPod never leaves me. In the past eight or so years, I have not gone anywhere, done anything, at any time, when an iPod was not easily within reach. About four nights a week, I put it on 30-minute sleep timer and play it while I fall asleep. I play it in my office. I play it through a "jam box" (heh... I just used the words "jam box" in 2009...) when I'm in the shower. It plays when I'm on the scooter or in the car. I strap it to my hip when I'm making sweet sweet love. OK, maybe the emotional strain got to me a little on that last one. I've gotta learn to keep those to myself.

In SAT terminology, iPod : Billy :: E.T. : Elliot. I was dying right there with it.

Just as I was about to give up all hope and leave my precious sidekick for dead, I had a flash. Everytime I reset my iPod, it would click, but I couldn't hear the hard drive spin inside its beautiful aluminum casing. Maybe it was stuck. Maybe something inside that machine had lodged in a place it didn't belong.

So I slammed my fist down onto the face of My Precious. Were one to have observed this act, one could have construed it as an act of anger, of unbridled rage. I submit to you this was not the case. It was the act of any number of movie protagonists pounding desperately on a thought-dead lover's or friend's chest, screaming "Breathe, dammit! Breathe!!" It was the act of the Fonz, a.k.a. the Fonzie, a.k.a. Arthur Fonzarelli, hitting the side of Arnold's jukebox with his fist.

Sometimes, the only way to fix something is to hit it. My iPod spun back into life. I am once again whole.

Thank you Fonzie. You have once again shown me the path to enlightenment.

Both of these tunes and bands can be found on Amazon.com and iTunes. At least, I'm pretty sure.

Those Damn Nuts!

Kanye West--"Addiction" (mp3)

My friend Chet has done it again. And if he wasn't such a wonderful person, I'd suspect him of malignant maliciousness. After all, he has put into my possession 5 pounds of fresh, plump, easy-to-open pistachios. If it were heroin, you would all look at him with disgust. If it were alcohol, you would blame him for knocking me off the wagon and then rolling over the wagon with a steamroller. But, oh, it's just pistachios.

My name is Bob and I'm an addict.

I cannot stop eating pistachios. Put a bag in front of me and I will crack them open one after another after another after another..............

I am like the dog that would eat itself to death as long as there was enough food in front of it to accomplish the task.

NUTRITION QUESTION: If you eat 5 pounds of still-in-the-shell pistachios, once those shells have been discarded, how many pounds of nut meats are you actually eating?

You've probably looked at the bag, so you know how they've even made pistachios healthy as part of their advertising: high in fiber, high in protein, no cholesterol or trans fats. Can I even afford not to eat them?

So there they sit in my office. I try to put some of them in the glass cannister that sits way over on the table at least 5 feet from my desk. To get them, I'd have to actually stand up from my chair, lift the glass lid, and remove the selected pistachios from their sequestering. But, I've got a stash on my desk as well-- the rest of the bag. To eat pistachios is a lot like doing infield practice on a baseball team. The ball is hit to you, you scoop it up, and throw it to first over and over. With pistachios, you take one out, crack it open, and, while chewing, toss the pair of shells into the trash can. Repeat, ad nauseum, until you get into a rhythm, until you can make that throw into the trash almost without thinking.

Here's the funny thing about the ritual: wouldn't it speed up the whole ritual just to go to a place like the Fresh Market and buy a bag of pre-shelled pistachios and just pop them into my mouth one after another? The answer would be no: I don't like pre-shelled pistachios and will even claim that they don't taste the same as the ones in the shell.

Part of addiction is ritual. Part of it is work. Think about it. If you didn't have to do a bit of work to get your "fix," you would probably flame out within a matter of days, if not hours. A bag of pre-shelled pistachios is a woman you paid for and who will dutifully pleasure you. A 5-pound bag of fresh, naturally-opened pistachios is a conquest, every salty-sweet crunch, chew, and swallow an earned pleasure on the path to fullfilment, and a reminder that you will have to keep working to get sated.

Damn you, Chet! Damn you, bittersweet nuts! Damn you, weakness!

Kanye's song "Addiction" comes from his Late Registration cd, available at Itunes.