From stay.free at verizon.net Wed Aug 17 09:50:41 2005 From: stay.free at verizon.net (Carrie McLaren) Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2005 09:50:41 -0400 Subject: Stay F---! | August 17 Message-ID: Hello. Here are recent highlights from Stay F--- Daily. For full text, links, images, comments, and more stories, visit http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org NEW FROM STAY F---! MAGAZINE Francis Heaney made a fine crossword puzzle for the most recent Stay Free! and, thanks to modern crossword technology, you can now do it on your computer at work. It requires special software, which you can also download. The puzzle is titled "Brooklyn Unreal Estate" and that's the only hint we'll give you (unless you count the answers, which are also here). http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2005/08/crossword_brook.html BLURB RACKET Gelf Magazine's Blurb Racket is a fine column documenting the more egregious misrepresentations of reviews cited in advertisements. The column needs some editing, but with a little filtering you'll find some outrageous examples. For example: Fantastic Four (Twentieth Century Fox) Blurb from Charlotte Weekly: "Fun!" Actual line: "Fantastic? Not exactly, but Tim Story's take on Marvel Comic's first family of superheroes can be fun if your expectations are low enough." http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2005/08/movie_blurbs_ad.html BABY CAN'T BOARD I'm not big on faux security but I can't say I'm against anything that keeps babies and children off planes. Apparently, every major airport has prevented a child under 2 from flying because his/her name was the same as someone on the no-fly list. (Be sure to read the comments on this one) http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2005/08/baby_cant_board.html QUICK LINKS "Our Global Food-Service Enterprise Is Totally Down For Your Awesome Subculture," Starbucks knockoffs, styrofoam hummers, penis-fixation as anorexia, and the new male consumer. http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2005/08/quick_links.html AND SOMETIMES A CIGAR IS A METAPHOR A new study by a Cornell researcher has found that men whose masculinity is threatened are more likely to buy an SUV, support the war in Iraq, and gay-bash. http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2005/08/suvs_men_mascul.html WHAT DO PHARMACEUTICAL GIANTS AND ANTI-ABORTION NUTS HAVE IN COMMON? The Wall Street Journal reports that drug companies have started putting language in their contracts with medical institutions to shape what doctors can and cannot tell patients about specific drugs. Case in point: Eli Lilly offers a discount to major purchasers of antidepressant Cymbalta as long as those purchasers refrain from "negative D.U.R. [drug utilization review] correspondence to physicians" or "negative educational counter-detailing" -- in other words, as long as they shut up about side effects and the drug's high costs. http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2005/08/cymbalta_eli_li.html MAYBE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE IS ON TO SOMETHING You know there's something wrong with a given trade when it launches a feel-good ad campaign; the question is only a matter of *what.* So when American Medical Association launched its new "Everyday Heroes" campaign, you had to wonder: is the group worried about the public awareness of medical errors? ...its reputation as an opponent of patients' rights? ...its sagging membership? Well, I don't know, but there has been a lot of solid reportage lately on the sorry state of American medicine. http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2005/08/cymbalta_eli_li.html MY CUDDLY NEW PET IS A SMITH & WESSON The Wall Street Journal has an interesting story about new gun industry promotions - "now with adjustable safety... in fashionable olive green or 'urban camouflage!' http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2005/08/gun_industry_ad.html GANGSTA GANGSTA Going back to an earlier post about Freakonomics, recall that the authors attribute the 1990s drop in violent crime to the legalization of abortion (in combination with increased jailing and tougher gun laws). But anthopologist Grant McCracken has a still more novel hypothesis: the drop in crime, he argues, can be attributed to hip-hop. (After all, they coincided...) http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2005/08/freakanomics_cr.html MUSICAL ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER At first I thought I was just tired of my music. I'd had an iPod for a year or so and increasily found myself skipping from song to song on shuffle mode, vetoing each one after about 5 seconds. Was I really tired of all 3,800 songs? Or was something else happening? http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2005/08/musical_attenti.html HOW TO GET A SUIT FROM FEDEX Wired News has a story about Jose Avila, a broke kid who, instead of buying actual furniture, decided to build his own out of Federal Express Boxes. His bed, couch, desk, chairs, shelves, and dining table are all made from Fed Ex shipping boxes. He even made a website about it called Fed Ex Furniture. Now FedEx has come after him for violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2005/08/how_to_get_a_su.html GENIUSES OF (CHRISTIAN) ROCK So I was listening to one of my favorite WFMU DJs, Dave the Spazz, the other night and was surprised when he invited a Christian punk rock band to play on his show. Dave usually plays 60s r&b, soul, country and punk, and so it wasn't much of a stretch, particularly considering the band was playing Maxwell's that night and did indeed rock. They also had a delightfully goofy sense of humor. Their album is titled My God Is Alive! Sorry About Yours!; a song about Catholics' gambling is "Father Bingo"... http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2005/08/geniuses_of_chr.html DEATH RIDES THE BUS I don't like bus wraps; the rolling billboards are intrusive and they make the view from inside the bus hazy and depressing. So damn you, HBO, for finding a bus ad that I can't resist! Claire Fisher's lime green avocado hearse is going to roll down New York's streets like a harbinger of death to us all for the Six Feet Under DVD release. San Francisco and Los Angeles turned down the ad because they thought it would reduce ridership, but New York (and Chicago) approved it. More proof that New Yorkers are tough, unflappable and looking for any source of revenue. http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2005/08/death_rides_the.html TAMPONS FOR TWEENS? So a bit ago Carrie posted something about deodorants aimed at pre-teen girls... Relatedly, a friend of mine working at an ad agency here in LA tipped me off to a new Procter and Gamble product: pre-menstrual tampons. They're called Almost, and I think they will be sold under the Always brand. http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2005/08/meet_me_before_.html WHY I LOVE MY LITTLE BLACK BURKA While in Spain, I saw an exhibit that included work by Iranian photographer Shadi Ghadirian. I couldn't find images of the particular pieces online but the subject was more interesting that the execution anyway: Ghadirian discussed how the Iranian government will censor magazines from the US and Europe by physically blacking things out -- particularly, models' skin. In women's magazines, for example, the government will black out any place where a woman's body is visible. Kind of ambitious, huh? http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2005/07/iran_censorship.html -- Posts by Damian Chadwick, Steve Lambert, Carrie McLaren, Charles Star, and Jason Torchinsky From stay.free at verizon.net Tue Aug 30 10:54:51 2005 From: stay.free at verizon.net (Carrie McLaren) Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2005 10:54:51 -0400 Subject: Stay F---! | August 20 Message-ID: Here are some recent highlights from Stay Free's blog. For full text, images, and many more articles, see http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org. STAY FREE! SUBSCRIBERS PARTY IN NYC We're going to be having our quasi-annual Stay Free! subscribers party on the weekend after next. If you're a (paid) subscriber to the magazine, you should have received the details by now. If not, reply to this email (stay.free at verizon.net) and I'll send them along. Of course, it's never too late to become a subscriber and, yes, that is a bribe: http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/order.html AMERICAN SCIENCE, RIP Stay F---! spoofs the new series of Post Office stamps devoted to "American Scientists." Impress your friends and loved ones with these downloadable, eerily realistic parody stamps: Richard "Rick" Santorum, George Walker Bush, William Jennings Bryan, and the Intelligent Designer himself. http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2005/08/science_stamps.html SPOOFING AMERICAN APPAREL Another spoof, this one from some friends of a friend in Los Angeles, home base of American Apparel. http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2005/08/american_appare.html CAN WE STILL BE FRIENDSTERS? Mark down August 28, 2005, as the day that MySpace.com officially jumped the shark. For that was the day a New York Times article proclaimed how of-the-moment the site was. (Though one could certainly make a case that the shark-jumping occurred when R.E.M. joined. Or when Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation bought the site. Take your pick.) My gripe is sour-grape based in part, I'll admit. As I age, I only learn that life is designed to make me feel old... http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2005/08/can_we_still_be.html UNKOSHER ART Look for the artists at this Beijing art farm to get a cease-and-desist letter after tattooing the Louis Vuitton logo on a pig. The artists in residence tattoo the anesthetized pigs and show the tattoos after the eventual natural deaths of the pigs... http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2005/08/pig_tattoo.html SELLING SICKNESS I haven't been very good about finishing books lately, but did manage to read this one the whole way through: Selling Sickness: How the World's Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies are Turning Us All into Patients by Ray Moynihan and Alan Cassels. The book is short, easy, and loaded with arresting anecdotes about drug company efforts to "brand" disease... http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2005/08/selling_sicknes.html COULD VIOXX COME BACK FROM THE GRAVE? I don't know how many of you are following the Vioxx story but it's taking a surreal turn. First, a quick recap: Merck withdrew Vioxx from the market in September 2004 when evidence linking the drug to fatal heart attacks became too much to ignore. (By some estimates, Vioxx has caused tens of thousands of deaths.) The news sparked a slew of lawsuits from survivors and the verdict in the first of these cases came back on Friday. The jury ruled against Merck and awarded the plaintiff -- whose husband died of a heart attack after taking Vioxx -- a symbolic $253 million... http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2005/08/vioxx_heart_dea.html REAL BEAUTY (FOR ASS MEN) Since Dove's "Real Beauty" campaign has won raves in the press, other advertisers are rushing to cash in on some of that "real bodies" action. Nike has just launched an image campaign in a similar vein, celebrating "big butts, thunder thighs and tomboy knees" -- or at least that's what Advertising Age said. I looked at the ads myself but the closest thing to a fatty here is, as Charles put it, "a tight, perfectly round ass." ... http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2005/08/real_women_ads.html BRAIN TAUNTER Little, stupid Flash-based ads that tout low mortgage rates are pretty much everywhere on the web, kind of like the soot-blackened gum wads pounded into the sidewalk of any big city: ubiquitous, mildly repugnant, and ignored. But, much like soot-blackened gum wads, sometimes one of these ads catches my eye. Like today. The ad pictured here seems to have some kind of slightly stoned green hippy troll-thing giving me a wobbly peace sign, surrounded by a sea-like miasmic soup of low-mortgage rate information... http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2005/08/brain_taunter.html CAN'T A GAY BATMAN GET A BREAK? Oh, will the copyright madness ever end? D.C. Comics is going after a Chelsea art dealer, demanding that it cease and desist from exhibiting Mark Chamberlain's series of "gay Batman" watercolors. As Kathleen Cullen of Kathleen Cullen Fine Art explained to Artnet, "D.C. Comics wants me to hand over all unsold work and invoices for the sold work!" I hope she told them to make their own gay Batman watercolors... http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2005/08/gay_batman.html BEER FOR KIDS Following on the heels of candy-flavored cigarettes and kiddie deodorant, a Japanese company is marketing a nonalcoholic drink it calls Kidsbeer: http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2005/08/beer_for_kids.html DEATH TO FALSE METAL! Nu-metal stalwarts Slipknot are on the warpath. The enemy? Coq Roq, the fictional band featured in Burger King's new ad for Chicken Fries. Slipknot are threatening to sue the fast food chain for ripping off their likeness and sound in a diabolical scheme to "influence the Slipknot generation to purchase Chicken Fries." http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2005/08/death_to_false_.html WHO KNEW FAKING BARCODES COULD BE SO EASY? Some of you may remember when pranksters from Conglomco created a website that allowed people to download barcodes of various consumer goods, print them out, and stick them over more expensive goods at Wal-Mart, enabling them to buy at a discount. (The site was quickly shut down.) http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2005/08/barcodes_art_fa.html