Apple, John Lewis/Elton John Christmas Ads Are Actually Pretty Awesome

A new Christmas ad from Apple is one of the better ones this year. 

Most everyone who knows me understands that I'm not all that into Christmas.

I'm especially not into the constant onslaught of holiday ads, most of which are stupid, a waste of time, and just harangue you to buy, buy, buy.

The unmistakable message in these ads is you are a horrible person if you don't buy the perfect material gift. If you don't make Christmas memorable and perfect for everybody, you're a failure.

Some ads are better. At least they try to give an uplifting message. Like this year's offerings from Apple and John Lewis, the British retailer.  Yes, the purpose of the ads is to get you to buy Apple products and merchandise from John Lewis. Bur they do seem to go beyond the consumerist intent and remind us there are other things to think about.

First, I'll tackle the Apple ad, then get into John Lewis/Elton John, which I have more mixed feelings about.

In the Apple ad, I nice Pixar-like production called "Share Your Gifts," a young woman is seen in her apartment with her dog, writing or creating art on her Apple laptop, printing the work out, then being bitterly disappointed in her talent and stuffing the papers into a box.

The young woman is obviously creative and bright, but fears sharing her talent with anybody. Maybe they won't like it. Maybe they'll think her talent is stupid or something.

The dog finally takes matters into his own hands, pushing the apartment window open and sending the papers from the box flying out into the gusty, snowy city where they live.

The woman frantically runs outside trying to collect the papers, but to her horror,  they blow onto the clothes and into the hand of passersby. Those passersby look at what's on the papers, and their reactions are completely different from what she expected.

The soundtrack makes the ad complete. It's the marvelous song "Come Out and Play" by Billie Ellish.

Here's the ad



Every year, John Lewis, the British retailer, releases an elaborate Christmas season ad meant to touch everybody who sees it.

Some bah-humbugs usually hate them. I'm personally not fond of the Christmas season, so I skew to the bah-humbug crowd. Still, a good ad is a good ad, so I do get all verklempt if the ad touches all the right emotional buttons.

Elton John is the subject of this year's John Lewis Christmas ad.

Usually, John Lewis comes through. This year, I have mixed emotions. The ad this year is certainly touching. And it involves Elton John. I've always been a big fan of his. Ever since I was a little kid.

This year's ad shows Elton John, this year, sitting at a little piano in a modest living room lit up with a Christmas tree.

The piano, we think, is probably one he got as a young kid. It shows him playing three notes, then launching into the familiar chords of "Your Song." He's been through a lot, and at age 71, the ad does not mask the time that has passed.

The ad then journeys backwards through Sir Elton John's life. It goes through recent concerts, his wild days as the ultimate international star in the 1970s, back to when he recorded that beautiful love tune "Your Song," which basically launched his career. Then we see him in small clubs, wowing people with his talent.

It goes back further, with a very young Elton performing at an elementary school recital, with his confident, encouraging mom in the audience. Then it goes back further, on Christmas morning, when he unwraps the piano his mother gave him.

As a toddler, Elton looks at the piano, and plays three simple notes. Then we go back to present-day Elton, and he plays those same three notes, looking wistful and emotional, wistful and grateful.

The reason I have mixed emotions over this ad, is I just hate how companies these days stretch to find "synergy" with current pop moments, with the cooperation with current pop stars. Elton John is on his big farewell tour currently.

It looks like John Lewis is hanging its pitch on this current pop moment, and Elton John is promoting his tour by hooking up with some big retailer.

Still, the ad is touching and to be honest,  it does have a great message. The tagline at the end of the ad says, "Some gifts are more than just a gift."

No pressure here.  It looks like John Lewis expects you to buy your loved ones something as life-changing as that piano Elton John got as a little kid.

But still. I can think of numerous things that kind people have done for me over the years. On the surface, those nice gestures were no big deal. It might have been a thoughtful compliment, a supportive word when I was down, a joke when I needed it

The people who did these things for me probably don't even remember them. But they had a profound influence on my life. Maybe not as big as Elton John's piano, but significant enough. I'll always cherish and remember those giving, warm moments people gave me.

I'm sure we've all had the benefit of these random moments people gave is that helped us so much. I also hope that I've done things that, however subtlely, changed the direction of someone's life. I bet you hope that, too.

I hate the Christmas season because of the manufactured pressure to give the perfect gift, decorate just perfectly, and just be shallow consumers.

The John Lewis ad does expects us to engage in that superficial buying to create some commercial idea of a "perfect" holiday.  The part of our modern Christmas culture that I hate.

But I hope the ad, intentionally or not, also encourages us to dig deep, or maybe not so deep. Perhaps just a kind word. A compliment to somebody who thinks they don't deserve it. Or even just a smile in the long, boisterous line at the big box store.

You never know what just a mellow, friendly, brief gesture can do to a person. That person's life.

Anyway, you be the judge. Here's that John Lewis/Elton John ad. Tell me what you think:

Appreciating Chuck Barris, Of Gong Show Fame - One Of World's Most Unique Characters

Chuck Barris died this week at the age of 87. He was
lowbrow, for sure, and I'm eternally grateful to him for that

Word arrived this morning that Chuck Barris, best known as the emcee of the very, very lowbrow 1970s talent contest television program "The Gong Show" has died at the age of 87.

I was a teenager when "The Gong Show" was on, so it fit my mentality perfectly. It was cruel, gaudy, annoying, anti-intellectual, druggy, stupid and a complete waste of time

In other words, perfect.

Most of the acts on "The Gong Show" were amateur, and many were not very good, to say the least.

One act involved two young women eating Popsicles very suggestively, which won them gongs, except of course from Jaye P Morgan, the, shall we say, sexually free regular judge on the program.

Panelist Phillis Diller gave the "PopsicleTwins" as they were called a score of zero on a scale of 0-10, but Jaye P Morgan gave them a 10, saying, "Do you know that's the way I started?"

Yeah, OK. And the show was really that tacky.

(For those who are somehow unfamiliar with the wonders of "The Gong Show," if a judge didn't like an act and couldn't bear watching it anymore, he or she would strike a big gong behind the panel, thus ending the act.

"The Gong Show" was impeccably chaotic. It was obvious that Barris, and many of the judges, were on something, and that something wasn't just a natural good mood. We're talking pharmaceuticals, folks!

By the way, there were some interesting judges on "The Gong Show," including David Letterman before he got really famous. Steve Martin played the banjo on the program. The band Oingo Boingo made a bizarre appearance.

Mare Winningham was on the show, operating under an alias on The Gong Show, singing at age 16. Pee-wee Herman, before he was Pee-wee Herman performed on the show as part of a jazzy duo called Suave and Debonair.

As Billboard reports, other celebrity judges that somehow got roped into doing the show included June Allyson, Milton Berle, Ruth Buzzi, Adrienne Barbeau, Dione Warwick, Sarah Vaughn, Joan Rivers, Tony Randall, Johnny Paycheck, Martin Mull, Wolfman Jack and Peter Lawford.

This is probably the reason we had all these luminaries on "The Gong Show": Whether you admit it or not, all of us like to wallow, to slum it from time to time. It's an opportunity to let your guard down, to not think, to take a break from always burnishing your image.

Chuck Barris understood this, which is why he had so many unlikely successes in life. And made us happy.

Very little of what Barris did with his life Changed History, but his life added plenty of color to plenty of other peoples' lives. Those were gaudy colors, and that was the point.

Barris kept popping up in American pop culture in random ways. He was kind of a smart, goofy, shameless but still loveable Forrest Gump.

As the New York Times reports, Barris first turned up as a guy to babysit a young ABC star named Dick Clark to keep him out of trouble during the Payola Scandal in the 1950s. (Though the Times reported that Barris mostly spent his time on that job drawing on pads of paper.)

The scandal involved the manufacture of radio hits by paying for radio play. 

Barris then wrote  the 1962 fizzy pop song "Palisades Park", performed by Freddy Cannon.

By 1965, Barris hit his glorious tackiness stride by created the television game show "The Dating Game," in which a bachelor or bachlorett would choose a date based on answers of three possible suiters hidden behind a screen.

After that, Barris created the equally lowbrow "The Newlywed Game," that beautifully icky game show that had newly-married couples test how in tune they really were with each other.

Then, in the mid-1970s, of course came "The Gong Show," which echoes on television today.

As the New York Times put it:

"The ghost of "The Gong Show" is evident in numerous reality-television shows of more recent vintage - the early rounds of any given season of  "American Idol", for instance."

See? Barris was a visionary of sorts.

New episode of "The Gong Show" were only produced for about two years, but the party lived on in syndication.

Barris faded from the scene a bit until he wrote the book, "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" in 1984 where he claimed that in addition to his being a game show king, he was also an assassin for the CIA.

Now, that seems completely improbable, but with Barris, you have to wonder. Was he?  Barris never gave a straight answer, but the CIA says Barris had nothing to do with them. But you never know.   Just another bizarre chapter in an odd life

Nevertheless, a movie based on the book became a smash hit movie directed by George Clooney and starring Sam Rockwell as Barris.

He went on to write several more books in recent years.

The New York Times said Barris would have preferred to be rememberd as an author, but he knew - correctly - that he'd be remembered differently.

Barris said: "I think on my tombstone it's just going to say, 'Gonged at last,' and I'm stuck with that."

I suppose Barris can be partly blamed for the so-called dumbing of the American mind.

However, as I said, he gave us all many welcome chances to go slumming in the most kitschy, strange and dim resources of American culture.

My low brows are very low withiBarris' legacy.

And I'm eternally grateful to him for that.

To give you a refresher course on how delightful, stupidly wonderful "The Gong Show" was, here's a few clips.

Here, Barris, and the judges, are particularly taken by an act called "The Worms," so much so, that Barris kept demanding encore performances:




Next, here's juggler Hillary Carlip on "The Gong Show" performing a glorious, bad physical pun routine that still has me laughing out loud. (This might be my favorite Gong Show clip.)



And here's that "Popsicle Girls" clip, the one I mentioned in the narrative. It's the most cringe-worthy thing I've seen in ages. Also, TOTALLY NSFW

YouTube's 10th Anniversary Is Surprising Trip Down Memory Lane

Possibly the most iconic YouTube video
Leave Britney Alone!  

It almost feels like YouTube has been around forever, but it's only ten years now

I'm a total addict with YouTube. I watch it more than television.

It's a great time waster when I don't feel like doing anything, or I want to procrastinate, or I just want to see how strange and wonderful and awful and gorgeous and creative and (rarely) bland the world and its humans are.

There's a tenth anniverary video of the highlights of YouTube over the past decade. Each snippet of the video lasts barely a second, but click on this hyperlink to see the entire list of the YouTube moments you liked or loathed. 

It's probably impossible to include all the best, most viral, most controversial videos out there, but they tried. I'm sure you can add yours.

Susan Boyle auditions for Britain's Got Talent,
setting off a YouTube viral frenzy about
five years ago. 

A number of them are music videos. MTV hasn't had music videos for years, so YouTube is now the go to place for popular music videos, or people who do covers of popular songs.

It reminds me of how quickly things change. One of my favorite videos, one that made this 10-year compilation, is Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance". It's weird and scary and wonderful and perplexing and crazy and odd. Which is perfect for me.

That video only came out about five years ago, but already, Lady Gaga has moved on to expertly singing torh songs, ballads and Broadway hits. At least for now.

The homeless guy with the golden radio voice
went viral on YouTube a few years ago. With all the
attention, he's certainly not homeless now.  

Then there's the world debut of Susan Boyle. That was just six years ago, when the dowdy, awkward woman stunned everybody with her vocal briliance. That video now has more than 65 million views.

Other rags to riches stories, or undiscovered talent came to us, and are in this compilation, too. Remember the homeless guy with the golden radio voice? He's there too. So is the amazing "Pumped Up Kicks/Dubstep" guy.     

Some of the videos are instant classics, something that everyone remembers, like in previous media eras, when the world instantly recalls, to cite both the frivolous and the devastating, the I Love Lucy chocolate factory episode, or Winston Churchill's "Nothing to Fear But Fear Itself" or the 9/11 terror attacks on the World Trade Center. 

The baby laughing gleefully as his
father rips up a job application rejection
letter is one of the best ultra-viral
YouTube videos of the past decade. 

Here, on YouTube, we have the silly, the interesting and the serious touchstones.

Perhaps the most famous is the wailing, distraught guy, mascara streaming down his face with his tears as he screamed at us to "Leave Britney Alone!," when the pop star was having a well-publicized meltdown.

Others were almost as famous, like  the VW Darth Vader ad, and the two baby twins seeming to have an intelligent conversation made of baby babble, and the baby laughing hysterically as his dad rips up a job application rejection letter. 

There was history, of course, like Obama's 2008 election and the 2011 Japanese tsunami, and the Boston Marathon bombing. 

I'm sure we'll have other viral videos taking over our lives any minute now. Or other media. Vine, those six-second video snippets, are already starting to becoming cultural icons.  

As Sonny and Cher once sang, back in the dinosaur age when anything online wasn't really even the stuff of science fiction yet, the beat goes on. 

Here's Some Changes I Suggest for 2014

Happy New Year!

2013 was certainly an, um, interesting year, wasn't it? The government shut down, or didn't function, the NSA probably knows exactly what I'm typing as soon as my fingers hit the keyboards.

None of this in 2014, OK?  

Miley Cyrus twerked her way into history, the mayor of Toronto partied hearty through the year with his booze and crack pipe. And we barely noticed, since we were so busy Tweeting, Instagraming, Vining and taking selfies.

Everybody wants a new start as a new year arrives, so here are some totally unrealistic hopes for 2014. Feel free to chime in and add your own.

In 2014, let's have a year in which politicians say and do exactly what they think is right, instead of kowtowing to the crazy "base"

They call them the "base" for a reason. Yes, I know the base in politics refer to the hardcore partisans on either the right or the left. But I call them base because they are just that, the lowest, stupidest common demoninator. Ignore the jerks and do what's right for once, jeez!

Speaking of extremists, let's have a little common sense and recognize that there's not always black and white, but shades of gray.  For instance, we can pass some gun laws that help keep weapons out of the hands of criminals and the crazies, while guaranteeing the rest of us can use our guns to hunt, target practice or use to protect our homes, if we choose.

It goes both ways. Some proposed laws by hard line conservatives are odious, too, but they won't mean the fascists will take over the world.

Mild laws don't necessarily lead to a Police State, despite what the NRA says.

That doesn't mean there's no police state. Again, shades of gray. The Snowden leaks shows the NSA seems to think that they have to get all the information about everybody all the time.

But what do you do with that information? There's too much of it to make sense. Can't somebody there get some common sense, spy on the people we need to spy on, and leave the rest of us alone. I know that's imperfect, but it's an imperfect world, no?

In 2014, whenever there is a law we don't like, let's also avoid the hyperbole, shall we?  Many people might not like Obamacare, want to change it, get rid of it, replace it with something else. That's all good. Why not continue discussing a law that's less than perfect?

But no, it's not communism, it's not a complete government takeover of every aspect of our lives, there's no death panels, and it's not going to lead to the fall of Western Civilization.

Same with gay marriage. If you don't like it, fine. But God is not going to smite us and every time we get a destructive storm or a tornado, it's not because God is pissed off at us because some people of the same gender are married. And a kid who is aware that gay people sometimes get married doens't mean the kid will instantaneously turn gay.

In 2014, I'm sure some celebrities will do something stupid, outrageous, criminal or eyerolling. This year, every time they do that, let's not turn the incident into a 'that's how low our culture has sunk" sermon.

People like Toronto Mayor Ron
Ford need to calm down in 2014.  

Some people, celebrities or not, are stupid sometimes. That's often the extent of it.

2014 ought to be the year we declare war on Internet trolls. I'm not quite sure how to do that, but I'm among millions who are sick of them. You know who they are: The people who leave comments all over the Internet saying the cruelest, most ridiculous things to get attention.

I know they say don't feed the trolls by giving them attention, but that's not working. The more we ignore them, the louder they get.

I'm a free speech absolutist. The trolls have the right to say their outrageous things. But we need to call them out more, expose who they are, show their faces to the daylight and let the world know how awful they are.  Time to exercise our own free speech.

They've been hiding in the basement long enough, mooching off their mothers, not going out and getting a job and and instead shooing out their bile.

Most importantly, in 2014, let's keep our sense of humor, OK? People say and do awful things, and I can see taking offense when that happens. But it seems every peep, every little misunderstanding, every slip of the tongue leads to outrage, yelling, screaming, victimhood and general drama.

In 2014, let's all chill out a little, OK?

And Happy New Year!

You Won't Believe These Weird Tricks They Did With These 20th Century Historical Headlines.

These days it's all about clicks on a website. Everything, especially headlines is written in a style designed to make you click on to read when you're on line.

Of course, it sort of dumbs down what the subject matter is. You know, it's all listicles, and language that always seems to involve the words "weird tricks" or "the most heartbreaking" or "You won't believe."

I found a summary of headlines regarding major 20th century historical events as if they were written today, when ya gotta get those clicks

UPDATE: As you can see from the comments section of this post, I now know the source of this image. It's from xkcd.com which is "a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math and language."  

The site looks pretty interesting, check it out.

Anyway, click on the image in this post to make it big enough to read

Money: Another Reason Why I'm Happy I'm Not in the Dating Pool

I'm so glad I'm married already and don't need to date to find a mate.

That's true now so more than ever, given the higher and higher hurdles people make their prospective partners clear before the relationship goes ahead.

On example came last month in a New York Times article describing how some people are demanding credit scores from would-be suitors, often on first dates.

Romance, Schmomance. I don't care if you're a hottie. Are you financially solvent?"

"Credit scores are like the dating equivalent of a sexually transmitted disease test," the Times quoted Manisha Thakor, who heads MoneyZen Wealth Management, a financial advisory firm.

I suppose asking about credit scores is useful, especially if the relationship escalates into love, living together, marriage. You'd hate to be tied to bad credit as you buy a home, furnishings, whatever.

Said the Times:

Dating someone with poor credit can have real implications. Banks remain wary of making loans to borrowers with tarnished scores, typically 660 and below; the best scores range from 800 to 850, and scores above 750 are considered good. A low score could quash dreams of buying a house, and result in steep interest rates, up to 29 percent, for credit cards, car financing and other unsecured loans.

All that might be true, but must dating, a first date, even, be completely a job interview, or a loan application meeting? If the maybe future partner has the goods in other departments, and is honest, which you'd want anyway, can't you work out the finances at a later date?  Get the money straightened out before marriage, yes, but a week into the relationship?

It's also a turnoff to have someone demand full financial disclosure minutes into an initial date. Yes, you don't want to waste your time with someone who is a financial train wreck, so you might want to get out early. But I'd also not want to waste my time with someone who sounds as if he or she is in it for the money.

What's next? Full interviews by an investigative journalist with any and all family members, past acquaintences, first grade teachers, kindergarten friends and strangers who encountered you in the street in 1979 to get the dirt on a would-be date?

Like I said, thank God I'm already married. Finding a mate sounds like it's too much work, too business like.

My husband Jeff and I disagree on money sometimes. But we always work it out quickly. So I'll keep the great mate I've got, and leave the financial negotiations to Match.com or something.  thanks. 

Roach Eating Death Mystery Merits Analysis

I hate to make fun of a death, but the passing of a man in Florida who had just completed a live roach eating contest merits some discussion, don't you think?

Luckily, there's a great Associated Press analysis of the situation by writers Suzette Laboy and Tamara Lush.

Edward Archbold at the roach eating contest.
He passed away not long after the contest ended. 

As an aside, I mentioned earlier this month  in a post about alligators swimming with kids during pool parties,  how Lush, formerly a Vermont reporter, now has such a great job  reporting for the weird, weird news out of Florida.

Anyway, Laboy and Lush open their article with some of the most logical questions that you'd never thought you'd find yourself asking about people, like the guy who died, Edward Archbold, 32,  who eat live roaches for fun and profit:

"Why would anyone eat a live cockroach? Why did he die when several others in the contest ate the same bugs without incident? What inspired Archbold - who was described by the snake store owner as "the life of the party" - to shovel handfuls of crickets, worms and cockroaches into his mouth?"

As for why people participate in these contests, we get this:

"Lou Manza, a psychology professor at Lebanon Valley College, said folks who participate in extreme events like bug eating "are looking for things to make life interesting."
"At a certain level we're all looking for things to break up the monotony," said Manza, who participates in extreme marathons and says some people think that is odd. "We're striving for something that gives life meaning, something beyond the ordinary. The older you get, you start looking for something else."

The article goes on to say that such odd contests like roach eating are inspired by the Jackass movies, in which people in the films performed very odd stunts. I guess people apsire to what they see in the movies.

I might aspire to be like Woodward and Bernstein in "All the President's Men" (fat chance of that) Others aspire to be the world's best roach eater. More power to them!

Autopsy reports on Archbold won't be available for another week or so, but theories are he was allergic to roaches and he had enough in his system to go into shock and die. Or the bugs had some sort of bacteria that killed Archbold.

As always, I have questions not covered in the awesome Laboy/Lush AP article. What do roaches taste like? I need someone to describe it to me since I'm never going to try them myself. I guess I'm not "striving for something that gives life meaning," at least via the roach eating method.

Had Archbold survived, he would have won a python for his efforts. I'm not sure if a python is quite the prize I'd want to win in a contest, but to each his own.

But, as the AP story points out, people who participate in these weird contests are after the fame, not acquiring material wealth

If you consider material wealth being the proud owner of a python.

Dick Clark Goes to the Great Spotlight Dance in the Sky

News that Dick Clark died today at the age of 82 brings me back to those Saturdays when I watched, with deep envy, the people dancing on the set of "American Bandstand."

Looking back, I have no idea why I was so envious, but consider the scenario. It was the 1970s. I  was sitting alone, again, in West Rutland, Vermont, in my usual  "husky boy" jeans and ill fitting  t-shirt, stained with Hershey's chocolate ice cream.

The dancers on "American Bandstand" were the cool kids in fashionable, dazzling L.A.  I was the dorky kid going nowhere in Vermont.  They were the stars. I never would be.

That's the strange thinking of a 14 year old kid. As much fun as I had with American Bandstand, I'm so glad I was never one of those cool kids on the show.  I look back on the clips now, and the kids weren't so cool. The clothes they wore maybe weren't the latest fashions. They were just what people wore back then. The kids couldn't even dance that well.  I was under selling myself.

Looking back,  I now realize it was more cool that I could walk out the back door, and lose myself hiking in the mountains in back of my house for the day. I didn't realize it at the time, but the fact that I could do that made me way cooler than the homogenous, bland Ken and Barbies dancing on American Bandstand.

I loved the music, though. I always loved pop music. Still do. I mean, check the clip below. "Don't Leave Me This Way," by Thelma Houston remains as delectable as Dick Clark said it was back in 1977 or whatever.  The clothes the dancers wore are so ugly. The kids weren't dancing well at all, like I thought they were when I first watched the show.  The clip is hilarious. Why isn't anyone really moving?!?






I'm almost 50 years old, and I can dance to any Lady Gaga song better than these American Bandstand kids could do to any of the best and wildest disco songs.

I used to get a kick out of the Spotlight Dance, where three couples on American Bandstand danced on three separate pedestals. They were the alpha kids, supposedly. The best dancers, the most popular, the best dressers. Now, they look and move no better than the two figurines atop a wedding cake during a minor earth tremor.

I don't mean to put down all those people who were on American Bandstand. They were all good. They had different lives than I did. I used to think that was to my disadvantage, they were better than I.  But no, they weren't better than me. Just different.

So anyway, Dick Clark, thank you for setting me off on this weird little journey of self discovery. I hope you're somewhere, introducing Abba or the Human League or Andy Gibb or Donna Summer,  to some of the best Spotlight Dancers in the universe.

Onion News: Oregon Euthanasia Takes a Teenage Turn

The Onion News Network the nation's most trusted news source, or at least the most satirical, has this, um, gripping report on an Oregon couple's painful decision to euthanize their teenage daughter, who is so brain damaged she can only text, groan and roll her eyes.

Employing every cliche from every network news drama story, the Onion News Network team brings us totally up to date on this highly important issue. Especially to you parents of teens.

I particularly like the shots of the protesters who don't want the girl euthanized. You can catch demonstrators carrying signs that read "Trying on clothes is proof of life" and "Caitlin isn't brain-dead. She's just an idiot."

And you have to feel for Caitlin's mom, who urges viewers in the report to "go home and hug their kids, and be thankful they don't have such a piss poor attitude."

Also, when watching the video, stay on to the end for a glimpse of upcoming news story of utmost importance.