Back in 1974, Alice Sheldon (aka ‘James Tiptree, Jr.’) won a Hugo for “The Girl Who Was Plugged In“, a dystopian narrative about an ugly, ghetto-trapped teenager given an opportunity to join the media celebrities she idolizes. All she has to do is agree to risky experimental surgery that will allow her to pilot a gorgeous, brain-pithed android-drone who can maximize product placement in a world where ‘advertising’ is banned. Her reaction? Show me the fire I have to walk through.
That was the story that convinced me Tiptree-the-author must be a woman (at the same time, IIRC, a famous sf critic publicly announced that no mere ‘lady writer’ could produce prose so muscular). Sheldon / Tiptree had the foresight to imagine the arc from 18th-century merchants ‘quietly’ advertising their royal customers, to 19th-century proto-celebrities taking payments to use Pears soap, to the 20th-century legitimation of PR agents, to the 21st-century protype Reality TV. But I don’t think even she predicted the Uberization of the form, where every product-shiller would have to hustle themselves as a “brand”.
The proudly libertarian Atlantic should be thrilled at such viral commodification, and yet, something about the unwieldiness of the current process seems to perturb them…
Three years ago, Lisa Linh quit her full-time job to travel the world and document it on Instagram, where she has nearly 100,000 followers; since then, she has stayed in breathtaking hotels everywhere from Mexico to Quebec to the Cook Islands. Often, she stays for free.
Linh is part of an ever-growing class of people who have leveraged their social media clout to travel the world, frequently in luxury. While Linh and other elite influencers are usually personally invited by hotel brands, an onslaught of lesser-known wannabes has left hotels scrambling to deal with a deluge of requests for all-expense-paid vacations in exchange for some social media posts.
Kate Jones, marketing and communications manager at the Dusit Thani, a five-star resort in the Maldives, said that her hotel receives at least six requests from self-described influencers per day, typically through Instagram direct message.
“Everyone with a Facebook these days is an influencer,” she said. “People say, I want to come to the Maldives for 10 days and will do two posts on Instagram to like 2,000 followers. It’s people with 600 Facebook friends saying, ‘Hi, I’m an influencer, I want to stay in your hotel for 7 days,’” she said. Others send vague one-line emails, like “I want to collaborate with you,”with no further explanation. “These people are expecting five to seven nights on average, all inclusive. Maldives is not a cheap destination.” She said that only about 10 percent of the requests she receives are worth investigating…
But to influencers themselves, this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the value exchange. Instagram has ballooned to more than 800 million monthly active users, many of whom come to it for travel ideas, and influencers argue that the promotions they offer allow hotels to directly market to new audiences in an authentic way…
Some of these issues can just be a miscommunication. Miragliotta said he’s invested in making clients happy—but hotels need to make sure they’re organized and prepared for influencer stays.
“I went to one Mexico resort and three different people were giving me different hashtags and handles,” he said. “I was with five other influencers and we were excited to post, but there was limited Wi-Fi. If you don’t have the simplest things ready for us, then that makes it difficult to produce the content you need, or do it correctly.”…
As an introvert and aspiring agoraphobe, just looking at the sampled Instagram pics convinces me that I’d rather eat glass doing this ‘social influencer’ thing is indeed a job. It is, after all, not that different than any other form of… what was Melania’s old job title… modeling, is it?
Roger Moore
This kind of thing is a big reason I despise the whole advertising industry. There is some informative advertising- letting people know about things they might want but otherwise wouldn’t know about- but the vast majority of it is spending lots of money to convince people to buy one brand rather than another. It doesn’t add anything of real utility to the world; it just siphons off effort that might otherwise be spent doing something productive.
khead
Will post pictures of Chewy.com boxes for free cat litter.
Mary G
I would rather die than be famous.
NotMax
“What a world, what a world.”
– Wicked Witch of the West
MattF
This is a pretty interesting NYT Magazine article about eBay, and how eBay set a lot of the patterns that we see on the intertubes. It’s all about marketing– and when the topic changes to social interaction? It’s still all about marketing.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
Did I write that comment for you?
Exactly!
Although you could have added “All to insure the pockets of the owners are stuffed with money they didn’t actually earn.”
I see it this way, Amazon is actually a rather badly designed store that inundates you with things that are nothing like what you ask about, all in the desire for you to purchase far more than you actually need or you’d be looking at those other items. And the owner is fabulously wealthy, so far beyond anyone’s needs. Yes, you can find most anything there, that’s a plus, but often it just isn’t worth your time. And at this juncture my time isn’t worth spit.
Mart
Just watched Carpool Karaoke with Paul McCartney and I puddled up pretty good.
My buddy and I ate most of our (thin) glasses on Rush Street over Thanksgiving break. We knew how to impress the ladies. Taking a bite a shard of glass swung around and clipped my nose so I was bleeding pretty good. Bartender was laughing his ass off letting us know what dumb-asses we were as he threw us out.
Amir Khalid
There can be only so much room for influencers that matter, just like there’s only so much room on the A-list for movie stars. Doesn’t Fancy Resort Hotels in Exotic Places Inc. have free room and board for only so many “influencers” before it reaches a point of diminishing returns? This is a marketplace I can see getting very crowded with sellers very fast.
Brachiator
I was born too soon. There’s probably college majors in grifting and “branding.”
And obviously quite a few career opportunities afterwards.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Roger Moore:
That sounds like modern capitalism in a nutshell. Every day we waste limited resources on things people don’t really need.
Joel
Maybe these hotels should have done some research on ROI before comping every clown with a megaphone.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Brachiator:
How’s that old quote go? Born too late to explore the world, born too early to explore the galaxy.
Omnes Omnibus
@Brachiator: Just saying.
PJ
The Minutemen said it 34 years ago:
Let the products sell themselves
Fuck advertising, commercial psychology
Psychological methods to sell should be destroyed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCnXf9RfxfU
Just One More Canuck
@khead: I hope you have a cat
Brachiator
@Amir Khalid: RE: There can be only so much room for influencers that matter, just like there’s only so much room on the A-list for movie stars.
Yeah. But I find this whole idea of “influencers” to be pretty shady. I remember reading about how Paris Hilton would get paid some ridiculous amount of money to show up at a club, etc. Good publicity for the club, I guess. But ordinary people would never receive star treatment, so I never saw the value to anyone else.
ETA. Hmmm. The quote tool seems to have disappeared
Platonailedit
As long as we are talking about wannabe stars (not.gonna.happen, sarah)
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Platonailedit:
Sarah, better watch out, Donaldo will shitcan her ass
Mnemosyne
I mentioned a few days ago that I went to an event this week that honored the Sherman Brothers, who were the prolific songwriters for Disney and other movie musicals.
For obvious reasons, Mary Poppins was heavily featured, and a thought struck me today — was Disney the first one in American culture to push the idea that fathers should play with their children and not just be disciplinarians? The whole point of that movie is take the distant, career-obsessed father and turn him into someone who happily proposes heading off to the park to fly a kite with his children in the middle of the workday.
I actually don’t know, but it really struck me during that event. Before those live-action Disney musicals, we didn’t really see fathers interacting with their children like that in pop culture, did we?
Omnes Omnibus
@Platonailedit: It isn’t his Supreme Court and that’s not what the ruling was. And that is just the first sentence.
Brachiator
@Omnes Omnibus: I respect sales people, but agree with the late comedian Bill Hicks that marketing is the tool of the devil.
different-church-lady
FUCK ANYONE WHO CALLS THEMSELVES AN “INFLUENCER”!!!
Thank you for your attention.
rikyrah
Did you see this ridiculous sentence from South Dakota?
https://twitter.com/ananny/status/1009180574521540608
Brachiator
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
RE: How’s that old quote go? Born too late to explore the world, born too early to explore the galaxy.
Good quote. Exploring the galaxy brings to mind “The Expanse,” the best sci fi tv show people aren’t watching.
rikyrah
@Platonailedit:
Not your SC.
Based upon moral conviction.
Well, it would be against my moral conviction to serve anyone that fully participates in the pure, unadulterated evil of tearing children away from their parents?
Roger Moore
@Ruckus:
My personal problem with advertising is that it doesn’t line the owners’ pockets, or at least not the owners of the companies that produce anything useful. Instead, it’s a giant leech that winds up making everything more expensive for no benefit to customers or producers. I don’t know if Madison Avenue is more or less damaging than Wall Street, but they’re ultimately both parasites on our economy.
Platonailedit
@Omnes Omnibus: Parody account.
JMG
The paradox of advertising is that it devours every new medium (which needs it to be profitable) by driving users mad with hatred, causing them to seek out and/or create newer media. I mean, maybe I’m a skeptical old man, but you’d have to be six kinds of sap to make an expensive vacation decision based on the blattings of somebody you’v’ve never met. Besides which, the Internet mass consumer review form tends to render these “influencers” irrelevant. Those are written by people who’ve spent their own money.
satby
@Omnes Omnibus: it’s a parody account
@ Platonailedit, psyche!
rikyrah
Story about the comprehensive evil that the KKKEEBLER Elf is doing???
https://twitter.com/DrIbram/status/1010496244584677379
Omnes Omnibus
@satby: How can one tell the difference? It seemed no more insane than his normal shit.
The Dangerman
I wonder (not really) if these influencers claim these benefits on their income taxes? It’s not quite the same as being as being comped a room in Vegas; if your profession is a travel videographer, this is income. Isn’t it?
ETA: Or what was said in 22; fuck ’em.
NotMax
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Couldn’t help but flash back to this, from a half century ago.
@Platonailedit:
Sufficient to make me throw up in my mouth a little.
zhena gogolia
@Omnes Omnibus:
True. The thread is hilarious, especially “BREAKING! Exclusive video” of SHS being thrown out.
zhena gogolia
@zhena gogolia:
Oh, and Shirley Temple is on the thread too!
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
Part of the problem is that there are two sides to marketing. On the one hand, you have market research, where companies try to figure out what their customers want and will be willing to pay for so they can produce the right stuff. On the other side you have advertising, where companies try to push what they have, whether or not it’s what those people want and need. The first seems largely legitimate to me; the second not so much.
Luthe
@MattF: Hence the fucking annoying need to have a “personal brand” when job searching these days. ::vomits xer introvert guts out::
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
I like Amazon. The site is easy to use and efficient, which is what I need, especially for frequent purchase items.
Amazon is just the high tech version of mail order catalogs, an American tradition.
ETA. Quote tool is back. Or it never left and I was having browser problems.
Omnes Omnibus
@Brachiator: It was gone for me for a while. Back now.
rikyrah
There was a White woman who ,called the police on an 8 year old Black girl for selling water.
Mom got it on video.
And, yes, Black Twitter found her???
https://twitter.com/keithboykin/status/1010576705122177024
https://twitter.com/jkiyomi/status/1010624623015182336
John Revolta
Parasites.
See also: “Your band should play at my event for free! You’ll get a ton of publicity!!”
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Omnes Omnibus:
It’s not really him.
The Ancient Randonneur
@Brachiator: I love the subscriptions for regularly used items for household and personal care.
NotMax
@Brachiator
Will freely admit have come across items found of interest there which I had no idea existed. If one has the patience to poke around on one’s own, can be rewarding (and alternatively, amusing).
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
Most marketing managers I’ve known have been weasels. The worst mistreated their staff and loathed customers, the latter a particularly stupid attitude. Sometimes the larger company management encouraged this, sometimes they didn’t realize what a cesspool the marketing department was, and how their bad efforts actually hurt the company.
I’ve also seen the abuse of marketing research. One company I worked for had a good research arm, but was infested with managers who would, for example, discount and ignore what customers told them in surveys or create surveys designed to be worthless.
Can you tell how much I hate marketing? Oh, I got stories.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
Is it an urban legend that the first radio advertisers studied revivalists to learn how they sold people on something no one really needed?
Platonailedit
Wapiti
@The Dangerman: That would be my take on it as well. Even if it isn’t your job. If you got a free trip playing Wheel. Of. Fortune. that is effectively income.
cope
For any of you other olds who remember Alan Sherman of “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah” fame (or infamy), when he worked in advertising before his show biz stuff, he once tried to sell Ford on an advertising print campaign in which magazine ads would host the title “Ford is not advertising this year” above a picture of one of their new vehicles. I have always considered this a most brilliant idea which, sadly, came to naught.
Wapiti
@Brachiator:
Too late to save Montgomery Wards, and Sears didn’t see an online bookseller as a competitor until they were too late.
I’d offer that Amazon is also a competitor to the big box stores; it’s often easier to find something, they have more selection, and it’s easy to get customer service if you need it.
lamh36
Omnes Omnibus
@lamh36: Ha!
The Dangerman
@Wapiti:
Yes, you’re right; the WOF winnings are income. Makes me go back to my Vegas Comped Room example; it might be income, though then could you count your gambling as expenses? Ugh, head hurts suddenly; another glass, stat, please (helps mightily to live where there’s world class Pinot Noir vineyards).
Omnes Omnibus
@The Dangerman: You can deduct gambling losses on your Schedule A – up to amount of your winnings.
rekoob
All of this reminds me of the saying attributed to John Wanamaker — “half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the problem is I don’t know which half”.
Then there’s Kliban’s cartoon “The Birth of Advertising”:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/wandereye/4566103215
NotMax
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
Personally would assign that to the urban legend category, as revivalists were nothing new under the sun.
Descendant methodology of P. T. Barnum, Sears & Roebuck, etc., etc. And even the success of Mrs. Beeton’s omnipresent tome.
Much stems from the work of Edward Bernays, who published in Crystallizing Public Opinion 1923 and Propaganda 1928.
For radio advertising, a driving force in pioneering days was a gentleman who went by the name Carroll Carroll.
Brachiator
One of my favorite bad marketing stories.
My team worked on a new demo tax software product. The marketing department managers and staff liked to brag about all the industry awards they had won and was responsible for packaging and brochures. They kept everyone out of the loop when it came to designing and writing the user guide and order form. Somehow they had final approval.
They ordered up several thousand copies of the product and just before shipping let the rest of us see the final work. In a quickie meeting they spent a lot of time talking about how they selected the color scheme used for the software packaging and customer brochure.
Hand to God, I read through the brochure and finally said, “Yes. This brochure looks really spectacular. But the company address and phone number don’t appear anywhere. If people want to actually order the product, what are they supposed to do?”
Stuff got delayed. It cost a few dollars to order up new material. The marketing people never learned and went on to an even bigger screw-up.
Peale
If y’all would just buy my stuff I wouldn’t have to convince you to buy it. It’s not my fault-it is yours.
Signed-Peale, B2B Market Research – 24 years and counting.
Platonailedit
Saudis join the 21st century. Partly.
NotMax
@cope
Cute little movie which skewers the advertising world is Advertising Rules! (a/k/a Viktor Vogel – Commercial Man). Trailer (in German)..
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Platonailedit:
Don’t you mean 20th century?
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
Dad’s played with their kids when I was a youngster. When they weren’t working. But a work week in my dad’s line of work was around 60 hrs. Nice on the overtime pay but that’s about it. For a time I didn’t understand that everyone didn’t work 10 hr days, six days a week. We changed at one point to 10 hrs monday-thursday with 8 hrs on friday and saturday. Damn, we lost 4 hrs of OT pay. But we could get to the bank on friday.
Roger Moore
@Wapiti:
That seems backward to me. If I win a free trip to Tahiti on Wheel of Fortune, it’s a prize and counts as income. If I travel to Tahiti on business and my company pays for it, I don’t have to pay taxes on it. If I go to Tahiti on business and pay for it out of my own pocket, I can write off the cost as a business expense*. If these “influencers” are going to Tahiti as part of a business agreement where they’re required to produce a certain amount of content extolling the place every day while they’re there, that sounds more like an expensable business trip (albeit a fun one) than a game show prize.
*Though obviously I’d better keep detailed records to prove my business purpose in case the IRS audits me.
NotMax
@NotMax
Also too (in English), Crazy Men. Trailer.
One proposed ad: “Quaker Oats. Does this cereal taste great? Who knows. But at least the box is cute.”
NotMax
@NotMax
Oopsie. Name of that film is Crazy People, not Crazy Men.
debbie
@Roger Moore:
There’s good marketing and bad marketing. There’s good advertising and bad advertising. This broad-brush stuff never flies.
debbie
@Platonailedit:
I don’t think this is the first time she’s done that.
James Powell
@Brachiator:
I love the Expanse, but it isn’t easy to find.
NotMax
@debbie
For the best value on broad brushes, shop Dick Blick.
:)
(Gotta admit, it’s always been a company name which is impossible to forget.)
Dorothy Winsor
I ignore most ads, but I like it if, say Amazon’s algorithm helps me find a book I want to read. And god knows, I’d like it a whole lot if my publisher figured out how to market my books so someone would love my characters when I throw them out of the nest.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
Agreed.
The selling company owners do make more by having a larger audience to sell to. And sales places like Amazon make it easier to sell more. Now is that better for many than it was 25 yrs ago when in many areas you had to drive long distances to find a store and didn’t know till you did that drive that whatever even existed and how much it cost. Now I like the modern world better than that of the world when I was a teen but it certainly has it’s bad side as well. One of them is info overload, and modern advertising is a big part of that overload. John can make money off of this blog site by advertising, and does. Which isn’t all bad considering that it does cost money to host it. But look at that advertising. How much of it do you need? For me that number is zero. How many sites now block you if you block the ads on their site? A lot that I used to go to. So they lost at least one set of eyes. I’d bet many more. What I also do is check out the owners of companies that I purchase from. If I find out they are assholes, I take my business elsewhere. If others did the same it’s possible that change could be effected.
Jeffro
@Amir Khalid:
I know, right?
I love how the article references an “ever-growing class of ‘influencers’ ” – growing to what, 200 people out of 7 billion? 2000 out of 7 billion? Gimme a break.
It’s a lucky couple of first-movers who then also lucked out by getting additional media attention about their media attention.
It’s probably worse odds than high school ballers dreaming about playing in the NBA They’d be better off getting actual skills and jobs, and doing a little ‘influencing’ on the side, for fun. If it takes off, great. If not, hey at least the rent gets paid.
Bryan Cranston had some sort of sage advice for actors who wanted to follow his “route” to success. Something along the lines of “you’re kidding, right? Do you have any idea how much luck was involved? Just do what you love and if lightning strikes, then hey, great.” I’ll go look it up.
trollhattan
This has already been covered in bidnez 101.
Curses aimed at #55.
So instead, this.
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/1f/49/ce/1f49cef250884e24d6c3ecb714d07dba.jpg
NotMax
@James Powell
It’s on Amazon Prime. (Amazon picked it up after cancellation and is producing the fourth season.) Outside the U.S. and Canada, was (may still be) available on Netflix.
Brach
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
One of the early radio pioneers hit the trifecta. He was a medical quack and demagogue who also harnessed the power religion to early radio advertising and also tried to run for public office.
John R Brinkley.
Fascinating story.
https://web.archive.org/web/20080709010024/http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2008/07/04/07
2liberal
true marketing story from my one-time employer APC: their biggest server room uninterruptible power supply at that time (about 20 years ago) was the Symmetra Power Array. It weighed about 1000 LBS and was 5 feet tall. Marketing wanted to make it look smaller so they took the cover photo for the manual (see link below). The model is a former APC employee in sales. She looks like a perfectly normal office worker and she is, except she stands 6’5″ in her stocking feet. LINK
Brachiator
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
One of the early radio pioneers hit the trifecta. He was a medical quack and demagogue who also harnessed the power religion to early radio advertising and also tried to run for public office.
John R Brinkley.
Fascinating story.
https://web.archive.org/web/20080709010024/http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2008/07/04/07
Jager
@Mnemosyne:
I know a guy (he now builds reproductions of old Porsches-really good ones) who spent many years working for the Disney family as their accountant. He said Walt truly loved his girls and was a great father. The concept for Disney Land came from Walt realizing how much his kids loved going to the Santa Monica Pier. He recoiled at the attitude of the workers, trash laying around and the bad service, he didn’t think kids should be subjected to that. You may recall that for many years no alcohol was served at Disney Land. Walt felt that the fathers should spend the day with their kids not sitting in a bar. I think Walt would shit a brick at what his namesake company has turned into as far as wages, etc.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
It works OK for stuff you purchase often. I use it for stuff I like that is not sold in stores around me. But having been a brick and mortar retail store owner I purchase in person when I can, even if I do line some RWNJ’s wallet. Or at some point we will end up with no stores, only online. And the only jobs will be the production (using the cheapest possible materials), the marketing (I’ll leave you on your own here), and the shipping (until automatic warehouses are the only ones left.)
But do a search for something, using the actual, specific name of the product and you will get lots of other stuff along with the item you want. You have to spend time looking, so that you might see something else you didn’t know you wanted or needed and add that to your shopping. That’s marketing, no matter how you look at it.
Brachiator
@James Powell:
The current season is on the cable channel syfy. The season finale is this Wednesday. The next season, season 4, will be on Amazon Prime.
There may be other ways of ordering or streaming episodes.
Jager
@John Revolta:
Lady Gaga says “really?”
James Powell
@Brachiator:
Syfy streaming only goes back to S3E7. Amazon wants $30 for the season. I guess I will wait & see.
efgoldman
OK, Red Sox are stumbling around like a bunch of eight year olds, and the Fox booth crew sucks. Back to Lawnorder reruns
Immanentize
@Brachiator: @NotMax:
Belter Order!
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
RE: It works OK for stuff you purchase often. I use it for stuff I like that is not sold in stores around me. But having been a brick and mortar retail store owner I purchase in person when I can.
Amazon works for me. I needed some luggage and tried Macy’s, which advertised a nice set. The sales people seemed demoralized or bored and were useless. And what I wanted was out of stock. Went home and ordered online. No muss, no fuss.
I work long hours and Amazon works for me. I just don’t have time to go to a lot of physical stores.
Also, their shopping cart is better than that of other online retailers, especially Sears, which I tried to use.
I don’t have problems finding what I want and sometimes find better versions of what I was looking for.
I have no loyalty to any retailers. Whatever works for you is the bottom line.
Viva BrisVegas
@Brachiator:
We’re actually in the Golden Age of Exploration of the Solar System. At the moment, probably equivalent to Vasco da Gama rounding Cape of Good Hope. That’s if Trump doesn’t decide to divert Nasa’s appropriations towards his “Space Force”.
As for the galaxy, we aren’t ever getting there. All exploration will be at the end of a telescope.
NotMax
@James Powell
Seasons 1 & 2 are free on Prime. I expect season 3 will fall into that same status once season 4 begins and they can begin touting it as an exclusive Amazon production.
NotMax
@Immanentize
I did eventually work through the first and second seasons, but was less and less impressed as it went on.
Brachiator
@James Powell:
I watch the current season on syfy via YouTube TV. The entire season is in my library.
I think I may have ordered season 1 and 2 through Amazon or Google play.
Immanentize
@NotMax: season three is pretty good. It comes on SYFY one episode a week (Wednesdays) on roku
It is getting pretty 2001 Kubrick-ish. I really like many of the characters.
zhena gogolia
Soy, you guys told me about that James Corden-Paul McCartney video, but I had no idea how great it would be. Man!
I mean “Boy”
JPL
I’m on episode 7 of SAFE on Netflix, and it is binge worthy, if you need a Trump escape.
corrected to say episode 7 of season 1. I have hopes that the case resolved
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Ruckus:
You didn’t have direct deposit? That’s the best thing in the world. The money appears right in my account.
Brachiator
@Immanentize:
That’s the key. Some friends praised it as good “hard” sci fi. But I like the story telling and the Belters.
In the latest episode, I loved how viewers were shown how dangerous space and the lack of gravity can be. And how the Belters embraced the danger.
I also have a special affection for Holden and his crewmates. And Amos.
Jerry
Reason #325 that I love Michigan’s upper peninsula: there is no chance at all of running into people like this.
Another Scott
@Roger Moore: McGraw-Hill’s ‘The Man in the Chair’ was a great ad, and explains the need for advertising.
But I agree with you and everyone else that too much these days is Spy vs Spy stuff – do you want the white or the black (when they’re both pretty much the same)?
Cheers,
Scott.
Dorothy Winsor
@zhena gogolia: Isn’t it?! I love the stuff in the pub at the end.
zhena gogolia
@Dorothy Winsor:
Yes, I was crying all through it. It was nice to see how many young people were so into it, including the girl with the Beatles tattoo! I guess they were the best thing that ever happened to Liverpool.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
Seems to me that the “content” they are providing in exchange for accommodation and food and airfare would be income.
From some of the things I hear in interviews and podcasts, I suspect a good deal of tax evasion is going on for some of these people.
Omnes Omnibus
@zhena gogolia: rikyrah got me addicted to Carpool Karaoke. She will answer for this.
schrodingers_cat
I watched two episodes of Ekaant (Solitude) on Netflix.
A hipsterish Indian dude goes to the places that were flourishing before but now are abandoned or in ruins. He talks to historians and locals and tries to understand what happened. Its fascinating. So much to discover and see.
Martnand Temple in Kashmir
Ruins of Hampi in Karnataka
James Powell
If we are talking about binge TV generally, I want to endorse Scott & Bailey if you like brit-cop shows.
Dorothy Winsor
@Omnes Omnibus: The Real FLOTUS was great!
Amir Khalid
@zhena gogolia:
Ahem! There is also Liverpool Football Club.
zhena gogolia
@Amir Khalid:
Oh, right. Of course. — sarcasm font
Steve in the ATL
@JPL: we watched “Safe” recently and loved it. To tie in this into the earlier discussion, the marketing algorithms now suggest a dozen or so British detective series. Since we watched one, surely that’s all we want to watch for the rest of our lives?
Also, I don’t care for Greek yogurt.
Further bulletins as events warrant.
ETA: et tu, @James Powell?
Steve in the ATL
@Amir Khalid: @zhena gogolia: and we are just pretending that Echo and the Bunnymen never happened?
Omnes Omnibus
@Dorothy Winsor: She has a great voice. No shit.
Steve in the ATL
@Omnes Omnibus: when you were younger, did you imagine spending a Saturday evening on a computer discussing imputed income with people you’ve never met? What a world we live in!
Redshift
@Viva BrisVegas:
Out of all the awful things they’re trying to do, that’s the one I’m most certain isn’t going to happen. This spring, they proposed a budget that slashed NASA funding and Congress ignored it. And 45* and Pence never mention that when they’re blathering about how they’re Making NASA Great Again.
TS (the original)
@JPL:
Binge watched it a couple of weeks ago – hoping for another series but from reading online – seems unlikely. Have to look for more from the same writer.
frosty
@Dorothy Winsor: I just watched the Carpool Kareoke with Paul. Loved it. Especially going back to the house he grew up in. The pub “jukebox” was great too.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL: Meh.
mad citizen
@PJ: Great reference PJ, had me looking up the songs. I know it’s a different song, but Can you call it the big foist?
Matt McIrvin
@Mnemosyne: Hmm… Mary Poppins the film was 1964, some years into the Baby Boom. I think we already saw some of that in Fifties sitcoms, didn’t we? Andy and Opie? I think it was a generational thing, part of men coming back from the war(s) and starting families in this huge wave. They were going to savor having children because it was so much the opposite of what they’d been through.
Ken
Dorothy L. Sayers’ take on advertising, from Murder Must Advertise:
WereBear
The sad fact about marketing is that when you advertise, you sell more.
All else is commentary.
It’s like the days before spam filters when we would really get upset with people who are stupid enough to click on spam. But there was no fixing these people who click on the spam. We had to invent spam filters. And so it goes with advertising.
Steve in the ATL
@TS (the original):
“The Five”. If you’ve read his books, many themes will be familiar.
Ken
@Viva BrisVegas:
I have hopes our robot overlords will.
efgoldman
@WereBear:
I don’t think that’s evidence-based
debbie
@TS (the original):
You’ll probably have read all of that author’s work well before Hillary Mantel gets around to publishing her damn third Cromwell book. ?
Mnemosyne
@Matt McIrvin:
Andy and Opie was different though, because Andy was a widower, so there was a lot of talk about how he had to be “both mother and father” to his poor motherless son.
It’s mostly just idle speculation, but I’m wondering when the societal expectation changed. Disney himself was ambulance driver in WW I, so he was a generation older than people like Andy Griffith.
Platonailedit
That’s 0.022%. Did they inform their twitler thug?
B.B.A.
@Brachiator: Bill Hicks’ advice to marketers is something I will take to heart for the rest of my years. He died for our sins.
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
Not a Netflix subscriber (yet), but this sounds like fun.
Platonailedit
B.B.A.
@Platonailedit: So about 15 edgy kids who think it’s “cool” to be a gangsta even though the worst they’ve ever done is jaywalking, and about 41 who photobombed/were photobombed by gang members in pictures posted to Facebook. Seems a bit low to me.
JPL
@James Powell: I don’t have hulu and it seems that netflix doesn’t have it.
Matt McIrvin
@Viva BrisVegas:
Maybe in the waning days of the Golden Age. There’s not as much in the pipeline as there was, at least for the US. (One beef I had with the Obama administration is that they were really not that interested in uncrewed solar-system exploration; Obama’s White House budgets kept zeroing it out.)
I think NASA is too focused on Mars, because of the chimeric possibility of sending astronauts there in some increasingly distant and implausible futurity, and is in danger of abandoning what used to be an incredible outer-planets program. Granted, Europa Clipper is still on, but that’s about it for US missions to the outer solar system once current missions are over.
KSinMA
@rikyrah: Good lord. There’s a special kind of asshole who has to pick on children. And of course an extra special kind of white asshole who has to pick on children of color. Hiding behind that retaining wall was an especially awful touch.
NotMax
@Mnemosyne
In the midst of the grey flannel fifties, Executive Suite showed William Holden’s character practicing playing ball with his son in the back yard and, IIRC, attending his Little League game.
Scamp Dog
@Redshift: yep, that’s pretty much what I expected. The Republicans talk about how NASA needs more money when there’s a Democrat in the White House, but that’s only a cudgel to beat the Democrats with. When they’re in, they actually cut funding.
JPL
@Steve in the ATL: Just finished and although it resolved the mystery, I’d wouldn’t mind one more episode on how the family heals. It was engrossing, but not as gritty as Happy Valley which I appreciated.
Abbington is excellent, and I guess because of her appearance I remembered her character in Selfridge before Sherlock.
Chet Murthy
James Tiptree JrAlice Sheldon! Damn! I found her work in the last few years, and she’s …. brilliant! “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?” !!! Cannot extol suffiiciently. I remember the short story AL is referencing, but have forgotten it; I’ll have to go back and reread. Sheldon’s GREAT!Matt McIrvin
@Mnemosyne: Mary Poppins is interesting in that Travers’ books had an indeterminate contemporary setting, which is to say 1930s (at first), but Disney turned it into a period piece set in 1910… when he was a kid, only in London instead of small-town Missouri. The same era depicted in Main Street, USA. So, yeah, he was probably working through his own daddy issues, but now we’re getting into the territory of that Tom Hanks movie I never saw.
Peale
@Platonailedit: let’s put this into perspective. 130,000,000 good and lawful gun owners in the US. 33,500 deaths resulting from the guns of those good gun owners. 64 out of every 250,000 gun owners has a weapon that will result in someone’s death this year. Now let’s include injuries…
Origuy
@schrodingers_cat: Thank you! I’ve been looking for shows about history other than Europe’s and the USA’s. The UK channels do a good job on what they do, but they are obsessed with the Tudors. I watched the first few minutes of Ekaant; the photography looks very good. I have to read the subtitles of course, but that keeps me from dozing off.
JPL
@Peale: What happened to the other 249,944?
smedley the uncertain
@different-church-lady: AMEN and Hallelujah ! A Parasite without reason…
KSinMA
@James Powell: Co-sign on Scott & Bailey. Amelia Bullmore is great in it as the chief. She gets writing credits on a lot of the episodes too.
Calouste
@Platonailedit: I’m pretty sure that more than 0.022% of the current administration has connections to neo-Nazis. I’m even sure that more than 56 people in the current administration have connections to neo-Nazis
Platonailedit
@Peale: Kids vs gun nuts? Nice false equivalence.
Platonailedit
@Calouste: Make that 100%.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Matt McIrvin:
As Stephen Baxter shows in his novel Voyage, we could have gotten to Mars with modified Apollo-era technology, if we had wanted to, in the 1980s. The Apollo program was cut short and rolled into an expanded Spacelab program as an intermediate step to Mars, to practice for long-term space travel. The Apollo CSM became the American version of the Soviet Soyuz, and was used in 80s Mars mission
Too bad we had to waste billions of dollars on the White Space Elephant that couldn’t even leave LEO. I blame the obsession with efficiency and cost-effectiveness.
Platonailedit
NK was so many scandals and disasters ago.
Matt McIrvin
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: I am skeptical of all such Amazing Space Alternate Timeline stories. There’s a general rule in space fandom that the most amazing, magical results always come from the things that weren’t actually tried.
Once I wrote one of my own, from the perspective of a timeline where the US built a desultory moonbase with Apollo Applications Program tech, it operated for a few years of not much and was abandoned after a tragic Saturn V explosion in the 1980s. The narrator is lamenting Jimmy Carter’s cancellation of the Space Shuttle, which, if built, would have been so much better than this tin-can crap–you know the thing would have paid for itself within a few years?
NASA had plans drawn up for manned Venus and Mars flybys with Apollo-derived tech. They probably would have been suicide missions if actually attempted. If I recall correctly, the timeframe for the Venus one in reality included a huge solar flare that the radiation shielding on the spacecraft would have been totally inadequate for.
Peale
@Platonailedit: well I’m not certain HOW I’m supposed to interpret the stat….only 56. Or OMG! 56! AND THAT’S JUST THE ONES WE KNOW ABOUT. LOCK YOUR DOORS. iTS A PUPUSA TRUCK!
TS (the original)
@Steve in the ATL:
I haven’t – many thanks – I need to get away from the real world quite a lot lately
Bill Arnold
@Chet Murthy:
Re Alice Sheldon, I know of two males (myself, around 14YO at the time) and an older scientist, who spotted her gender early. Myself, because of a misunderstanding in a story of human male sexuality and some additional stylistic things, and the scientist (who has a fine and literate and nuanced mind), purely stylistic; she created a mood that he had never seen a male successfully create.
Anyway, devoured all her works at the time (70s) because they were so good at badgering readers to step very outside normal thought patterns. (Which I find kinda … boring.)
TS (the original)
@Brachiator:
When you first subscribe to netflix you will find one or two months worth of binge watching – then you spend ages looking for something to watch (with the added horror of Netflix latest advertising – auto play trailers) – so online recommendations are good
TS (the original)
@JPL: Have you watched “Last Tango in Halifax” – 3 series – Sarah Lancaster in a very different role
Mike in NC
@TS (the original): We just watched the Netflix spoof of cop shows called “Handsome” which was pretty amusing. Similar to “Angie Tribeca”. But desperately waiting for “Last Tango” and others.
Bill Arnold
@Omnes Omnibus:
Look for https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump – that’s his real stuff. (Which I haven’t checked yet today.)
Chet Murthy
@Bill Arnold: Bill, I commend you for how you approached reading. Me, I read sci-fi for escape and wish-fulfillment. So I only got around to reading Sheldon/Tiptree, Joanna Russ, and a few other female writers, in the last few years. B/c back in the day, I was reading Poul Anderson’s Dominic Flandry and …. well, you remember what 14yo boys are like.
rikyrah
@Omnes Omnibus:
There are so many good moments. A celebrity for everybody ?
Mike J
BTW, whoever recommended Endgame on Amazon, thanks. I’m very dubious about “chess master excels at X”, in this case X=crime solving. If you’re good at chess, that means you have a good chance at winning a chess game and almost nothing else. Liked seeing that the crime solving had nothing to do with chess. Only a few eps out of one season in, but enjoying it so far.
Why are there no crime programs where a guy is really good at rebuilding transmissions, and that’s the hook they use to prove he can solve a crime? Rebuilding a transmission is fuck-tons harder than winning a chess game.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Matt McIrvin:
One of the best things about the book is that it didn’t portray everything going so smoothly. There is a disaster that kills several astronauts in 1980 that is strikingly similar to Challenger when the experimental nuclear engine blows up on the “Apollo-N”. The unmanned missions that NASA is famous for never happen in the mad rush to Mars, and so consequently the outer Solar System remains largely unexplored. The stress also gets to at least one character in charge of the company manufacturing the Mars lander, causing him to suffer a heart attack, and one NASA big wig looks around one day in the 1970s and realizes that the country has changed dramatically from the 1960s; that the nation had become far more cynical and the space program was out of touch with most normal people. Baxter also didn’t hesitate to show us the idiotic “fighter-jock” culture in the Manned space program at NASA at the time (60s-80s) through the eyes of the first female astronaut of that universe.
rikyrah
From Forever FLOTUS ? ?
” We could not make mistakes”
https://twitter.com/betsy_klein/status/1010322175256035334
GregB
The Strange Name Movie on Netflix is a short entertaining watch.
The Dangerman
@WereBear:
Well, yes and no.
Advertising is just one of the 4 P’s of marketing (Promotion); think of the 4 P’s as a recipe. If 1 of the other 4 P’s is way off (say, a Product like Liquid Pig Shit, in honor of our Blog Master), you can advertise the hell out of it and it ain’t gonna happen.
Bill Arnold
This does not make me proud to be an American, though similar things are probably worldwide:
POLICE BRUTALITY BONDS – How Wall Street Profits from Police Violence – ALYXANDRA GOODWIN, WHITNEY SHEPARD, CARRIE SLOAN (June, 2018)
(via)
efgoldman
@The Dangerman:
See: New Coke
Peale
@The Dangerman: I believe Packaging and Placement are the key Ps to marketing liquid pig shit.
MomSense
All of the curated IG accounts are so annoying. I’m sick of staged photos. No a ball of yarn does not belong on a cutting board with a knife, an artisanal loaf of bread angled just so, jam and butter carefully swirled in vintage china, and a cup of tea with loose tea sprinkled artistically on the cutting board. It’s like the worst still life set ups all the time.
I want to stop following everyone except my family and the normal dog accounts.
And maybe someday we can have a conversation about how we already need five more planets Earth to sustain current consumption. We should probably figure out what will propel our economy when we can’t just make and sell more and more crap.
The Dangerman
@efgoldman:
New Coke is an interesting case study. It was either one of the most numbnutsfuckingest (sp?) things ever done (I think it would be #2, right after Trump being elected President)
…or they went for the argument that as long as you’re being discussed, even negatively, it’s a win, and you get to save the day by bringing back Coke Classic.
It was almost surely the first but I wouldn’t totally eliminate the second. Call it 90/10.
Peale
Hmm. Liquid pig shit. How to get it flying off the shelves. What’s the competition. Solid Pig Shit. Liquid Cow Shit. Solid Cow Shit. Other Shit.
Product strength vs 1: liquid shit does not need to be touched. Broken into bits. Just poured. Would putting it in aerosol cans be a premium? Maybe can convince consumer that aerosol versions are safe. Filtered of impurities. If not, talk to Engineering about dropping in some kind of inert but blue flakes to demonstrate purity…the only pig shit so pure…maybe have an ad where we spray it on plates at a kids birthday party and kids don’t wretch as much as expected.
I think we can work with this…
? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?
@MomSense:
That’s what exploiting other planets/asteroids is for!
More seriously, I hope we’ll be able to master matter manipulation in the future, like in Star Trek with the replicators. If we can simply make anything, then scarcity will disappear and we won’t have to worry so much about running out of resources.
Mike in NC
@efgoldman: My Navy Reserve unit in Baltimore had a worthless officer who in regular life worked on the project called Pepsi Clear around 1990. Didn’t last very long. His career was MIA.
Viva BrisVegas
@The Dangerman:
If you can sell bottled water, you can sell anything.
Viva BrisVegas
@? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?:
It doesn’t matter how much resource you have, the rich will always declare that some “natural law” requires them to have most of it.
M4
@MomSense:
I saw on twitter that maybe the reason we’ve never met aliens is because every sufficiently advanced civilization invents cryptocurrency and destroys their homeworld’s environment by the insane energy consumption of ‘mining’ it.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@M4:
I prefer to think we’re one of the first technologically advanced civilizations to emerge in the universe. A tad arrogant and egotistical? Perhaps. But it’s the most optimistic. Speaking of Stephen Baxter, I’ve been meaning to get my hands on his novel Manifold: Time. The plot basically addresses the Fermi paradox in a creative way: an alien race long ago created a weapon that would seek out advanced technology and wipe out its creators. The weapon has been on the loose ever since and is on it’s way to Earth…
All they have to do is harness the energy output of their system’s star. That would solve that issue :p
M4
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: the idea is that cryptocurrency precedes Dyson sphere technology. Obviously. GOD GOKU DUH /
The Dangerman
@Viva BrisVegas:
Well, again, it depends. Arrowhead basically comes out of a huge pipe next to the old Arrowhead Springs Hotel (please, someone with a huge bankroll, buy that place and use it for something) and they do very little to it other than put it in a bottle…
…while a few miles downriver, Penta does their thing with ultrapurity. Same water from the Santa Ana River (ok, technically, the Hotel isn’t on the Santa Ana river, but roll with me here), but one might have a lot of added value and one … markets the hell out of their water.
TS (the original)
@Mike in NC: Haven’t watched it – thanks for the info- Netflix in Oz somewhat different to the US – Last Tango on here.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@M4:
Wouldn’t be the first time a joke has gone over my head
B.B.A.
@The Dangerman: The snark is meant more towards brands like Dasani and Aquafina, which are both just ordinary municipal tap water from wherever your local Coke or Pepsi (respectively) bottler is located.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@B.B.A.:
In Aquafina’s defense, they do put the tap water through a stringent, AFAIK, purification process.
M4
@B.B.A.: @? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: that “raw, unpasteurized” trendy water from somewhat recently, which was like $100 a gallon, turned out to be municipal tap water from somewhere in Oregon.
Mnemosyne
@Matt McIrvin:
Saving Mr. Banks is a very good movie and (IMO) doesn’t whitewash Walt Disney too much. It’s basically a movie about a guy who’s always gotten his way using his charm who goes up against a woman who’s impervious to charm.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Mnemosyne:
The thing about the Andy Griffith Show, is that while Andy was a warm, caring father to Opie, he still couldn’t be assed to do the more domestic stuff. It was the stuff of laughs (for the standards of the time) that he couldn’t cook to save his life. How fucking hard is it to make a “TV” dinner?
The women, with the exception of a rare few, were portrayed as oversentimental morons. Aunt Bee was the worst offender. Keep in mind, this is someone who likes the Andy Griffith Show, even in the color seasons. Although the episode where Goober’s girlfriend gets his job after he’s let go is the absolute worst.
NotMax
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
At the time, TV dinners , even though ostensibly marketed as a convenience item, were in my experience considered more of a special treat. And not be something to be eaten at the dining table, but on TV tables set up in the living room while gathered ’round to watch something special on the tube.
Also too, chances are the general store in Mayberry didn’t yet carry them. if the place had a frozen foods selection at all.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@NotMax:
The funny thing about that, is that I read that Mayberry was based on Griffith’s hometown of Mount Airy when he was young. So Mayberry was a small town that was still stuck in the 1930s, because even most very small towns in the 1960s weren’t that slow or sleepy.
NotMax
As was popularly said on the radio, “Vas you dere, Charlie?”
You’d be surprised. Well outside of the cities, I can well recall having to make a trip to the soda fountain at the drug store if one wanted to take home ice cream; it wasn’t available anyplace else locally. Mayberry wasn’t even much of a town; it was more a hamlet.
Also too, other than in the expensive top end models, the usable space of freezer compartments of refrigerators was still relatively tiny.
Heck, one of my grandfathers still owned a grocery store in Queens at that time and it carried no frozen items.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@NotMax:
That’s interesting. It never occurred to me that some grocery stores in smaller markets would not have had frozen food sections as late as the 1960s. Goes to show how much the world has changed since then. As you point out, the usable space of freezers at the time in refrigerators played a part in that.
NotMax
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Be thankful you missed out on those ragga-fragga metal ice cube trays. The ones with the lever on them which one hand to manhandle to try to get ice.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@NotMax:
Those look annoying. You’re right, I am thankful
Ruckus
@NotMax:
You had to bring those up didn’t you?
Were those horrible or what? We had, if I remember correctly 2 of them and that’s all the earliest “freezer” compartment would hold. You wanted ice in your cocktail, good luck. No I was not old enough to drink alcohol at that time. Still managed once at 3 to get blotto at a parents cocktail party, by drinking out of the glasses that people set down. Mom said she was amazed that I didn’t get one with a cig put out in it. Maybe I checked, I don’t remember and anyway I was smashed. She also didn’t know how long I’d been drinking before I was caught.
The Other Chuck
Dear “Influencer”: If we want you to stay here for free, we’ll invite you. Sincerely, every Hotel manager.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Brachiator: I’m watching it, and it is indeed fantastic.
I had some friends get married at a hotel called The Parker in Palm Springs last November and that was my first exposure to influencers or influencer wannabes. I’ve never seen so many hope to be starlets taking so many selfies. It seemed so completely vapid and self absorbed. I suspect the majority of them were not actually working for the hotel, they just showed up in a place with some cache to take selfies in hopes of building themselves into influencers. Probably most of them never get to actual influenced status though.
Fair Economist
@Wapiti: Sears actually tried to do online sales, but they did it too early (around 1990 irc). It flopped, and that made them too skeptical later when the technology and reach were large enough that it could work.
Fair Economist
@B.B.A.: Dasani and Aquafina are NOT just tap water! They add lots of plastic compounds by putting them in bottles! Those lousy municipal tap waters don’t let you self-experiment with dozens of poorly studied industrial chemical byproducts. Surely that is worth paying 100 times as much for water?
Ruviana
@NotMax: @Ruckus: God, I loved those! The sound of cracking ice cube trays was the quintessential sound of summer in my youth.
Uncle Cosmo
@Ruviana: I remember ours having copper bottoms. Better heat conductivity, quicker freezing, I guess. Then again my folks were suckers for copper-bottom things ever since they splurged for a Revereware set. I remember Mom with a sponge pad lovingly swirling Twinkle copper cleaner over the bottoms after every use…
One thing about the daze of my misspent yoot I do not miss is hand defrosting a freezer compartment. Although there was a certain charm to carefully sliding a table knife between the ice & the wall after the pan of hot water had done its work & having an iceberg the size of the Ritz calve into one’s bare hands (which froze as one transported it to the sink)…
Ruviana
@Uncle Cosmo: Are you….me?
Uncle Cosmo
@Ruviana: Last time I looked, no…but I haven’t looked recently.
Wow, this altered format looks like the Administration’s favorite after-hours hangout: the FU BAR. No navigation back or forth…(ETA: Aaaand we’ve been returned to our regularly-shedjeweled pogrom…)
Modestly o/t, but I see one of the streaming services (Netflix?) has filmed a season of Richard K. Morgan debut SF-noir novel Altered Carbon. Anyone seen it? Worth digging up to watch?
NotMax
@Uncle Cosmo
Didn’t watch it because the initial reviews were so abysmal, and the severe episode by episode drop-off in number of viewers over the first week seemed to point that way as well. That no announcement of a second season has yet been made may be a result of that last part.
Have encountered some people who liked it a lot as well as others who metaphorically threw their hands in the air and gave up on it without qualm after (or during) the first episode.
@Ruviana
If one didn’t pay attention, too, the sharp edges of those metal fins were quite capable of slicing into a finger.
NotMax
@Uncle Cosmo
Ah, the unmistakable stench of Twinkle cleanser. Mom still lovingly using the Revereware set she received as a (first) wedding present some 70 years ago. Come to think of it, the only piece I don’t recall ever seeing put to use is the frying pan.
Jake the antisoshul soshulist
@Brachiator:
Possibly, I should have given it more of a chance. 1st, it was not what I had expected.
2nd, I spent the first two episodes trying to figure out who was the lesser evil. Gave up after that.