Still want that blue suit?

Yeah, button up that collar. Suck in that gut. Tuck in them big black lips. Lighten your skin. Shrink up that nose. Let me tell you something, boy. You can march like the white man. You can talk like 'em. You can learn his songs. You can even wear his suits. But you ain't never gonna be nothin' to him but an ugly-ass chimp in a blue suit. So the white man give you a couple of stripes next thing you know, you hollerin' and orderin' everybody around like you the massa himself. Nigger, you ain't nothing but the white man's dog.

from Glory (1989)

With the downturn in the economy, and the scarcity of employment, I have been minding my p’s and q’s at the job. Gone are the days of trawling the net or flapping my grape for hours on end. I no longer have a lackadaisical attitude towards my work and I take very seriously the completion of any tasks that are assigned to me. I am no longer satisfied with the all too common result of having my work product blocked or corrupted by the myriad of on-payroll masons who immediately build a wall whenever some goal of mine is close to being accomplished. I try as hard as I can to eliminate as much as possible any third party involvement in my cubicle dwelling day. In fact, my only real rest time during the day is when I’m deucing.

Unfortunately, what my new spirit of production leads to is long hours at the office as well as bleary-eyed early morning and late-night subway rides. After spending a full day staring at computer screens, standing over copiers and organizing and reorganizing paper files, I some times do not have the energy to open whatever book I am reading at the time. There have been many a sojourn as of late when I just sit and stare into space, catching glimpses of the other tired commuters or the ever more frequently sighted lunatic shouting obscenities or singing to themselves very loudly filling the train with jaw droppingly offensive rap lyrics or just looking generally menacing. It is in these grey moments of consciousness, those times when I am no where near asleep but am not quite awake, that I feel as if I’m in a time warp. The sleaziness of the whole experience brings me back to my youth and a pre-Disnified City. A time when the bowels of the MTA felt like three AM all day.

The other day on the one train I actually saw someone wearing a three-fingered ring!

Along with the hooligans, junkies and freaks to stare at as you barrel through the underground one of the other sights caught in my mescaline-like vision during these rides are the abundant advertising that papers the inside of the cars. The posters are probably one foot high by three feet long, connected in a row. The row of pictures is then hung along a curvature between the wall and the ceiling which runs along the length of the car. Next to every door is a three by three square displaying another poster. Usually one entity purchases one side of the car, creating a block of pictures relating to one thing. The more clever companies/agencies create a running theme from 3 feet ad to 3 feet ad that tells a little story which is tied together by the big square by the door. The theory being that the straphanger, who is naturally looking up in this situation, can read the cute little things up top and then finally figure out what it is all about at the end and say to himself “Oh, how entertaining” and maybe, just maybe, remember the product in the future.

For example:

The first 3x1 can say in simple block text in front of a solid blue background, “Wouldn’t you rather be…” Then the next panel, in the same form, says, “If only your commute was this good…” and finally on a third tile, “Tired of reading a paper over someone’s shoulder?” As your eyes follow these three phrases from left to right they are funneled towards a 3x3 picture by the door of a bikini clad woman with a rack out to here and an ass out to there saying “Come to Bermuda” in bold type right below her crotch.

The same advertising formula can also be used for Michelob.

I assume that most urban centers have similar trains. Be it Paris, Tokyo, Moscow or St. Louis, when one rides a Metro, I imagine that one is subjected to commercials.

Which leads me to the point of this post. A few weeks ago, during one of my aforementioned zone-outs, I came across this particular piece of advertising. At first it gnawed at my sense of taste but nothing major and forgotten within seconds. But after being subjected to it five or six times since I feel it is worthy of at least a comment. And then after I sat down to write this I realized there was even much more than I thought. And after even further thought I actually think that this ad campaign could be the answer to all of my problems!

So here is the picture,

I want you to look at it for a few seconds, and just let the mind flow. Upon seeing this image, what are your thoughts? I have come up with four reasonable responses with the parenthetic mathematical equation to my soul.

1) That show looks pretty stupid and lame. (1 to 25 percent connection)

2) That show looks pretty stupid and lame. I wonder who would possibly watch a show like that? (26 to 50 percent connection)

3) That show looks pretty stupid and lame. I wonder who would possibly watch a show like that? I mean, the “reality genre” started many years ago with an original idea: Several “strangers” occupy the same house with their every move recorded by cameras so that the conflicts, actions and relationships of the participants create “real” drama which evolved to "contest" type shows which turned into "celebrity" participation which became plain narcissistic voyeurism which turned into shameless semi-scripted "docu-dramas" featuring empty headed ne'er-do-wells and, finally, stretched to the breaking point beyond contemplation. I can not see them making any more of these pieces of tripe. (51 to 99 percent connection)

4) Look at that fucking guy!

(100 percent connection)

And, of course, if you are actually interested in watching it, we probably have nothing in common.

So, is there anyone out there who sees it the way I do?

And what are you? So full of hate you wanna fight everybody 'cause you've been whipped and chased by hounds. That might not be livin' but it sure ain't dyin'. And dying's what these white boys been doin' for goin' on three years now. Dyin' by the thousands. Dyin' for you, fool! I know, 'cause l dug the graves. And all the time I'm diggin', I'm asking myself, "When? When, O Lord, is it gonna be our time?" Time's comin' when we're gonna have to ante up. Ante up and kick in like men. LIKE MEN! You watch who you call a nigger. If there's any niggers around here, it's you. Smart-mouth, stupid-ass, swamp-running nigger. If you ain't careful, that's all you ever gonna be.

from Glory (1989)

Larry B