Leaving On a Jet Plane...

Tomorrow morning I board a flight for France. I don't return until September 1.

I'll try to come back with wisdom from the ancients. Try not to miss me.

Nothing is sacred anymore.

No, not even our infidelities. Here's plum proof that the most fragile details of our lives are fair game on the 'net, sometimes even faithfully documented with meticulous rage for the sadistic pleasure of the rest of us.

The chronicles of a wife whose husband cheated on her (with her best friend!) are located here. It's the stuff of Lifetime television and contemporary soaps. Best of all, it's rife with rage and domestic vengeance.

I mean, you've got the whole nine yards: cancelling his credit cards, blackballing him from the joint accounts, accessing his e-mail and letting all his contacts know he has gonorrhea, destroying his childhood stuffed playmate, spraypainting his car:

Don't forget to check out the handy-dandy Youtube videos of her creepin' hubby and best friend, and of her throwing stuff around like an enraged tornado.

Dee-fucking-lish, yo. To tear a page out of E's last entry, "next time you’re tempted to cheat, think once, twice or however many times it takes – and if you need to, think of that girl Emily."

Marvelously well done. I only wish she sullied her graceful conclusion (just slightly!) by divulging how he reacted to the deluge. But that's like wishing for a sequel to Gone with the Wind. (And in my mind, there isn't one.)

One of Those Humiliating Cool-Hunter Moments.

So this morning my employer's son GT walks up to me and goes, "Angela. Is there an urban slang term for talking on your cell phone?"

I consider. "Not that I know of," I reply. "But if one exists, I can find it."

"No." He swirls his hands around. "I want one that's ... common. Used."

"Then no, there isn't one that comes to mind."

GT looks at me a moment longer, then resolves, "I'm going to ask someone younger." And walks off.

"Thanks!" I shout, and he laughs.

Moments later he returns, smug: "Do you know what urban slang is for your cell phone?"

"What?"

"People say celly." He repeats it for good measure: "Celly."

I can't help but be nasty: "Oh, that's been around forever, plus it's bopper," I snarl. "You don't really ever say that unless you're, like, eleven."

Perhaps encouraged by my surprising exhibition of rage, GT again experiences a moment of resolution: "I'm going to use it." And walks away. I can hear him typing with quiet glee as we speak.

Snickers: Saving Hip-Hop, One Sell-Out at a Time

A friend directed me to InstantDef.com, an interactive ad campaign run by Snickers and featuring a liaison with Black Eyed Peas. The page exhibits gritty graphics and BEP all decked out in what I imagine is gear for the future. They also have a spotted dog that occasionally talks.

The website contains five episodes in a drama for which BEP are the protagonists. Granted, I only watched "The Knockout," but one was all I really needed to see. While the graphics are interesting enough, I wasted critical seconds watching background buildings appear in a most snazzy and futuristic manner. When the episode finally loads, we cut to a BEP marginalized by society (kind of the way they are now with the underground hip-hop scene), passing flyers out to a line of fans and demanding that they stay real, save hip-hop, and not buy into the evil lyricist villain Boo-T (the one who's "all about the almighty dollar," according to their spotted dog).

At some point a blinged-out midget appears, canes the crap out of BEP's boombox (something I imagine doing every time I hear "My Humps," for example) and destroys a choked-up will.i.am. in a freestyle battle with rhymes like "I got it made, and I'm getting paid, while you're still stuck in the '80's with your hi-top fade."

The idea is that by the end of the series Black Eyed Peas, who happen to have super powers donned upon them by an accident at the Snickers plant, improve their wack lyricist skills thereby saving hip-hop from those who would seek to, er, sell out.

I hope this is satire. Let's forget for a minute how silly it is to paint Black Eyed Peas as saviours from sell-outs. Will anybody really be won by the exhausted "save hip-hop" rallying cry? That was so late '90's.

Snickers, if this is the best you can do, you aren't making your situation any sunnier.

Makes You Feel A Little Patriotic...

A Japanese Gatorade ad:

Interesting integration of traditional and contemporary sports activities: all-stars from all callings, doing amazing things. Well, ricocheting a baseball around to some techno, anyway.

In any event, it made my chest swell with proprietary pride for the colourful sports history of Japan and the great people involved, despite the fact that the Japanese invaded my parents' country and acted like total pricks. That's the magic of advertising.