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1:04 pm - Wednesday, Mar. 06, 2002
where have all the jingles gone?
WHERE HAVE ALL THE JINGLES GONE?

I have to leave for work fairly soon, but this is the only time I have left to do this, so there you are...

I don't know why, but I think a LOT about "jingles". For whatever reason, it bothers me that writing "jingles" seems to be largely a dead art. I really admire the skill of someone who can write a little tune so catchy, or lyrics so fun to sing, that I remember the song twenty years after first hearing it.

Nowadays (Do I sound like an old fart yet?), all advertisers seem to want to do is buy the rights to some song we ALREADY know and like, in order to leech off those good feelings we have. It BUGS me.

Another musical thing in commercials that bugs me is when they STEAL a song, just changing it enough so that you RECOGNIZE it, but they can't be hit with a plagiarism suit (I've seen a commericial recently with music that made me INSTANTLY think of The Who's "Tommy", but probably different enough from the original that they can get away with it...the scum!).

And as long as we're working on a THEME here--and I'm trying to move fast as I can here--there's another commercial thing that bothers me; Fast food commercials where the spokesperson goes in and harasses the people at the "inferior" fast food place (Some recent subway commercials, for example, or the most recent KFC commercial with Jason Alexander). If you want to have your spokesperson attacking the competition, why don't you represent management, and not the poor slob behind the grill? (As if the poor fry cook has any SAY in how things are done...)

(And does this strike anyone ELSE as odd--In the KFC commercial I'm thinking about, Alexander gives the guy behind the burger grill a hard time for putting condiments on the burgers, accusing him of hiding the fact that "those soggy burgers" have no flavor of their own". Then he promptly sells the virtues of "double-breaded" KFC, as if "double breading" ISN'T hiding the lack of "flavor" of the chicken hiding SOMEWHERE underneath. But anyway...)

I've been thinking about Jason Alexander lately. First, the failure of "Bob Patterson"--I saw one episode, and it was ANTI-funny. After I watched it, the world seemed a more grim and joyless place--and now these KFC commercials that actively ANNOY me.

I don't have any kind of grand POINT to make here, it just occurs to me, watching this talented actor flail in these projects, how very, very important WRITING is to the actor; Some very special actors can "rise above the material", but most, sadly, cannot.

Anyway...

This "very special actor" has to go now, and act like a "very special bookstore clerk". See ya...

 

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