Rhymes With Flubnoxious

WEEEE!!! (*beep* *beep*) WATCH OUT EVERYONE!! I’M GONNA RUN YOU OVER WITH MY ANNOYING-SCOOTER!!!

Cow-nspiracy Theory

Of course I went through a vegan period in my life. Didn’t we all? Mine was junior year of college. It lasted from the moment I couldn’t find an unleavened bagel (yeast is ALIVE, people!) for breakfast and went hungry all morning, till the moment I realized lettuce needs bleu cheese dressing on top to taste good at lunch. So…roughly 4 hours of not eating at all. But I do love “vegetarian” food, despite being a meat eater – tofu, tempeh, soy-everything. I am a fan. Plus, vanilla soymilk tastes really good in coffee and cereal so beat THAT, dairy farmers! The Silk ads that feature “Cows for Silk” – cows, cow families, cow roomates, all minding their day-to-day beeswax while dressed in American Eagle clothing and having the ability to talk – are totally weird. Cow heads on human bodies will never sit well with me unless they are an astrological sign I’m not aware of. So thank God the Real California Cheese people have kept it real, like their name implies, and used talking cows on all fours in their commercials. At first I thought these commercials were for the same product- I mean, if the talking Silk cows wear clothes, who is to say they can’t decide to play football in a pasture, too? But they are so not the same – couldn’t be more different! I don’t know which one came first or what the deal is, but something tells me that the “Cows for Silk” campaign vs. the California “Happy Cow” campaign will end in udder tragedy. Oh! Yes! I went there. I just wonder if they are upset that basically they are running the same ads while selling different products. But they might resolve things peacefully too because as you know, to err is human, to forgive is bovine.

True Romance

Living in a city as big as NY with millions of people, you begin to realize just how isolated you are.  We’re all floating on an island in the dark bumping into each other looking for a connection to validate our lives, make us feel special, loved… something.

This has been especially true for me lately as I just changed my status from “taken” to “single.”  No matter how much I try to tell myself I don’t need someone, that I’m a strong independent woman, that nagging emptiness is there.

Well, I’m here to tell you that I’ve finally found someone!  I hate to rush into things, but I really think he might be the one!  From the moment I met him I can’t stop thinking about him, and every time he’s around I just melt!  He’s adorable, articulate, kind of famous… oh and the best part; he’s got a British Accent!  SWOOON.

Who is this mystery man?

“Oh, Hello” yourself, talking Gecko.

I know, I know.  It’s crazy.  But I simply can’t help but imagine him as a full-sized creature ready to sweep me off my lonely feet!

Winter’s coming up and I’ve already planned a trip for us to Colorado to see my family.  We’d, of course, have to spend a day skiing and building an adorable snowman!

And I’ve always wanted to go somewhere in Europe.  Italy!  We’d totes go to Italy.  It’s SOOO romantic.

My friend Sherry is getting married in Hawaii, so of course we’d have to attend the wedding and sneak into all the photos.

But we wouldn’t only travel.  We’d do normal stuff, too.  Like watch a baby play golf.  Adorable!

What a great boyfriend!

I can’t wait to get married and have adorable little Gecko-human babies!

And of course we’d have our little one pose in Anne Geddes photo shoots!

Thanks for all your support on my decision to date a Gecko, everyone.  I’m really the happiest girl alive!

Love,

Glennis

Rider’s Bloc

The music in the Saturn commercial (the one that features the Project Runway approved Sky Roadster, hopefully to be won by Michael Knight, not that I’m editorializing in this parenthetical digression or anything) is the instrumental beginning to “So Here We Are” by Bloc Party. Silent Alarm is such a good album, by the way. Lucky for you all, that’s all I have today in the two-year-old album recommendations category.

Chafe Happens

I had this weirdly self-righteous English teacher in high school, “Mr. H” (in case he Googles himself I really don’t want to give him the smug satisfaction of knowing he made lifelong, albeit bad, impressions on his students), who gave the class vocabulary words to learn every day. He also wore a belt buckle with his intials on it. Shudder. So, instead of giving us real words that might actually be impressive, like obstreperous or lascivious, which I learned in 10th grade English, we learned word origins like “MG stands for Morris Garages” and “Cole Slaw means cold salad” and “Volkswagon means wagon or CAR for the folks, or PEOPLE; the people’s car”. Then we would be quizzed and this vocabulary would count for 50% of our total grade. This was also the kind of class where you could make a papier mache Holden Caulfield and call it a book report. Finally! An English class where I could put my puffy-painting skills to good use! So of course I ended the year with the only A+ I’ve ever gotten, mostly by memorizing crap that I am pretty sure was in one of those bathroom reading books.     Which brings me to how much I hate the new Volkswagon ads for “Safe Happens”. They are jarring and I can’t deal. It’s like the surprise appearance of the Energizer bunny back in the day. Clever, that’s great. But not ever like “WHAT THE HELL?”, which is how these spots make me feel.  Picture it. Sicily. Two guys talking about how one guy like, says “like” too much and like, that’s annoying and then like POWBANGAIRBAG! A pickup truck almost made you die! Now picture two couples who are talking about crying at the movies and then SCREECHCRASHSIDEIMPACTCRUMPLEZONE! Thank God we were in a Jetta, we could have met our doom! What bothers me most – the cherry on top of this irritation sundae - is the button at the end of each of these ads where one of the passengers says “HOly SH–” and the commercial cuts at that moment. Realism? Maybe. The entire commercial is going for realism – accidents can happen at any moment, especially when you have annoying friends in the car. And realistically, people do swear under duress. But it makes my skin crawl that it’s implied but edited. Not that I want to hear an alternate word, I just would rather not see the entire commercial. That swear bothers me for reasons that my finger can’t put itself upon. But if you want to start a healthy debate you can see them all for yourself, here.

HEADON!!!

As I stated in my other blog ages ago, the commercial for Head On is completely bizarre and a little bit brilliant.  All they did was film some lady rubbing this mystery salve on her forehead and repeat the same phrase 3 times and it’s gotten insane press in the blogosphere.  I just read about it today on Pink Is The New Blog when he referenced this article in his news links.

I have nothing else to say, I just wanted to point out that Iwastalkingaboutitfirst! ThatIwastalkingaboutitfirst!  ThatIwastalkingaboutitfirst!

Also, go to the website and check out how many freakin retailers carry this shit.  Then click on the link that says, “Dr. Newman retracts his statement regarding Headon”  Apparently this doctor was misquoted as saying something negative about one of Head On’s ingredients.  I like his “owie my head hurts” letterhead.

Sk8tr Grl

Being an actor in NY is tough.  Being an actor PERIOD is tough but it’s especially tough in NY where your big decisions are, “talking head on VH1 for no dollars or dead body on L&O for 100 dollars?”  We take it up the butt like true actors (figuratively speaking) and get none of the fame.

Until now!

In a mission to promote our friends who are struggling actors trying to make a good, honest living by touting your wares (corporate America I’m talking to YOU!), I’d like to present a new portion of our blog: People We Know!

Living in NY in the comedy world of acting (me) and writing (Liz, although I still consider her a performer as well), you get to know a lot of people.  And then you see those people in commercials when you’re home visiting your family in Colorado and you wonder how many times you can say, “hey!  I know that dude!” before your family stops being impressed.  (In my case the answer is one)  These people are hard working and deserve the lime light should they actually want the lime light depending on what they’re selling (1/2 clothed for Dove?  Yes.  Fully clothed for Valtrex?  No.).

So we’d like to shine our humble ad-light on our friend Lynn Bixenspan.  She’s only on camera for 3 seconds in this MTV Promo, but she deserves every second she got… and more.  Let’s find out what Lynn has to say about her exciting day as a full-fledged Sk8tr Girl.

Fun facts about this promo:- I auditioned with a male model who wore a shirt with a thin, sexy? slit straight down from the top to his torso, and some mystical beaded necklaces hanging down into the chasm. I sort of panicked in the waiting area, thinking, how can I be up for the same thing as this Beautiful Man? (He acted terrified in the actual audition.)

- I am a skater teen in Washington Square Park. I wonder how much longer I can feasibly play a teen.

- The director tried to make it interesting by giving us subtext. “You’re sleeping with text-messaging guy, and your best friend is trying to get with him!”

- The food was awesome. They fried their own donuts on the set!

- When the director couldn’t find me, because I got lost between the trailer and the set due to my embarrassingly poor sense of direction, I could hear his voice barking over the walkie-talkies, “Everyone, we have to find Lynn… Talent Lynn.” I felt a little bit cool.

- When I wait a month to write an entry, I am too lazy to write an interesting description, and post it in bullet point form, thereby depriving both the reader and myself of a fully immersive and engaging story.

- Despite not really seeing me do much of anything in this, my dad is really really proud, and emailed the link to all of our relatives.

We at And Now… A Word are really proud of you, too, Lynn.  Keep up the good work, and work that teen angle for as long as you possibly can!

What’s the 311?

I love New York – the ads from the 80s worked on me and I am one of the millions who flocked here seeking a life of fame, fortune, liberalism, and twenty-five cent Times Square peep shows. But thanks to the weird fact that New York keeps electing Rebublican mayors, neither the politics nor the peep shows are as liberal as I had hoped.  Luckily, Mayor Bloomberg, he of the Masshole heritage, is never one to bore us. Whether he’s firing city employees for playing solitaire on their computer, commending the head of Con Edison for allowing Queens to lose electricity for a mere week for no reason, or just talking with that funny, “pahk the cah in Hahvahd Yahd” accent, he is a real trip! He brought us 311, the non-emergency phone number for the city of New York, for when you just wanna find stuff out and are willing to be on hold for a long time. In theory, 311 is a fine idea but if it’s for non-emergencies, please explain subway ads like this:

First of all, domestic abuse is a pretty giant emergency so I would think that this would get more urgency than just “Call us! We might help! Also, today is alternate side of the street parking, we wouldn’t want to ticket your Honda Odyssey!” If you are bleeding letters out your nose, that is also a pretty huge deal. Actually, that’s not very funny, this is a serious topic. Which is why I can’t believe they thought that a battered woman with letters-as-blood coming out her nose was the right visual. Letters-as-boogers I can get on board with, perhaps a Mucinex ad (which I do love) – Mr. Mucus lives in your lungs and is an old timey piece of phlegm with a porkpie hat and suspenders and comes out your nose in big green globs of goo! – that is a less severe, more runny-nose appropriate ad, I think. But there is a thing called TONE, you know, that thing that makes innocent comments on IM get taken the wrong way, and methinks this isn’t the right tone for this.

Did the ad grab me? Sure, I read it, after all. But do I want to read horrible statistics about battered women in the form of blood dripping out a nose? AhhhNO. If I want to laugh at domestic abuse, I’ll watch Julia Roberts’ performance in Sleeping with the Enemy. However, the severity of this issue warrants more than a statistic-spewing stream of blood. Someone get that woman a tissue and tell her to apply some pressure, stat!

Mind The GAP

The song from the new GAP commercial is “Do Ya” by Peaches off her new album Impeach My Bush.

Dunk, Counter-dunk.

I’m from Massachusetts. Due to a lack of a real word that signifies where I come from, I sometimes say I’m a Masshole. One time in college, a guy from the Bronx who lived on my hall said “Aren’t you a Massachusian?” in all seriousness. Whether or not there is a word that assigns a name to residents of my home-state, one thing we all share is a love for Dunkin’ Donuts. Which is why it pains me to say that I have to disagree with Glennis, I hate that “Karateeee!!” commercial. But we can disagree and be ok with each other, which is what life is all about, do you hear me, the Middle East???

Dunk, I grew up on your coffee and love those chocolate donut sticks, but this American does NOT run on Dunkin, at least not that commercial.

Now, just to infuriate you all, I’d like to say that I like the Pepto Bismol commercial with 5 guys “rapping” or whatever they are doing. Like the commercial for the Dunk where each person yells out an activity, the Pepto commercial has five lucky actors proclaim their poop problems, or “ploplems” as I now call them. ”Heartburn! Indigestion! Upset Stomach! Nausea! Diarrheaaaa! YAY, Pepto-Bismol!”

I think it’s just because I like anything poop-related. Although I guess coffee is indirectly poop-related. But these rapper-people actually do a dance where they grab the part of their body that is afflicted. Heartburn? Ow, my chest hurts! Nausea? Bllpht, I just threw up in my mouth, lemme cover that. Diarrhea? I have to cover the hole in my bum so nothing leaks out my anus! These are actual dance moves. You can even go on the website and create your own dance/song using any combination of gastrointestinal distresses you like. What I like about this campaign is that they are trying shed the stigma attached to shitting your pants. Like, you know what? Seriously, everyone takes dumps and pukes sometimes, why shouldn’t we dance and celebrate that? Isn’t that what college was?

“How many times did you boot? 17? AWESOME, Dude!!” High five! You expelled toxins and bile and dining hall food provided by Sodexho Marriott! YES!!

 It’s like how fat women are celebrated in other cultures but reviled in America. Why do we hide in the bathroom? We stall in the stall, not wanting people to hear us poop because we have been ashamed of the poo since we were in diapers. Thank you, Pepto, for all your shit talkin’. I appreciate it. Because, as someone who pauses mid-IM conversation to say “Poopin’ – BRB!”, I think we need more openness.

Ain’t no shame in the brown rain! I just made that up, but if the Pepto people want it, they can have it.