They Stand Watch.

“As the world’s leading full-spectrum genetic security and containment company, Trask Industries continues to uncover new ways to control the mounting X-gene threat…Our goal is to solve tomorrow’s problems, today.”

Following up on last week’s posters, the X-Men: Days of Future Past viral campaign kicks off with a spiffy corporate website and commercial for Trask Industries (Note Peter Dinklage, in period ‘stache), along the lines of the pre-Prometheus commercial for David — and we all know how Prometheus turned out. Still I’m a sucker for Watchmen-style alternate history, like the Sentinel presiding over Ronald Reagan’s inauguration, above.

“Only Nein Neinty-Nine.”

If you thought JCPenney was having problems at the top — or if pressure cookers were posing problems for the tea-kettle industry — look no further than 405 freeway near Culver City in Southern California, where an innocent stainless steel pot is drawing comparisons to perhaps the least innocent person of all time, spigot salute and all.”

Don’t turn around, uh oh. Der Kettle Fuhrer’s in town, uh oh. If I remember correctly, this teapot with an ill-favored look is an exact replica of the one once used in a small boarding house in Minehead, Somerset. “Sorry Mein Dickey Old Chum!”

Sliding Kicks, Sliding Doors.


I thought Amores Perros and Babel were meh and 21 Grams was laugh-out-loud terrible. But now I too have a favorite Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu film: “Write the Future, this really great World Cup 2010 ad, featuring, among others, Cristiano Ronaldo, Didier Drogba, Wayne Rooney, Fabio Cannavaro, Franck Ribery, Andres Iniesta, Cesc Fabregas, Theo Walcott, Patrice Evra, Gerard Pique, Ronaldinho, Landon Donovan, Tim Howard and Thiago Silva. Yes, y’all, the world’s greatest sporting event is right around the corner

Peas’ Porridge Cold.

But to retire the very concept of ‘selling out’? To dismiss the notion that an artist’s reputation could ever be sullied by wanton greed? Nuh-uh. I can’t allow it…We as a culture must reserve our right to shower disdain on the Black Eyed Peas.” Old friend Seth Stevenson reads the riot act to will.i.am and the Black Eyed Peas for shilling for Target…and, apparently, anyone else who comes down the pike. “Observe how eagerly — how incredibly naturally — the Peas embrace the role of discount store shill. Stop for a moment and ponder the fact that will.i.am has a giant Target logo on his hat. A line must be drawn. I draw it here.

Adventures on the Holodeck.



Let’s disconnect these cables, overturn these tables, this place don’t make sense to me no more… As you can see [or maybe you can’t — the “embed code” option doesn’t seem to work, so I switched it out with a jpg], I’ve been having a little fun with this pretty spiffy Star Trek advertising toy, which is definitely worth playing around with for a few minutes. I’ve seen a lot of upload-your-pic widgets in the past, but I’m pretty amazed at how fast and how well this maps a pic onto a 3-D avatar. Could this Dylan-spouting Vulcan be the future of MMORPG gaming?

Coens Cold to Clean Coal.

Well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man: By way of a high school chum, the Coen Brothers try their hand at muckraking in a new spot against “clean” coal. “The Reality Coalition promises a whole series of Coen brothers ads — which were actually designed and produced by Crispin Porter + Bogusky, the Boulder, Colo., agency behind the “Truth” anti-tobacco campaign.” Have fun, guys, but please don’t quit your day jobs.

Surveying the Wreckage.

“Above all, this irony emerges: Clinton ran on the basis of managerial competence — on her capacity, as she liked to put it, to ‘do the job from Day One.’ In fact, she never behaved like a chief executive, and her own staff proved to be her Achilles’ heel…Her hesitancy and habit of avoiding hard choices exacted a price that eventually sank her chances at the presidency.The Atlantic‘s Josh Green, who covered the dirt on the Patty Doyle firing earlier this year, tells the story of Sen. Clinton’s primary bid from the inside (thanks mainly to being the beneficiary of vindictive document dumps from across the campaign hierarchy.)

Among the many interesting revelations, Mark Penn is apparently an even bigger asshole than he seemed during the primaries. Regarding Sen. Obama: “All of these articles about his boyhood in Indonesia and his life in Hawaii are geared towards showing his background is diverse, multicultural and putting that in a new light. Save it for 2050…his roots to basic American values and culture are at best limited. I cannot imagine America electing a president during a time of war who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values…Let’s use our logo to make some flags we can give out. Let’s add flag symbols to the backgrounds.” Classy.

Update: Speak of the devil. While giving kudos to McCain for his Paris Hilton ad, Mark Penn emerges from his cave to extol the usefulness of negative advertising. “Picking a president is not just about the candidates’ strengths but also about how their weaknesses can manifest themselves. Imagine if, in 2000, Al Gore’s advertisements had hit George W. Bush hard over incompetence on foreign affairs and as a trigger-happy cowboy.

Methuselah Speaks of the Devil.

Perhaps the most puzzling scene in the ad is an altered segment from The 10 Commandments that appears near the end. A Moses-playing Charlton Heston parts the animated waters of the Red Sea, out of which rises the quasi-presidential seal the Obama campaign used for a brief time earlier this summer before being mocked into retiring it. The seal, which features an eagle with wings spread, is not recognizable like the campaign’s red-white-and-blue ‘O; logo. That confused Democratic consultant Eric Sapp until he went to his Bible and remembered that in the apocalyptic Book of Daniel, the Antichrist is described as rising from the sea as a creature with wings like an eagle.

You’re one microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan? In TIME, Amy Sullivan parses McCain’s recent “The One” ad to discover that it’s basically a dog whistle for Left Behind evangelicals, declaring Obama is the Antichrist. “A new TIME poll finds that the most conservative evangelicals are the least enthusiastic about McCain’s candidacy. Convincing them that Obama does have two horns and a tail might be the best way of getting them to vote.

Obama is the Antichrist? Has it really come to this? I know the GOP are feeling on the verge of “Left Behind” this November, but that’s gotta be just about rock-bottom. It’s hard to even imagine an anti-McCain ad that would stoop that low (well, other than that it would probably have to involve the Queen of Diamonds.) And, what with the crazies already percolating, feeding this type of chum to the confused anti-Greg Stillson types out there borders on the criminal.

Come November, these GOP asshats had better lose, and lose big.

Weapons of Choice.

To me, the 12 formats serve equally well as a weapon of defense for the consumer under assault from endless advertising messages. It’s like learning how a magic trick works: Once the secret’s revealed, the trick loses all its power.” Old friend Seth Stevenson explains the twelve different types of advertising for Slate, with example ads for your perusal.