OMFG!!!!!! Teh first post of teh yar!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, so it's been a while, but I'm going to keep you wanting anyway. Just a quickie to mention the new link I've stuck up: to "'boards".

The website of a mag I've been woefully ingnorant of until now, 'boards is about where ads and videoclips meet: on the avant garde of video art.

Check out the Screening Room to see a bunch of really cool music videos and more.

Crap. This sounds like an ad.

Citroen C4: You can rock MY body anytime!

Okay, so sure it came out last year in every other country: it's still a cool ad. Carmaker Citroen has tapped into the instinctive male desire for both Transformers and Justin Timberlake, who's choreographer Marty Kudelka (the one who isn't Michael Jackson) was hired to do motion-capture for a dancing car.

All I can say is, now my girlfriend understands my fetish for Transformers. She understands!

*a note on the ads of our American cousins*

Having just come back from a brief sojourn in the States, I feel I should make a few brief comments on the ads they have to offer. These will proceed in a series of bullet points.

- They have at least 1 ad for an American defense force each break, sometime 2 (at least in Arizona).
- Erectile Dysfunction doesn't exist in America, they have instead a problem known as "ED" . Apparently there's less stigma attached to having what sounds like a mental disorder, even though everyone knows what it is anyway.
- My brother thinks they're hilarious. But then his favourite station was the Weather Channel.

That is all.

Pepsi: Dare For More. More Poopsi, that is.

And so Pepsi's campaign for domination of outdoor cola advertising (yes, there is a war going on) continues. Not content with trotting out unknown 'celebrities' and making Jennifer Hawkins look ugly, Pepsi has continued it's series of billboard ads. Now no bus shelter or building is safe from posters with such images.

I'm not sure why they've decided to go with people (more 'celebrities', perhaps?) pulling enourmous caps off (presumably; they're not pictured) equally enourmous Pepsi bottles. The problem I have with them is that, at least in the one with the girl using a crowbar to open it, they display images that one might describe as - how shall I phrase it? - dubious. It shows a picture of her bending forward, laughing, and a large amount of brown liquid gushes out from behind her.

I'm not entirely sure there's more than one way for us to take that, and I think we know what it is.

Juicy Fruit: Citronic. How (c)i(t)ronic.

Did you see what I did with the title? That's comic gold right there, that is.

I like these ads. The first one - 'Strappleberry' - that had the duck's head in a gum-boot as it flopped past, and (my favourite) the car body with the bottom half of a cow sticking out, was inspired. What would normally be an unbearably obnoxious tune in the background just added to the frivolity. And if there's one thing this world needs more of, it's frivolity.

It's the latest from animator James Hackett. You might remember his stuff from such works as the Nova 96.9 ad with the little Nova guy walking down the street, the opening titles to Andrew Denton's Parky rip-off (why you'd want to, other than the fact it's an international success, is beyond me) Enough Rope, and those music videos for Band: The Dissociatives.

i-mode. Aye-aye-aye-aye I like their ads ver-y much.

This week appears to just be a gusher about which ads I like (read: I find cute). The i-mode ads, with the "Aye-aye-aye-aye-aye I like you ver-y much ..." song, are awesome (incidentally, does anyone know what the song is?). And it's not just the song. Oh no. Their little Revenge of the Sith tie-in ad, with the little i-guy swinging around his little lightsaber (little guy!) was incredibly cute, and I've decided I want one.

I just haven't decided "one" what.

Canon Dig!c: No Dig!c No Detail. Poetry in LEGO.

It may be for a fairly esoteric piece of hardware, but the Canon Dig!c ad with the LEGO-like rodeo is bloody beautiful, right down to the soft mandolin soundtrack. It's just a shame they have to go and ruin it by (the hide of them) actually advertising at the end, when the magical Dig!c processor brings definition to the world and we're left with an ugly clown's face.

This kind of ad supports my theory that advertising, and not arty-farty movies, is where the real avant garde of cinema is. Okay, so maybe there've been papers written on it for some time, and maybe my original theory was about music videos but, whatever. It's still my theory.

McDonald's: Simple. Life IS complicated enough without McDonald's ads being cute.

I think the "Life's Complicated Enough" McDonald's ads (the ones with the cute little captioned paper dolls) are cute, and that worries me. What's next: arty ads for Adidas that have cool songs by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs?

iPod: Rollerskating. Where's your iGod now?

I suppose I should begin by declaring my interests in the issue. I have no particular love for Apple or iPod. In fact, I'm more likely to avoid an iPod - or its user - at all costs, opting instead for a cheaper, less theft-inducing mp3 player, that doesn't have bizarre battery-charging requirements; ones that oblige me to offer my first-born in blood soaked sacrifice to their iGod, (but only when the Moon is in the 8th House, otherwise I'll damage the battery life for ever).

The first ad, the one with the Jet song 'Are You Gonna Be My Girl?', I managed to escape from relatively unscathed, maybe because I wasn't really watching much TV at the time. I don't really have anything to say about it I guess, other than to observe that my feelings for iPod at the time were much more neutral (at about 'Favourable' on the Love/Hate Spectrum) than they are now. I'll elaborate on this in a minute.

The second ad, featuring U2's 'Vertigo', had a different effect. By this time my relationship with iPod had deteriorated drastically, nor had I trusted U2 for some time (I'm not sure if it happened with Achtung Baby; it may have been Zooropa, but we'd definitely stopped talking after Pop). While the song's film clip was clever in a "kids love CGI" kinda way, it almost made me hate the song even more. Put it on a stupid iPod ad, however, and throw the silhouettes of some gyrating enfants terribles into the mix and: bingo, I love it! The little cutaway to the person mouthing "Hola!" moved me in ways I don't care to divulge here (call me privately, however, for more info). I didn't understand what was happening to me.

The new one, with the Gorillaz song 'Feel Good Inc.' has had a similar effect. Don't get me wrong: I don't hate the Gorillaz at all. Sure, I may have gotten caught up in the hype surrounding the release of their self-titled 2001 debut, and had my hopes of seriously interesting music dashed after the initial promise of 'Clint Eastwood'. The new song wasn't bad at all, but didn't move me in any particular way (I've yet to hear the rest of the album). Once again, however, truss it up as a black and fluoro hussy, throw in some roller-skating, and I'm sold; sold like so many chattles. Every time I even think of the ad, I get 2D's haunting chorus stuck in my head.

What we have here, people, is something I've decided to call the 'iPod Effect'. This effect means that the more you hate iPod and a particular song before the ad, the more you'll like it after. I think they should change their tack and sell this space as an advertising service for bands, because they don't make me want to buy anything but the singles, and I ain't gonna do that off iTunes, I can tell you that for free.

Lynx. For all you geeks out there who think hygiene is a province of Middle Earth, try new Lynx: Klingon!

I've tried it. I have drenched myself in Africa, Accelerate, Atlantis and other scents that promise to transport my ailing and rotten libido on some Rocky-like fantasy montage - where it will return, to my body, possessing all the secrets of allure and will, unlike Rocky, draw all the women into my arms (or hurtling into my six pack - which will come out of retirement after I visit Atlantis).

I'm surprised more men aren't running around randomly spraying women in the street. So attracted to the smell of Africa on a white guy, women will come running. Therefore, if I spray a woman with the scent of "where man began," they should, one hopes, lapse into some type of bacchanalian lesbian frenzy. At least that’s what we were promised in the Lynx body spray ads a couple of years ago.

Today’s ad campaign promises a sorceror's mastery of a woman’s nipples, midi-chlorians enough to pop buttons off a shirt with just the arch of your eyebrow and the mystic, mythic proposition that women won’t care if you’re a pervert just as long as you smell like a new car. I discovered recently that no matter how concealed you are, no matter how casual you attempt to look, you are inevitably conspicuous when you try to pop a woman’s shirt open with the power of your mind. I felt like a super-villain who’d run out of kryptonite. My arched eyebrow, having come under the increasingly angry stare of the woman opposite me, arched just a little higher. The whole thing looked awful. Me with a crippled eyebrow, one eye open and the other squinting shut, a vein the size of… I don’t know, but BIG, popping out of my head… all the while my hand grasped for my mind control spray, missed, and found my stomach, hips and, fatefully as it turned out, my crotch instead of my bum bag (or the more socially acceptable “fanny-pack”). Taking Lynx Africa out of my utility belt, I doused myself in the spray, focusing on her breasts, willing the buttons to pop off…

It almost worked, too. Well, not really. I ended up looking at my own chest in embarrassment wishing to God I could offer my own buttons in surrender. I mean, sure, I vowed to fight another day, but my heart wasn’t really in it any more. I planned to escape by blasting the air around me with bursts of Africa, hoping to confuse her senses and make her think a much sexier, more musclier and more African man was trying to pervert the Force. Surprisingly, the Lynx cleared the cabin. Mustering my pluck, I tried at a party a few days later to control a woman’s nipples from across a crowded room using the knobs on an oven. Wandrew made me promise to never ever try to prove something while drunk again. Or, failing that, never use an oven in his presence.

I don’t really understand the sexual promises made by the Lynx ads. Why don’t they tell the truth: if you can’t be bothered showering, we have the solution! It isn’t sexy. It’s dangerous.

I realised something about myself and my Lynx, though. I realised it when I took the spray from my bum bag. I realised that the only way you teen-aged boys are gonna pop the buttons off a woman’s shirt is if you cultivate the art of conversation. You gotta listen, be interested, and make her the centre of your world for just those few precious moments you’re with her. Seriously.

Chicks’ll believe anything.

Nokia 3230: Serious Finds Fun. Then kills Fun.

Okay, maybe it's just me, and maybe I'm just stupid. Everyone else seems to get it. They sip their lattés up in their ivory towers and laugh. They laugh at both me - in my stupidity - and the ad, which they get and I don't.

I pointed out to my girlfriend the other day that all the girls in this ad are tall, while all the guys are short. She, being a girl and therefore inherently jealous (and having height issues), thought that I'd noticed this because I found the girls attractive (and therefore, obviously, more attractive than her). But I noticed this fact because I've been analysing this fucking ad since they started screening it, because I still don't bloody get it.

So: you start with a (tall) girl walking down the street. She checks out a (short) guy walking past, wearing (what I guess are supposed to be) work clothes and talking on his Nokia 3230 mobile phone. Suddenly, the guy is wearing civvies and walking backwards. Then we get a flash up of the phone: displaying first the guy in work clothes; then it flips to show him in civvies; then (and this is where I start to get confused) it flips back to show him in work clothes again!

Are they trying to say that, should you have the hide to wear casual clothes, you're actually being counter-productive? That you'll start walking backwards, become short, and tall girls will stop looking at you? I don't think I'm overinterpreting things when I say that the final, repeated flip of him in work gear shows that the moral of the ad is that casualness is the New Hitler, and conformity the New Black.

The second part has a (short) guy going up an escalator. Four (obviously meant to be Japanese) girls are going past him on the down-side. Their inexplicable scowls are turned into "Kawaii!" screams and "V" signs (thus the Japanese thing), as their clothes brighten-up and they smile at him. Again, however, the parting image is of their dismissive scowls (perhaps because he's so short).

The last one is a (tall) girl in a suit stepping out of an elevator. She's then switched to be wearing a trendy red outfit and - once again - walking backwards. Once again, the final flip is of her back in her suit. The freakiest thing about this part is that, if you look closely as she steps out of the elevator, you can see her backwards-walking alter ego as a phantasm, standing behind her. Maybe the message of this one is: mess with Nokia's conformist ethos, and get fucked with by the Dead. And we all know you should fear the Dead. They have strange powers.

My final estimation of the ad is that it is promoting some kind of Orwellian police state, in which working types - "wage slaves", if you will - are considered the only 'choice' available to people. This status quo is policed by a series of phantasmagoric daemonae who, á la Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, follow people around their whole life, revealing themselves only at the moment of death.

This, to me, is the only sensible interpretation of the ad. T-Gor's suggestion was that the image flip forward-back schtick is a hidden message about the crappy battery life of the thing. Yeah, well, I don't think T-Gor is taking this seriously.