The Rake Magazine

Tag: Bush

  • Helter Skelter Advertising

    So I have a friend who’s kind of a conspiracy theorist. Which is fine, because conspiracy theorists can sometimes help one see the broader picture. Global warming is a scam put on by Ben and Jerry’s to sell more ice cream, which in turn helps the Canadian GDP because – unbeknownst to anyone who isn’t paying attention – that’s where B & J get their milk? Okay. In short, hanging around with a conspiracy theorist is a pretty good substitute for smoking pot.

    A few nights ago, said friend was over at my place. We weren’t watching the Olympics, because of course they’re rigged, anyway, so why bother? And he was talking about this book, called The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder. It’s written by Vincent Bugliosi, a lawyer-turned-best-selling-author, most famous for Helter Skelter, which chronicles the legal proceedings of the Manson family. In his new book, Bugliosi states that he has a watertight case against Bush on grounds of homicide, and given the chance, could nail our President with a ‘guilty’ verdict.

    It came out in May, and received minimal press. Like, actually, no press whatsoever, according to my friend. This was suspicious, because Bugliosi is a world-renowned writer, who has topped the New York Times best-seller list. My friend attributed the lack of coverage to the fact that the government controls the media, including the liberal-seeming Times, and simply wanted to suppress this title.

    And he has some corroboration. "The author is receiving the silent treatment from many media outlets," reported Cara McDonough in an article for Finding Dulcinea. "Bugliosi…thought that at least MSNBC and Comedy Central’s ‘The Daily Show’ [where he’d made previous appearances] would show interest in interviewing him about his new book, but neither responded to requests for appearances."

    Did someone say Kafkaesque?

    Nevertheless, the book became a bestseller. Now The Prosecution is being hailed as a working prototype for how the Internet can sell literature, perhaps more effectively than mainstream media outlets.

    "The latest title by former Los Angeles attorney Vincent Bugliosi has become publishing’s favorite example of how the web can move books," writes Mark Flamm in Crain’s New York Business. "A campaign that blanketed blogs with excerpts, podcasts, author videos and advertising has led to sales of more than 60,000 copies of The Prosecution, according to publisher Vanguard Press, part of the Perseus Books Group. A total of 140,000 copies are in print."

    Ahh…so it would seem that, in the book world, conventional marketing is losing out to newer forms. This of course is a somewhat predictable progression – it’s easy to see that history is marching blogward. I guess I’m just dumb enough to be surprised that the industry hasn’t yet completely shifted its paradigm. Especially because it’s cheaper to do targeted online ads.

    "While a half-page black-and-white ad in USA Today costs $53,000, a two-week online campaign on a network of small Web sites can go for as little as $3,000 to $5,000 and reach 2 million to 3 million people," Flamm reports.

    I don’t think it’s too much of a reach to say that this same approach could work for fiction, and maybe even poetry, so long as marketers don’t just tap insulated lit blogs the way they do insulated lit mags.

    Back to Bugliosi, I guess I still can’t explain why the media didn’t give him coverage, in terms of reviews and interviews. While the success of The Prosecution is impressive, no one has yet dealt with the book’s actual content. Pundits are surmising that people are just sick of hearing about how much Bush sucks, but still, given Bugliosi’s stature, it is surprising that no one picked him up (and way too post-Modern that EVERYONE, including me, covered his lack of coverage). I guess the conspiracy theorists can keep their suppositions in tact on that count.

  • Basilica Party All Blocked Up

    DAY ONE

    The warnings start off nicely enough, with the Basilica Block Party MC kindly asking people to stand further away from the stage, you know, for fear of electrocution or something.

    Then it is, "Ladies and gentlemen, if you’re worried about getting wet, you can go in the parking lot or go in the church. If you go in the church, you better say a prayer." That quickly morphs into the pleasantly shouted, "Head into the parking lot!" Then, essentially, "RUN FOR YOUR LIIIIIIVES!"

    The clouds had been broadcasting impending doom the whole afternoon. They dimmed the sky as Augustana took the stage to spout their pop-infused pick-me-uppers. The Californian quintet clearly doesn’t partake in the Minnesota tradition of the "summer haircut." All five don shaggy do’s and unwashed jeans, though it’s possible they paid for them to look that way. Augustana is your typical rock-by-numbers band. The music is not particularly inspired, an apt summary of the entire festival, but it’s easy listening. The band is all about earth tones, from their clothing to the color of their guitars, to their inoffensive piano-fuelled ballads. Still, on the side of the stage a gaggle of girls are enjoying themselves, slapping their thighs in time to the music.

    As a solid mass of gray eclipses the skies of downtown Minneapolis, concertgoers flood to cover inside the basilica and under a soon-to-be drenched highway overpass. The nearby parking deck turns into a five-level beer-drinking fiesta, as festival attendees hoot at every clapping thunder and bolt of lightning. They swoon under the force of 80-mile-per-hour winds rushing through and cause a general ruckus, stopping only to snap cell-phone photos of the monstrous purple cloud hanging over the highly embellished cathedral dome. The scene could only be more appropriate if snarling gargoyles hanged from the edge of the building, laughing frightfully at the weather.

    One woman takes things in stride: a professionally trained ballerina who leaps and dips and twirls on the outside deck of the parking garage, with not a centimeter of dry skin left. "My shoes are wet," the rain dancer says after sufficiently exhausting herself. By this time, her lack of dryness is a moot point. She smiles, "That was awesome."

    Outside, the festival looks like a deserted and wrecked movie set. Tents are overturned. A light inside the basilica is silently flickering. A tree split by the wind lays desecrated on the lawn. Everything is soaked, and the only thing not in danger of blowing away is a Brinks truck quietly lumbering down a nearby street.

    But the show must go on, even if it is an hour late. As lightning hushes the distance and the rain dies down, a beer-thirsty herd emerges from hiding. Those who don’t head for their cars become a mass of wet diehards, eagerly waiting for reggae all-star Ziggy Marley to begin. Bathed in blue light, the be-dreaded Marley’s only comment about the storm is a simple "Yeeeeaaaahhh!" shouted before he and his band fill the air with their uplifting, poppy reggae. In response to the reverberating wah-wah and the sight of a legitimate member of the legendary Marley clan, the audience is awash with high fives and handclaps. One man feels compelled to do jumping jacks. Why not?

    DAY TWO

    A gigantic piss cup is standing next to the Twin Cities’ mayors. Let’s be proper here. The piss cup has a name: Petey P. Cup. Petey P. Cup and Pokey the syringe, health insurance company Health Partners’ mascots, are just a small sampling of the infectious throng of corporate advertising at the Basilica Block Party. There’s Verizon with its free mini backpacks, Starbucks with its free samples, and Chevy with a small armada of show cars and its very own stage, on which two not nearly drunk enough women are yelping their way through Joan Jett’s "I Love Rock and Roll," and many more.

    St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman and Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak are standing next to the six foot tall piss cup in what, let’s hope, is a low moment in their respective careers. Mayor Coleman steps up to the mic and hollers, "You do this every night over here? Is that true?" Next, mayor Rybak gives "shout outs" to his children in the audience and loudly reminds them he is in charge of the police force, before flinging t-shirts into the crowd.

    Missy Higgins’ set is a sigh of relief. The Australian songbird is one of the only salvageable acts of the festival, joining local rockers White Light Riot on the shortlist. Higgins alternates between acoustic guitar and keyboard. Wearing a summer dress and appropriately rosy cheeks, her soulful, swooning alto hangs in the air like a thick, velvet curtain. Tunes like "Peachy" are rolling, spirited romps, while others sound more rustic and befitting of coffee shop showcases. Her songs of being in love, angry at love, missing love and love in general transfix the sunned audience.

    This cannot be said about either headliners. For reasons of mystery and poor planning, festival organizers chose the Gin Blossoms and Gavin Rossdale as the main acts. Maybe this would have passed a decade ago, but definitely not now.

    The Gin Blossoms’ music is as sagging as their skin. The half-hearted harmonies flounder, as does the band’s approach. They play like it is the thousandth time they’ve plunked the notes. The technical musicianship is apparent, but their enthusiasm died with Y2K. The saving grace of the Gin Blossoms’ set is singer Robin Wilson’s penchant for shooting devil horns. Devil horns. At a church-sponsored music festival. Granted, the money earned from the two-day event goes into the restoration of the undeniably gorgeous basilica and not to the J-man, but still. The whole evening has this "smoking in the boys’ room" vibe. People are sloshed on $5 beer with cigarettes hanging from their lips. Wafts of pot smoke float by. Who knew Catholics could be so cool?

    Gavin Rossdale’s set is negligibly better. He has faired better with time, though his long, curly locks are sorely missed. Rossdale pairs piano melodies with his trademark epic guitars that are full enough to slip into every nook and cranny of the city. He is still able to serve up upbeat thumpers with dashes of atonality, though his new music could easily be considered "Bush-lite." The lyrics are at times ghastly: "She started a fire/I was the wood." But Rossdale sings well, as long as he doesn’t try to get too creative with his vocal range. His stage presence is a different story. Rossdale often saunters across the stage like an ape in a confusing white room. Gone, also, is that "tortured rock star" aesthetic that was so pivotal to Bush’s success. Rossdale even sings a song called, "Happiness." Being married to Gwen Stefani, the guy can’t have much to complain about-which is, unfortunately, less than can be said about Basilica Block Party.

  • Bush Money

    My friend calls it his "Bush money." When I got my own Bush money—six hundred dollars from the Department of the Treasury—I stared at the words. Economic. Stimulus. Package. I’m not one to buy China-made plasma TVs, but I did want to help the American economy by buying something I wouldn’t have otherwise bought. Something fun. Something stimulating. So I decided to trade in my economic package for a different kind of stimulating package. The silicon kind.

    I nervously made my way to the Smitten Kitten, Minneapolis’s progressive sex shop. I had always lacked the guts to go there because, well, I’m a prude. A prude-and-a-half, really. But, as I entered the store and checked out the clientele and merchandise, I told myself I had to help America out. There were plenty of customers amidst the colorful dildos and vibrators, which, had they been in a paint store, would have had names like "mint moonshine" and "silver dawn." I shared company with a woman who I mistook for a honky-tonk man named Cletus, a coiffed blonde who could barely walk on her wedge-heeled sandals, a man bearing striking resemblance to Paul Wolfowitz, and three young girls in trendy leggings.

    I hung back while Jennifer, the seven-month pregnant owner sporting Mary Janes and a pixie haircut, fielded customers’ questions. She made her customers feel comfortable by talking about sex like she was discussing the ins and outs of turning a rotisserie chicken or changing a bike tire. One of the younger girls asked Jennifer in a mousy voice for a book that would shed some light on the personal problems she and her partner were having. Jennifer suggested ditching a book in favor of self-experimentation.

    "Yeah, cool…cool," the girl said, shrugging one shoulder like a junior high student trying to impress a friend while hanging out at the lockers. "Yeah, cool," she said once more like she had never said the word in her life.

    That made me feel better.

    It was my turn to ask Jennifer for help. She would have sensed my discomfort even if I hadn’t let it spill out of me like a broken bag of rice. I started out by bumbling on about how this whole excursion was inspired by Bush, and ended up saying something like, "blah ha ja ha blah." She listened patiently and then told me she’d start with a tour of the store.

    "It’s just like I’m giving a tour of the library," she told me. "You know, here’s the microfiche, and there are the atlases."

    Yeah, cool…cool. Libraries. I know a thing or two about libraries.

    Halfway through our tour we paused at the remote controlled vibrators. One caught my attention because the graphic designer of the "Waterproof Remote Egg Vibrator" had done a bang up job of creating the crappiest cover ever. It donned a busty model looking like someone had accidentally splashed her with a container of day-old popcorn butter. Looking at the cover, I had a hard time understanding how this image really turns people on. For all my mistrust of the Waterproof Remote Egg, though, Jennifer assured me that this was the best one of its kind. I was about to ask her just how she knew, when, reading my mind, she cut me off.

    "We took the remote around the corner," she explained. "You know where Falafel King is?" I was familiar. "Well," she continued, "it still worked even when we turned on the remote all the way from the Falafel King."

    I pictured a staff member with runny cucumber sauce and falafels in one hand and the remote control in another. Then I tried to imagine a lover trying to get his/her partner off from the local falafel store, and still had a hard time understanding just why this whole remote control thing would be necessary. I must have looked dubious because Jennifer told me, "It’s a good product." She stopped and turned over the Waterproof Remote Egg Vibrator, spying a crack down the fuchsia plastic. "Oops, this one’s broken," she said apologetically.

    I assured her I wasn’t going to buy the floor model anyway.

    When we got to the end of the tour it was time to shop. Standing among the multi-textured dildos I felt like I had entered the cereal aisle of a grocery store. Do I want Life, Cinnamon Life, Chocolate Cinnamon Life, or the new Fruity Life? Shoot, I thought, how could there be so many options? It is America, but come on. I mentioned this to Jennifer, who laughed and told me that, yeah, there were a lot of options.

    She paused for a second and added, "and then there’s size." Gulp. She picked up a dildo with the word "Randy" on the side of the box.

    "Randy?" I asked. Randy would be bionic if he were real, like the Incredible Hulk. On steroids.

    "Oh, they all have names in this brand," Jennifer told me, passing me Randy. "Todd, Jim, Spike, Joe."

    Oh, geez. Okay. Yeah. Cool. Randy. I asked her if they had a George, but no such luck.

    Feeling like a teenager in a Judy Bloom novel, I looked at the overwhelming selection as Jennifer left me to size up the situation on my own. Despite my novice attitude, I finally picked a nameless dildo and bought some books on great sex writing. The price tag for everything was $84.14, which meant I could still dump $515.86 into my savings account. This was definitely a shopping trip I wouldn’t have made without the help of the government.

    Fun? Yes. Stimulating? Yes.

    Thanks, Dubbya.

    I have only one regret. Half my purchases were made in Germany.