The American Crapper

Soap Scum, Gender, and the Quest For Freshness

Thanks to cutting-edge hipster Tony Patti for alerting me to this St. Louis Post-Dispatch article about the trend toward what he calls "jerky male advertising." The Post's critique isn't super-trenchant (author Diane Toroian Keaggy has no problem "celebrating American guyness--the lust for beer-fueled good times and busty women," and besides, she is writing for the P-D, that Midwestern arbiter of the lowest common denominator), but I love when people make any observations at all about commercials--especially when they mock Foghat in the process--because TV ads are an overwatched, under-fucked-with tool of The Man.

Diane correctly points out that the pretty young men in these jerky male commericals are "mean." Her examples include the Levi's ad where the asshole boyfriend cons his ex into thinking they're getting back together just so he can get his jeans back, and the Heineken commercial where the asshole boyfriend tells his sleeping girlfriend "I love you" so she'll free up his beer-drinking hand.

Jeans, beer, and stupid chicks. Three of Boo-Ya Nation's most crucial accoûtrements.

Diane also singles out one of my Most Detested spots, the one with the albino doofus-dad who cuts his hot wife down to size by waxing manly and ejaculatory over the "hammy" engine in his Dodge Durango.

The doofus-dad ads are the jerky male flipside of the in-yer-face asshole boyfriend spots. That the doofuses are always married to smart, hot women who in real life wouldn't be caught dead in the same zip code as these losers is sort of insulting. But even worse is the underlying pathology, that patronizing, tongue-in-cheek "we know who's really wearing the pants" crap that feeds a popular patriarchal myth: that even though the world may look male-centric on the face of it, it's those wily women who really have all the power.

What a load.

As is evidenced by the rest of TV advertising, the innumerable ads showing women in ecstasy over housework. Happy women with mops. Ha, good one. Charwoman Power!

Which brings me to my hypothesis: You can tell who wields the real power in a society by looking at the cultural janitorial narrative. Where is this narrative archived? In TV commercials, that's where. Look to TV to see who should sprawl on the couch eating pizza and watching football, and who should clean the toilets.

Other than that dapper lavatory mariner of yore, the Ty-D-Bol Man, I have never seen a toilet product ad with a Y-chromosome anywhere near it. Men appear in TV commercial bathrooms only to advertise x-schtreme shaving gear. These commercials double as gay porn.

There was that one spot where hubby reaches into toilet to retrieve wife's dropped earring, which pretty groundbreakingly featured a guy and a commode, but that turned out to be an ad for an electric shaver.* Men occasionally make non-shaving appearances in the bathroom when the product is repair-oriented rather than janitorial, like for drain de-clogger. But most of the time their manly clogs are confined to the kitchen, where an obstructed pipe is a metaphor for, oh, I don't know, frigidity?

The crapper-as-germ-infested-stink-zone is strictly a woman's purview. In America, men--straight ones, anyway--don't hang around toilets in rubber gloves chatting amiably with scrubbing bubbles. Any ad script containing the phrase "soap scum" indicates a non-sexy female spokesmodel. Currently there is a series of toilet-verité spots where homely barefooted homemakers--that's right, barefooted-- go absolutely apeshit for a disposable toilet brush. It taxes the imagination to the utmost to picture a man huddled over a toilet in his bare feet expressing unbridled joy over a toilet brush. Whence cometh this perceived affinity between barefoot women and toilets?

From the jerky males who write the commercials, that's where. And nothing can stop them. They've got nothing to lose. They already know they're going to hell; they're in advertising.

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* Some may point out that there is also a commercial for a swiffer broom where an incredulous hubby busts in on his wife's shower to show her all the gross crud the broom has picked up, but it is clear he has been sweeping in a non-bathroom (i.e. male-safe) area. Also, his apparent fascination for, and amazement at, the yukky dirt stuck to his broom infantalizes the male character in a variation of the doofus-dad model. This is not, in other words, a guy who does much housework.

Hack Hits Nail On Head

Thomas A Bico, who, as editor of online journal The Moderate Independent, has been charged by some unnamed authority "to speak with America's True Voice," criticizes Osama bin Laden and his new campaign vid. With America's True Entrepeneurial Invective, he even suggests a new role model:

Like you, [Osama], Rupert Murdoch was not American. Like you, he had lots of money at his disposal. But unlike you, he truly had something he wanted to say, and so he bought himself a platform to say it. This is how human beings who have something to say to the world work.

And dammit, we'll fight for the right to hear Rupert Murdoch's True Voice twenty-four hours a day. Free speech! Buy yours today!

The Man Who Can't Be King

John Joseph Kennedy

But He'll Settle For The Next Best Thing

Has anyone else been getting spam from this John Joseph Kennedy specimen? Though he may resemble a humble TV evangelist, the man is running for president. His platform? He will "begin rebuilding the infrastructure of our country by allotting back to the citizens of the United States of America, dollar for dollar, what has gone into the war in Iraq."

His plan may need a little fleshing out, but his opposition is clearly outgunned when it comes to pedigree. John Joseph Kennedy--or "JJK," as he would be known--anxiously enlightens the spam-ee with detailed information concerning his "aristocratic Kennedy bloodline" (his branch of the family are "the acclaimed Kennedy's [sic] of Charleston"), and by way of presenting his qualifications for the post of Leader of the Free World, claims to be descended from Charlemagne.

Combined with his resume (created "Richter Duck's Operation Quake-Quake," a program educating California kids about earthquakes; worked "part-time as a high-profile print and runway fashion model"; served as CEO of John Kennedy Enterprises, a corporation marketing something called "The Royal Critters," etc), his ancient lineage should render him unstoppable.

JJK's royal pedigree

UPDATE 11/3/04: He lost.

Misogyny Update

Why We'll Never Be Rid of Miss America

It's finally happened: ABC has announced that it's putting the long-awaited kibosh on Miss America. As in cancelled! So why, you ask, have I not taken to the streets to dance a victory rhumba? Considering the recent spiritual agony and self-esteem scare through which the 2004 pageant put me, you'd think I'd be flitting to and fro, singing "O What A Beautiful Morning," handing out daisies on street corners, and affecting a convivial attitude toward the townsfolk. I'd thought so, too.

Yet the heart is heavy, and I am without vim. For, gratifying though it is to witness this belated victory against hypocrisy, it has dawned on me that ABC didn't cancel the pageant because it has suddenly come down with a case of feminism. It cancelled the pageant because it was losing the coveted Young Misogynist Demographic to shows that employ less subtle, more compulsive forms of woman-hating. Such shows include the ones where girls compete for dates with rich guys who turn out to be poor, or where girls compete to marry rich guys who turn out to be violent. There are shows where homely girls compete to see whose hideously painful plastic surgery will make them most resemble a porn star, shows where girls who already resemble porn stars gulp animal intestines while suspended in thong bikinis over a vat of snakes to compete for the Grossest Bimbo In America title.

Yup, Miss America may have ducktaped her final boob on broadcast television,* but this changes nothing. The anatomically improbable Barbie doll is still on every 8-year-old future bulimic's Christmas list. So I cut short my pageant-cancellation revelry; I don't think we've really seen the last of Miss America. As a form of mind control, that pageant was always alot more insidious than this reality crap, but tastes change. Miss America will be reborn as a campy reality series (sans scholarship and wearing a hot pink G-string) or I'll eat my hat.

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*Interestingly, according to the AP , a woman named Shari Ann Brill, who directs programming at the ad-buying firm Carat, believes that "a women-oriented network like Lifetime or Oxygen might want Miss America." Brill clearly has her finger on the pulse of patriarchy's weapons program. Its most powerful device: America's huge reserve of misogynist women. Why? Because women who hate other women are better qualified to despise themselves, thus ensuring that the cycle of humiliation and disenfranchisement is unbroken.

New Shatner Record Finally Arrives At Twisty Bungalow

I will leave it to qualified music reviewers to parlay the release of Has Been into excuses to use words like "kitsch" and "nerd chic." Whether this record is, in the grand scheme, hi art or lo, good or bad, makes no difference to me. Listening to Shatner riff on deadbeat dads and the inevitability of death is somehow the sonic equivalent of wearing fuzzy slippers and sipping hot chocolate in front of a roaring fire.

Thus We Conclude: Pat Robertson Is A Nazi

Mike Godwin, former lawyer for the
Electronic Frontier Foundation and inventor
of laws

Has anyone been following this Pat Robertson Reports Major Bush Miscalculation on Eve of War story? You know, the one where Pat tells W, "Dude, you should prep the citizenry for the eventuality of casualties in Iraq" and W answers, "There aren't going to be any casualties." Groups like MoveOn and the lefty bloggers with whom I have developed heartbreaking codependent relationships are eating this up with a side of guacamole. But isn't it kind of funny how all these liberals have decided that Pat Robertson is some kinda Oracle of Truth all of a sudden?

Nerd interlude: I have, in my customary Twisty-come-lately style, been fascinated to discover that there are numerous theories, laws, and corollaries said to govern all internet discourse. They are mostly modeled on Godwin's Law, which states that as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1. Some of the corollaries include:

Freiler's Maxim

Those who incorrectly invoke Godwin as proof that they have won the debate have in fact run out of relevant points to make, and have, by invoking Godwin, admitted defeat.

Sircar's Corollary

If the Usenet discussion touches on homosexuality or Heinlein, Nazis or Hitler are mentioned within three days.

Of tthe corollaries, my favorite is Gaudere's Law, whcih states that any post made to point out a spelling or grammar error will invariably contain a spelling or grammar error. Having glanced over my own post just now, I am moved to leave intact my typos and split compound verbs as an example of Twisty's Subclause: any post alluding to Gaudere's Law will also contain a spelling or grammar error.

I am hatching another corollary, which, when honed to its inevitable razor-sharp edge, will state something like: when a lefty group is desperate beyond all reason to discredit the megalomaniacal leader of the opposition (whom it has, at one point or another, compared with Hitler), it invariably bestows sudden lefty street cred on a member of the Christian Coalition.

Wikipedia's list of Godwin corollaries here.

Have You Ever Eaten A Quart Of Live Worms?

If So, What Was It Like?

I can't get into these reality shows. The "reality" they purport to showcase is a fake and unpleasant one, and anyway, there's already enough fake and unpleasant reality floating around; even the Lewis Laphams of the world think it's no big deal to make stuff up and print it in Harper's and then expect you to buy it when they call it "poetic license."

Observing human nature manifest itself when it knows cameras are rolling is creepy. Even so, as a testament to the power of an entertaining TV reviewer, I give you: me, watching an episode of America's Next Top Model, because I was curious after having read Heather Havrilesky go off on it. She thinks this show's the greatest thing since the presidential debate split-screen.

Quoth H.H, who had just taken poetic license herself in describing one of the models: " I can't believe I just wrote the words 'sophisticated swan.' But that's what this show does to you. You think you couldn't care less about fashion or models or any of this nonsense? Think again. Tyra [Banks] fills up every little moment on the show with drama, clothes and one giddy treat after another."

Lard knows I'm as fond of one giddy treat after another as the next guy. Roll'em!

What tha. It turns out that this show is just a longer, sleazier Miss America. Its premise is repellently, predictably misogynist: exploiting the vanity and insecurities of pretty 19-year-old girls and exposing their seamy underbelly by systematically picking them off, one by one, in an achingly slow, humiliating, weeks-long beauty contest, the ultimate spoils of which include expensive photo shoots and--the holy grail of every fucked-up anorexic pubescent American girl--a modeling contract.

Banks, a feline supermodel-turned-bride-of-Frankenstein I remember from the olden days before I pruned Vogue from my reading list, is a combination Svengali/drill sergeant commanding both a coven of goofy-looking fashion industry minions and the dozen or so girls trying to out-preen each other for filthy lucre. The aspiring mannequins subject themselves to humiliating fashion model "challenges," the results of which are judged by Tyra and the inquisitors. The judging scenes, wherein the authoritarian fashionistas alternately reward and berate the increasingly neurotic girls according to no code or scheme that I could detect, are apparently written by the guy who wrote the hospitality manual for Abu Ghraib.

Here's what I learned about competetive amateur modeling:

-- To an amateur model, professional modeling is a dream she's pursued from the cradle, for it represents the absolute pinnacle of human achievement.
-- An amateur model will weep like an Early Romantic poet when forced to cut her hair, but she'll remember to find solace in the hope that her ratty old split ends will go to "kids who have cancer."
-- When an amateur model turns out to be bulimic, camaraderie amongst her fellow amateur models and soon-to-be-ex-friends is instantly supplanted by declamations to the camera that puking even once is an eating disorder which ought to disqualify her. When the chips are down, it's every amateur model for herself. Whoa! Didn't see that coming!

I wish I could say that I learned more, but it turns out there isn't really much to know about 12 girls who will allow themselves to be piled like a tuna catch into a single limousine, given 10 minutes to fight over bags of makeup and wriggle into tight dresses while en route to a "glamorous industry party," only to be told when they get there that, except for one lucky winner, they'll actually be serving cocktails in polyester tuxedos. Get it? Instead of downtown glamor girls at the ball, they'll be lowly servants. Zing!

Not that they don't deserve it. It turns out that, in order to appear on the show, they each, ostensibly of their own free will, filled out an application with questions like "Have you ever been to a nude beach? If so, what was it like?" and "When was the last time you hit, punched, kicked, or threw something in anger? Please provide details."

Which is why reality shows are sub-par entertainment. Once you discover that there exists a large subclass of photogenic nutjobs who so psychotically yearn for fame they'll swim the backstroke across a river of shit if they think a TV camera is waiting on the other side, the novelty soon wears off and you kind of get sick of gawking at them. They're like sideshow freaks, except real sideshow freaks are interesting.

You've seen the commercials where those lunatics cram handfuls of live worms into their mouths? You've felt the pang of satisfaction over the humiliation these silly people endure to feed their ravenous ambition? This pang of satisfaction makes me want to take a shower.

Has Been Will Be But Isn't Yet

Waiting For Shatner

As Raymond Williams said, culture is ordinary. So, five minutes ago I ordered the new William Shatner record (at 20% off!). Now, suddenly, nothing else matters. How will I fill the bleak hours, the interminable days, the miserable lonely nights that separate me from It?

The Hazards of Keister-Fusion

Or, How I Came To Watch Half An Hour of The Miss America Pageant



There are untold blocks around which I have not been, nor will ever be, and countless turnip trucks off of which I have not fallen, nor will ever fall off of. This is because my keister has semi-permanently fused with my lime green recliner. But do not cry for me! Keister specialists have been alerted and are on my case. Meanwhile, when Twilight's indigo eye espies me of a summer's eve, I am recumbent and flipping through the channels like an autistic redneck. There, what marvels visit mine eyes! Last night, for instance, on Court TV: a pair of bantering hosts (the ubiquitous hot chick w/nondescript, doughy guy) yukking it up about forensic procedure during a show about the real-life brutal killings of actual innocent young girls. Also, that rascally Bill Maher feigning interest in what B-list comedians think about foreign policy so he can whip off some of his super-controversial quips.

But the other night I flipped to the most extraordinary thing. That's right. The Miss America Pageant. Who knew that thing was still around? It dawned on me that it might be edifying to observe this vile anachronism, so I swaddled the physique in some dirty grey sweatpants and let 'er rip.

Well, I'll tell you straight out that I'm not the woman I was. In days of yore, odes were sung to the glory of my iron stomach. My stiff upper lip was on the cover of Newsweek, and my other cheek, so masterfully turned, received a private audience with the Pope. But that is a bygone age. Since then, my mettle has mouldered. In fact, I didn't make it much past Miss America's first round of judging before my right hand involuntarily flew up to shield my bleeding eyes while the left fumbled with the remote to effect an immediate, life-giving channel change.

The horror, see, had started to seep into my pores. This in turn was making my skin crawl with such creeped-out revulsion that at one point it got as far away as the kitchen. It was then that I noticed sharp pains in my face; I'd been reflexively responding to all the sinister, smiling beauty queens by smiling right back at them. I wondered whether, if I smiled much longer, I'd start feeling fat and ugly and worthless, the way the advertisers wanted me to. The answer, of course, was "yes!" I had already begun to appraise and, naturally, hate the contestants--Miss Georgia, the token Negro; Miss Kansas, who couldn't keep the rapacious gleam out of her eye; Miss Alabama, who looked like something Sue Ellen Ewing spit out. I am eccentric, and I talk to myself. Here is a sample of my conversation:

"Check out the hair on Miss Wyoming." I said, smiling. "Like she couldn't make an onion cry."
"To say nothing of that hoe-bag, Miss Arkansas!" I responded, smiling, "I bet she's brought a few crabs to the beach in her day!"
"A foul and pestilent congregation of vapours!" I agreed, smiling.

The thing was sucking the sweetness and light right out of me. Watching less than half an hour of the Miss America Pageant did to me what weeks and weeks of trudging through Middle Earth with the soul-sucking Ring of Evil did to Frodo Baggins. Thus was I able to withstand only the "casual-wear" competition and the smarm-drenched events leading up to it. Such events included

--The "arrival ceremony," where the girls modeled what the "woman of today" wears when traveling: white gloves, veiled pillbox hats, and Doris Day's wardrobe from "Pillow Talk."

--Several commercials for dime store hair color and frozen diet food.

--A behind-the-scenes look at the Miss America Dressing Room, which, according to the repugnant game show host, "was once a sanctuary, but now that's all changed!" This gripping segment revealed acres of teeth attached to giddy young gums, one set of which personified the ideals of "the world's largest women's scholarship program" by proclaiming "you can never have too much mascara!"

--A commercial for a diarrhea drug which featured attractive women baring their midriffs, upon the actual human skin of which the drug company had scrawled its slogans with Sharpies.

The "woman of today," when competing in the cut-throat world of casual-wear, proceeds as follows: First, she conceals herself behind a scrim, where she flails provocatively in silhouette like a spastic Bond girl. When her name is announced she springs out, dripping with brick shithousery, dressed in tight jeans and a halter top that plunges just deep enough to prove she's a C-cup. She sashays down the runway doing sexy little daddy-pleasing Jon-Benet dances. She sashays back and starts flailing in silhouette again. What is she thinking about while wagging her boobs to and fro? Why, the education of little blind Bangladeshi orphans! If she can make the life of just one of them a little bit better, it's all been worthwhile!

I did some research, and it turns out that Miss America hasn't been doing too well in the ratings the last couple of years. I also found out that the girls spritz their butts with hairspray.

Local Band Has Songwriting Breakthrough

It wasn't easy hacking through the Flash underbrush of the .june. website, but here's the gist of their exciting new technique, in their own words:

The concept of .june. began to slowly take form early in
the spring of 2001. Jaded by the tune of the rock industry's
tired songwriting from monotonous garage bands, the
members of .june. decided to create something fresh.
The primary element that distinguishes .june.'s sound from
the others is their method of writing music. During the writing
process, each song is approached and dissected as if it
were a movie script. An intro establishes tone. Following the
intro is consistent movement and development. A climax
ensues. And lastly a conclusion leads the listener out of the
song. Each song is a journey. And each live set is an
experience.