The Backbencher

For Your Consideration - Disney/Pixar's Irony IRON-E

Some of the WALL-E merchandise in transit from Disney/Pixar to a landfill near you: From top to bottom: plug-in video game, light-up pillow, programmable robot, throw, book that makes sounds when you press the buttons.

Now that it's after Christmas, if you live in Los Angeles, you are getting to hit full on with the onslaught of ads vying for your nod on the nomination ballots for the Academy Awards.

It's a lovely time of year to be in LA. Even if you are not a member of the Academy, you can't help but feel important as billboards, newspaper ads, and even radio ads all pucker up to you and offer something "for your consideration." After all, you don't need a ballot to not vote for a movie. And not voting for all those movies every year always made me feel good.

Now that I'm in Grand Forks, North Dakota - surprise, surprise - I am no longer assaulted by ads desperately seeking my "consideration." These days, my only form of ersatz rebuffery is refusing to purchase the brands of beet seed that billboards beseech me to buy.

But I am certain that back in La La Land, execs have purchased acres of ad space in Variety and on bus shelters throughout the city to tout Disney/Pixar's WALL-E for an Oscar nod. If not, it's because the movie is such a shoe-in it doesn't need any help. Not because it's good, but because it has great heaping shovels full of social and cultural MESSAGE of the sort the glitterati can't get enough of.

If you didn't see WALL-E, here's all you need to know [SPOILER ALERT:] Earth has become so cluttered with garbage that it has been abandoned by humans and all other life forms. WALL-E, a squat, adorable robot, dutifully scoops up the detritus of our consumption-driven society and stacks it into neat cubes. Humanity persists as race of sedentary blobs living on a spaceship where their fat bodies are whisked around in pods that move from one form of passive entertainment to the next. In the end, people learn to value the environment and exercise. In other words, the lesson is that humanity needs to take its political direction from Tinsel Town and strive toward having awesome bodies like those of all the underemployed SAG-members out jogging on the Miracle Mile on any given Wednesday. It's a beautifully animated validation of everything LA.

Now while the members of the Academy are being called upon to send in nominations for this orgy of SoCal self-love, we here in Grand Forks are not being ignored. We have our part to do. Specifically, Disney/Pixar is asking us out here in fly-over America to BUY WALL-E MERCHANDISE. In other words, we are supposed to clutter up the Earth with mountains of WALL-E licensed plastic crap and grow soft and pudgy with our WALL-E video games, DVDs, and other couch-viewed entertainment products that are compatible with a sedentary lifestyle. (Examples pictured.)

Ah, the irony! That would be like agronomy titan Holly Hybrids touting the aphanomyces tolerance of their beet seeds to North Dakotans but trying to sell muffins made with cane sugar to Californians. As if!!

[Cross-posted on Pixelization.]

To America's Financial Services Companies: Please Shut Up

After last week, when I told you how afraid I am of slipping on ice, and how, I injured my neck by “moving to sit down,” you may be asking how old is this guy?

Well, let me tell you. I am old. Very old. Actually, I’m 36. And let me tell you, that’s old enough. My 35th birthday was very hard to take. Much harder than 30. When you are 30, you are still in the 18-to-34-year-old demographic. Advertisers are still encouraging you to buy an engagement ring, take out a lease on a Mini Cooper, and even “go out” on Friday night.

But as soon as you turn 35, you’re an entirely different beast as far as America’s corporations are concerned. You’ve just passed into the 35-to-59-year-old demographic. And that means you start getting commercials for vitamins that are “specially formulated for your active lifestyle.” Worst of all, you begin to receive the considerable attention of a group of outfits called “financial services companies.”

I think I speak for everyone here on planet Earth when I say: Financial services companies, PLEASE SHUT UP.

The worst is when these financial services companies merge with one another and change names. Upon such an occasion, they will spend the next several months engaging in an orgy of advertising trying to impress you with how great that is.

“USB Warcus Pinkberg Globotrade and TD Ameriswiss Fidential have now joined forces to become USBTDPG AmeriGlobo Pinktrade. Learn how the power of USBTDPG AmeriGlobo Pinktrade is the Power to Dream.”

I’m not even sure what these companies do. They are not banks. I understand what a bank does. Thanks to the modern convenience of “direct deposit,” a bank gets all the money you earned from your job, and then charges you a fee if you ask about it.

Okay, I get that. I can wrap my head around that. But financial-services companies do something entirely different. How is it different? I can’t tell you, but for one thing, even though they are in the “financial services” industry, they apparently do not provide services at all. Instead, they provide “financial products.”

What is a “financial product”? Your first thought might be “money.” What other kind of financial product could you need? And if helpful American corporations are trying to give me money, that would be something I’d definitely be interested in, and I bet you would be too. But, as it turns out – and this is not a real shocker – these companies actually want you to pay them money in order to receive a “financial product” in return.

So, once you have a financial product, what can you do with it? Well – and this is the good part – with a financial product, you will be able to do no less than go out into the middle of the desert and achieve your dreams.

At least this is how Dennis Hopper explained it to me as he was sitting on a chair in the center of a vast dry lakebed. And since I’m now in the 35-to-59-year-old demographic, I tried really hard to pay attention.

Now, the thing about Dennis Hopper is, I’m not sure I find him incredibly persuasive when it comes to financial services. Several months ago in L.A., when I was driving on to a movie studio lot at about 4 a.m., I saw someone who looked like a bleary-eyed, unshaven Dennis Hopper half-asleep in the driver’s seat of a car parked immediately in front of the security booth. In fact, he looked exactly like Dennis Hopper, except that he looked very old, not very tall, quite drawn and wizzened, and, like I said, he was nearly passed out in a car parked just outside security at 4 a.m.

Now, there is a rule you learn about celebrity sightings when you live in Los Angeles. It is this: An apparent celebrity sighting is never not-to-be-believed because the person you see is (1) too short, (2) too old, (3) too thin, or (4) doing something extremely weird.

When my car’s headlight beams hit his face, he looked at me like I was the biggest jerk in the world for disturbing his nap. I will just say that it was not the look of someone from whom I want to take advice regarding financial products.

So I still have many decisions to make regarding financial products and services. But at least I’ll have plenty of time to think about it. All of us in the 34-to-59 demographic will – now that Sally Field has invented once-monthly Boniva. Because who could possibly deal with the slave-like drudgery of taking our osteoporosis pills EVERY SINGLE WEEK?!?