As always, a collection of useless and useful things I’ve thought this week. Enjoy!
There’s a commercial out there - I think it’s for Jim Beam (it is, but I had to check) - where an incredibly sterile bar full of people sing along, awkwardly to “Sweet Caroline.” It’s really … weird, in part because they clearly are trying to make it ‘natural’ in that you hear individuals singing (some fairly poorly, intentionally) instead of a professional chorus. It’s also all a cappella so there’s NO music behind it at all. It’s just weird. But that’s not what I always think about when it comes on, usually during a sporting event (about the only time I actually sit through commercials). It’s the reality that this commercial took many, many takes. How many times did the guy with the hipster beard have to sing “I’ll be inclined…” in an atonal but happy voice for the director to be happy? How many times did four actors have to clink glasses together and laugh raucously, on repeat? I feel like being any part of this commercial shoot would be suitable torture for forcing a confession, at least for me.
One of the non-sports related podcasts I listen to is The Watch from The Ringer. It’s about movies and TV, and quite often has some of the better discussions about that media while still being fun. I noticed that a recent episode is called, “The Best TV Episode of the Year,” and my first thought was that it would be a countdown of the best episodes. I wondered where “Forks,” from The Bear would rank, which is the episode where Richie interns at a fancy restaurant and has an awakening. It turns out this episode of The Watch is actually ONLY about Forks, talking with the director as well as Ebon Moss-Bachrach (Richie). I haven’t listened to it yet, and I’m still recommending it.
‘Forks” was such a great episode of television I thought about it for so long afterwards. It was so beautiful, funny, and so much more. I loved it, and I can’t imagine this discussion of it will do anything but reinforce that.
Hey, speaking of commercials … I’m officially out on Natasha Lyonne. I have no reason to believe she’s a bad person nor wish any ill will towards her, but it’s enough already. The OLD NAVY commercials where she talks like she’s a sailor from the 1940s - and I truly do not believe this is her real voice, though she talks like this quite often - are wildly, wildly annoying. I do realize that I complained last year about the Jennifer Coolidge OLD NAVY commercials so what I can say for sure is that either I’m not the target audience for these marketing plans or I’m exactly the market since I am here talking about them.
(I have not really watched Russian Doll, which I know many like. I watched the first few episodes of Season 1 and was fairly bored. Apologies.)
You may have now heard of DALL-E, a fairly simple visual AI tool you can prompt to create an image. I asked it to create a logo for this Substack, and here are my favorites. The first thing to be QUITE clear about is that DALL-E does NOT do words very well. Some of the misspellings are … impressive. Still, some of these are pretty good!
That should do it for this week. Happy Holidays to all!
“Greens in Reeucafion” is my winner