I wish they all could be Caledonian
we never forget you have a choice
Time is so weird.
I was just discussing with friends last night how January felt like three long years and then February was a total blip. I guess this is our new normal? I don’t care for it!
And yet, here we are. I don’t have anything remotely useful to say about The Current Moment, other than that I’m quickly learning the difference between useful anger and rage-for-rage’s-sake. I burn out quickly if rage is my motor, and the bad guys are counting on us to burn out. I’m not making that mistake.
Look, a lot of weird and bad shit is happening, and I’m not trying to pretend otherwise. But for now, joy is the most powerful form of resistance I can commit to, and that’s where I’m finding my time and resources are best spent. Here’s a good start: several of my brilliant and talented friends are putting on a trans/GNC theatre festival here in L.A. March 31-April 14 (that will be livestreamed!), and they are raising funds for it very soon on Kickstarter. I’m so excited to see the work that comes out of this! Pre-save their campaign and throw a few bucks their way if you can. Support art. Support community. Support joy and peace and safety for everyone. It’s where I plan to start, anyway.
what’s living rent-free in my head this week
Commercials From Around The World (VHS compilation, 1988)
I’ve had a lot of conversations with folks my age and older about our shared nostalgia for the video store experience. One of the many reasons why I am such a champion for Vidiots (besides the fact that their programmers are geniuses and their current beautiful facility is within walking distance of where I live) is that they understand the deep importance of physical media in an increasingly digitized landscape. While on one hand it’s amazing to have so much streaming content at our fingertips, things are taken down every day from these services at the whims and mandates of megaconglomerates. Physical media ensures that the art we care about doesn’t disappear. (It’s one of many reasons why libraries still matter, too.)
But beyond the necessity of physical media, there was another crucial component of the video store experience that I miss: an element of discovery that pushed you to try things simply because they were there. When you don’t have an algorithm trying to narrowly cater to your tastes, there’s an element of risk that is exciting. I discovered many of my favorite films this way — I remember looking at the box of Clue every Friday night for months at our neighborhood Red Giraffe Video before gathering the nerve to rent it, and when I did, I felt like I’d discovered hidden treasure.
Red Giraffe was a local video store chain in Louisville, Kentucky (my hometown). I don’t remember seeing this ad at the time, but wow, this is a time capsule:
(Also, if any of my people in the ‘Ville have any idea what happened to that sweet merch, gimme a yell. I’d pay decent money for a Red Giraffe Video shirt or hat…)
It was this intrepid sense of danger that led to me renting a truly bizarre video called Commercials From Around The World. This video lived in a section at Red Giraffe that, if memory serves, was a catch-all for anything that didn’t easily fit into narrative genre — music videos, travel videos, etc. This was the front cover:
And this is the tantalizing (?) copy that lived on the back:
Laugh Your #!@* Off in Several Languages at the Best — and Funniest — Television Commercials from Around the Globe! Bask in an international glow of creativity as the brightest minds in advertising from around the world compete to fracture your funnybone (and maybe sell you a product or two). Award-winning TV commercials from England, Australia, France, Japan and other countries vie for the title of cleverest promotion. And don’t worry about being subliminally sold to — You can’t even buy most of the products advertised in this country!
As I feel like this Substack has exhaustively established, I was a Very Weird Child, and so 9-year-old me read this description and thought, “Yeah dude, let’s rock and roll.”
I think it’s very possible I rented this video from Red Giraffe upwards of twenty-five times. It fell into a category of things that I love which I would broadly describe as “give me as much variety as possible within a single thing.” My favorite Viewmaster reels were always the demo reels that featured unrelated things to try to get you to buy other reels — look, the Alps! *click* The rings of Saturn! *click* A baseball game! *click* The Muppets!1 The curiosity that’s always been my driving force (and that is almost certainly responsible for my maximalist tendencies) has always pushed me towards sampler platters, variety packs… and this weird-ass VHS.
The existence of this thing is baffling. Even as a child in the early ‘90s, I wasn’t entirely sure who it was for (other than, well, me). If you’re feeling bold, I found the entire thing on YouTube (even though the box claimed it was an hour, the thing clocks in at 29:01):
Are these the greatest commercials ever made? No. Are all of them even good? Also no. But there are a handful of them that take up permanent prime real estate in my head. Here they are:
First, this extremely 1982 ad for British Caledonian Airlines has everything: objectification of women (“girls”, ahem), broad ethnic stereotypes, and in spite of it all, a truly charming Beach Boys parody that I love beyond reason. (Well-written lyrics always help!)
I think of this ad every time I see a sidecar. (Which admittedly is not that often in real life. #bringbacksidecars)
This bonkers French ad (the very last one on the tape) is where I learned of the existence of Orangina. It is, like one of my favorite of this year’s Oscar contenders The Substance, EXTREMELY French:
It was of course unseated as my first association with Orangina in May of 2000 by, well, this:
(Can I make almost anything about Frasier? I can. It’s a gift.)
However, there is one commercial in this largely Eurocentric2 compilation that I would stack up against literally any other. It is a self-contained short film, a masterpiece of the genre. It’s the “For sale: baby shoes, never worn” of advertising. It has made me cry on multiple occasions. Behold:
Were you a “rented the same tape from the video store multiple times” kid? If so, what was the tape? I want to hear all about it.
what I did this week
Speaking of both Vidiots and The Substance, I got to attend a screening that featured an in-person Q&A with Demi Moore (and her dog Pilaf, a legend). Of all of the movies I’ve seen of late, this is the one I can’t stop thinking about. It’s both the most disgusting movie I’ve ever seen and also the most accurate representation of what it feels like to be a woman in our society that I’ve ever seen. I’m just in awe of it, and Demi Moore deserves that Oscar (not that anybody asked me)!
in conclusion, a cute picture of my dog
A thing just occurred to me: I think a huge part of why I love Soarin’ in all its iterations is it’s like Viewmaster Demo Reel: The Ride.
Actually, the vast majority of the ads are British, so maybe Eurocentric is slightly misleading. Australia and Japan both make decent showings, as well as Germany and France, so it’s certainly international. But mostly British.
I've absolutely seen the J.R. Hartley ad before, but I have no idea where--maybe it was used here, too?
(Did you know that someone actually wrote a version of the book?)