SORRY TO LET YA DOWN, but Misc. just couldn’t come up with a sufficiently good/bad pun to describe the announced Quaker State/ Pennzoil corporate merger. Not even one involving the phrase “lube job.”
THE MAILBAG (via Michael Miller): “Regarding your question about being televised during a future Seattle Olympics under the `quaint local customs department,’ the answer depends. If a film crew expects me to walk around in Doc Martens, drink Starbucks, wear flannel, drive a 4 x 4, and brainlessly idolize Bill Gates, Boeing, and that idiot Chihuly, then the answer is `blow me!’ However, if they are willing to film me coming home from work in my classic Mustang, changing clothes, playing with my dogs, sneaking over to my neighbor’s mailbox, `borrowing’ her Victoria’s Secret catalog, and then jerking my stuff before yelling `Hi mom!’ into the camera, then fine, film away.”
LOADS OF SUDS: Anheuser-Busch, ever on the prowl for ways to replenish flat or slightly-declining beer sales, is now test-marketing Catalina Blonde, the “first beer for women,” in select areas (not around here yet). It’s a lighter-than-Lite concoction–half the alcohol content of regular Bud; fewer calories than Bud Light. No word on whether it’ll be promoted with tightly-dressed Catalina Blonde Boys tossing out key chains at the Flower & Garden Show.
PILOT LIGHT EXTINGUISHED: We neglected to previously report on the early-April passing of Dewey Soriano, the tugboat pilot who took effective control of the Pacific Coast League in the mid-’60s, and was rewarded for his efforts by the baseball establishment by getting Seattle’s first MLB franchise, the 1969 Pilots. He held a name-the-team contest as a PR stunt, but had already chosen to name it after his own former (and future) profession piloting commercial boats; that’s why its logo had a nautical, rather than an aviation, theme. Of course, his thin pockets could only take one year of losses at the beloved yet creaky old AAA ballpark, and by April 1970 (the same season Boeing laid off half its staff) the Pilots were sold and became the Milwaukee Brewers (now threatening to move again). The City of Seattle sued the American League, and in the settlement got the Mariners franchise seven years later. While the local dailies’ obits praised Soriano for bringing the majors to Seattle, I still wished the Pilots had owners who could’ve kept the team alive until the Kingdome finally got done. And it was touching, in a way, to see the ’98 Mariners remember Soriano by serving up Pilots-quality relief pitching in the weeks immediately following his passing.
SODDEN: Damn! The webzine Salon already did what I wanted–to request your own phony Microsoft support letters. If you’re tuning in late, the LA Times revealed a scheme wherein MS’s hired PR firms would concoct a supposedly spontaneous gush of letters and newspaper opinion pieces–all begging state and federal governments to back off from their assorted antitrust actions against the software giant. Commentator Jim Hightower calls these sorts of fake-grassroots campaigns “AstroTurf politics.” MS denied the allegations, claiming the newspaper had merely uncovered documents of unapproved PR-campaign proposals. The paper stood by its story.
It does read like something with which MS could conceivably try to get away. Except the trickery would’ve been all-too-obvious if all these supposed ordinary civilians all spouted the same leap-O-faith line–that the company’s dominance wasn’t really the result of its relentless deal-wringing and strong-arm tactics, but simply of releasing “popular” products within an unfettered open marketplace. It’s the kind of complex reality-distortion construct that too easily collapses when you try to translate it from spin-doctor lingo into more “natural”-sounding prose.
That’s where Salon’s invite comes in. They’re asking for original, equally preposterous, leave-MS-alone arguments. (Their own example letter: “Since I upgraded to Windows 95, my pancreatic cancer has gone into remission, my daughter was accepted to law school, and I won $50 in the Lotto Quick Pick.”) Send your own to www.salonmagazine.com. Or send ’em to us at clark@speakeasy.org.
