McCain Captured on Video Resorting to Gonzo AttacksMcCain has hunkered down with the nastiest of his advisers, convinced himself that any attacks he makes on Obama are justified, and gone batshit negative.
See All the New ‘Gossip Girl’ OMFG AdsThe CW has released a whole set of steamy new advertisements for the Greatest Show of Our Time, and they want you to get bleeping excited about it.
The Tribeca Grand: Now With More ButtOkay, this is an ad for the Tribeca Grand that a Mark over at Copyranter clipped out of City magazine. Our questions include the following:
1) Where is, exactly, the Tribeca Grand in this picture?
2) Are we to infer, from the sheet this woman is wielding, that your massage therapists at the Grand will be naked?
3) And seductively Asian?
4) Who in Tribeca is driving a wood-paneled Buick station wagon, like the one on the lower right?
5) And is she barefoot on cobblestones downtown? Ew!
TriBeCa Grand Hotel apparently offers Naked Turndown Service. [Copyranter]
the morning line
Joe Bruno, Eliot Spitzer Ruin It for Everybody
• One actual result of Troopergate (Brunogate? Spitzergate?): The State Ethics Commission passed a new rule preventing officials from using state aircraft unless the primary purpose of their trip is state business and requiring reimbursement for those parts that are not. [NYT]
in other news
Suits of Armor: The New Suits of SeersuckerSo you’re sitting there on the subway, bored and crowded and sort of hating your life (which is sort of inevitable in New York in August), and you see one of those School of Visual Arts ads promising the much more fun and fulfilling things you could be doing if you just took one of their classes. Yes, I would like to turn my passion into a program, you think. Or: Yes, I would like to learn to take pretty pictures of birds like the guy in that poster. As the always-angry Copyranter points out today, in SVA’s latest campaign, as seen in the Voice, you now also have the option of becoming a knight. Or a blacksmith. Or something. All of which, we’ve got to tell you, seem even less pleasant to be doing on humid 90-degree-plus days than squeezing onto the downtown Lex. Maybe it’s nice to know that things could be worse?
School of Visual Arts Doth Prepare Thee Well, Young Apprentice [Copyranter]
in other news
Disneyfied Subway Station Objectionable, AdorableSo there’s this cockamamy idea that the MTA could raise money by selling Disney the rights the advertise however the company sees fit in the Times Square station. “I would rather try to sell 42nd Street’s subway system underground to Disney for $60 million a year and have them paint it any way that they want to paint it,” board member Norman Seabrook suggested. We noticed this in the morning, and because we’re sort of opposed to the proliferation of advertising into every corner of life, and because we think there’s something untoward about selling public facilities to corporate sponsors, and just because we’re crotchety and don’t like change, we were against it. But then we saw the cute little logo Gothamist came up with for the combination — it’s a Mouseketeers hat! On the MTA logo! Ha! — and we should say we’re now sort of smitten.
Mickey Mouse for MTA? [Gothamist]
the follow-up
Doing the Butt
You may or may not have caught the controversy we like to call Butts Over Broadway. See, an ad campaign was planned for Toto Washlet, a Japanese-made toilet that, essentially, does the wiping for you, and it included a Broadway billboard showing big, happy, and presumably clean and paper-free butts. Thing is, the billboard was to go on a building that houses a church, and the church’s minister successfully sought a restraining ordering preventing the ad from going up. But there’s one thing being ignored in all this: Never mind the ongoing battles of church and butt; what’s a Washlet like? Fortunately, New York is here for you. Stephen Milioti reviewed the Washlet for the mag back in December. His poster-worthy verdict? “The Washlet will make you forget toilet paper forever!” There’s much more explanation in the piece.
Open Water [NYM]
In Billboard for Bidet, Church Sees Times Square’s Seedy Past [NYT]
in other news
‘Post’ Either Loves or Hates Paris Hilton
Just wanted to make sure you got a good look at what might well be the single greatest New York Post cover ever. “If Paris wasn’t born, she would have to be invented,” Andrea Peyser writes in her column. “If she did not form naturally, we’d have to build one of her.” We can’t tell if Peyser’s “we” refers to American society, dismissively, or to the Post’s circulation execs, appreciatively. Maybe a little of both?
(Also: Isn’t that cover line effectively calling Peyser a bimbo? Fun!)
She’s the Naughty Gift Who Keeps on Giving [NYP]
Related: Paris Was Pig in a Pokey [NYP]
party town
Can You Define ‘Irony’?• Generation Harvest Summer in the City event. Metropolitan Pavilion North. 110 W. 19th St., nr. Sixth Ave., 6 p.m. Tim Robbins, Greg Kinnear, Elizabeth Banks, B.J. Novak, and others are expected. Coming just after the slacker era of Generation X, “Generation Harvest” consists of 29- to 31-year-olds who dress like Ethan Hawke’s character in Reality Bites but are corn farmers.
Or check out our Agenda listings for tonight, selected by New York’s culture editors.
developing
On Perry Street, the Death of Real-Estate Bling?Luxury-condo marketing went through the looking glass at a brokers’ breakfast this morning for 166 Perry Street, a new 24-loft, bumpy steel-and-glass condo set to rise just east of Richard Meier’s sleek towers in the far West Village. The building has private swimming pools for its penthouse duplexes and art-installation screens over the ground floor, but, interestingly, Corcoran Sunshine marketers are pushing it as, well, simple. “There’s an architecture-collector market,” marketer James Lansill told us in Jean-Georges’s Perry Street restaurant, which will deliver room service to the building. “It’s not about bling at all.” Oh, no. Not at all. —Alec Appelbaum
photo op
Our Bodies, Our Storage
We spotted this latest installment in Manhattan Mini-Storage’s inarticulate we’re-trying-to-show-we- share-your-politics-but-we-fail-at-it ad campaign (has anyone actually ever figured out that Cheney ad?) on our way down the West Side Highway Sunday night, and we were as confused by it as the Copyranter is today. Our best guess at its message: Once Alito & Co. overturn Roe, at least a storage locker will be preferable to an alley! And you know how we all love decreasing-civil- liberties humor.
Better interpretation? Let us know.
Back Alley Advertising [Copyranter]
Saatchi & Saatchi Loves New York, ‘Lovemarks’So Saatchi & Saatchi has landed the “I Love New York” account. And it seems the international ad firm (which takes credit for electing Margaret Thatcher and Boris Yeltsin, among other things) has a unique qualification for the job. Turns out Saatchi & Saatchi doesn’t do brands anymore — it does lovemarks. “Brands have run out of juice,” proclaims the first sentence on Lovemarks.com, a has-to-be-seen-to-be-believed site created by the firm to explain its mission. “Check out the Love/Respect Axis” — seriously, check it out — and learn “the hallmarks of a lovemark.” Those, it turns out, are “mystery, sensuality and intimacy.” And what is “I Love New York” if not the ultimate lovemark? It doesn’t get more intimate, sensual, or mysterious than a first-person-singular pronoun, a big red heart, and an abbreviation. Indeed, we’re so excited about Saatchi’s forthcoming campaign — nothing will be unveiled till winter 2008 — that we might just leave a lovemark right where we sit.
Lovemarks.com [Saatchi & Saatchi]
Cheerio! Loyalty and Mutiny at Saatchi & Saatchi [NYM]
