Aides would give few details beyond the fact that McCain will speak directly to the camera, addressing Obama.

The strip-tease on the ad is one of several moves by the McCain campaign that could distract attention from Obama's big night.

Ok, John, that's a really bad idea.

Also his Vice Presidential pick will be announced either right before Obama's speech, which is a brilliant way of getting it no publicity until tomorrow, or after the speech, when we are drunk or asleep. It will be either internationally beloved sanctimonious baby mole-rat Joe Lierberman or reviled phony rich prick Wilbur "Mitt" Romney And His Totally Not Gay Sons.

Or Pawlenty or Kay Bailey Hutchison, who are boring, or Rudy Giuliani, who is not boring.

[Pdf of original.]

WSJ: Tell me about your lucky red backpack, which you wore to your first Spanx sales meeting at Neiman Marcus.

Ms. Blakely: It's just an old-fashioned Eastpack from the early 1990s. When I first cold-called Neiman Marcus to sell Spanx, my friends all begged me not to bring it and to buy a Prada bag instead, even if I had to return it the next day. It's my lucky bag, although I think seeing my butt [in Spanx] actually worked more than the backpack. I had no shame — I took the Neiman Marcus buyer into the bathroom, and as soon as I came out of the stall and she saw my pants [with the Spanx underneath], she said, I'll buy 3,000 pairs.

Remember: Always. Be. Closing. By using your butt.

WSJ: Ms. Paltrow is actually one of many actresses who has praised Spanx. Did you have a moment when you knew you had "arrived"?

Ms. Blakely: Actually, it would have to be when Gwyneth told the press she attributed her post-baby body [after the birth of daughter Apple] to Spanx, and said that all the celebrities wear them two pair at a time on the red carpet.

This is simply misguided. You want something even better than Spanx? Try THIS on for size, Gwyneth:

[WSJ. I am aware that nobody cares about my opinion on "Spanx."]

“We know that the guidelines need to evolve into specific recommendations and goals,” [coalition member Tom] Berquist said. “And yes, we know that eventually, we have to get paper out of the equation altogether.”

MORE SPAM. Huzzah! And there's always this creative tactic:

There is also support for “list hygiene” — that is, cleaning out direct-mail lists to remove the names of dead people and others unlikely to respond.

ONLY SEND MAIL TO THE LIVING. We'll have this crisis solved in no time.

[NYT]

1. "Magical Binder"

If you ever tried to write on a three-ring binder in your lap, you know how annoying it is when it keeps folding up, and possibly falling between your legs. Chuck's idea: "I don't have all the plans drawn up, you will have to spend the half hour figuring out the best way to make this a reality, but someone should produce a three ring binder that locks open, creating a rigid plane of productivity."

2. "Sex Sells Stuff"

The energy drink market is crowded with competitors, and the big players like Coke seem to have it on lock. How to even the playing field for smaller energy drink companies? Chuck's idea: "Product placement in pornographic films."

3. "Deep Fried Gold."

Fried foods offer restaurants a healthy profit margin, because a lot of their bulk is just made up of grease and fry material. Chuck's idea: "A restaurant that only sells deep fried nuggets/bite sized morsels of food. The nuggets are sold by the pound, and everything is the same price per pound. The customer wants a pound of deep fried okra or a pound of deep fried chicken nuggets, it costs the same."

If anyone does invent any of these, give us a cut too, for directing you to his site.

[Ideas By Chuck, first spotted at Adrants]

[Ad Age]

CBS signed up Roehm to be a judge on Jingles, a new show where people compete to make the best ad jingles (sounds awful). But the show has already been "postponed" before it even launched, because the network needs more time to promote (kill?) it. So how did Roehm, famous mostly for her spectacular failure on one of marketing's biggest stages, get the gig?

According to executives familiar with the matter, the "Jingles" casting crew was in a tizzy as of just a month ago, sending out dispatches to ad folks citing a "time crunch" in assembling a judges' panel, with a specific eye on pinning down a female ad or marketing executive.

Oh, and part of the criteria was the hotness factor: "It is television, therefore, being attractive would be a bonus," said one e-mail dispatch from Sam Gollestani, casting director for the host and judges.

The article also points out that every similar show has failed. Should be great!

[Ad Age, Forbes]

"Why doesn't David Geffen provide a proper amount of backing for an online newspaper out of LA and why doesn't he hire the staff of the LA Times en masse and let them keep putting it out under a different name? That way Geffen would have the pleasure of owning LA's paper of record, the staff might have the opportunity of doing their jobs without worrying if their names are going to come out of the hat at the next round of cutbacks, forests of precious trees would be saved and no one would get their hands or light suits stained with ink while reading about current affairs."

That's kind of a great idea! And then why doesn't David Geffen buy some closed steel mills and textile factories in Ohio and pay all the workers to keep making all that steel and those textiles too? Then he can give everyone welfare. Oh wait, did we say capitalism? We meant handouts! WHAT HAPPENED TO PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY?

[via And I Am Not Lying]

• The Web is dead. Churchill once described a pudding as having no theme. The same is broadly true of today’s Internet; Web 2.0 has descended into bathos, which really ought to have its own 'sphere named after it. Facebook’s great advertising revenue model went bust a year ago and everyone’s already stalked everyone else on MySpace. Most user-generated content reads like a stale algorithm of pettiness, paranoia and semi-literacy. Time formerly proclaimed “us” the “Person of the Year,” and it proved too burdensome a responsibility. We renounce the title.

• The television season is over. What is there to watch now except the Real World set where it always belonged – on a Hollywood soundstage – and with revolving cast members that don’t hang around long enough to come out of the closet, smack each other in the face, or forget to load the dishwasher? Bring back House with its acerbic Bertie Wooster.

• The economy is in limbo. It’s bad, sure, but it’s not quite so bad as to precipitate a new artistic or literary movement. No one's ready to move into lean-tos on the B.Q.E., become a Trotsykist, and found Partisan Review. Speaking of which –

• There are no new magazines. What’s to overhype and then hound to an early grave? Radar’s doing fine in that unremarkable way of its. And n+1 will either lurch into neoconservatism or get bought out by Dave Eggers and turned into Zimbabwean refugee’s emo fanzine.

• There are no parties, except the one being thrown tonight by Keith Gessen, the Julia Allison of public intellectuals, who wants to take back the Internet the way Irving Howe wanted to make socialism relevant.

• We live in atomized and fragmented times. Like academia, the culture is over-specialized and only caters to microscopic – mostly web-based – niches. My Buddhist Scandinavian black metal band can beat up your vomit porn-themed ballet troupe. It’s impossible to congregate under a mass banner of anything anymore. Is this why Barack Obama is deified? Is he the closest thing we have to a popular icon? (Michael Chabon thinks so, and he’s the dean of Superman studies.) But there are no other imagos to make our hearts beat as one and give us a shared cultural experience. What’s the last stadium-venue concert you attended? (I'm seeing Mos Def with a Big Band this month and I can't even get worked up about it.) Who’s the Seinfeld of the humorless aughts, the Geldof of this age of waste?

• Politics has sucked the oxygen out of media. Fortunately, like the TV drought, this may just be seasonal and subject to change once November comes and goes and Obama Girl is cast in the next Tom Stoppard play as Béla Kun's wry housekeeper.

• It’s been an uneventful summer thus far. Might we look forward to a rolling blackout in August that will allow us all to mate in darkened stairwells and wash with tonic water for a glorious twelve hours again?

[via Fimoculous]

The Subway chain of sandwich shops used Peter Griffin — a working-class guy with a New England accent — in a campaign at the end of last year that included television commercials and signs in stores.

The ads promoted a new menu item, the Subway Feast, that would appeal to the character if he were real, because it is “a large sandwich with lots of meat[.]"

Considering the advertising history of a man I like to call "Homer Simpson," I think they'll be safe here. Just keep Bill fucking Engvall out of it.

[NYT]

Along 34th Street between Fifth Avenue and Avenue of the Americas, 15 stores flooded the sidewalk with their air-conditioning. On a three-block stretch of Broadway in SoHo, from Houston Street to Broome Street, the number was 29. Among the energy wasters were major retailers like Steve Madden, H & M, Foot Locker, Aerosoles, Lane Bryant, Ann Taylor Loft, Arden B., Aldo, Uniqlo, Esprit and Zara.

Not Lane Bryant! There's a proposed law to fine retailers that do this, but it doesn't look too popular politically. More effective is the "asshole customer" route. Think of it as a free chance to berate Steve Madden.

[NYT]

[via Breitbart.tv]

Obama should point out shocking facts like "We aren't always aware of our biases" (people love to be told that!) and "A conservative may end up the first woman president" (why would Obama say this??) and "Politics can make a difference for women" (can it get them a MAN? lol j/k).

Then he suggests that Obama use this speech on gender issues, the speech it would probably condescending for him to make, as it usually is when smart boys play "feminist," to save all the ladies and babies in Iraq and Africa, which, while a very noble and important cause, really has fuck-all to do with the gender issues that colored coverage of Hillary Clinton's campaign and exposed deep reservoirs of sexism in the American body politic.

Then Kristof invites you to comment on this column on his Facebook page! You can be a Knight or a Vampire.

The Sex Speech [NYT]

Conscious rappers touch on this now and then, but are much more interested in telling us that black criminals are victims of the system. A recent example: "Black Thought" on The Roots' new album tells us, "It is what it is, because of what it was, I did what I did, 'cause it does what it does."

OUTRAGEOUS.

So: indeed, it's "not all like that." But if the folks known as the hiphop generation are learning their politics from "conscious" rap, there is little hope for our future.

Oh, John McWhorter, that's where you're wrong. The hip hop generation has a message for you: "I know I can/ Be what I wanna be/ If I work hard at it/ I'll be where I wanna be." Dig it, old man!

[NYS]

For years, people have sent decorated postcards with secret confessions on them, and PostSecret has published them. The blog is practically unassailable because it's so overtly emotional: Who's going to criticize a collection of personal confessions about drug addiction, grief over death, and private fears? (I will: After about thirty postcards, everyone's secrets sound the same.) Frank Warren has published four full-color books of this stuff.

So you've already got a well-respected blog doing what you wanted to do. No problem! For every person who sends a postcard, ten others have a confession but don't want to do the work to send it. Now here comes a site where they can just tap it into a text box. It's an instant content machine! I bet you know one you could type now! Here are some recent entries:

Poop Protocol

I cannot poop if my shirt is all the way on. I have to put one arm out of my sleeve, and put that side of my shirt on my shoulder. I also find it hard to poop with my shoes on, and will take them off if I'm at home. If I'm out and about I will suffer through the shoe thing, but not the shirt.

Floss Sniffer

i have the need to smell the dental floss each time i pull it out from between my teeth. sometimes when other people are around, i have to turn my back in case they catch me sniffing the floss, because i can't just floss without sniffing.

Even Distribution

When eating any food I have to distribute the different parts evenly so that every bite has the same amount of each. E.g. When I eat pizza I tear the crust off first and eat a little bit of the crust with every bite of the interior.

So now everyone with a neurosis can send it here. Okay, we solved the problem of neurosis, everyone! NEXT!

The bubble-butt version:

Fun-loving yellow:

Put it in your pocket!:

[via Mother Jones]

[Flickr via Environmental Graffiti]

"Spotted: Actor Who Plays Gay Overcompensating by Kissing Girls In Public," hisses Intel's headline for an event wrap-up. Paolo was apparently sucking face on the red carpet with some dizzy dame (pictured above) named April Alice, behavior that looked like "flaunted heterosexuality" to the Daily News. And, yeah, I don't know. I'm all for silly gay rumors, because they're amusing and fun and just might be true sometimes. But when a seventeen-year-old is making out with his girlfriend, is it really "overcompensating" or is he just, you know, a seventeen-year-old straight boy?

Yes, it was on the red carpet, and that's a bit of a "look at meeeee" PDA in a way that doesn't seem exactly organic, but he's definitely not the first celebrity to kiss someone in front of cameras. Maybe it's kind of a giddy thrill, you know? Maybe that's all it is. The idea that an actor who, whether he's gay or straight in real life, plays gay on TV must be grandly trying to shake off that image at any possible opportunity is a bit... I don't know, rude in some way. I'm probably being totally hypocritical and will double back on myself next week, but right now it just seems a bit like piling-on and over-analyzing the hormonal bumblings of a teenager. So, there.

But, on the other hand, we received a tip that Paolo's costar, Ed Westwick, was at a basement gay bar recently hitting on some mens. So, hah! Game on!!

Update: A Facebook-roving tipster tells us that the girlfriend's name is, in fact, Alice. And they had the photos (from Facebook, natch) to prove it:

[Image via Splash]

[Copyranter]

The casualwear brand, called LL Cool J for Sears, will include girls and boys, juniors and young men's wear, according to (WWD).

Much catchier than "FUBU." LL's main challenge? Living up to the standards set by Latin TV star Lucy Pereda:

Sears previously launched 97 multicultural concept stores in its stores, and has offered African-American-themed items in its catalogs. It also has sold labels by Latin TV star Lucy Pereda, as well as well-known designers Liz Claiborne and BCBG's Max Azria.

Meanwhile, analysts expect another dismal quarter at Sears when the Hoffman Estates-based retailer reports earnings on Thursday.

[Chicago Sun-Times via Multicult Classics]

The positives: $500,000 out of a rich person's pocket. Their absence from the New York metropolitan area from Memorial Day through Labor Day. And Hamptons parties overrun with bandaged, Joker-like figures, grinning grotesquely through their new masks of plastic.

This is like tee-ball for righteous outrage. Give us a challenge, you decadent monsters.

[NYDN]

The New Travel Weekly, a small lifestyle magazine, ran photos of sultry models in their underwear amid the debris in an issue that hit the stands on Monday - the first of three days of national mourning.

Ha, whoa! Now we've seen some bad judgment, but that is some bad judgment. All the magazine's top editors have been fired, and the publication has been temporarily shuttered for "rectification." In a formal statement we agree with for once, the Chinese government said the photos constituted an "extremely evil social influence."

You still don't see 9/11 porn.

[News24]

Reading Buckley's preface to the 50th anniversary edition describing the contempt heaped upon his book, I was reminded of the reception of my book criticizing racial preference policies, "Losing the Race." Stewards of "academic freedom" dismissed my reasoning as immoral rather than alternate, often having read not more than a chapter or two of the book. Melodramatic epithets flew thick, hurled by people blissfully unaware of the contradiction in upholding free inquiry while readily tarring people expressing certain views as "not with the program."

Visionaries always trod a rocky road.

[NYS]

Charles O. Prince III, Citigroup's former chief executive, wanted something fresh and focused on the theme of financial partnership, these people said. After months of research, the group settled on "Let's Get It Done," an invitation for customers to use more of Citi's services and a rallying cry for employees to get behind its turnaround...

But the tagline fizzled, despite a $30 million budget for the first two months of advertising. Although Citigroup executives maintain it tested well with customers, many employees, from senior bankers to security guards, were uninspired. The tagline also sounded like the "Git-R-Done" riff from the blue-collar comedian Larry the Cable Guy.

You might be a troubled CEO if...

[NYT]

Advertising and restaurant executives point to several reasons that neither campaign was a hit. The bizarre red wig commercials were too much of a departure from Wendy's folksy brand; the apple was not a strong enough image to represent Applebee's. It is unlikely, though, that either one would have been ended so quickly in better economic times.

Instead, both marketers have opted for a more recession-proof approach: glamour shots of food that are intended to make mouths water and prompt consumers to reach for their wallets.

THEY WILL BE MISSED. Wait; no.

[NYT; disclosure: I once worked with Doug Quenqua, author of this article.]